BLART #3 Blue Beetle

The Blue Beetle name covers three different heroes dating from 1939 and currently published by DC comics.  I feel sort of bad given that these guys have had a long history yet I've never heard of any of them until now.
Given that I knew nothing of the character I gave myself a strict 2 hour deadline (including research) to crank something out. In retrospect I think I should have spent longer on it; the version I chose to draw at least has quite a following and is apparently well respected, but with the tight time limit I made a bit of a mess of him.

BLART #2 Jean Grey

Jean Grey is one of the X-men (usually), and has had several "Hero Nicks" including Phoenix and Marvel Girl.  She's pretty rare in comics because she's known more by her own name than by her heroic alter-ego.  When I started this for the BLART I did my customary research (Which equates to far to much) and found that the vast majority or Jean Grey images were of the iconic green or red Phoenix/Dark Phoenix outfit.  I can see why, it's a very snazzy set of duds if you have a Super Heroine figure, but it meant I wanted to do something different.  In the end I chose her original X-men gear from the 1960's.

BLART #1 Nick Fury

What's a BLART?  Why it's Blog Art of course.  There's a story to this, and we may as well get it out of the way.  My Brother is employed by comic book artist Antony Williams as an inker/colourist/odd job guy, and is also a member of the Swansea Comics Collective (SCC) - go take a look for more explanation.   This is based on the Comics TWART which is much the same thing, but with professional contributors and it's on Twitter rather than in a blog.  The SCC runs a fortnightly BLART for their blog, with a new subject every two weeks.  The subject could be anything (But tends toward the geek and comic) and the contributers have to draw something based on the current subject.  OK, cool, I decided to have a go, starting back at the very beginning.  Their first BLART was Nick Fury:

We Coulda Been Contenders

While I don't post everything I draw or do on this blog I do post a good cross section of the stuff that takes ten minutes or less, and anything that takes longer than that is probably going to end up here, good or bad.  This post sees a couple of works that took very different times to create, but neither of them really worked out.  One of them took quite a bit of time, and then I gave up with the piece still unfinished, the other was just a colour sketch with some good qualities, but that just didn't cut the mustard overall.  Both were done in ArtRage. I may come back and redo or finish them one day, but for now they're in the failure pile.

Facial Muscle Faliure

I didn't draw all that many faces stripped to the muscle for a variety of reasons.  The first was that it was terribly boring, the second that it was deadly dull, the third was because I was lazy, and this little piggy had none...  No, that's gone wrong hasn't it?  anyway, what we have after the break is every muscle sketch I did since the last skulls post, and I'm sure you'll agree that I neither did all that many, nor that they were as good as the skulls.  I do have a plan though that will require me to be less lazy but may alleviate at least some of the boredom.  You'll have to watch this space to see if it pans out (well, not this exact space, this one is done and is not going to change any time soon).

Slacker Random Pose Drawing

Well, I am a slacker.  It's been almost two weeks since my last post, which is silly since I've had the images for three available for almost a week.  Not just sitting there doing nothing, but scanned/saved and uploaded all ready to go.  I've been a little busier than usual at work for those two weeks, but that's a fairly feeble excuse since writing these posts doesn't take all that long, especially in comparison to the time taken to prep the images for them.  Still here we are with the first of three rapid posts.  Expect some brevity, or perhaps you wish for it...

Narcissism in Action

Look, something that isn't bone white and associated with death.  Yes, it's me, my first self portrait in...  Oh, OK, not that long really since I did a quick sketch of me for my facebook profile not long before I began this blog.  Still, it occurred to me that since I'd started it you hadn't seen what my terrible visage looked like (although since only people who know me have likely looked at the blog you may already know what I look like); this is about to change.  You may even see a photograph!  I know, try to restrain yourselves.  I'll begin with the finished self portrait, and then proceed to the blow by blow replay.

Father/Son Tag Team Paint

So I lied.  Another skull.  This time it's from reference, with a little tracing (read on to see why) and some help from my son, bless him.  Ever since I've had the Art Rage demo I've been thinking it would be great  to let my 3yr old some try it for several reasons. It mimics real paints, but I don't have to clean up the mess.  I can make the canvas full screen, so he can't inadvertently delete the Internet (You can do this in Photoshop too, but it never feels quite right).  The interface is bright and colourful and pictorial so he might actually try clicking on the buttons as well as painting.  It didn't go terribly, but it didn't work as well as I had hoped, so under his guidance I started a skull, and then he joined in, and then he lost interest and I finished it alone: