Illustration Friday: Opinion - Lil' Roarshach

I finished my lil' Roarshach painting yesterday, but I wasn't happy with it. There was something missing from it, and other things that were just off. In my opinion (see, this is how it fits into the IF) I needed to make some changes. There were too many light sources (in the original painting) in the alleyway. There needed to be more of a defined shadow under the garbage can. And the words "Who watches the watchkids" needed to stand out more...I did the words in three different colors (previously) and didn't like any of them...well, I liked them okay, but they weren't working out as well. I toned down the texture on them (because that was one of the biggest problems in making them readable) and I think the piece works a little bit better. And it always bugged me that the buildings in the background didn't have any lights in them.

I also put it up on my blog at a bigger size (the original size of the piece is 9x12 and when I posted it last time I shrunk it down to 7 inches). So...I really like how it turned out - I feel that it's a stronger piece now.

Lil' Darth Vader

This was one of the first drawings of this sort that I did. It almost got lost in a page of character drawings - but I was going back through what I had drawn and I really liked the death star behind Vader.



Last week I cleaned it up in between my real job (during any downtime)...



I tried to simplify the computerized mechanical elements of the death star by adding some lines. When I was finished with the cleanup I felt like it was missing something...sure it had Vader and a death star behind it...but I felt it needed something else. I drew one tie fighter and copied it (for the back two tie fighters)...originally it was three of the exact same tie fighters...but I changed the wing lines on the front tie fighter because Darth Vader always flew in a different vehicle from the storm troopers (and possibly it helped the audience to identify which one was his).



So I added that to the drawing, and it was ready to color. This is actually the biggest one I've worked on so far. I had to enlarge it to fit in the tie fighters. Usually these pieces are about 8 1/2 x 11 - but this one ended up at 11 x 13. The only downside to it was the slowdown the computer had when I used a bigger brushstroke or when I was applying a filter (which I did very minimally - I just added a little noise to the mechanical elements of the picture to add some texture). And that's it. Darth Vader was done.

Lil' Galactus

lil' Jason

The latest in my line of media icons comes from Friday the 13th. I did several drawings of movie villians and this one was the strongest. I'll have more in the coming weeks - but I believe this one will be my favorite. I had a lot of fun drawing Jason in this style, and a tough time texturing the color...but I think the struggle made it all the better. And it ended up being quite a strong painting.

I did two different versions of his mask - one with a lot of red...sort of a gory version and a 'clean' verson.


Anyhow - I love this series of illustrations. I want to do something with them...