Hello to all. I find myself in a place where I am in-between ideas for my next page layout of sequential panels. When I get like this what I like to do to get the juices going is to look at other art and see if I can get some inspiration. If that does not work then I just practice an aspect of my drawing skills. I believe if you want to be a truly versatile comic book illustrator you need to know how to do many of the different things involved in comic art production. Most of the time I pencil, but my first love is inking. It is how I first started and what I feel is one of my best strengths. While looking at other art for inspiration, I stumbled across this Batman drawing by David Finch, who is currently illustrating Moon Knight for Marvel Comics Entertainment.


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Batman, Copyright 2006 DC Comics and Warner Brothers Communication. All Rights Reserved

I really liked the pencils on this page and thought, heck why not ink it. Well needless to say it was a matter of biting off a little more than I could chew. I had no idea how intense the pencils were until I actually started laying inking on them. Whew, that Finch dude can really draw and his rendering is absolutely awesome and beautiful. The piece took me about 5 hours to complete and although I worked on a really small size, 8 1/2" by 11", I really like the finished piece:




Batman, Copyright 2006 DC Comics and Warner Brothers Communications. All Rights Reserved

One of the great things about doing this sort of excercise is that you learn little tricks and techniques that other artist use and that you can then apply to your own work to enhance it. I am pleased with the way it turned out and it was well worth the time invested in it since I learned so much. Until the next time, keep it real.

Cesar-

Characters Copyright 2006 Masterpiece Comics. Fireblast Copyright 2006 Masterpiece Comics. All rights Reserved.

I was asked to do the cover for Fireblast issue #2 due out in July. I was actually asked to do this a while back but kept putting it off because I could not get my mind around these characters. I ended up finishing this in one night, pencils and inks. It was fun to do and helped me to see if I could meet a deadline and produce decent art while under pressure.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow, Copyright 2006 DC Comics and Warner Brothers Communications. All Rights Reserved

I've been doing alot of art for some upcoming projects and that keeps me very busy. However, there are times when I just start to get a little bogged down with the particular piece that I happen to be working on and need to get my mind refreshed. When this happens I just take out a sheet of paper and doodle the first thing that comes to my head. Sometimes the results are good, sometimes wierd and other times interesting. In this case, I had never really spent much time drawing Green Lantern or Green Arrow (who I find one of the toughest characters to draw) but this came out. There are some things wrong with the face on Green Lantern but what I am going for in doing this type of excercise is a sense of intimate immediacy and spontaneity. This sketch took about 15 minutes to do and it really helped me to get the juices flowing again so that I could get back to the piece I was working on and finish it.

Here are a couple of Promo pieces that I did for an upcoming project (March of 2007). I actually did these about 8 months ago and have slightly altered my style since then. It is good to see however what you were doing and what you are currently doing as far as art. This type of looking back really shows me how far I still need to go if I want to become an upper echelon artist.
Characters Copyright 2005 Rebel Dawn, Full Force Promotions and Masterpiece Comics. All Rights Reserved