The Process

Today I thought I would share a bit of my process I use for completing a finished piece of art.

I got the inspiration for doing this piece from Rob Schamberger’s Bi-weekly art jam section of the KC Comix scenes message board. This week he is doing Christopher Reeve as Superman. I wanted to take a break from my stuff and do a fun kind of piece.

On Rob’s thread he provided everyone with some photos to use as a guide to there creation. Normally I have no problems using photo referencing, I use it quite a bit for my two books, but I wanted a break from that and decided to just “freestyle” on this one.

Once I came up with my concept pose I started my research on the man of steels costume. This was not what I was wanting to draw. For the most part superman has a very boring to draw, costume. I myself love drawing details, and really had my heart set on that. So I scraped the Superman idea and went with the only other Superhero more “American” than Superman, Captain America.

I did my research and noticed caps costume was a bit boring and dated too, so I gave my cap an update for 2005! I stared fleshing it out and adding the little details; I also played around with the ideas for my background. The total penciling process took me about 4 hours. Not to bad, but pin-up type art is always faster than sequential when laying down the lead.

Next I started the inks. I begin by just inking the details and leaving the lighting effects for later.

Here you can see where I started. I use (Micron) pens for most of the detail, and acrylic (zillar) soot black ink, with a brush. These two tools I use for 99% of my inking.
"flat" inks. Staring grays with the gun barrel



Next I add the “lighting” with the inks. Brush and ink, and some (Faber-Castell) brush pens work great for this as well, makes this process a little quicker without losing much as far as details.
Last but not least I add in the gray tones with (FW) gray acrylic ink and ink wash (my own mixture of course). For this, I every so sparkly used (Pantone) gray marker for some more effects.


Finally I inked up the background and erased all my pencils and I’m done! I started this piece late Saturday night, and finished it late Sunday/early Monday. Click here for a higher rez version, more suitable for viewing.
Hope you enjoyed this.

Later

Back on track...

What's up everyone. Well I just finished two more Silencer Pages on Issue 4, and one more page on issue 2 of Texas. I'm trying to get back in the grove and hit my story telling stride. It's very hard to do sometimes when you don't know when...And IF your books will ever come out. Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll have an announcement about my books, but don't wanna jump the gun, so I'll fill everyone in when I have something set in stone.

I will say that I'm getting very impatient waiting for my books to come out, nationally. I hit some snags with cocked and loaded and it seemed they have a chronic feet dragging condition. hopfully that is behind us and they seem to be motivated and excitied on getting my stuff to the next level. The next few weeks will make or break the immediate future of my books, I'll say that much. But I've been working on Texas for over a year from concept to finished product. Silencer was the first thing I wrote after my first published book (Warrior of Destiny) came out in 2001.

I just want to remind anyone who wants a copy of Silencer, Texas Tenaka I still have some here. Just shoot me an e-mail if your needing one. Remember to check out my gallery site if you want some cool artwork.

SIN CITY!!!!!

Sin city DVD came out today, and yeah I know there is a special edition DVD coming out soon, buy I bought this one anyway. The movie is so good, it gives me chills just thinking about it. For anyone who does know me, Frank Miller is my idol, without a doubt the biggest influence on my work as a comic artist. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you need to check it out.


Here is some Sin city Art that I've done

Cry of the wolf...

Just finished another commissioned piece for a fan I met at Wizard World. He's a big Werewolf fan, so here it is. I do love doing commissioned pieces, because you know if some one is willing to pay for your work, that they will display it proudly.

Just to remind everyone that I have five different types and prices for commissioned pieces. I try to make sure if you want something, I can make it affordable for everyone. Just contact me for pricing.

Chicago, highs and lows...

Whazzup everyone. Back from Chicago a few days ago. It had it's high and low points but over all the trip was a disappointment. We had a bad local in artist alley, and my books did not come in till noon on Saturday. Texas Tenaka was not printed to my specs and was quite disappointed in the over all quality of it.

-No color on front and back cover ( inside and out)
-No spot color on interior pages
-The interior pages were suppose to be a differnt paper type
-The Gray tones were not on target.

( any one in KC looking for a printer, Copy Club sucks Ass!!)

With that being said I want to thank everyone that did pic up this "Convention" edition of Texas Tenaka.

I also want to give a special shout out to Ed Lavalee, without his help the book wouldn't ever have been ready, so thanks Ed!

I've already got some good feed back from you guys saying how much you like Texas, and let me say right now that I plan to fix what ever problems this book had before we go back to print with it. Anyone still wanting a copy you can get one at Elite comics for $2, or just e-mail me and I'll hook you up.

Here some picks from the con

Jim and Frank

Some...uh, people in costumeWizard World