Introducing a device of my own creation.  The Gray Book ™.  Okay, not really trademarked…yet…. I spent about 6 hours last night putting this together.  Why?  Because I can.  Because I can’t buy this for love or money anywhere.  You have your all black sketchbooks, your creams, whites, pastel assorted clusterfucks, and grayscale books of a range of darknesses.  No book in any art store I could find that had a sketchbook with a single gray tone throughout.  So I made my own.  For those who don’t draw, it’s really nice to draw on this because it adds natural depth to a drawing that you don’t have to spend time rendering.  Your mid tone is already created, you just work your darks, then throw in some highlights.  I’ll post pics of some stuff I put into it later.

I went with a coptic stitch because I like the look, and you can lay it flat, or even wrap it around the back.  Plus it didn’t require and glue or pressing. All of the pages are hand cut, as well as the cover, hand drilled the holes.  I stitched it with a red-dyed hemp cord.  It’s 50 pages, 9x 11.5 inches.  I embossed a logotype onto the cover, but the board I used was actually quite hard, and didn’t pick up a deep impression.  Says something about its durability though.  I like how it came out, a little rough around the edges, but I’ll be making more for sure.  I just need to bring the cost and speed down as much as possible.  I’m very picky about the type of paper I’m using.  It has to be a nice drawing surface, low tooth, with as even a tone as I can find.  Some pastel and charcoal papers have a lot of texture to the colour I don’t find desirable.

I’m putting a closure on this long-term piece.  Finished the tweaks and lighting.  Hope you like it, especially you Starcraft fans.  The story goes, you’re a human living in a Federation of planet colonies in space, and you join up with the Rebellion lead by a megalomaniac named Megnsk.   After you take a stand with Marshall Jim Raynor to defy the Federation to protect a colony, it labels you both outlaws.

Lieutenant Kerrigan is part of the team, she’s a powerful psychic spy called a Ghost.  She gets sent on a mission to protect a ravenous insectoid alien race called the Zerg so it can gestate and overrun Tarsonis, a Federation colony.   If that sounds hypocritical to you, it’s meant to, the cure is worse than the disease.  At the end of the mission, Mengsk hauls ass out of orbit leaving Kerrigan to die on the planet.   You can watch the video below to get a visceral sense of the situation.

Instead of ripping her to shreds, the Zerg Overmind that controls the host of Zerg recognizes her power and her potential.  They capture Kerrigan and subject her to mutations and experiments, warping her into the Zerg Queen.  Later on in the story, the Zerg Overmind is assassinated, and Kerrigan becomes the new leader of the Zerg.  In the image below, you can see both Lieutenant Kerrigan and Zerg Queen Kerrigan in a moment not depicted in any particular canon.  I imagined this point after she’s been abandoned, exhausted from battle, defeated.  She can either die, or surrender to the Zerg, join their ranks.   It’s a little bit Jekyll and Hyde, a dash of Stockholm Syndrome, and a dollop of Michelangelo’s Pieta with a serving of Grand Space Opera.

Just a little sketch of an OP Toss strategy.

I did an illustration for my friend John Sargent who does casting for Starcraft 2 competitions as a surprise.  Since he’s terran, I fit him in a Marauder suit with the flag of his native land on his shoulders.  As I was working I screen captured the entire process then cut it into a video.  The music is a song by two Joes I know, Joe Vourteque and Joe Mason et al.

I started doing some live figure drawing using markers.  I stuck with the Copic Warm Grays for these three.  I have on my wall a marker sketch by Gene Ha I got from a small local convention.  In terms of getting an on-the-spot fully rendered original piece, you just can’t beat the speed and convenience of markers.  It’s a skill I’d like to develop more. Let me know what you think!

The Leggy Starlet herself.  Had some fun with Copics.

Taking inspiration from Greta’s dusky looks, and Indian art of Kali and Shiva, I put together this figure here.  The many arms for many drinks.

Started as a thumbnail sketch then to a full line drawing.  I’ll fill in shading and color and background later.  I’m going to be adding more henna style details on her hands and feet.  All that will come later, time for an Ice-Cream break.

On the heels of the roughs I created for the old Kerrigan piece I have a brand new composition in the works!  In case anyone forgot, here’s the old version.

I liked the idea of having this operatic scene with fancy background lighting, but I wasn’t getting the sense of intimacy and private struggle I wanted.  So of course I zoomed way in to capture all the details.  I painted this directly over the thumbnail I sketched and scanned.  I tried to get a proper detailed drawing done on 11×17 illustration board, but the flow somehow eluded me.  I was just going back over my old lines never quite getting what I wanted.  Maybe I’m not ready to have full sized original clean display ready artwork and for now this has to be my workflow.  I was just eager to get things going.  This is what I ended up with after Day 1.  The dramatic lighting will still get pushed, and the setup has a kind of Pieta feel to it.

Starting to tighten things up, changes some arm positions.

I was kind of stymied on this piece for a bit, the same face from two very different angles is really hard to do with no decent reference.  I recruited the lovely Jen F. to assist me in a guerrilla photoshoot.  The whole piece pulls together so much better now.

There were quite a few steps after this, but it’s kind of painful for me to see Kerrigan’s face mold like clay.  I moved away and kind of came back closer to the previous step shown here.  I feel like I’ve finally hit a lot of the subtlety of expression and gesture I had originally imagined.

I’m refining the details, and getting way more specific with the lighting.  I saw some illustrations with really tight spot lightning that has a dramatic effect I’m looking for.

I tweaked the shadows and highlights, got some background detail.  I think I’m done messing with the mood, now it’s just adding some detail and adjusting the focus.