Gambit Process

Start to finish. I originally planned on just the inked sketches but ended up going through to color. Along the way I ended up trying out some new techniques that I will probably use on future projects.

Sketchbook

What's up people, this is the cover to my new sketchbook.

It's 65 pages, 20 full color pages, 20 or so monochrome/tonal pages and about 20 pages of bw. sketches. Gloss paper with a spiral binding.

It includes work from my DA gallery as well as other stuff that I have never posted. If you want one just e-mail and I'll send you a bill. Cray888@hotmail.com

The book is 30$ plus shipping

I tried to pack as much as I could into this book, showing sketches, process and finished illustration. It's a range of everything that I've done.

Each book will come with a sketch, let me know what character you want and I'll hook it up.

Black Panther

This was a pencil commission the I decided to ink and color. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results, its not perfect but at this point I think my total production is more important than trying to create a perfect drawing.

Deadpool Teaam Up

A couple more pages.

DeadPool Team Up

The first few pages from Deadpool 897.

Deadpool pg 10

More Deadpool pages. Now that the book has come out I can post the rest of the pages that I drew. Pg 10 This page was a doozie...is it only old people that say Doozie?

Deadpool 900 Pg 5-9

More Deadpool pages. Now that the book has come out I can post the rest of the pages that I drew. Pages 5-9

Deadpool 900 pg1-4

I was fortunate enough to be given a chance to draw a short story in the new Deadpool anthology book. The book comes out on Oct. 14th if anyone wants to pick it up.
Here are the first four preview pages that Marvel posted. I just did the drawing portion of the page, the ink were done by http://elvlasco.deviantart.com/ and the colors are by http://martegodpopo.deviantart.com/

ghost Ryda

Some sketches of the Ghost rider.

Deadpool

I know how much everyone wanted to see this and I aim to please, so without further Ado, DEADPOOL! A couple different stages here, inks and colors.

I'm going to be offering prints of this guy as well. Same deal as before, If you want one drop me an e-mail (cray888@hotmail.com) and I'll send a bill through Pay Pal.

11x17 high quality prints for 20$ Plus shipping

Thanks

Indy

Just for fun. I really love Short Round, what a great character. Roughs, partial inks and full inks with gray tones.

Sketch cards

I just started doing these sketch card commissions recently, these are a few of the ones that I did so far. I'm working in gray tones only at this point and will probably start doing full color soon.

I'm selling the cards for 10$ a piece, just let me know what you are looking for and I'll do it up for you. I'm starting to do some painted cards as well, if you want one of these let me know and we'll work out the price.

All payments are through Pay Pal just send me an e-mail with what you want and I'll send the bill back to you for payment.

Thanks for all the support, take care.

cray888@hotmail.com

Sketchbook

A bunch of pages from my sketchbook, a mix of life drawing and imagination drawings.

Spidey inks pg1

First page of inks

Spidey inks

Not much to say here just the inks. I take that back, I will say that I really tried to not worry too much about the end result here and just go for it. I had a great instructor at the Kubert school named Toby Cypress that really helped change the way that I looked at art. What he said and did didn't fully sink in at the time but it really made an impression with me. I don't know if this is the direction that I will head in and I think that's a good thing. The most important lesson that I have taken from Toby's instruction is to just be open to what's feeling right for you at the time and to not be scared of heading into new territory.

Spidey Cover

Cover for the previously posted six pages of Spidey vs Hyde. I think that I'm starting to settle in a bit with how I want to approach my inking in the future. It's been fun seeing the different type of marks that can be made wih a brush once you break out of typical approach to comic style inks.

Chief 3d

I was fortunate enough to be able to make a maquette of the chief character of my spirit fireman story. I haven't decided yet but I might paint this guy up pretty soon.

Kingdom of the Sun

This guy is from something called Kingdom of the Sun which I think was a Disney movie, if anyone knows for sure please tell me. Anyway I thought he looked like he would be fun to sculpt so I did.

New force 2

A little more early exploration of color styles and character designs. Next week I'll have to get more detailed with the characters and their final designs, I should have more props as well.

New Force

The start of some of the new characters for the Ghosts of White City. Here again I'm just trying out some different ways to color things and also I'm trying to incorporate more reference in my work.

