Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Some Unlettered Comics Pages

Here are a few unletterered pages from my current project. It's trans erotica again, but with werewolves and swashbuckling. No werewolves in these pages, though. Just erotica. Watercolor and ink on 300 lb Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper. If all goes to plan, this will appear in Alphabet, an anthology to benefit Prism Comics.








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Friday, December 11, 2015

Male Nude (back on the drawing horse)



I finally got back to a life drawing session yesterday. I was late so my pose opportunities were limited. In truth, I'm kind of happy with this angle, as in your face as it is. Pencil on Canson sketchbook paper.











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Saturday, November 7, 2015

Work Process, Early November

I'm trying to slog to the end of my current big project. I'll be done with it by the end of November if it kills me. That still doesn't prevent hiccups from happening.

This piece is described as basically barbarians vs. giant plasma monsters, with some other game-specific instructions like what weapon the barbarian woman is holding and such. The under-drawing was quick (I did it while I was chatting with a friend on Google+ as it so happens):



Detailed, eh? Most of the fun comes in the inking stage. Here's the inked drawing. I didn't like the trailing figure, so I drew a the archer instead as I inked it:


But this drawing has a couple of problems. One is an inking accident in the lower part of the drawing on the feet and legs of the two male barbarians. You can see the white paint on the thigh of the archer that I used to cover the smear there, and there's another smear under the left foot of the swordsman. Additionally, the aspect ratio is wrong. The size of the space this fits in in the final book is 2.6:5, so it's too narrow. You can also see the edge of the paper on the left side of the drawing. To the Photoshop! I corrected the contrast to get rid of the page tone of the paper, plus the stray pencil strokes that I failed to erase, I used the clone stamp tool to get rid of the ink smears, and I widened the image and extended the landscapes. These I just drew directly with my Wacom tablet (why am I not working digitally on this project? I'm not fast with digital tools, or, at least, not noticeably faster than I am with traditional materials, which I like). Here's the final version I sent to the client:


This next drawing went off without a hitch. The image popped into my mind and the drawing went very quickly. For inspiration and reference, I looked at bunch of photographs of dancers in a production of "The Rite of Spring" choreographed by Pina Bausch. This will be reproduced in a tiny space, so a lot of detail would get lost, so this is fairly simple:


Belatedly, the client suggested that I cover the naughty bits. This surprised me a bit, because the other books in this series don't shy away from harder material and this book has plenty of gore in it. There's a dancer pulling her face off in this image, after all. But, that's fine. I'm a very compliant collaborator most of the time. Again: to the Photoshop! My client suggested fur bikinis for these figures, but I didn't like that idea, so I went with something a little more civilized:


This is ultimately an example of the practice of drawing a naked figure and then drawing clothes on top of them, which is well-familiar to artists of comics. Anyway, I'm pushing through this. Here's a bonus image, one that went through more or less without a hitch, though it's more "sketch-like" than most of the other stuff I've done for this project. The dinosaur is modeled on the skeleton of a giganotosaur, and you can't actually see the tail of the beastie in the reference and I didn't draw it on the page, so I added it in Photoshop after I scanned it because I thought the drawing looked odd without it. I like the dynamism of this image:


Enjoy.









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Sunday, August 30, 2015

Late August Art Dump

I've been making a lot of art this month, but a lot of it is stuff I can't show. That hasn't stopped me from going to my regular figure drawing sessions, though, and here are a bunch drawings from those sessions I attended this month. The drawing at the head of this post is pencil and almost dry Copic markers on sketchbook paper. Dry copics have their uses, but I think I need to refill mine.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

More Recent Life Drawings...

Star, graphite pencil on watercolor paper

I've been posting a lot of life drawings lately. The reason for this is twofold: first, the stuff I would ordinarily be posting--stuff for my current illustration clients--is under a non-disclosure agreement until publication. Second, I'm really digging my life drawing sessions. Anyway, here are some recent ones.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Still More Life Drawings


Some more drawings from my weekly life drawing sessions. Col-erase Prismacolor on Blick sketchbook paper and pencil on Blick scetchbook paper. Pretty scribbly. I tend to be an impatient artist.

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Creative Process (or "Stealing Like An Artist")



I'm deep into an illustration gig right now, and unfortunately, I can't show much of it. I'm gonna show this piece, though, because it's got a fun story behind it.

The description for this drawing wanted a Chinese man, dressed simply, kneeling in front of a shrine and cutting away vines that had overgrown it. Behind the shrine was to be a plague demon. The shrine was easy enough to think up. This doesn't have any photo references. I just drew it from my head. The plague demon was another matter. I didn't want to step on the toes of a certain very litigious game company who have a prominent plague demon in their IP, so I asked my client for some guidance. He suggested I look at viruses. So I did. I looked at Ebola. I looked at streptococcus (which is technically a bacterium), I looked at HIV. None of them really fired my imagination. But then I remembered this thing, which I ran across for another project last year.


