DD - 2

Here are a few headshots of Daredevil out of costume, aka lawyer Matt Murdoch. These sketches were drawn from an article in recent issue of GQ about which topcoats to buy for this winter. Since I don't really have $1200 to drop on a coat, I just used the photos (which happened to be of Joshua Jackson of "Dawson's Creek" fame) for reference. Enjoy!

DD

Busting my butt to get some new samples together for NY Comic Con, which is in early February. I'm going to try my hand at some Daredevil pages and am currently doing some prelim sketching in an attempt to capture the mood of Daredevil and his environment, Hell's Kitchen.

Dragonlance Cover

Hi All,

I drew this cover for the Dragonlance Legends: War of the Twins series a few months ago. The War of the Twins is the follow-up to the series that I drew, Time of the Twins. I will not be doing interior artwork for the War series, just covers.

When I came across the colored version of the cover in the Devil's Due January 09 solicitations, I figured I would be safe to finally post this image on my blog. I'm really happy with how this turned out, as I think it colored up nicely.

As you can see, I've included a few other images to demonstrate the process that goes into creating the image, from initial thumbnails, tighter comps to final pencils. Enjoy!

D

Captain America chopping the Red Skull's head off with his shield

'Nuff said?

quickie

just doodled this freakish gunner guy at several different times over the past day or two while i have been on the phone. again, rather than attempt 'perfect' anatomy (show me a comic book artist who can achieve that), i'm trying to create interesting shapes and exaggerated gestures.

i'm REALLY excited about this other piece that i'm working on which i hope to post over the upcoming weekend. it's probably one of my favorite things that i've done and i'm having a blast working on it.

check back soon.

oh, i didn't post during november because on november 3rd, i was mugged and assaulted while walking home from the subway. as a result of the attack, my ankle was fractured and i was laid up for an entire month. so that's that! stay safe out there, people!

Almost forgot about this one

The third and final long awaited (by me only) Batman image in a series I probably started around February I think...
I obviously messed around with this one in Photoshop a bit (maybe too much?)-- but I do like the overall motion blur/washed out with floodlight effect.

Green Lantern

I've been having a lot of fun drawing DC characters lately for some reason. I was always such a marvel/image zombie when i was a kid, but I guess that just has to do with the fact that all my favorite artists (at the time) worked for those companies. DC's art was much more traditional and not at all as "cutting edge" (in the eyes of a 12-year old kid) as those other companies, and therefore, i never really gravitated towards their books. Well, I was definitely missing out. Aside from their handful of main icons, DC has a great library of weird and wacky characters that I'll be posting a bit more of in the future. For now, here's another one of their icons, John Stewart, as Green Lantern.

while we're at it

since i'm on a green arrow/black canary kick, i thought i'd throw another piece on the ol' blog just for fun. in recent sketches i've done, i'm trying to 'push' the anatomical exaggerations of my figures to closer resemble the general arcs and other gestural lines of my thumbnail doodles while maintaining a tightly rendered style. make sense?

averting blog catastrophe

my poor little blog is in need of a blog bailout. the signs of posting recession have been evident for quite some time now. profile views are plummeting, investors in my craft are leery, and the artwork, quite frankly, is in the shitter. so why should you care, you ask. you didn't cause this mess. you're at home, working hard to feed your offspring, while i'm out whooping it up in new york city nine nights a week. so fuck ME, right?

ok, i don't really know where this is going. i was going to get into something about warren buffett showing up on a rooftop wearing a superhero costume made entirely of hundred dollar bills (no, euros!) and saving the economic day along with my fledgling art blog, but i'm tired and simply don't have the energy.

what i WILL do, though, is tell you about the pic that i'm posting and bitch and moan about those rat bastards at UPS.

my friend alicia got engaged a while back and i wanted to make a little engagement gift for her. when she and i were in college, we used to do all sorts of silly comic book drawings, mostly of the x-rated variety now that i think about it, so i thought i would do something with characters who are married in their own respective comic book universe. i kept it clean, of course, and made it a little romantic. i really dug the first few issues of the recent green arrow/black canary series, especially when cliff chiang was on art duties, so i thought they would be an appropriate choice. i love both of those characters as well.

i'm happy with how the piece turned out, but am completely unsatisfied with UPS, who decided to BEND THE DRAWING IN HALF upon delivering it to her. i specifically asked that the package be labeled do not bend as i was mailing it, but my instructions were forgotten or ignored by the people in the store, thus resulting in a lovely crease across the middle of the paper. i'll be sticking with fedex from now on.

enjoy!

