Stan Lee

I finished my painting of Stan Lee. I wanted to add a few ironic touches to the painting, so I put the Marvel Comics legend into a classic Superman pose, showing off one of his famous catch phrases. I also wanted to make sure I gave it a bit of a Jack Kirby flourish, so I added some Kirby-style crackles to the background. I painted this jumping back and forth between Photoshop and Corel Painter (with just a bit of Adobe Illustrator for the background).

Stan Lee - WIP

I'm still working my way through this, but here's a sneak preview of a painting I'm doing of Stan "The Man" Lee, creator of Spiderman, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and much of the rest of my childhood. I've been doing this jumping back and forth between Photoshop and Painter.

Maggie Q

I just watched the new show Nikita on the WB and my review is it was totally meh, and doesn't come compare to the original French film. That being said, I was still supremely impressed with the uber-hot star Maggie Q. I painted this while I was watching the show.

Tilda Swinton

Here's the final. I always thought Tilda Swinton has kind of an outdoorsy, natural look to her, so I decided to place her outside in a field. The lighting just kind of followed naturally.

Tilda Swinton WIP

I started this one as a personal challenge. Tilda Swinton has quite unique features, but she's definitely proven to be one of the trickier caricatures I've done. After sketching her over and over again numerous, I finally like where this one is going thus far.

New Portfolio Website!

For a while now I've been wanting to redesign my portfolio website. One of my primary goals was to remove the Flash image gallery I'd been using in order to make my site more accessible to mobile users and others who don't have access to Flash. I also wanted to make sure all my images were easily accessible right from the main page. I decided to go with a WordPress site, for its ability to easily update and customize. I used a really great free theme called "Gallery" by Chris Wallace. I'll probably be making some tweaks to it here and there over the coming weeks, but overall I'm really happy with how this looks and functions. Check it out at http://www.markdraws.com

Rihanna - Final

I decided to take the sketch I did earlier all the way to a finished piece. If you compare to my earlier sketch, you can see a lot of the changes I made along the way. I widened the jaw, moved and resized the eyes and did all sorts of other things that improved the overall likeness. One of the best ways you can tell if your image looks right while you're painting is to flip it horizontally every once in a while. This will reveal all sorts of inconsistencies and places where things are just "off" that are practically impossible to see otherwise.

Rihanna Speed Paint

Just practicing. This is about 1 hour of pushing pixels around in Photoshop.

Eminem Final

 

Here's where all this has led to.

Eminem Progress

I'm slowly tightening up the details. I decided to ditch my original background and am planning something entirely different.

Eminem WIP

Thought I'd try painting my fellow Detroit native. Still working on it.

Zombie Claire - Final

I tweaked some details here and there. Now I'm calling it done.

Inception - Alternate

Tried a more traditional color scheme on my Inception painting.

Zombie Claire

Over on ImagineFX.com, they're having a contest to paint their editor Claire Howlett as a zombie for a future issue of the magazine. Here's what I've done so far. I think I'm mostly done, but I'll probably give it another day and check it with fresh eyes tomorrow to see if it needs any tweaks.

Waits Alternate

The rather brilliant French caricature artist known as Maester made some suggestions as to how I could improve this caricature. I messed around with it for a bit, including dramatically shortening the entire skull. Now I'm starting think it's turning into more of a caricature of Ron Perlman, rather than Tom Waits.

Inception

Here's the final. I wanted to create an off-kilter color scheme that had the dual purpose of implying a dreamlike atmosphere, as well as allowing me to put some additional focus on the top, which, if you've seen the movie,  you will understand is very important to the story.

Leonardo Dicaprio - WIP

I saw Inception over the weekend and liked it a lot. I couldn't help but notice while watching it how much Leo Dicaprio has a face that's just made for caricature. I'm still working on this one, but here's a part of this work in progress.

Tom Waits Final

I think I'm finished. I sharpened up some details, including the jacket, which I really wasn't happy with.

