Mauron the Magnificent

This Sunday I'll be participating in my first ever Dungeons and Dragons game.  I decided to take some time and illustrate my character, who I've named Mauron the Magnificent.  Mauron is a bit of a snake oil salesman. He travels the country side selling various potions and trinkets that may or may not be the answer to all of life's problems.  He's also a wizard of sorts. During his travels he acquired a magical amulet that allows him to create frighting illusions to scare off any would-be attackers.

Magneto Wedding Officiator

I'm taking Suggestions again, over on my Facebook page.  This Time I'm asking for suggestions based on fictional characters. Last time I just did quick pen and ink drawings of each suggestion but this time I'm going to spend a little more time on each drawing to exercise my art muscles a little. I feel like I've been getting a little rusty in certain areas and I figured this would be a fun and challenging way to get some practice in.

This first suggestion comes from Michael Kwan.  His suggestion seems to be based on the recent news that actor Ian Mckellen would be officiating Patrick Stewarts wedding. Of coarse, Ian Mckellen played Magneto in the X-men along with Patrick Stewart but Patrick Stewart is probably more famous for his role in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Michael chose to go with the less obvious suggestion that Magneto be officiating Captain Picard's wedding rather than the Magneto officiating Proffesor X's wedding.

I decided to challenge myself a little by drawing the characters in a more comicbook fashion which has made me realize that I need to brush up on my anatomy a little. I've gotten so used to illustrating more cartoony characters that I've sort of lost touch with how all the muscles connect and work together.  Rest assured, I'm already doing some figure drawing sketches to fix that problem. I've got to be the best!

On to the next one. I think I might add some color this time too.

More Caricatures

I recently completed another caricature/portrait.  I hesitate to say that they are fully a caricature because I don't exaggerated the features as much as I could but I wanted it to be more of a cartoonish portrait.

This one was done for my friend Dylan's Mom and her husband.  We stayed with them in Washington last year for vacation and they had asked me if they could commission me for a portrait.  I decided to do it for free since they had been so hospitable.  Unfortunately, it took me a little longer than expected to get to the drawing as I had some more pressing projects to complete but they understood completely.  

 The inks were done with my usual tools, A Pentel brush pen and some Copic multiliners for the finer details. The color was done with some Prismacolor markers and I added some minor shading with some Prismacolor color pencils.  I recently purchased an assortment of skin tone markers so I was excited to give them a try. I'm hoping that I'll have  some opportunities to play around with the markers a little more and get better at using them.  There's something about using the traditional means of illustrating that is a bit more relaxing and satisfying than doing things digitally.

Caricature Gift

My Girlfriend wanted to do something special for a friend's birthday, so she decided to get an authentic Jeff Morin caricature done of her friend and family.

The illustration was done on an 11 x 17 inch vellum bristol board.  A Pentel brush pen was used for all the line work. Then I used some Prismacolor markers for the base colors, except for the skin-tones. I used a few Copic sketch markers for those. Only because I don't have any skin-tone Prismacolors other than peach which is a horrible color for skin it's more of a glowing orange.

All the shading and highlights were done with some Prismacolor colored pencils, by coloring on top of the base marker color.

I hear the recipient was very pleased with her gift.

Sketch Suggestions 5

Well, here we are, at the end.  These are the last of the sketches that were suggested by you guys, over on my Facebook page. It's been a heck of a lot of fun and it's given me some good practice too. We will definitely do this again!

Anyway, here's the last  of the sketches, all suggested by SirRichard Lee LionheartedGrahn (yes that's what he calls himself on Facebook.).

Mr. LionheartedGrahn writes, "DRAW near to God and He will DRAW near to you. DRAW a conclusion. DRAW water from a well. DRAW straws. DRAW bridge. . . . . ."

The result: I drew this picture of myself drawing near God.  If you look closely you'll see that I'm drawing a picture of some straws and a bridge. I suppose you could say that the water under the bridge was from a well and that God also counts as the conclusion.

After SirRichard's first suggestion, he was teased about not giving me more butt themed suggestions. So, he decided to join in and gave me some rather  odd ones.

He replied with, "Draw two butts walking down the street, one says to the other "hey, we look like a couple of peaches!"

In my illustration the speaking butt is saying his dialog in butt language.

The Lionhearted one followed up with, "Two butts stand on the street corner as they see another butt walk by wearing a leather jacket and a pair of devil horns. One butt says to the other "look, a bad ass!"

 I drew the "bad-ass" in the back of a speeding pickup to add to his badness.