As for artwork this year? I'm moving forward with the same huge project I have been working on. It's hugely hush-hush so I can't really talk about that. It's not fantasy, sci-fi, or supers, however, and I have been needing to get that fix. I'm working on some commissions from last year at the moment, trying to clear the docket, so to speak. Once that is all done I hope to work on some personal illustrations that I will be able to showcase here. I know I have at least one children's book, some comic-styled pieces, some paintings, and possibly some game art that I would like to tackle given the time. But for now I will show a piece I did late last year for an up-coming magazine cover for Keck Publishing.
This is one of the first images of this type I have produced since starting this journey. I used reference from Iron Man to start the pose and then added a different design to the armor. I knew I wanted the color scheme to be white and red, and that I wanted his palm-blaster to be a major light source and focal point. I also knew I wanted a somewhat WWI look to things, thus the barbed wire, bomb crater, and rain. Initially I started off with a pencil sketch that was then scanned into Photoshop CS4. I inked him with my Intuos 3 Wacom graphics tablet and then started playing with light, textures, and laying in some basic values. Once I was satisfied with the various layers of texture and how they played off one another I began with the colors since the lighting had already been mostly handled. Finding the right combination of color tone to serve the mood and still make the central figure pop was a bit of a search and conquer process, but I feel I managed in the end. The customer was pleased, and that is ultimately the bottom line.
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