Birds, Brushes and Ballpoint

I really wanted to play around with a copic nylon brush pen. And I happened to have a blue ballpoint pen sitting around along with some bird of prey reference.

Messy Experiments

Still plugging away at seeing how far I can push the abstraction of line work and texture consistency. It really got pushed on the image of the boxer and I am surprised at how happy I am with it. No idea who the boxer is, but the lady with the kettle bell is coach and athlete Meg Gallagher.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Art

I don’t need to go on about reading comics as a kid. Between characters on shows and podcasts about retro pop-culture, we have more than our fill of people talking about how they always loved comics. But I will say this, though I really enjoy DC Comics characters, I’ve always been more of a Marvel fan. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to catching Avengers: Endgame.

There is just no way to collect all the drawings and doodles I’ve done of all the characters from the MCU. But here are a few I’ve done in the last few years.

Preserving Something

Strongman Champion and actor Hafthor Bjornnson

If you or anyone you know is in great shape or at their peak strength (or at least has some quality reference photos of when you/they were), and would like to have a free illustration of yourself in an art style similar to the pics in this post, let’s talk. It can be you actually doing a lift, or running, or biking or whatever. It can be a pic of you posing too. You did all the work of getting there, now let’s preserve that with a little art!

CrossFit Champion Heather Bergeron

For some backstory, I used to love to draw comic book characters in a comic book style. It’s still fun but it just isn’t as enriching as it used to be. Using photo reference to draw actual people has become something I am thoroughly enjoying though. One thing that could be a hybrid of this is drawing people who look like they could be superheroes but live and breath. People who are in the fitness industry, or just really into being fit seems like the way to go. Plus, spending so much time in and out of gyms over the last 20 years has given me such a respect for people who can put in the work, and exercise the discipline it takes achieve the kinds of goals that are just too daunting for most people to maintain (like myself). I would love to try to capture or preserve that in what I draw.

I’ve begun doing a bunch of small pieces like the ones in this post. I think I would like to build up a bit of a fitness specific portfolio before I pursue charging people and turning it into a business. So you’d be helping me out too.

So if this sounds like something that might be of interest to you, send me a message.

Sandboxes 2

As I mentioned in a previous post, Tim and I had a lot of sandboxes, or fictional places filled with character and stories. One idea and set of characters were ever-present though. This was a story I really wanted to make into something someday. I concepted the main character when I was 17. We considered graphic novels, a comic book, a video game or most likely, a sort of graphic novel / website hybrid. We even came really close to starting on it about 6 to 7 years ago. This was something we actually had piles and piles of character sketches, plot outlines, scene write-ups, and historical accuracy notes for. And my friend was a huge help in all of that. But something always held us up.

One problem is the scope of the thing. But more often than not, it was just life stuff. Jobs, job changes, moving, break-ups, bouts of creative block, an ongoing sketch blog we shared, marriage, more moving, etc. It didn’t help that I had an 8 year long addiction to riding bicycles every chance I had.

My wife and I moving into our new place in October, 2018

About four years ago, it really seemed like producing something was becoming a reality. Then I got a call from Tim’s sister telling me that he had collapsed and a body scan found that he had cancer again (he also had it when he was only three years old). Despite that, he still wanted to be a part working on this thing.

Now that my friend has passed away, it seems a little empty to pursue it further despite having poured so much into it. But then I imagine him wanting to slap me upside the head for walking away from it just because he’s gone. Besides, no matter how many times I have tried, I’ve never been able to get those characters to leave me alone. I suppose stories are just how some people make sense of life or the world.

So I’m at a little bit of a crossroads. Delve deeper into this world of characters for good or bad? Or do I follow my new idea of becoming a portrait artist for the fitness crowd? That at least seems like something that could be lucrative. Plus, I do love illustrating fit people in action.

I know… how terrible to have options in life.

Copic Marker and Digital Color Experiments

The reference is Canadian bodybuilder Natasha Aughey from a photo by Gord Weber.

For the last few months, I have been experimenting with copic markers. But it wasn’t until I saw a few Instagram videos by Terrance Whitlow that I realized a whole new level (to me) of how they can be used.

He takes a more painterly approach to their application. This can be seen by how he adds several layers of marker color, as well as a white wash of some sort for highlights. I wanted to be able to do all of this in a way that was much more mobile, so instead of a really wet white like he uses, I’ve been using General’s Charcoal White 558 pencils and a Sakura Gelly Roll pen. I started with white colored pencil, but I found the waxy buildup that colored pencils give you doesn’t work well at all with trying to apply marker over it. I also wanted a look that was much less creamy, and more granular. So, the charcoal looked great for that as well.

The next step was to color it. I still love watercolor and watercolor pencils for their textures and for the tactile feel of using them. But in the last few years, technology has hit the point where digital coloring, with the right brushes, looks natural and authentic. A good eye can still spot the differences of course, but overall, digital painting has hit the point where it looks right with what I want to accomplish. So after all the tone and line work was done, I scanned it in and brought it into Procreate for the iPad. I generally stick with a modified gouache brush for both color and eraser with a modified brush pen for line work touch-ups.

If you have any experiences with copics, white washes or digital coloring, leave a comment. I love to hear what other people think of using them as well as how they use them.

Sandboxes

Desert Mystery Woman by Michael Hay based off a sketch by Timothy Keller

The late Tim Keller and I wanted to make a place where we, and some artists we liked could post our art. That was Illustrators Social Club. Now that it is over, I still wanted a place to occasionally post whatever I was working on somewhere besides social media. I wanted something connected to my portfolio site. Hence the new blog. I had a couple posts in line about some artists I wanted to chat about. But then I found a drawing in one of Tim’s sketchbooks that put me in a trance.

Tim’s original sketch

For almost 30 years Tim and I made sandboxes, meaning that as a sort of fictional universe. We had futuristic-noir detectives alongside genetically augmented soldiers caught up in corporate conspiracies. A splintered family at the heart of a world-wide shadow government set during the first Crusades. People rebuilding society after a failed alien invasion left part of the population with superpowers. A western that explored the genre’s tropes. The story of a failing P.I. who lost his family to substance abuse. On and on. They were just fun, creative exercises for us to keep our creativity nimble, and to better understand the process of storytelling.

Tim’s desert woman sketch stuck with me. A woman with a gas mask and sophisticated body armor wearing a desert pith helmet with goggles? What is the story there? Who is she? What has she done and seen? Maybe it was going to be the start of another sandbox? I couldn’t stop trying to recreate, in my own way, one of Tim’s final sketches. One of his final possible sandbox ideas. I knew I couldn’t post about anything else for the first post here.

Is that some weird catharsis? A way to feel as though he’s still with us in some manner? Am I just nostalgic for the times when we would hang out and just draw for hours? After hours of recreating that sketch and then making a final color piece, it did become a catharsis, a way to feel he was still with us, albeit briefly. And yes, I am very nostalgic for the times when Tim and I would just hang out and draw for hours.