The Con

I'm leaving for San Diego Comic Con Thursday morning. I'm quite excited, as I have never made a Thursday trip down there. Seeing how busy it was on Friday AND Saturday of 2007, really made me not want to go this year. But I'm going free as a professional and I got a friend's place to crash at. Going on a Thursday also might mean I will get a full day WITHOUT literally bumping into my fellow geeks. :)

Anyways, I figure I could squeeze in another post of drawing before I'm off to the con. Some of these are just real quick sketches of fellow coworkers.

First up, "Swany Soccer Man"


Next, "The Daily Ritual"


Then, "Before Crazy"


Lastly, "Not To Be Confused With TaeBo"


I tend to not finish things. The goal is to revisit these, as well as my older posts, and color them. I love to just sketch things, but I need to get more familiar with color, which I think will help me draw less "flat" and get into creating my own light sources.

"The Con" title refers to Comic Con, as well as how I feel like this post is a con, or a cheat, in that these are not drawings that took a long time or had much thought. The first one took me like 15 minutes, and the last one with color took about 5 minutes.

Anyways, see you all at San Diego if you're going!

The Inspiration

Alright, so it's the 4th of July and I'm not out there enjoying nature and stuffing my mouth with freshly grilled burgers. Is that lame? Kinda. But I awoke this morning, felt good about not having to be at work, and just felt this creative boost of energy. So I turned on the fan, hit the light on my drawing desk, powered up my MacBook, and let Pandora play. Today's posts are not today's drawings, but something I worked on this week for a my budd Bert's 50th birthday. Anyone that knows me, knows I'm a huge Laker fan. But Bert is NOT.

First up, some sketches of how I want to capture his excitement. I suck at really exaggerated poses. I always end up sticking to a more "normal" pose, when I should really try to push a drawing to it's limits. It will be a process.



Next, I kind of decide on what I'm looking for in his pose. So I add the stars of the Boston Celtics. I took maybe 2 passes on them once I got the heads locked down the way I wanted. Used a lot of photo reference, doodles (most were too light to scan), and advice from fellow artist Kelly Matten. Thanks Kelly! :)



Here is the final piece with color. There was more added, like text bubbles, but that is something a little more personal that was framed for Bert. An inside joke. But as you can see, I wanted to break up the negative space around the players. They were all too evenly spread apart. Also wanted to vary their poses.



So, this is a fitting title for this post. The Celtics obviously had an incredibly inspirational win this season. Garnett finally got his ring, and I couldn't be happier for the guy. Pierce is also very deserving. Bert's 50th birthday is a big milestone for him, his wife, and his daughter. His party was a lot of fun. And on this day, we celebrate our day of independence.

WOW. I really never fail to be cheezy. I almost made myself throw up just now.

Oh, and as for TODAY'S actual drawings, they will probably go on my MySpace page. I use MySpace to post drawings of my fellow CSUF alum group, which is what I worked on today. So if you're on my MySpace friends list, check it out. I may still post it here as well.