Green Lantern Samples

Completed 08/08

Fantastic Four Samples

Completed 08/08

BAMF!

I'm pretty happy with how this guy turned out, although I think he still needs to be a little more waif-y looking, like I did when I was in college. Started tinkering around with a few Copic markers on this one, and they definitely add a little more interest.

I have a big project wrapping up in a couple weeks, after which I will have a bit more time to post. Until then, cheers!

D

Lady Blackhawk Commission

Good times drawing this character again after quite some time apart. :)

Robin Commission

Used the good old Windsor Newton Series 7, No. 2 on this one. My former illustration professor Bob Dacey used to preach about this brush all the time, calling it his "work horse." He was referring to working in watercolor, but I know this tool is used a lot with ink as well. It has an absolutely incredible range of lines that can be achieved (not that you will find them by looking at my work), from the razor thin to a fat, quarter inch stroke and back in a second. Worth every cent.

I tried to make Robin's cape look a little like a bird's wing in this one, just to throw in a little cheesy conceptual angle. Not sure it was entirely successful, but the intent was there. Enjoy!

Hard Edged

I think i've always had a natural aversion to drawing everything and anything mechanical. Cars, planes, guns, robots... anything that will probably require the use of a ruler or some sort of french curve (freedom curve?) and i definitely can't hang. I don't know whether I have some sort of learning disability when it comes to technical drawing or whether I just really prefer and find organic subject matter to be much more interesting.

This Ultron sketch proves my point. I saw this version of this character online and liked it as opposed to older versions, even though it borrows heavily from a lot of generic anime mecha designs. Maybe not designs per se, but just the general shapes that are used in the silhouette construction of the character. I kept the lines pretty obviously hand-drawn and like it better that way.

I don't know much about all the different incarnations of the character, but my idea was to show Ultron sort of being "born." He might be coming out of some cool-down vat of liquid or rolling off of some high-tech assembly line -- something along those lines.

Anyway, I haven't at all given up on perspective or hard edge objects. I've actually got an Iron Man sketch rolling around upstairs that I want to put down, and I haven't even seen the movie yet. Has anyone seen it? Is it any good?

Cable Commission

How awesome were the 90's?

One last one for May

Another month zipped by and I didn't post as much as I should have. Actually, I need to DO more work outside of my paying gigs to post on this thing. Speaking of 'Thing'...

I think this is only about the second or third time I've ever drawn this guy. I tried to model my little rendition after versions of this character where his rock exterior appears a little softer and more organic or even clay-like. I never liked it when artists would draw EVERY SINGLE LITTLE PIECE OF ROCK on him. Not only is that pointless and a waste of time (come on, people, learn how to INDICATE), I think the "softer" look is symbolic of this characters soft heart. Incredibly cheesy, I know, but true.

Batman Cover 2

Here's the second in a series of three. GRRRRRRR!!!!

Nightwing Samples

Another little batch i got together last month for NY comic con.

Thor Samples

Don't tell anyone, but I didn't do a page-a-day on these samples. They took me more like six months to complete, in part due to the fact that i completely forgot they existed. They laid buried under a pile of art rubble in my apartment under a futon.

The sample plot that I was working from for these pages was a little wierd. In fact, they might have been a little too out there for convention purposes. There's too much emoting going on here and not enough easily decipherable action and advancement of a plot. Too many "character moments," if you will.

I probably shouldn't have shown them. The style and artistic ability are noticeably different from the first to the last page. Also, I had some other work that was stronger than these pages, and it's always better to show a smaller but stronger portfolio than a sprawling, diversified body of work.

Sure was fun drawing Thor, though.

Puck!

