76 - the female nose

Now today is a two-fer, holy smokes. The Thing and now female noses, a grand day.

And now, I go draw monkeys! Life is good.

75 -that Thing you do.

This drawing was originally done by Steve McNiven, all credit where credit is due. I have the image set as my desktop wallpaper at the moment. The original has Sue standing in front of Ben but I wanted to just work on the Thing so sadly no Sue Storm this time.

While looking at the image I started a sketch in Sketchbook Pro 2011, I got the image partially done and converted the image to blue lines in Photoshop and then printed it out and started inking it with a Prismacolor ink brush. I've been wanting to try this technique as I've been watching a lot of the videos that Skottie Young has up in multiple places(check out http://www.skottieyoung.com/ for some great stuff) and his way of working is very different from mine. So mainly it's just for fun.

After I worked on the ink for a bit I decided to add in more pencils and try to do the rest of the image. Added some lines with just pencil and I'm gonna rescan it and add in the rest back in Sketchbook Pro 2011.

I just threw this piece up on http://www.penciljack.com/ to get myself started there. Hoping for some positive art critique and feedback. I am also posting it here for both of my loyal fans, enjoy.

74 - the male nose or Can You Smell What the Bach is Cookin?

The Nose knows fools, it always knows. And here we have the next section, starting off with the male nose. The simplified version is to use a triangle as a base and remember that less is more. Put down all 5 of these quick head shots tonight and they came out pretty good I think. Repetition is good, gotta practice making a face look the same repeatedly so I can make my characters match panel to panel, pretty important in any kind of sequential art.

Coming up next, the female nose, same Bach time, same Bach channel. See you then.

73 - Female eyes one more time!

Now we finally come to the end of a section, the eyes have it! And I am fracking done with the eyes, sweet. I enjoyed drawing these and as always the more practice I get the better I will get at drawing, hopefully. Gotta keep working the quantity thing and strive to reach quality as the end game.

The next section is on noses, good stuff, gonna work that triangle.

72 - Girly eyes or Is that Owl Girl?

The girly eyes again. Enjoy.

71 - The Flash with Black Dynamite or Why it's all Kevin Smith's fault!

These sketches are all Kevin Smith's fault, which I believe to be a good thing, but let me explain. I don't think I have ever brought any attention to the podcasts I listen to and thought now would be a good time.

My iPod is usually full of episodes downloaded from the SModcast Podcast Network that I listen to while at work mainly during the time that I am processing mail. These podcast make the day go by faster and they are extremely entertaining. SModcast with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier is the grand-daddy of them all, really entertaining stuff. Then there's Tell Em Steve Dave, Blow Hard, Plus One, Puck Nuts, Hollywood Babble-On, Jay and Silent Bob Get Old and the two that led to these sketches; Bagged and Boarded and Red State of the Union.

Red State of the Union is Kevin Smith's new class on film podcast that has been filled with great interviews with people that worked on the film Red State. If you really dig on film this is a great podcast to listen to and learn a bit about how this film was created. I just listened to the episode starring Kyle Gallner and enjoyed hearing all about this kids journey to Hollywood and his entry into the acting world. Kyle first caught my attention as he did a lot of comic fans when he appeared as Bart Allen a.k.a. Impulse on Smallville, great stuff. Listening to that episode I realized he was also in Jennifer's Body and the new Nightmare on Elm Street remake, whether or not you think they were great movies I enjoyed them and Kyle put together some cool character work in these. Now he's playing what sounds to be an integral role in Red State which I can't wait to see. I tried a quick sketch last night of a picture I found of Kyle Gallner and have to say I like the sketch but I don't think I got even a bit of the likeness. But 15 minutes with a pen and I did end up with a pretty good head shot, the proportions came out to my liking.

Next we have Bagged and Boarded with Matt Cohen and Brendan Creecy, a real funny podcast with a couple of geeks that have a lot of the same interests I do so I find the episodes to be mini laugh-a-thons and fairly informative, they introduced me to Team Unicorn, check it out. The new episode had a great interview with Michael Jai White a.k.a. Spawn, Tyson, and the super cool Black Dynamite! They had a nice sit down with Michael and had a great conversation about the Mortal Kombat mini-film and the possibility of a second Black Dynamite, the world will get funkier! Any who, I was digging on the episode and thought tonight I would throw down a quick sketch of the man with the kung-fu koolness! 20 mins with a different pen and I am quite happy with the resulting likeness.

If all that isn't enough then after you listen to all the SModcasted podcasts you can also check out The Walking Dead Cast, The Devil and Me, Around Comics, Word Balloon, and 11 O'Clock Comics. I have listened to a couple hundred hours of these and found them all to be fully enjoyable, get your geek ear on!

70 or 1-1-11 the binary day

And as we start a new year I start things off the right way by getting going on Simian things. The Simian Brewing Company of Nampa, Idaho will soon be the greatest brew house in the northwest. But if I'm going to help that happen I have a fair amount of art to create. So here's were we start. One simple idea for a label template, with 2 variations on that theme. Once I nail down a template then the real fun will start. Marvin Kinney, brewer-owner-operator of Simian Brewing Company has already crafted a large slate of beers and now that he is reproducing them and refining the recipes the time has come for unique labels for each special flavor of Simian.

Just you wait and see...