"Here I am. Send Me!"

Isaiah 6:1-8 Describes a vision of the prophet Isaiah as he is in the presence of God in the throne room of the temple.  The passage describes an angel (seraphim) with 6 wings, two covering the face, 2 covered his feet and with 2 he flew.  In the presence of God Isaiah falls to the ground "Woe is me for I am ruined!  Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the lord of hosts."  (verse 5) Then in verses six and seven the angel takes a coal from a fire with tongs and touches Isaiah's mouth with it saying, "Behold this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away your sins are forgiven."  I have struggled for years to pictorially describe the angel in this scene.  I do not feel I have solved the artistic problem of drawing an angel with six wings, just done the best I can for now.  Another major problem was how to draw the throne room of heaven.  In this I went for Jack Kirby-Esq energy attempting to create more a sense of vast power than anything too specific.  I went with pen and ink and then decided that I would experiment with color.  I at first began with colored pencil but was not happy with it.  I then went over it with art markers that my Mom had gotten me a while ago.  Verse 8 is one of my favorite Bible verses "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"  Then I said, "Here am I.  Send Me!""

Grip The Ball

This piece is inspired by the chief reason I have not posted much lately; my daughters' softball schedule!  I am coaching softball this year and have been reading all the books on coaching softball I can find.  Proper grip of the ball is essential to throw and/or pitch.  I did this drawing with my usual mechanical pencil and final touch up with a woodless pencil.  I chose to only show the hand but not the whole arm to add just a touch of surrealism.

Superman Kirby style

Last Fall I encouraged my kids to make day of the dead alters around Halloween. I intended mine to be done in honor of Jack "King" Kirby, co-creator of many Marvel characters and creator of several DC ones as well. This sketch was all I was able to do and I only just recently finished and cleaned it up. When Jack Kirby worked for DC comics his drawings for superman were altered prior to publication to fit the "house style" of their flagship character. DC's attitude was that they did not want their comics to look like Jack Kirby comics but like all other DC comics. This drawing I tried to do in his style with wild background energy and all (you can see that influence in a lot of my work). Most of the time Kirby did not ink his work, most of his surviving originals are raw pencil drawings. I will leave it to fans to judge if i succeeded in capturing the Kirby style or not.

This is a drawing I did of the latest incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake for my cousin's birthday. Beyond the challenge of deliberately drawing characters out of proportion (something I can only seem to do when I'm not trying), I added the shading for a little extra challenge.

This is a drawing that I did In church over the course of a couple of weeks. If you can't tell this is a pot of flowers (one of two on either side of the stage at the front of my church). I had to make sure and sit in about the same spot each week. Just another drawing done with a mechanical pencil and a gum eraser.

Luke VS Thalia: The Battle on Mt. Tamalpais

This picture is another one inspired from one of my children, my oldest daughter. It is an image from "The Titan's Curse" the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I have been reading these books out loud to the kids but my oldest had already read them. She told me one day that there was a picture from near the end of the book that she wanted me to draw. I was a little surprised that it turned out to be Thalia VS Luke that she wanted me to draw. It is part of the larger battle at the climax. I actually ended up doing several variations of sketches before settling on this one. The books are Greek Mythology set in modern times with Thalia being the daughter of Zeus and Luke being the son of Hermes. They battle on the top of the mountain with Thalia doing her "lightning bolt thing" pushing Luke back. They are old friends but Luke has turned evil so she fights with anger and grief (note her tears). Pen and ink drawing, my wife wants to see a color version - we shall see.

"Nice Try Lao Che"

For those of you who don't recognize this, it is of Indiana Jones from the second movie as he is about to get on the plane to escape Lao Che, not knowing that the plane is owned by him, Indy taunts his enemy. The inspiration for this piece was twofold: 1- Indiana Jones is quite popular around our house right now. I let my oldest watch them and she really likes them. My other daughter is chomping at the bit to watch them and my son is starting to develop interest due to Lego Indiana Jones video games. As a result we checked out the first volume of the Adventures of Young Indiana Jones from the library. This leads to the other inspiration - 2- One of the special features is a documentary about Norman Rockwell. One of the comments on this was that Norman Rockwell captured moments in time or snapshots in his illustrations. This lead me to think that I could do that with DVDs and pause on a moment and capture. For a still unknown reason to me this is the moment I thought of and wanted to capture as a drawing. It turned into more of a technical challenge than I anticipated. My DVD player in the Living room goes into a screen saver mode a few minutes into being paused. The one in my bed room does not, but sitting on my bed drawing is not ideal. As usual, I began with a mechanical pencil and finished with a woodless pencil. Due to the fact that I was drawing Indy in a White Dinner Jacket I also used my gum eraser to return some white highlights.