Who's Puck, you ask? Oh, ya know, that immortal Canadian dwarf adventurer. That dude. It sure is tough to get dynamic action from a 3'6" frame.

Links

Hello everyone,
I've updated my links section today, with links to friends and complete strangers alike. These are just a few sites that I check on a fairly regular basis and serve as a source of inspiration to me. Enjoy.

May

One of my favorite months of the year is upon us and I've decided to finally rejoin the blogosphere and get this old jalopy of a blog started up again. I'm just gonna post a couple pics today. The first are some old kicks with fresh grass stains and the second is my dear Millie, moving in to shake the hell out of her mousey baby. I love it that something as domesticated, tranquil, and loveable as my ten year old golden retriever can still show some killer instinct once in a while.

You look how I feel.

Gettin some stuff together. Be back in May sometime.

Cheers,

DJC

Character Sketches - Dragonlance Chronicles

Servin up some Lady Crysania today.

Character Sketches - Dragonlance Chronicles

Here's a character sketch of evil ol' Raistlin Majere. Made him a little too short in this sketch. He could have been about a head taller or so, only to add to his menacing look.

Deathstroke

Yeah, totally forgot to finish the shoulder and upper arm on our right hand side. Ah well. I did notice and finish it on the original piece, but only after it had been scanned, and obviously do not feel that it is worth reuploading.

Batman Cover 1, Ver 2.0

I like this one a lot better. I think the bat insignia is still recognizable in the cape, but the cape is altogether more believable than before and has more weight to it than the previous attempt. Man, I really need to learn to do more prelim work.

Batman Cover 1 of 3

Three Batman images came to me the other day, so I doodled them up real quick and intend to take all to finish. All three images are rather simple concepts like the one shown here, but that's what I like about them. They are all consistent in their heavy use of black, Batman's face only being shown through the use of those familiar eyes, and the Bat insignia being shown some other way in the piece. Pretty well-worn territory, I'm sure (I never really followed any of the Batman titles that closely, so I'm not that familiar with many "famous" cover images), but hopefully something unique will come out of them.

{EDIT: After some thought and seeing what this image looks like on the web, I've decided to re-do it and do a better job of studying the draping of Batman's cape. The image seen here was completely impulsive and I feel that if some more convincing draping was applied to the piece instead of these fake-o spaghetti-looking folds, it would definitely strengthen the piece. Should have another one up within the week.}

2 Minute Sketches

Whenever I'm penciling a page, I always keep a folded letter-size piece of paper under my right hand to protect the drawing from smudging. After a while, the paper gets dirty, or I temporarily misplace it, so I grab a new sheet. Instead of discarding the old ones, I've recently started doing really quick sketches on them.

In these examples, Robin's face looks totally messed up. I made his eyes too far apart and he kind of looks Asian. I think at one point during college I was trying to perfect the whole "eyes too far apart" thing when drawing faces, but I've since tried to take a different, more anatomically correct approach. I'll getcha right next time, buddy boy.
I'm pleased with the way the Joker turned out, though. To me, he looks like a combination of the old Cesar Romero Joker with the new, gritty Heath Ledger Joker. (Is anyone else now scared to see that movie? I'm scurred.)

Character Sketches - Dragonlance Chronicles

Character studies of some goodies and baddies in the Dragonlance world. Many more to follow.

Wiener, Dawg.

This was a last minute (sshhhh) Valentine's Day card drawn yesterday afternoon. The reason it was last minute attempt was due to the fact that I left the intended card, as well as my umbrella (ella ella ella ehh ehh), at a restaurant on Wednesday night. I returned to the restaurant literally about two minutes after we left to find my umbrella exactly where it had been, but the cards on the table were gone. The server, instead of admitting to the fact that the cards had probably been thrown away with the rest of the trash on the table, refused to admit any fault and insisted that someone walked by and took them.

If you don't know me, I'm about 5'9", brown eyes, brown hair and must look EXTREMELY NAIVE. There's nothing I love more than being lied to after leaving a tip.

Oh well. I actually like this card and had a lot of fun drawing it.

Happy belated Valentine's Day to all you lovers out there.