This week's sketch theme is....

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Release The Kraken!

Nice pick, Mr. Eisma! I've been meaning to draw The Kraken for ages. He reminds me of Wolverine back when Wolverine was cool. The 80's Wolverine who gutted people for looking at him funny and had absolutely no past whatsoever and thought an eye-patch was a good disguise.

Monday, April 26, 2010

The Séance.


The Séance. Didn't have much time for this one. The original is about 3 inches high.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Umbrella Academy-Spaceboy

I'll be honest as well, I haven't read Umbrella Academy yet. I love Gabriel Ba's work, I just haven't had a chance to read it. This is the most hectic part of the year for teaching (standardized tests), but I still managed to keep on schedule for the blog!!!

Umbrella Academy - The Kraken and The White Violin


I'm not too familiar with The Umbrella Academy, so after some research I find these two as the coolest looking. Hopefully this entry keeps up to speed with the blog's schedule cause I was way behind when I submitted my last one.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Umbrella Academy: Spaceboy & The Rumor



This week's theme is my choice: The Umbrella Academy. It's a series from Dark Horse, by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way and Casanova artist Gabriel Ba. I'd always heard good things, but only recently checked out the series for myself. I tore through both volumes--and they're some of my favorite comics in recent memory.

Anyway, I chose to draw two members of the Academy--the Rumor & Spaceboy. I love Spaceboy's look--a guy transplanted into the body of a gorilla--how could that not be cool? And since I'd already drawn the White Violin once before, I wanted to try a rendition of the Rumor.

I highly recommend this series--I can't wait to read more Umbrella Academy comics!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Cronenberg Films - The Fly


Yeah, the Fly is the only movie I know.

Something Went Wrong


Whoops, later than usual! Yeah, yeah, The Fly is the obvious choice right? I was originally going to do Carl Fogarty from History of Violence, even sketched out some ideas but I wasn't digging any of them. Finally just decided that the Brundlefly would be incredibly fun to draw and guess what?

Friday, April 16, 2010

Cronenberg: Videodrome

Hello all, Jake Ekiss here. I'm a bit late to this party (thank you deadlines) but I knew I had to get in for this theme. I'm a storyteller, comic book creator and illustrator here in Dallas Texas. As for this week's theme I decided to take on Videodrome, one of the slightly more obscure (and stupefyingly weird) Cronenberg works. Hope you dig!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Cronenberg Films -The Dead Zone

I'm not a huge Cronenberg fan, but I do love me some Walken!


I almost went with BrundleFly but that seemed too easy.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Cronenberg Week-Dead Ringers

It was funny to see this as the week's prompt. My brother and I LOVE David Cronenberg. We celebrate his library on a regular basis. So seeing that someone else thought that this would be a good idea before I did makes me so happy.

I knew that most people would want to go with the obvious Naked Lunch, History of Violence, The Fly, or Scanners. But I didn't want to go so obscure as Shivers. So I went with a family fun-fest ala Dead Ringers. For obvious reasons I went a little more subtle with the subtext in this one. This one gave me nightmares after seeing it!

(Un)Dead Presidents


UPDATED - Yeah, I put the name Franklin D. Roosevelt there before. No idea why I did that, I know the freakin' difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Thank you Craig for calling me on it.

Originally someone suggested I do Jefferson Davis for this theme which was a unique idea but I wasn't totally convinced. Of course, once the idea of UNdead presidents popped into my head... well that was that. The zombified bunch includes George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and good old Grover Cleveland. And of course there's tough-talking, zombie-smashing Theodore Roosevelt (not Franklin Roosevelt, the WWII president as I had erroneously put before. Gah, whatta maroon) down there in the corner 'cause really, if there was going to be a zombie hunting president it probably woulda been him right? Bully!

Honest Abe

I wrote a story once where Abraham Lincoln has to meet with the King of Atlantis. The Atlanteans give Lincoln 5 years to end slavery or they will invade and wipe out the Union and give North America back to the red man.
Anyways, I really wanted to draw a different President for Metrosketchual, but I couldn't get that story out of my mind, so here's an apprehensive Abe caught between the Confederate army and the Atlantean legions... what's a President to do?
hope you like it!
-samax

Monday, April 12, 2010

Ridin' dirty

When i first read that this was suppose to be Dead Presidents... I was thinking of the 90's movie lol. Here is my version of Teddy Roosevelt... he is one of my fav presidents. He is quite a character! Rough Riders reprazent!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Nixon


Richard Nixon. I was actually pondering today about which president should I draw and what way. Me and a person I know pretty much end up with Nixon as a Klingon, but it turned out more of a Nixon with a Klingon weapon.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Van Buren Boys




I decided to go a little tongue-in-cheek for this week's theme of 'Dead Presidents.'

