Thor V. Hulk W.I.P.

This is a small section of a digital painting I just started.  It started out as just another practice/portfolio piece when I found this kickass line art from Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales online, but as soon as I started it I thought it would be a nice challenge to turn it into a painting with my own feel to it.  I guess I was kinda inspired by the recent Marko Djurdevic paintover of one of Coipel's Thor covers.  Digital painting is something I've really gotten into and would love to get good enough to do freelance illustrations and possible cover work for Marvel and DC, so hopefully this turns out good and will make a nice start to a new portfolio.

I wanted to share the work in progress simply because I love to see others' W.I.P.s to see how they work and flesh out a piece.  You can see here that I start out very sloppy, roughly blocking out shapes and shadows, then working in colors and highlights before really tightening it up.  I don't use many layers either, I like to keep as close to real painting as possible.  I'm really still figuring it all out but this seems to be the most effective process for me.  I'll post this when it's finished with the line art for comparison.

Cover to Hulk #5:

Pencils by: Olivier Coipel, Inks by: Mark Morales, Paints by: me

-beefy

Zombies: Final

Took my pencil sketch into Painter X to do digital inks. The first time I've really tried to ink a piece digitally, not too bad, kinda liked it. I then brought the inked version into Photoshop 7 to apply the grayscale colors. Text done in Illustrator. I'm really happy with this piece, though I'm probably not quite finished with it. I'll probably do a proper background for the version that will appear in the comic book. I did kind of incorporate the more gruesome idea I first had, though it's not nearly as graphic as I had originally intended.

"Nuclear Family":

*edit: Photobucket removed the uncensored version, oh well.

-beefy

Houston, meet problem...

So all kinds of crazy shit goin on at my wife's job, her boss fucked up big time and is facing possible criminal charges.  Needless to say it's a pretty stressful work environment and my wife has had enough of it so she's started applying for other jobs, two of which are located in Chicago.  She has a very good chance of getting either one and if she does that means a big fucking move in the very near future.  Moving to Chicago would be pretty cool, we'd finally be living near family and we'd be the fuck out of California, but on the other hand, moving 2,000 miles with a baby, four pets, two cars (one of which needs repairs), all the shit we've accumulated and not a whole lotta money in the bank would be a colossal pain in the ass.  Not looking forward to that if it comes to it.  We'll just hafta see how it plays out.

Had some spare time tonight so I did this piece for my pal Ben over at http://www.hankhouston.blogspot.com/ . Big congrats to them for making the top 50 in this year's Platinum Studios' Comic Book Challenge!  Did a grayscale version in PS7 over the inks but I'm not sure I like it so I'm including both. 

"Hank Houston":

-beefy

Zombies

A sketch for a pin-up I was asked to do for a Horror anthology comic. Still need to add a background then I'll be inking and painting it in grayscale. I had a much more gruesome idea in mind for the baby and mom, but my wife forbid me from drawing it. Probably for the best.

"Nuclear Family":

-beefy

Luke Cage

Today's daily sketch.  Luke Cage from Marvel Comics.  Not really a fan of the character the way he's written in the Avengers titles, but he's partners with my boy Iron Fist where he's a more interesting character.  Been kinda slacking on the daily sketches lately, but I have been busy drawing pages for a short story I'm putting together, along with the coloring shit I do.  I've tried working traditionally again with ink and markers, but the results weren't anything I'm happy with.  Need more practice there.

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire:

-beefy