Variant Cover for Sidekick for Hire issue 5

This is a project I finished at the end of last year, but I got the opportunity to draw a variant cover for the 5th issue of Sidekick for Hire, a really interesting take on superheroes by Kristian Herrera & Rick Alves! After reading the existing issues and the script for the 5th, I really wanted to focus on Sasha (she ended up as my favorite character in the series) and so I came up with this cover concept. 

I tend to color my covers a lot lately, which is interesting. This cover did come out well in terms of what I envisioned and what I was able to do, and it was a very color-centric approach, with the lighting and the effects. I hope you dig it, and please support the 5th issue which will be on Kickstarter soon! The Pre-launch link is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sidekick3/sidekick-for-hire-1-5?ref=ksrtwitter-prelaunch

Now to take a look at my process for it. I used a Zebra brush pen and the Pentel Color Brush on Stillman & Birn Zeta paper, and it's colored in Photoshop.

Roxy Rewind pages 1-4

 Super late on taking advantage of this when it was online, but last year I worked David Pepose and Jim Campbell on a short story for Project Big Hype,  a comic anthology on Kickstarter! The funding was successful and I hope everyone enjoyed the comic! These pages were shared on Twitter and other places, so I'm sharing the first 4 of our story here! This is a different kind of book than I usually do, but it was a fun change of pace! I've never really drawn superheroes comics before, so this was fun!

These pages were drawn on Deleter B4 manga paper, which I haven't used in years! I used mostly G-pens and the Nihonji pen and used Photoshop to create the digital halftones. I'll include some pencils down below the inks!

 Story & Script: David Pepose https://twitter.com/Peposed

Lettering: Jim Campbell https://twitter.com/CampbellLetters

Pencils

Golden Heroes, Coloring Book for Canvas for Hope

This update is for a freelance project I was a part of in between pages of Spencer and Locke. My friend Elena runs a non-profit called Canvas for Hope, where she creates and sends paintings to children that are battling cancer. She approached me to create a coloring book for kids in the hospital, so we worked together and created this! If you'd like to learn more about Elena and her organization, or maybe even sponsor some coloring books being sent to a hospital you support, go here for more information!

Materials: Pencils and Zebra Brush Pens
Paper: Stillman and Birn Beta and Zeta paper
Colors: Photoshop CS6

Portrait Commissions

Recently I was working on two watercolor portraits for a father with two graduating kids, one from college and one from high school. I received these commissions on April 13th, and I completed them April 30th, so just in time for both of their graduations! I'm happy to have heard that they liked their portraits, and that their dad was happy with them =D

So here's the finished product, which I have permission to share.

Media: Watercolors, mostly Sennelier with some Da Vinci colors and Holbein White Gouache. Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils for details
Paper: Stillman and Birn Beta Paper

DC Ladies in Watercolor

These are some watercolor sketches from my Stillman and Birn alpha sketchbook. I was painting these in between assignments last quarter and I think they turned out well. I'm not really all that interested in accurate depictions but more on doing my own interpretation of them. I find their outfits to be kinda silly, like why wouldn't Wonder Woman wear Greek like armor? Why is she going into battle in a one piece swimsuit?

My favorite is Hawkgirl, that one came out the best I think.

Sketch of the Day 5-26-13: Iceman

I'm posting this on 5/26 but it won't pop up on the blog until the 28th. I want to get ahead on these things so I can have more consistent updates on here. Anyhow, here's Iceman! Finding a proper pose for him took me longer than I thought, and I'm still not even sure if this is the best answer. I didn't want to compress him too much, which is probably the best way to show his forward motion, but because I chose this angle, drawing him compressed would just show a bunch of his back.

Unlike the Cyclops sketch, this one is probably most in the my style of drawing. I used my leadholder for this so I ended up making the lines thinner and I used a lot less shading on his body. I was sort of approaching this one as a drawing I may one day ink so it's just pencilling practice. It was a fun one though, and I do really like his hips and his left hand. They were pretty fun and easy to figure out.