Spidey pg1

Six pages of a very old Spider-man plot that I've attempted to draw numerous times. This things been around I've seen a bunch of other versions of it on DA. It's always cool to see how different people interpret the plot. Pg1

Spidey pg 2-6

Six pages of a very old Spider-man plot that I've attempted to draw numerous times. This things been around a while I've seen a bunch of other versions of it on DA. It's always cool to see how different people interpret the plot, since it's left pretty open.

The Old Engine

I beefed up the color a bit on the Fire engine page. I tend to like less saturated colors but in this case I wanted to push the color a little more, I kind of see these characters as being more at home in a cartoon than a comic book.

The first piece is about 50/50 digital and traditional. The bkg and the overlay I used were both done in Photoshop but the rest was done traditionally.
This is the Ghost's of White City's Wheels. I think that it's actually based mostly on Firetruck from turn of the century Great Britain if I remember correctly. I thought this looked cooler that Fire engines from Chicago at the same time period so I changed it up a bit. More development work to gome along with the rest of my Spidey sample pages.

The next couple are a couple character moments with the chief and his daughter.

The big man

I'm starting work this week on some of the other characters from my firefighting ghosts project, this is the second guy. He's kind of the old school muscle back when strong dudes looked like dudes and not buff chics, admittedly he's a bit fat too. I'm about to start painting this guy too so if it doesn't suck too much I'll post that as well, since I'm a posting whore.

Hammer head sculpt

This is a sculpture bust that I'm working on, it's pretty much finished here except for a couple minor things. I'm debating if I should paint it or not, I probably will but it might be a while later. So this is a character from the Enrique Fernandez Wizard of Oz comic that came out a couple of years ago. He's such a great character designer that I had to sculpt one of his Oz characters.

Firehouse

No not the crappy eighties band the domicile. I'm starting work now on the Old Firehouse designs. This is the first pass and possibly the last as I'm running short on time. Pretty basic stuff a bunch of silhouettes of different types of firehouses and a more detailed version, along with a detail of one area. I think I'll move on to designing some more of the characters next and a couple more interiors.

Chief in repose

So I'm never going to claim being done with a certain subject again because I love to beat a dead horse to death, redundant I know. Anyway, this one's a bit gimmicky with the frame and the filters and such but I was having fun and it fits the story so there you go.

What's more exciting than a kitchen, I mean c'mon. I'm finally moving on to some environments and such for the firemen stuff and this is the first pass.

A quikie

A quick pass at some colors on...you guessed it the Chief. It actually wasn't all that quick because I was just trying out all sorts of combination's, damn Photoshop and the endless possibilities that it offers!

Portrait of a Ghost

I couldn't resist adding a bit of color on the chief. Really quick color sketch, I'll probably finish most of the characters this way.

Chief

A page of the Chief pointing at people mostly. Just a page of some of the chief characters actions, this will probably do it for this guy for a while, down the road a bit I'll probably have some colored versions of this guy.

Batman and the gang

I always wanted to have someone else color this and a couple of people ever said that they were going to; you know who you are, but no one ever did. So, I had to do it myself. This is probably the most popular thing that I've done so I wanted to give you a finished up version, it only took like two years to do it! Anyway, thanks for looking.

ghosts of white city dev. week 3

More development stuff, I'm still working on the chief character, almost done I think.

Ghost's of the White City wek 2

Second week of dev. for this project. Mostly just figuring out the chief.

Ghost's of the white city

Just some early development stuff for school. The thumbnails are pretty rough at this stage and are just used to get a feel for some of the environments that some of the scenes will take place in. The rest of it is just me getting used to the way things look. As things get a little further along the designs should get more outlandish, I'm still working on the idea so it's all kind of up n the air still.

Gadzooks it's sketches

A bunch more sketches, I'm still working on some drawing issues, mostly that I just need to draw more. This page of sketches is the result of some of those efforts. The page is 19"x24" and was not that fun to scan as you might imagine. Anyway, thanks for looking.

Same day different face

I sat down to Practice drawing womens faces because mine are less than ideal at this point. I sat and I drew with no other distractions and it was great. But what I realized is something that has occurred to me in the past, and that is that you really can't find a consistent voice to speak in unless you are constantly drawing. It's so easy to get influenced by art from people that you admire but what's there to keep your own work stable? For me it's devoting a chunk of time everyday(which I don't do enough) that really keeps you honest and lets what you do naturally flow out. Anyway these drawings are just the beginning of that idea. I'm going to do my best to devote most of my day everyday to drawing with limited distractions. Easier said than done, I know.

