Artifix Noctem 7 – atc

Another great night with my fellow artifix’ers!
Each Artist is responsible for 3 cards and at the end of the night we randomly get 3 others in an exchange.

Enjoy the show!

Pacaderms and Appreciation

505 imports in lake Charles, la is one of my best clients. They sell imported hand made furniture from India and Indonesia. Rebekah Dressler and Sharlene Boyle are the mother and daughter team that runs 505. They’ve made the experience working with their company a very enjoyable one. Their 5 anniversary was coming up and I thought it would be a great chance to drop off an appreciation gift I had been working on. It has been art project going over a couple of months with a little bit of work here and there when I had the time. I started with a pencil sketch on watercolor paper. I then inked it and erased the pencil lines. My color started with markers then pencil colors. I used water color for the diamond board behind the elephant. The background started as clouds and then watercolored it. It didn’t look right because the elephant wasn’t popping like I wanted. I roughly painted over the background with white acrylic – no good. So hesitated to go any further but it had to look awesome! I went with darker acrylic colors and ended up with great results (thankfully). I then brought it to the fine people at frameworks to get it framed. With a matte color of antique green and a dark brown frame we came up with a great piece of art. At their anniversary party I was super excited to give it to them and they loved it. It’s for this reason I think artist love what they do – for the reaction and praise of the client. I love the people at 505 imports and enjoy working with them and wish them the best success in life! -Erik

Kraken Killz

I had the itch tonight… not the itch that can be cured by ointment or cow bells (“i need more cow bell”)… the one that’s cured by getting on the wacom and doing the “do”.  I can’t remember the last time I did a 100% digital piece. This is all photoshop and wacom tablet… no pre-sketch or scanning involved.  This is a really good method to launch right into a piece and get it done in a decent amount of time. I’ve been anticipating the upcoming release of Clash of the Titans, a remake from an old cult classic.  I remember watching this movie allot as a kid, it really sparked my imagination to see giant scorpions, Medusa, Pegasus, that magic shield that Perseus wielded that ended up melting in Medusas blood…remember that?  Such an awesome movie for its time.  That inspired this piece… “Kraken Killz”  I wanted to do some sort of pop-art poster with the cult icon coming out of the water as it first appeared to the roman soldiers.  After drawing the Kraken I wanted to put in big letters in the background “KRAKEN”… then it came to me… Kraken’s do kill… and… Crack Kills… so… Kraken Killz – I thought it worked!

After the Kraken piece I’ll also post some other works that I did 100% digitally using Photoshop and my wacom tablet.

Woops!…. Sweet!

So I thought I’d work on a new entry for my moleskine… I wanted to do some sort of fight scene between some super dudes. I started sketching the flash and was going to get some help from friends to figure out who the villian should be. Thirty minutes later I thought of a drawing that I’ve been wanting to work on… The hellhound from supernatural that you never get to see. I just finished season 3 and dean gets what’s his by the claws of a hellhound. It leaves a lot to my imagination to fill in the visual gaps. I gave it a shot on the next page of my moleskine and before I knew it a quick sketch started to turn into a full blown finished piece. I covered it with copic red and that was the killing blow to the flash piece on the reverse side. It might be salvaged with Photoshop magic or I might try it again on another page. In the end I was pretty upset I lost something that could have been, but I also made something that was and will be… Whoa that’s deep.

Supernatural work

Using my copic black and fabers – moleskine work entitled ’supernatural’

Green lantern

Here is my first moleskine art work inspired by Ivan reis. Green lantern

New Year!… Here comes the work!

So November and December were pretty much dead for me when it came to business and projects.  Everyone checked out and so did I… not very smart move.  This year i’ll be sure to fatten myself up for the business hibernation.  The new year has brought a total 180… the phone starts ringing and people start requesting design.  Yay! Now I have to get my butt back in gear and start doing what I do best… making things look good?  … who knows … but I am making a living doing it.

Somewhat related (because i need to post a picture here), my pal oran wrote about the clients ever relenting need to bark, act like a parrot, or grind the organ box… however you put it we can all relate somehow to this image.

Inspiration always leads to good things

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən|
noun
1 the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative.
• the quality of having been so stimulated, esp. when evident in something : a rare moment of inspiration in an otherwise dull display.
• a person or thing that stimulates in this way : he is an inspiration to everyone.
• a sudden brilliant, creative, or timely idea : then I had an inspiration.

Many people have inspired me to do some creative stuff.  I think it’s a good to have inspirational people around or at least follow them on their social network of choice. My wife has her group and I have mine because we each do something different in our creative journey through life. I thought of a couple of projects i’ve done in the last month due to some ‘moments of inspiration’… so to those who’ve inspired… thanks!

Here’s Eric Merced’s Captain America (below)  that lead to the inspiration…

You can see Eric Merced’s work at his site http://ericmerced.com/

Inspired by my brother and Chris Manuel

Inspired by Oran Parker and Thom Trahan (it's his favorite hero)

Oran Parker really got me thinking about this traditional inking stuff… that may seem weird to allot of you but I started in digital first… then went back and “discovered” the traditional medium of comic art.

You can see more of Oran Parker’s work here on his blog…  http://www.oranparker.com/

I’m batman

I thought I would try a batman piece using allot of ink – traditional style with a sable brush. My brother loves batman so I was also going to use this as a present to him. I’m working on the color now and will post that version later.

The jetsons, er… Jessens

My wife requested an image for her home page on her blog. A parody of the jetsons, but with our last name – Jessen. I think I got the likenesses down the best I could. I used illustrator for the inking and Photoshop for the color.