Tom Waits Continued

I tightened up the rendering here and there and added some textures. I think the jacket could still use some work.

Tom Waits Sketch

Just messing around in Photoshop. Usually I don't sketch directly in the program. I usually sketch on paper, scan in my sketches and paint over them. Not this time though. This took about 90 minutes.

Captain Kirk

I started out trying to turn this into a caricature of a young Shatner, but as things went on I realized the more I distorted his features, the less it looked like him. I think I'd have an easier time with an older, lumpier Shatner, which I might do sometime in the future.

Morgan Freeman

Here's my latest painting, in my humble opinion, one of our greatest American actors, Morgan Freeman. This one had a strange process to it, that went like this: 1. Draw a colored pencil sketch of Morgan Freeman. 2. Scan sketch in and paint over it. 3. Decide the aforementioned sketch really didn't look much like Morgan Freeman at all then paint over the whole thing until it no longer resembled the original sketch, but ultimately looked a lot more like the actor.

HOW Magazine

I'm extremely honored to have been selected to paint the contributor's page for HOW Design magazine's July 2010 issue. I've been reading HOW since I first went to design school a million years ago, and now here I am with my work up front and center in the book. Art Director Bridgid McCarren was remarkably open as to what approach I should take to painting the contributors. Not only that, but I got to paint my own ugly mug and list myself among an amazingly talented group of contributors. These were all painted in Photoshop over pencil sketches. Here you can see each of the images a bit bigger:

They are, from left to right, yours truly, AIGA President Debbie Millman, David C. Baker, Principle of ReCourses consultancy, web designer extraordinaire Jason Santa Maria and Nelnet Director of Marketing Jackie Ostrowski.

Sofia Loren

My wife and I had a new baby a little over a month ago. Since then, I've been finding ways to occupy my time in the middle of the night when I'm usually sleeping. I did this last night, painting over a sketch from my sketchbook. It's actress Sofia Loren, in case I blew it and you don't recognize her.

Teddy KGB

I had kind of an odd request with this one. A friend of mine is a huge fan of the movie "Rounders," and he asked me to turn my John Malkovich painting into one where he's in character as Teddy KGB.

Locke - Final

I think I'm pretty much finished here. I'm sure I could always go back and tweak a detail here or there, but sooner or later you always reach that point where you throw up your hands and say, "looks good to me." Well, here I am.

John Locke WIP

Here's where I'm at after a couple of hours painting. You can see here some of the decisions I made along the way to raise the cheekbones and drastically lower the top of the cranium. I think the result is a much stronger likeness overall. I'll continue to tweak the painting as I go along, tightening up the details as I go along.

John Locke Sketch

Ballpoint pen sketch of John Locke from my favorite TV show Lost. I might develop this into a painting.

Painting John Malkovich

I've been extraordinarily busy lately, but I still wanted to take the time to paint this. This is Photoshop over the ballpoint pen sketch seen below. You'll notice I made a number of adjustments as I went along.

Sketchbook Dump

Busy, busy, busy lately. But I still make sure I find the time to draw every day. Here are a couple of recent sketches from my sketchbook. Both done in ballpoint pen. I'm hoping it's pretty evident who they are.

Han Solo sketch

Sketching in front of the TV. Ballpoint pen and Pentel brush pen.

Rush Limbaugh

I had a job years ago where every day my boss, a die-hard Republican, would crank up Rush Limbaugh's radio show every day right at lunchtime. Having to listen to this obnoxious loudmouth every day did as much as anything to turn me into a Democrat. This was about three hours in Photoshop.

Luke Skywalker

I actually started painting this one a few weeks ago before I got sidetracked with other projects. I finally got back to it and wrapped it up. This is Photoshop over a pencil sketch.

Marty Feldman - Finished!

This is about as far as I feel like taking this one. Really, it's more or less a glorified sketch. But it was fun.