Reggie Couture

What do you know, another painting and believe it or not these are just for fun, there's got to be something wrong with me. I really like MMA and one of the best and most liked fighters is a guy by the name of Randy Couture. When I painted this I thought it kind of resembled him but in a "bizzaro world" kind of way, you know, like an evil half brother or something. One day I'll have to do a proper portrait of some of these people. I think my next painting I'm going to do a whole scene, I feel like it time to stretch myself a bit more, maybe even some women in the next painting.
One last thing, I painted this for anyone who's interested, on the back of an old drawing board. I really like the surface of the board over canvas, plus there were a bunch of scratches and cuts all over the thing as well so it added another layer of texture to everything.

Frank and Lilith

I did this as a drawing after watching the now cult classic Monster Squad. There was a scene from the movie similar to this and it just struck me as an interesting image. The drawing sat around forever waiting to be painted but since it wasn't high on the priority list I never got around to it, until yesterday that is. I just finished up my next to the last semester of classes and since I finally had some free time to do exactly what I wanted I made sure that I took advantage of the opportunity, Frank and Lilith was the result of that free time. It's nice to have finally gotten this thing painted and for the most part I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. As with all things there are areas that could be improved but those areas will have to wait for another day to get fixed for now I'm through with this painting.

The painted face

Just trying out different things here with painter and phtoshop and using them in tandem.

Secret Space

O.K. so I stole the title from a pretty wild Pseudo Documentary about a secret space program within Nasa. That being said, there are many aspects of Nasa that are not widely known but are in fact part of it's history. This was an exercise in using allegory in illustration, so there is some symbolism contained within that hints at some of the aforementioned secret history of Nasa. I could explain what my thinking was behind it all but I think that it will be more fun to leave it up to the viewer, so have fun looking for everything. There are seven primary uses of allegory contained within and a bunch of others that you can't really see all that well. Anyway interesting stuff and if you google secret space it's pretty entertaining to watch if you don't take it too seriously.

Two paintings

Just a couple of pretty quick little paintings. The one on the left is basically just a quick sketch study for a bigger painting, not one I'm actually going to paint though. The other started as an alternative idea for the Struwelpeter piece that I recently posted but I decide not to go with this one. I liked it however and it seemed like a good thing to try out some paint on. So there you have it. The images are a bit blurry, I had to take a picture instead of a scan since they were still wet.

Sketchbook junk

The first two pages are just some life drawings done in class during a boring crit. to pass the time. The next two are just some character sketches and a page of ideas for page compositions.

Drawing for film

He's in there I swear. Just some thumbnails and a couple of studies based on a Hellboy short story. I should have some better designs of the train in a week or so as it plays a pretty big role in the story.

Struwelpetler

I might have spelled that wrong, oh well. This illustration was based on an old children's book to help children learn proper behavior. This story was about a child that wouldn't eat his soup. After only five days he withered away and died.

Haunted homes

Three quick color sketches of a few different haunted house designs I did for my film class.

Circus in The Park

Finaly finished the colors, it was an uphill battle for sure but I'm pretty much finished. I had to color this in Illustrator and it was a bit of a challenge. In the end I learned a few things and got a lot more comfortable with the program. I still have a couple more teewks the I'm going to do to this piece since I'll also be using it for my sketchbook cover. Since the only hold up on the sketchbook was that I had no cover it should actually get done very shortly now.

Circus in the park

Circus poster Illustration. I'm currently ruining this drawing in Illustrator. I'll post the abysmal results when I'm done.

Dogs

It's been a while and I always hate it when artist's that I like don't update regularly. So it's not much but here are a few dog drawings done in pen and then one that's colored in P.S.

Aqua Noir

This is it my final presentation for My advanced perspective class. Whew! It's feels great to be finished. Each of these Boards will be 20 inches by 30 inches. The first are all of my thumbnails, the second is the characters and the last one are all of the images. I posted all but one of the images previously but I wanted to post up the entire process to give an idea of how things worked out.

Planet Aqua

I decided to try a different approach with these illustrations and do everythin tonally instead of relying so heavily on line. Whew! It was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It was a great exercise in the end and I learned that I'm a lot better at this approach when I have good reference to use. All of these will be in my sketchbook when it's all done, hopefully by the beginning of September.

