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Hellboy
I started doing a series of my own personal comic icons, mostly characters or creators who I really admire for their style and vision. I couldn't pass up Mike Mignola's Hellboy, they both ooze style.
I started with a quick sketch. I wanted to keep the lines clean and fresh, with big shapes. I didn't want to completely ape Mignola's style, just use it as inspiration.
I knew from the start it was going to be a digital piece and sometimes starting a sketch digitally gets too messy for me. I've also been trying to streamline my process. So I just sketched it out, took a quick picture, and redrew the whole thing digitally.
Since sometimes scanning forces me to try to save the original line work, I wanted a photo so it pushes me to recreate crisp lines.
Here's the finished linework. Mostly cleanup and blocking in the empty shapes. Plus he needed his iconic BPRD patch.
I tried no to get to crazy with the detail, here's a bit of a close up shot.
And onto the color! The color was a bit of a head scratcher for me, I wanted to find a nice balance between flat colors like the comic, but just enough detail to set off the linework.
And that's about it. Trying to keep the linework and detail minimal was crucial for the color not to become overpowering in the end.
Prints Available as well!
Skunk Ape - Dark Arts St Pete
This was an older gallery piece for DARK ARTS, a Halloween art show and entertainment event on October 26, 2013 at stationnumber3 in St. Pete.
The theme was basically anything dark and Halloween themed. I decided I wanted my piece to be local to St. Pete and Florida as well. So I chose to go with the legend of the Myakka Skunk Ape.
Think of a swamp version of Bigfoot, That's our Skunk Ape.
The original sketch was just a bunch of scribbles in Photoshop to get a basic composition and shape down. I wanted to make this piece as organic and fresh as I could, so I went with minimal planning.
The one thing I did plan out is the overall style and look I wanted. So I zoomed in on a small part of the digital sketch and pushed as far towards finished as I could.
From there it was just a matter of transferring the sketch onto a 2 x 4 foot whiteboard by grid and then lots and lots of time detailing.
More detailing. The whole piece was done in sharpies of all sizes, and even red sharpie for the trees. I wanted to see if I could stick to one material for the whole piece.
And finally all done!
And here's some close ups.
In the end it was a really fun piece and a great show with over 60 other local artists, plus food vendors and live music.
The main pupose was the challenge of sticking to one material the whole way through, I might have to do a digital updated version as a print eventually and clean up the lines and color.