This inspiration behind this was the Seinfeld episode, 'The Van Buren Boys' (hence the title). I always laugh at the concept of a street gang that models themselves after President Martin Van Buren. In the episode they are, as Kramer put it, 'every bit as mean as he was.' So I just had the idea to have Van Buren looking sinister, backed up by a couple of homeboys decked out like the man himself.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010


I am late, I know. But hey, I didn't get time to last weeks! I wanted to channel my inner David Mack. I am always blown away watching him sketch. So quick with the brush pen. So I gave it a try.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The Crow

I hate drawing long hair so I was kind of worried about how this would turn out. Then I decided to use a brush pen for the hair and decided to make it look like feathers. Added the feather texture in Photoshop to complete the effect. Always wanted to do a nice looking Crow piece and I'm really digging the way this turned out.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Dead Presidents-Jackson

I know, I know, WEIRD transition from Crow to Dead Presidents...but hey, it's all good...right?

Anyway, I love drawing Presidents...I'm not a history buff...AT ALL, but in my opinion, presidents are the new pirate, or ninja. They're fun to put in outlandish situations. So I sat down this morning looking at my sheet of all the Presidents, and I thought, who has the rocking-est hair? My choice was Andrew Jackson, the man had an amazing quaff of hair in that bouffant hairstyle. I wanted him to have that Bond/man of action air to him!

So this morning I did this so that I could start things off with a bang!

The Crow

Hey there, My name is Terry Parr and this is my first post to this group.... I have been active in the Comic/convention scene for a long while now. I am currently trying to reboot my comic idea and I am also still looking for my "break" in comics. ummm.... I gotta say that I am really flattered to be invited to this group, there are a lot of artists here that i know and really do admire!

So here is my version of the Crow... sitting and being moody.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter! Plus, Crow!


here's my crow submission.  i tried adding some color to this very black and white character without taking away from his dark gloomy-ness.  and happy easter, too.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Crow


Here's my contribution. Nothing much to say about this one, but I had the urge of a black and white piece, and what perfect choice of a subject than the Crow himself.

That's SO (D)raven!

Feeling Much Better Now... by Samax Amen
Since I've still never read the comic, my piece is based on the movie version.
The Crow is still my favorite comics-to-movie adaptation, since The Matrix and Unbreakable technically don't count. anyways, this is 2 hours of my life in Photoshop, so I hope you like it!
-samax
(r.i.p. Brandon Lee)

The Crow


So this week was my chance to pick the theme. I have always liked the character of The Crow, and I thought it would be a good chance to try an emotionally complex character.

Anywho, this is another test with my quils and ink. I like how this one turned out more than last weeks street fighter.

Friday, April 2, 2010

The Crow

I remember growing up in Indiana, and going to my brother's friend Tim Roger's house, his brother Roy was the biggest Bruce Lee fan. He was a huge fan of Brandon Lee as well, and introduced me to the Crow comics. Then, when I was in high school I picked up the Alex Maleev drawn Crow comics. I always loved how expressive it was. So when I finally got to meet James O'Barr it was a treat, and every time since, he is extremely nice!

With this, I wanted to go with a different approach, I did the drawing about 2 1/2 inches tall, and got a really expressive and better composed design than if I tried to pencil it at full size. Then I scanned the sketch and blew it up on an 11X14 inch sheet and went to town with inks. I wanted to retain the expressive nature of the lines, so I went with a simple textured color approach on the figure and a gradient for the background. In all, tons of fun to work on!

The Crow




Here's my sketch! I grew up on Marvel & DC, so I missed the Crow in his heyday. But, I was a fan of the original film with the late Brandon Lee, and I always dug the general dark style of the character. I wanted to go a lot looser with this drawing than I normally do (been reading a lot of comics by Sean Gordon Murphy & John Buscema), so this was a fun one to do!

The Crow

More experimenting, this time with shapes and inking techniques. The rough pencils were very boxy and I intentionally left the shapes loose so I could have some freedom in the inks.

Also played around with some custom brushes and paper textures to add the grainy effect in the coloring stage. Total time spent on this; about 3 hours.