Greek Myth

These illustrations are a loose narrative of the Greek myth about Haphestus and how he was able to marry Aphrodite. It basically goes like this, Haphestus makes a throne for his mother Hera who immediately hops on and is trapped because Haphestus is a very devious god. In exchange for releasing her Haphestus black males his mother into arranging a marriage between he and Aphrodite. Once they are married Aphrodite is quickly unfaithful to her new husband with none other than the god of was Ares. And in a strange bit of storytelling the rest of the gods of Olympia gather around the cheating pair whilst they are still in a carnal embrace and they proceed to mock them. That's basically the story in a nutshell. I did these pretty quickly as is becoming the norm for this course and tried to focus mostly on composition rather than a slick finish to the work.

Egypt sort of

Egyptian theme this week. I didn't get to take one of the illustrations to a completely finished level because I ran out of time. Hopefully I'll be able to color it up eventually.

Final Samurai

Final colors on the older work. I'm still not sure about the red on the female figure but I tried so many different combinations and wasn't really happy with any of them. In the end I feel like the red was the most effective choice.

Samurai colors

Just added some quick colors on this one. I'm still working on a coloring process that I like in photoshop. I feel like I'm learning some things that work and that I like so I'll just keep at it and see where I end up.

Noah Colors

I had to color this to get full credit and as part of a midterm assignment. It's not my favorite of the Noah's Arc illustrations that I did but I had fun coloring it. In the end I think of it as kind of a wash, not crazy about the drawing but I'm pretty happy with the colors.

Noah 3

Second Noah

Does any one else remember that show second Noah? It had the guy who played Cyclops in it. Well anyway it wasn't very good and neither is this drawing, but being the glutton for punishment that I am I am posting this anyway. I don't actually dislike the drawing on this one it's mostly the colors so if any one's got any suggestions as to how to fix the colors let me know. I've gt two more of these to do by tomorrow so I'm going pretty quickly on these. I have to give myself a bit of a break I don't want to come off as on of those self deprecating artist. I have a healthy amount of self esteem even if I shouldn't...just kidding.

Noah

This illustration started like any other, and then my printer broke. Normally, or lately, more accurately, I've been roughing out a thumbnail sketch of my composition and then enlarging that and light boxing it onto the final board. Because I couldn't enlarge my drawing and was too lazy to go to a copy center I decided to try and draw this guy out on the computer. I've never had much luck in doing that and even though this worked out I still draw much better on paper than on a tablet but I can definitely see the appeal of working all digitally. Anyway, I managed to get the drawing done and colored and I only have to go to Kinko's once to get this guy printed to turn in for class. Thank goodness because as I'm sure you're all aware kinko's is the tenth level of hell.

Geisha Inks

I kind of like the inks better on this piece than the finish so I thought I would post them up. I inked this with quill and brush pen.

Geisha 2

Geisha

A Geisha pic. I tried mainly to focus on composition with this one, moving the eye around the image and creating a strong focal area. I also wanted to explore "shape Welding". Combing a roup of figures and seperating them with patters and a few small areas of detail. I did a little bit of an ink wash and a dash of Photoshop, for filters and a gradient overlay.

Samurai Shiznit

Samurai theme this week.

Heads awaiting a paint job

I'm going to paint these two up later today but I thought I would show a little bit of process work along the way. I'm also going to try something a little bit different with colors and lighting.

Save some babies

So this started out as a mock war poster using characters created specifically for the image. What ended up happening with mine was that it morphed into a Saturday Evening post esque cover. I looked at a lot of Leyendecker's work because of all the great Illustrations of babies that he did over the course of his career. Although not intentional I ended up being influenced by it.

Space Child

Second of three character designs for an upcoming illustration. Continuing with the space theme.

Me

Self portrait in oils.

Mrs. Sweet Berries and Mr. Sour Grapes

Just a couple of head paintings from class. Both of these were a big strugle and in the end neither one is a greaat success, however I do think that I learned a lot from both. Mostly I learned about perseverance and not getting frustrated when things are just not working.

Space hunter

First of three designs to be used in an illustration next week or so.

Blue light Cover

This is it the cover to the Grimm's Brothers fairy tale of the same name as the post title. The last one was mostly water color with a few gouache accents and this one is basically the reverse of the process. In the end this pic. took me way less time to complete but I'm not nearly as satisfied with the results. Part of the drop in quality was my drop in interest, that is what hurt it the most. All in all it was a good learning experience with working in gouache so it wasn't a total loss.

The Blue light

Finished Illustration for a children's book based on a rather obscure Grimm's Fairy tale story.

jolly woman

love this model, she has a great personality that really comes through into the painting.

more process

One step closer to being finished, after this I'll add in some opaque elements like highlights and some details with gouache.

