What Do You See?

This post almost got lost in the mix. This is one last image from the show I went to a couple weeks back. I was surprised and pretty happy with how this one turned out.
Hope you like it!

Intergalactic Planetery

click-it to enlarge-it

Chris Samnee beat me to the punch today by posting this so I thought I'd better hurry up and get it up on my blog.
I really love this piece. Samnee and I were each commissioned to do a drawing in this sketchbook. Chris was to do Galactus on one page and I was to do Silver Surfer on the facing page--an epic duel (Galactus and the Surfer not Samnee and Hurtt). I think the piece turned out great!
So, Chris and I sat at the con tables discussing how to approach the drawing--I said "I think I have and idea of how it should look" and Chris said "I have an idea of how we should do it". So we each grabbed a post-it and started doing our thumbnails. Chris finished his in about 10 seconds and slid it across the table to me. I took one look at it and then slowly, and inconspicuously, slid my paper off the table and into the trash box. Needless to say, the above drawing is completely Chris' layout. The guy knows what he's doing.

Bullseye!

I'm pretty fond of the design on this one. The image is was adjusted in Photoshop from a photograph so some of the subtlety in the grey wash is lost here (that's generally par for the course with my grey wash scans). Still, I think it's a nice piece. This was done the weekend before last at a Kansas City show.
I only got two and a half hours of sleep last night so I'm going to go take a nap now. I'll have another post for you before the weekend!

Hurtt/Samnee Crossover Event

This was a one-off commission that I did with my friend Chris Samnee. I doubt we'll do this sort of thing again (neither of us really likes giving up control of our work) but it was definitely a lot of fun and we're both happy with the way it turned out. For this piece, Chris drew the original breakdowns/roughs and I then did the inks/finishes as well as the grey wash. It was quiet freeing to do the piece--pencils are always the drudgery of doing a piece, it's the inks that are fun and relatively stress free. For that reason I was happy to have Chris pencil this piece-- coupled with the fact that he's just an excellent artist. He makes pencilling seem so effortless. I know he'd say it was otherwise, but I sit next to him at shows a lot and it's always me who's doing all the cursing and erasing.

Inking over someone is always exciting because you get to know their art more intimately and learn a thing or two in the process. I ended up seeing a lot of things in Chris' work that I hadn't before and I have to say that in the subsequent days I noticed myself picking up some of gestures and techniques in my own work.

To see the original pencils for this piece go check out Chris Samnee's Oct 5 post.

Leave it to Chace

Another fun Queen & Country commission from this past weekend. It's always cool to get another shot at drawing Ms. Chace. I feel that my art style has changed so much since my initial run on Q&C--it's nice to come at the subject matter with fresh eyes.
Hope you like it!

The Life and Times of Paul Crocker

This past weekend I did a small show in Kansas City. I have a handful of commissions to show for it--all of which I'll post over the course of the next week. My friend Chris Samnee also attended the show. Because we were sitting next to one another and because both he and I have worked on Queen and Country we were asked to each do a drawing of Paul Crocker in someone's sketchbook. The catch: I was supposed to draw Crocker 20 years younger than his present day incarnation and Chris was asked to draw him 20 years older. I had the advantage in that, having done Q&C:Declassified, I know what a younger Crocker would look like. Chris' drawing was more challenging. Watch him hit it out of the park here (you might have to scroll down a little--the post is from Monday, Oct. 1). I'd also stay tuned to his site so you can see all the other outstanding pieces he did this past weekend.

Seems Like Just Yesterday

This recent commission took me back to my roots. Queen & Country: Operation Morningstar was my first real comics work. And it shows. I would post some of those early pages for comparison but they would be cringe-inducing for me. For this drawing I was asked to revisit the main characters of the book (at that time)--Paul Crocker and his Minders. It was nice to get a chance to redraw these characters--especially Wallace and Kittering (right and left, respectively). I'll always have a fondness in my heart for this book--having done two tours of duty with it. It's a great graphic novel series and I also highly recommend the prose novels.