Jubilee

Gonna try to get a few more in here before the close of January! Whew! They say January usually feels like the slowest month of the year, and if that's the case, I'm kind of scared another year is going to slip by and I'm still writing 2006 on all my checks.

Anyway, had some fun drawing Jubilee, gleefully rollerblading down the San Francisco Embarcadero (apologies for the uber-fudged background). I've always liked Jubilee and her 90's "whatever" attitude, and I think I'll do a few more of her to try and capture her spirit. I'd also like to draw her with her best bud Wolverine. They will not be rollerblading.

Enjoy!

Illustration Friday - Extremes

This is an old Illustration Friday piece that had been rolling around in my head for quite a while. I had done several sketches of this idea, but none of them were quite right to me. I finally nailed it a few weeks ago while pretty aimlessly doodling in front of the boob tube.

Then came the task of coloring the piece, which was another mountain to climb since i think my color sense and color application skills are a bit dubious at best. I know I wanted to go with an unusual color palette; something that didn't reflect normal color expectations of certain elements. For instance, I did not want the fire to be orange and yellow -- that sort of thing. I flatted the piece and fiddled around with color adjustments and saturations in photoshop for a few days until i crafted something with which i was happy. And here you have it!

I have a bunch of these in-progress Illustration Friday pieces, as I can never seem to actually finish them on time. I'm usually working on one from at least a week or two before the current topic.

The idea of extremes must have struck a slightly political chord with me when the topic was announced, no doubt due to some current event that may have been in the news at that time. As some of you may know, i can't stand overtly political art (or music). Therefore, I didn't give this character a recognizable entity as a person or group of people. To me, the word 'extremes' stood for someone who is zealous about an idea or belief. This person is not interested in hearing what others have to say and has no regard for how ridiculous/hateful/obscene/outdated/stupid, etc. their rhetoric may be. Hopefully with that being said, the illustration makes a bit more sense now. I realize that without that pretext, no one may have ever guessed that -- but that's ok. I did just want it to look cool as well. :)

Faces - Silver Sable

OK, so now that this week's fun thing to do is draw with a metallic silver marker and white-out pen on toned paper, I naturally have to find characters that would fit into this cheeseball aesthetic I have set-up for myself until I'm bored with it in about four days. Today's is villainness Silver Sable, who... um.... I don't really know anything about her other than she wears silver and has white hair and probably wears frosted lipstick. Luckily for me, that's all I really need to know!

Tomorrow's post will be sweet-as-sugah X-man Rogue and on the drawing board after that is DC Comics's Steel! Any other suggestions?

Illustration Friday - Hats

When you live in New York, you'll notice that the slightest indication of seasonal change is more than enough reason to don your latest favorite accessories. That first nippy breeze in September brings out the scarves. Those damp, rainy October days call for your new golashes. Now that we're a week into November, you can only imagine...

With all the characters I see in this city, the idea of 'hats' as a theme was a good one, because the variety you see is countless and it's interesting how the hats reflect the personalities of the people wearing them. All these characters were drawn from imagination, and I could have (and should have) achieved more variety from real life observation while drawing.

Hope you enjoy them!

PS -- Yes, I know some of the characters aren't wearing 'hats' per se, such as the headband dude and the earmuffs guy, but they're close enough ;)