Illustration process

Fnishes yet to come, plus a cover image.

Metropolis

Movie poster for the 1927 Fritz Lang movie of the same title.

Zombie dave

This is an old clothed figure drawing that I decided to make into a creepy zombie fella.

Monster deuce

second of two monster designs. This guy was based on an actual description from a monster manual for dungeons and dragons.

Afterbirth

So I had to design a monster based on personal fears. I really couldn't think of to many animals or spirit type critters that I was actually afraid of so I was kind of stumped. Then it occurred to me, something that is scarier than any ghost goblin or ghoul, and that foul creature is known as a baby. Please try to remain calm, I shuddered when I first pictured the nasty little thing myself. Basically this mother beast, who is almost as terrible as the little demon hoard that she carries inside her drops babies as she goes. Now once your touched by one of these "Babies" they absorb your D.N.A. and then there is no way to prove, to quote a day time Icon of trash T.V., "Your not the Father". The only way to kill the mother is to not compliment here and to tell her that she's fat. Of course this thing is not so frightening to everyone, this is just a personal fear of my own. For all of those out there who have one of these slimy sprites I mean no disrespect, you are all far braver than myself.

Portraits

Just a couple of portrait drawings.

The Bald Avenger

This was a cover I did for a friend of mines comic book. He has been self publishing his own stories with some friends of ours and this image will be the cover to issue three.

Big Ears

I got this great brush and this was the first thing that I inked with it. It seems like a small thing using a different tool to finish of your artwork but it's really gotten me pumped up to make some new art so that I can see what my new brush can do.

The Bald Avenger

I was asked to do a back cover for a friend of mines self published comic. This is not quite his character but it will be by the time I finish the cover but it's a good start for now.

Square Sheriff

A really quick sketch and some colors. Trying out a more animated look to the colors.

Remix

The Aviator in Technicolor glory

People VS Big Government

Done as an editorial illustration depicting the Plight of the average American against Big Government. Armed with the constitution as a shield and the Bill of Right as a sword are these two important documents enough to protect the average American from a government that seems to respect neither anymore?

Broke back High School

I posted this image on Deviant art and the title was actually made up by a friend of mine on there but I thought it was pretty funny. This was done for my clothed fig. class. My instructor, Barbara Bradley an incredible artist and a teacher of fifty years at the Academy of Art where I attend brought in two high school football players that we got to draw. At the end of the drawing session we took photos of different scenarios to base an illustration on. I thought this one was a good scene with a lot of potential for mood.

Africa

Take a shape and using 5 things that are thematically similar to the original make them fit into the originals silhouette. I chose Africa obviously and Kind of copped out a bit and went with an all animal sub theme of sorts.

Conspiracy?

This was a pen and ink illustration inspired by a friend of mine who is interested in some alternative versions of some current events, most notably the attacks of 9-11.

portraits

portraits, yeah!!

sketches

Quetzalcoatl

expressive color

Classwork from fig. painting. todays focus as the title denotes was the use of expressive color.

portrait painting

partially finishe portrait painting. i hope to finish this one eventually. i probably won't like it by the time i get back to working on it so it may never get finished.

womans portrait

charcoal portrait from life.

hands

just some hands from class

Leyendecker

Well anyone who knows me knows how much I admire Leyendeckers work so when I got my newest fig. painting assignment to copy a master painting I chose Leyendecker. I've copied one of his paintings before, also for an assignment but I had to use acrylics to fullfill the requirements of said assignment. I always wanted to do another copy painted with the intended medium, which is oil paints. All in all it was really fun painting this and it was much harder than I had anticpated. Slowly but surely I'm getting closer to being able to do Leyendecker justice with my copy of his brilliant work, one day perhaps i'll try again with even better results.

Colossus and kitty in color 2

Made some changes to the last post, the bkg. color obviously and i desaturated the colors all around. I think the lighter bkg. helps to push the idea that kitty is in the shadows.

colossus and kitty in color

Finally finished up the color on this one and what a relief, it took me a lot longer than it should have. I learned a think or two in the process of coloring this piece and i think future color pieces will go much more quickly so that's exciting.

heads galore

i had to draw some heads either from life or from reff., i chose to draw them from photo's since some of the angles were somewhat challenging. the one thing that i really enjoy about drawing from photo reff. is the distrotion that a camera creates. It helps to make the exageration of features more believable which can at times be difficult to fake.