Greetings! I'm just a transient Jack of all trades (or trade of all jacks, whichever fits) with a longtime interest in comicbook art. Although I started out inspired by such artists as John Byrne and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko to look into a career, this has become more of a hobby for me, and still one that I like to pursue if I make the time for it. My influences date back to my childhood in the late 1970s with Marvel Comics to the beginnings of my anime/manga fandom in the teens. Byrne started me off with his work in the X-Men and Fantastic Four, then I got hooked on the anime Star Blazers and Robotech, which led me to various other series. My present works are displayed on galleries at DeviantART and Newgrounds. I plan on using Tumblr almost exclusively as an artist blog, mostly showcasing small sketches done during work breaks throughout the week, plus one or two scans of preliminary drawings for more detailed projects. How often I post depends on the volume of what I get ready for posting. My preferred media of art is traditional drawings, with most of it being done in pencil (2B graphite) and India ink (preferably, Pelikan Teusche A drawing ink) on Bristol board. Other skills being explored include traditional watercolor painting and art markers for coloring work. If I'm doing any finishing work on a comic page or strip, I use Corel Paint Shop Pro for prepping scans of inked work for lettering and/or coloring. My favorite subjects for storytelling tend to be in the sci-fi action/adventure and superhero genres, though I'm exploring using original characters in my own stories. My fan art has included the X-Men and Naruto characters. More often than not, I'll be putting worksafe and family-safe drawings up here. However, I may place some NSFW drawings up, if I have the means of warning people ahead of time.
I guess the week didn’t turn out like I wanted it to...
I pin this one on feeling a bit rushed. The day job had some rushed periods on it that made me feel a bit like a sneaky old guy smuggling porn past the wife, and when I got home, the energy just wasn’t there. So much for the daily sketch sessions.
It also didn’t help that something I was starting off the working hours never quite looked right in the second phase. It’s an NSFW pic, so I won’t put it up here. Needless to say, the old bugaboo about letting proportions on a human figure get out of whack came back on this one.
I better start learning how to look at my stuff before I ink it.
I got to do a little bit of thinking today, about the rules and conditions of DeviantART.com pertaining the nudity and pornography, and some recent trends that I’ve noticed with certain types of image posts being made around that. Those who have a DA account should know about their prohibitions against pornographic imagery outlined in FAQ #565. There are also rules about self-censoring nudity by various means described in FAQ #305. I’ve had personal experience of having a daily sketchdump drawing deleted due to my having pushed that envelope a little too far, so I generally avoid going over that line. However, the trend I’ve noted involves people using self-censoring in relation to selling prints via Patreon or other sites, where people are invited to pay a contribution in order to view or download the uncensored image.
I’ve got a few misgivings about this...
For one thing, I’m aware that DA doesn’t want people making external links to sites that compete with it’s model. If this includes the Patreon advertisers (as I’m calling them), then I’m watching people breaking a website rule. I, for one, wouldn’t do that online with existing IPs (some of these Patreon ads are fan art commissions), unless there’s a grey area that the IP owner lets people play in. Most fan art isn’t done for profit, so that area can be pretty large with some IPs. However, I’ve heard of a few IPOs who’ve gone after people for doing things like making porn, and there is a Tumblr user I knew from her DA days who had her account temporarily blocked for posting a lesbian Hinata X Sakura pic once (a rather tame nude kissing pose IIRC). For my part, I’m not sure about using Patreon, and I likely wouldn’t use it for fan art that might violate some of the conditions for using IPs.
Now DA does allow people to post artistic nudity, even if there are suggestive themes involved. The only thing they want is for the uploaded image to receive a Mature Content tag, with two grades: 1) Moderate for images that might be safe for voluntary viewing, and 2) Strict for those images that would be considered safe for viewers over 18 years of age. I tend to stay within the FAQ rules there when I post nude/mature themed art.
Supervillain character design. I was thinking of a sort of high-tech pirate with motifs adopted from old lithographs portraying that sea monster, the Kraken.
Some critics have been giving the current Secret Empire mini from Marvel Comics a middling grade, and I couldn’t help but make a little cartoon spoof of this whole idea of “Hydraverse”, given all the lead-up to it.
I have reprints of the old Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD comics where most of the Hydra minions were basically derp NPCs who needed a badass like Baron Strucker or Viper to give ‘em directions that made ‘em a bit more effective. Now it’s like the superheroes are the dim-witted peons.
I’ve moved over to another small comicbook page project which kind of got caught up in the procrastination habit. This one’s going to have a stronger NSFW rating, so I’m only going to preview a couple of cropped panels here. It should still pass DeviantART.com’s FAQ #565 rules, though.
It's been a while, but I'm trying to whip myself into finishing this project I actually started late last year. The inking phase was finished on January 20th. After an abortive attempt a month or so later using digital coloring, I decided to go the old-fashioned route and pull out the old Prismacolor Premier and some Copic Sketch markers.
One of the supporting characters in my futuristic superhero team concept is the younger sister of the team member codenamed Shakti. I gave her powers related to the psychic “reading” of computer data records, and she makes a number of trips around the country seeking abandoned stores and warehouses where such devices may be found with which to experiment with this power. Initially, she goes alone (”Indiana Jones” style), but a close call teaches her to take along a companion or two.
I’ve been trying to get back into the groove of daily sketching since having a bit of a skip over the past few weeks. There’s also still that desire to keep working on my original characters and their related stories. Even though I’ve not had the professional training and discipline to be able to hold a regular comicbook gig, I can’t just shut down the creative outlet. And so I keep coming back to this, hoping that it jump-starts something more than the (almost) daily sketches.
First color image I’ve posted here in quite a while. I felt the urge to put up a holiday-themed (almost-) daily sketch with an OC. I kind of like how the colored pencils came through on this scan.
For some reason, after hearing what some vloggers on YouTube had to say about the first issue of America Chavez’s solo book, I had this vibe of “Dark America” inspired somewhat by the Dark Phoenix saga coming to mind. The writer of that book was talking in an interview a few months back about her seeing some shit during her dimension-hopping days. Thus this idea of her snapping and going berserk on the Marvel universe (and my OC making a guest appearance here).
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