This is the penis of a bean weevil. The bean weevil, like many insects, reproduced by "traumatic insemination," in which the penis penetrates the carapace and spews reproductive materials all over the insides of its "partner." Basically, they're rapists. Insects are fucked up. Serious nightmare fuel.

In any case, this photo accompanied one of the wikipedia articles and I knew I had to save it for my morgue, because that's a Lovecraftian horror, right there. I wound up flipping it for my drawing. Flipping images is a common practice among artists who want to disguise their source, but for me, for this drawing, I flipped it because I already drew the other main figures and I wanted it facing them. Besides, I'm owning up to the swipe right here, and it's an image in the creative commons of wikipedia anyway, so I don't need to disguise it. I'd feel bad about it if I hadn't run across a blog post about the great French cartoonist, Moebius, and his use of photo references. I'm not in his class, but, hell, if it's good enough for Jean Giraud, it's good enough for me.

Anyway, my drawing is brush and ink on bristol.







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Friday, June 5, 2015

Male Nude


After months of female models, we finally got a male model for my life drawing group. I was pretty happy to be drawing this guy. He had great muscle definition and it wasn't a reclining pose for a change.

Pencil on sketchbook paper.





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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Dark Dungeons Redux


This is a commissioned piece for a card game about conspiracies (the game itself is in the early stages of funding). The conspiracy in question here is the religious right's panic over role playing games in the 1980s, which they foolishly deemed Satanic. The brief suggested that I design this as if it was going to go into a Jack Chick tract, and also suggested I include some signifiers of role playing games. This was fun to draw. I love drawing horror-ish things. Brush and ink on Bristol board.







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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Always with the Negative Waves, Moriarty!


Always with the Negative Waves

This is a piece I did for one of my Kickstarter backers. Very different from the other Kickstarter art, but the backer in question is a very dear friend and wanted a piece with Oddball from Kelly's Heroes. I'm torn between wanting to ink this and sell prints and the sure suspicion that I'll screw it up if I try. I'm really happy with the likeness on this piece, which is something with which I often struggle. This is going out as is, per request of my backer, who has seen it and likes it this way. You may not have seen the last of this, though.

Pencil on Bristol board.













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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Winding Down the Exiles Art



This is another piece I did for one of my Kickstarter backers. brush and ink on bristol board. This turned out better than I was expecting while I was drawing it, but most of my work teeters on the edge of disaster while I'm drawing it. I have no idea of how I pulled this off (or if I'm deluding myself. I also needed to draw Natalie and Daryana. I should have figured out a way to work Wayne into a piece, too. Ah, well...











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Saturday, April 4, 2015

Freewheelin Natalie and Alyx



Here's one of the drawings I made for my Kickstarter backers. Natalie and Alyx from The Exile of Natalie Rios. Brush and sumi ink on Bristol board. This turned out nice.











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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Still More Life Drawing



Here's the painting I made at today's life drawing session. Sometimes, image-making just comes easy. This was fun. Watercolor and sumi ink on Canson watercolor paper.









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Saturday, February 28, 2015

More Life Drawing




Here are two more drawings from the life drawing sessions I've been attending, drawn on different days from different models. The first is graphite on sketchbook paper. The second is brush and ink on watercolor paper.













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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Janey and the Missionaries Page 4



Here's the next part of this. I need to rethink lettering by hand.


You can read the whole thing (so far) at my comics Tumblr.











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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Friday, February 13, 2015

War Horse and Pack Mule



Here's the last of this commission. More horses (well, a horse and a mule). I never went through a phase of wanting a horse or drawing horses, so this is uncomfortable territory for me. You'd think after years of doing fantasy art I'd be comfortable with horses, but I'm not. Brush and ink and Pitt pens (and some digital correction) on Bristol board.












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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Rhino Pony Wolf



Here are more drawings for my current commission. Brush and ink on Bristol board. I should be finished with these tomorrow. I have some experience drawing wolves by this point. Also: Shetland ponies have ridiculous manes.

















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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.


Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Snake Monkey Lizard




Here are some more animal drawings for my current commission. Brush and ink on Bristol board.













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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Janey and the Missionaries page 3



Here's the first page of the next Janey and the Missionaries sequence. This will be about two pages, too, like the first one. Brush and ink with some Pitt pen and digital clean-up. I really probably ought to rethink lettering these by hand...










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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Elephant and Kestrel




Two more drawings for my current commission. Brush and ink on Bristol board.








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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.