Don't Make Me Angry....

Who doesn't love The Hulk?? The rampaging monster with a heart of gold! Does he still have that? To be fair, I have not really read a Hulk comic in many years. My memories stem from the iconic run of the 1970's with those terrific Ernie Chan covers and the TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. I have seen the movies, and that does include The Avengers as that has the best film Hulk, in my humble opinion, to date. Would love to see another Hulk movie! As some of you know, my wife just went thru radiation treatment for breast cancer. To lighten the mood when we first visited the facility, I kept humming the old theme song and asked the doctors when I could expect to see the manifestation of any super-powers. Not all of them appreciated that.

So here is my Hulk. I did base much of my reference on the Avengers version but I did make some adjustments to bring him a bit closer to the original Kirby design. I spread out his eyes, increased his brow and upper lip and lifted his nose. Not huge adjustments but they made me happy.

Enjoy!

Not going to bore you with the whole progression thing this time, but I will share the tight drawing for this.

The Dude Abides

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Big Lebowski. And from what I have encountered since it came out is either you love the film or you have not seen it. I am sure I am wrong and that people will jump now to point out that they not only saw the film but hated it. Sounds like your problem man and that type of aggression will not stand. I don't really know why I suddenly decided to paint The Dude but I wish I did since I really didn't plan any aspect of it. No studies. No composition. Nothing. Not usually a great way to work. Sure, you might let the muse just guide you on occasion and let "whatever" happen, but then I found myself in a situation of wanting to add things that I didn't leave room for. I went back and forth for days with whether I should add Walter and Donnie to the pic and even went so far as to actually draw and paint them and shoe-horn them into the piece. Was never really satisfied with what I came up with (read: lack of planning!) and I had several Facebook followers offer up opinions on the matter. The prevailing thought was to NOT add them in. So I did not. But this just means that I have unused parts that are just begging to be used in a separate illustration at some point in the future. Sounds fine to me. Not like I would hate to paint another Big Lebowski picture!!

Boba Fett!

Who doesn't love Boba Fett?? I know people that don't like or have never seen Star Wars and still think this guy is cool! He was the best thing about the Star Wars Holiday Special!! Seriously. With only a handful of lines and not even really doing much, he captured the imagination of a generation of geeks. Myself included. He was one of my favorite Star Wars figures as a kid, I still look for cool figures of him now in fact. A few years back, I had the pleasure to meet and spend some time with Jeremy Bulloch himself at a small (back then) Doctor Who convention (Hurricane Who) and he could not have been any nicer. He came up to me as I was just finishing setting up, complemented my work and engaged me in some conversation. At first, I didn't even know who I was talking to until I finally glanced at his name badge. Like I said, super-nice guy. I also like to tell people that Boba Fett sat in my car! He did! As I was preparing to leave the already mentioned show, Mr. Bulloch came out and asked about my car (I drive a Cube) and then sat behind my steering wheel to have a look around. BOBA FETT SAT IN MY CAR!!!!

So it was inevitable really, that I would paint Boba Fett again. I hope you like it.

Enjoy.

Here is also a progression of the art.

Eight and the War Doctor

As I have stated in the past, I am a big fan of the Eighth Doctor and was tickled pink when he finally returned to the screens this past November in the minisode leading up to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. Brilliant as always, Paul McGann is every bit "The Doctor" and I, for one, would welcome another return. Now, maybe it's my love of McGann that clouds my judgement, but I am on the fence with the War Doctor as played by John Hurt. I think he did a wonderful job in the role and is always brilliant, but I am not a fan of effectively retro fitting the history of the show and setting of countless debates about the proper numbering of the Doctors. When I think back, I think it would have been even a bigger shock at the end of "The Name of the Doctor" episode, after Clara has entered the Doctor's time stream to have Paul McGann be the one to turn around at the end for the cliffhanger! I think that McGann should have been the "War Doctor". For years fans have assumed that he was the one who fought the war anyway and the fans all thought that he should have had another go at the character on screen as well and this would have filled both bits. Plus the fact that he is also a brilliant actor would still have made the 50th anniversary episode a memorable one. But alas, I am not in charge of Doctor Who and like many, just have my opinions.

So here is my simple piece with Paul McGann as The Doctor and John Hurt as the War Doctor.

Enjoy.

More Lone Ranger

Yeah, I know. The Lone Ranger again. Wait!! I meant, the Lone Ranger!! AGAIN!!  I don't care what anyone else thinks really, and there are plenty of opinions out there about the Lone Ranger. Say what you will, I always will have a soft spot for the character, and as I have waxed poetically about it in previous posts, you can look for it if you are interested. I honestly have mixed feelings about the newest movie. While I don't hate it like most critics out there, I also had a few problems with it but I thought it was fun and I appreciated that I could watch it with my son. I must admit that I have also re-edited the movie for my own viewing. Nothing fancy mind you. Not some professional level job with high end equipment and programs. Just Windows Movie Maker and some cuts you can see, but most turned out pretty seamless. I mainly cut parts of the Ranger acting a little too goofy for me and I think I trimmed about 10 minutes, but I also think that it works better. Yeah, I am basically a critic too.

So more on the picture. I really just kept this on my portable tablet computer to work on in my church cafe on the days when my son had basketball practice. If I finished my "real work", I basically had something to do. So I basically just noodled this one little by little. I tried a few things different and used it as a learning exercise as well. While I have "frankensteined" reference together before, never to the extent that I did with this one. Overall I was pretty happy with it. Some of my pencil lines got blown out a bit as I cropped the figure much more drastically than I originally intended.

So even if you are not a fan of the movie or the character, I hope you can at least enjoy the picture.

I don't usually share my reference, but here is the "frankenstein" as well as the progression of the painting.

007

MegaCon is just a few days away. I can't wait. This will be my second year in a row there with a table at artist alley and I am hoping for a good show. I have so many new pieces and a variety of styles to show as well. One special print I will be offering is a collaborative effort between myself and the very talented Danny Haas. While we were in New Orleans I mentioned that I had early drafts of a James Bond piece that I had stalled on and casually asked if he wanted to help me with it. He did. Then came the prospect of actually figuring out a way for us both to be represented in the piece as our styles are very different. Turns out, they merged quite nicely. I gave Danny the loose sketches of each Bond and then Danny worked his vector magic bringing each one to life. We then simply put my drawing back over the top and added a bit of flourish. Pretty simple and I think pretty effective.

So if you are at MegaCon this weekend you may want to think about picking one of these up. We are only printed 40 of them (we will each have 20) and when they are gone, they are gone! So get one. Get one for a friend! We won't even charge extra for us both to sign it either.

Hellboy!

I have always loved Hellboy. I remember when he first came out and have many of this first appearances. I have also been lucky enough to have met Mike Mignola on two occasions. One before Hellboy and one after. Super nice guy! For some reason, I don't have enough Hellboy on my shelf. I will have to rectify that. I enjoyed both movies (and still hold out hope for a third) as well as the animated version too. For this picture of the big red guy, I took the obvious visage of Ron Perlman and modified some of his proportions to be a bit more comic like. Bigger brow, jaw and more space from his nose to lip. Not too drastic, but enough. This was a really fun piece to work on and am pretty happy with the results. I hope you all like it as well.

Here is the progression of the piece as well. Enjoy!