Laci

Another Painter experiment. This time a character from a comic one of my "comic mentors" works on. Brian Stelfreeze has been such an influence on my art in general for the past...Lord even knows how long. I first met him the second semester I was in college. Went down to A&M and met him, spoke with him and listened to him lecture other people while working. 6 hours, and it completely changed my approach to art. The way he talks about color is intense, but it's extremely important. Since then I make my yearly pilgrimage to "Brian." We'll talk techniques and any cool new materials available. It's just great to have that. He does this for everyone.

But anyway, this is a character from the Image/12 Gauge book The Ride. Some of my all time favorite comic artists have worked on this book, and it would really be a dream to do ANYTHING with them. But I just did this in Painter and Photoshop...which henceforth shall be referred to as P2 for the sake of saving me some additional keystrokes. Anyway, lots of fun. I also had my friend Tom Feister give me some pointers on it. I'm really happy with the result.

More portraits...

I'll tell you a funny story, not funny "ha ha," more funny "odd." It's been years since I really did any portraits. I think the last one I really did before this was one of Alan Cummings for a Design I project in college. We had to do a 28X35 ink reproduction of a portrait using a mark of our choosing, mine was a partial "C." Because of poor planning by the professor, we did not get class time for the project, and we had other projects to do outside of class. So, one Thursday before finals, I had two projects to get done, so I cranked out the one for the other class and spent 16 straight hours working on the Alan Cumming piece using microns. By the time it was done, I couldn't see straight, I hadn't eaten, my hand wouldn't come out of a "claw" shape. I went to meet up with my friends, and nearly fell asleep, but didn't, so I felt sick. We walked to class through the tunnel under the highway. My hand was completely numb and cold. When we got to class, there was an indention in my hand from where the handle of my portfolio was. I got a super good grade in the class, but I guess all that last minute work was a put-off. I really shy away from reference. Whatever I need I try to take from the world in mental snap shots. I don't like to give myself too much time or else it stifles creativity. Back in high school I was pretty bull-headed. I would always try and add my own spin to portraits, when all people wanted was a basic portrait. My mind would think that it was just too boring for me to spend time on a simple portrait, why not add a cool background. I guess I've always been like that. With limited time has come the attempt at trying to fit in as much as possible. But as I've been growing up, I've learned that things have their limits. I'm really scaling things back lately with my work, and it's helping a lot. If you can find a point that ties all of this information together, major "Rad" points go to you!

Digital portraits...

I felt like working on some faces when drawing in painter, so I did some portraits of some of my friends. Cully and Tony. It's been a long long time since I a)used reference, and b)drew anything that resembled something. I kept the ref to as much of a minimum as possible. I'm pretty happy with the results.

Also, I must profess my love of my wacom Intuos 3 and Painter.

More sketching...

Just having some more fun with the wacom tablet.

New sketch...

I just finished an 8 page story completely using Painter for the lines and photoshop for colors. It was a different experience, but the finished product looks pretty good. I found out a lot of what works and what doesn't. Here's a sketch I finished after the story. Meryl from MGS.