Challengers Assemble by Tom Kelly by TomKellyART
This was for the Challengers Assemble Sketch blog, this week the theme was "Challengers". This theme refers to the Sketch blog and the Chicago based comics shop and what it means to me. First off let me say that this is the Final theme for the Challengers Assemble sketch blog. The crew over at Challengers decided to end the blog they are just busy with other things so they decided to retire the sketch blog (after 5 years). That's right for once a week for 5 years the Challengers Assemble sketch blog has been serving up sketch theme/challenges or some where around 290 sketch themes and now the blog has ended. So for this theme I decided to just do a piece to pay homage to all the wonderful heroes, villains and other characters I drew for the blog over the years. You see for me the sketch blog was a way to challenge myself to draw something at least half decent once a week as well as often draw characters or things that I would normally not draw or want to draw. Too often artists fall into the trap of only drawing things they like or enjoy and this can limit their skill set. Over the years I did sketches for the Challengers blog using pencil,pen and ink, markers, digitally, and even sometimes water color paint. I drew woman animals,cartoons,kids,cars,robots,heroes, villains, sexy woman and non sexy woman plus many many more. The Challengers blog helped me refine my style as well as get commercial work doing covers and interior comic book art for major and indie companies. The Challengers blog allowed me to produce art work that I sell at Comic Conventions as well as other art shows. The blog as was a great motivator to make art efficiently and to creatively think on my feet, sometimes I would not have a chance to do a piece for the blog until only a few hours before the deadline. I would often suggest taking part in the Challengers sketch blog or encourage other artists to try a theme, sometimes people did other times not so much which is all cool. I really enjoyed the blog it was a fun creative exercise and I will miss it. I will still make art and take part in online sketch challenges and blogs but Challengers Assemble was a rare thing and I do feel honored that I was able to take part in the blog on a regular basis. Hey when you get a chance POP on over to the Challengers Assemble blog you can see all the other entries for this theme as well as all the ones from the past. http://challengersassemble.wordpress.com I created this illustration with the pen and ink then Adobe PhotoshopCS6 the pen tool and many many layers plus my wacom tablet to render the colors and textures. Here are some other places you can follow me and see more of my work. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tommm9 Tumbler http://tommm9.tumblr.com/ Twitter https://twitter.com/Tomkellyart Pintrest https://www.pinterest.com/tomkellyart/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tomkellyart/