Xmen...literally speaking

Had an idea of interpreting some superheroes exactly the way their names would suggest. So first up is Wolverine, that Marvel megastar who's name is taken from an oversized, Canadian weasel.


Should be fun doing some other Xmen characters- Storm, Cyclops, Sabretooth... also thought about doing Nightcrawler, but considering his name is derived from a kind of Earthworm, it might prove difficult.

EDIT 30th March- I don't want to start a new blog entry for each addition, so I'll just keep adding to this one. Here's the latest, the giant teleporting earthworm that is...The Nightcrawler!

Milestones and funnybones

A double dose of celebrations on my blog today.

Firstly, I just passed 100,000 hits. Woohoo! Thankyou very much to all those who have visited and kept on visiting. Hopefully you have all been entertained and enjoyed what you saw along the way. Your comments have always been encouraging and I appreciate all your feedback.

Secondly, it was a year ago TODAY that this whole blog began!! A BIG thankyou to Heri who after discovering I didn't have a website, suggested that I start up a blog to showcase my work. Before that I'd been itching to get a website together, but the knowledge needed and the cost of running it had put me off. This blog costs me nothing to run and is so much easier to keep updated than a regular site. I've managed to transform it into everything I wanted out of a website and then some, with the added bonus of being able to directly communicate with visitors. It's been a blast!

On another celebratory note, my Chewbacca piece has been shortlisted for the next Exposé book from Ballistic Publishing. Crossed fingers and I'll keep you guys posted.

UPDATE 18th April- Unfortunately Chewbacca didn't make the final cut for Exposé 5. Ah well...I guess for someone who doesn't specialise in 3D art I did pretty good to get that far.

But enough chitchat, here's some artwork. I finally got around to inking and colouring my Joker pic from a while back. The scalpel was a last minute addition to balance out the pic.

Another brunette...

My third brunette in a row, to be exact (yes I'm including Sumo Alfred). This time it's a digital sketch of actress Eva Green (Casino Royale, Kingdom of Heaven), done for a drawing challenge over at the Drawing Board.

Drawn in about 90 minutes in Painter 8 using the Square Chalk tool. I love the natural hand drawn feel it gave the piece.

And as an added bonus, I finally got my screen capture program working again and managed to create a timelapse video of the drawing process.



EDIT 5th April- Added a touch of colour.

NCIS Abby

Here's a digital sketch of Pauley Perrette a.k.a Abby Sciuto from TV series NCIS. When I was researching photo reference, I was surprised to discover that Ms. Perrette is almost 40! (Not that there's anything wrong with that). It must be a combination of her high voice, elfin features and her character's goth getup and pigtails which make her seem so much younger.

Originally this was going to be a self-promotional video sketch for YouTube but once again my screen capture program crashed halfway through saving and I lost the footage. Bummer.

About 90minutes in Painter 8 using the Pen/Scratchboard tool.

Sumo Alfred

A Sumo Alfred E. Neuman for an Australian MAD Supersize special.

I used the same method that I do with all my MAD covers- pencil, Photoshop, Painter (see Paperboy tutorial), but this time I made more of a conscious effort to blend the linework into the painting. It's still there, but nowhere near as strong as this method usually produces. Gives it a slightly more traditionally painted feel, I think.

Also below are a couple more of my MAD Supersize covers from last year.