Marty Feldman

Here's a quickie painting I did of the late great Marty Feldman as Igor from Young Frankenstein. This was about two and a half hours in Photoshop.

Joker - Nearly Done

 

I'm pretty close to being done with this one. I think I need to take a step back from it for a day or so, then check back in and decide what else I need to do to complete it.

Joker Preview

 

Teaser for a painting I'm doing of my favorite comic book villain, the Joker.

Wonder Woman - Final

It's never easy to figure out if I'm truly done with a painting or not. I'm constantly tempted to go back in and tweak it here and there. But for now, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

Wonder Woman - Work in Progress

 

Trying something a little different here. I'm using a new set of Photoshop brushes, as well as trying a few other new techniques. I still have quite a ways to go, but I'm liking my progress thus far.

Indiana Jones

I painted Indiana Jones, just for the fun of it. This is about five hours in Photoshop.

Harry Reid

There's a new tell-all book out called Game Change that spills all sorts of behind the scenes gossip surrounding the campaign trail for the 2008 election. One of the more controversial stories that came out of the book surrounded some racially insensitive comments Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reportedly said regarding then candidate Barack Obama. This is Photoshop, over a pencil sketch. I think it demonstrates the influence the great Mort Drucker has had on my work.

Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker has been one of my favorite writers ever since I was a kid. I've read nearly every book he's written (and that's a lot of books). For those who don't know, his most famous creation is the fictional detective Spenser, but throughout his life he wrote many, many other novels as well, mostly in the mystery genre, but also westerns, historical fiction, love stories and even kid lit. He died today.  He  reportedly died at his desk while he was working on his latest novel. In honor, here's a speed painting I did of the man. About 90 minutes in Photoshop.

Barack Revised

I made some subtle revisions to this image to correct the overall symmetry. In reality, faces are not symmetrical, but ever still, there were areas on this portrait that needed tweaking in order to improve the overall likeness. One thing you can, and should, do as a digital painter is to periodically flip your entire image horizontally every so often. This will invariably show you parts of your image that don't look right. I did so here, and realized I needed to move one of the ears up and nudge the mouth over a bit to bring it more in line with the horizontal and vertical axes. I also went in and smoothed out the suit texture and added a bit of subtle texture to the skin to give it a punch of reality.

Barack Obama

There comes a time in every caricaturist's life when they decide to paint the President in office. Here's Barack Obama in glorious black and white. This took about four hours in Photoshop. I'll probably go back some time soon and add color, which is considerably easier to do once I have the black and white tones established, as you can see here.

ImagineFX Entry

One of my favorite magazines, ImagineFX, is having a competition to get a shot at having an illustration appear on an upcoming cover. I thought I'd give it a shot. After a couple of false starts, I decided to go back to the classics and do a take on Little Red Riding Hood.  Wish me luck.

David Tennant

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who. I'm looking forward to watching the tenth Doctor David Tennant's last hurrah in the role tonight. In the meantime, here's a painting I did of him. About five hours in Photoshop.

Work in Progress - ImagineFX cover

The Fantasy and Sci-Fi digital painting magazine has a really awesome contest going on right now for a chance to create a cover for an upcoming issue. Here's a sneak peak at my entry-in-progress. Obviously, I've still got a ways to go. I started painting in black and white, because that makes it so much easier to establish the overall tones of the painting. I would argue that getting your tones right is the most essential part of any painting. Tone is what gives your image the look of being a real object in three dimensional space. Once I have this image fully rendered in black and white, I can go over it with pretty much any color scheme and it will still look good.

Glenn Beck

Here's my latest. Here's Fox News political pundit Glenn Beck. I'm going to try to stay off my political high horse expounding on which side of the political fence I'm on, but as for the illustration itself, I gotta say, I'm really proud of the hands on this one. Hands are always difficult for me to draw, which I suppose is weird because most people (myself include) have a perfectly good set to use as reference anytime I want.