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.

The Ripple Effect

This drawing was inspired by a sermon at church on 02/13/2011 "The Character of God". I began by just challenging myself to see if I could draw a picture of water rippling like the one that was in the bulletin at church that Sunday. As I listened to the sermon a couple of ideas stuck with me. One- was The love from Christ to us becomes the love we give to others. The love for Christ to us found it's ultimate expression on the cross, bearing God's wrath for my sin upon His son. This also reminded me years ago of a song performed at a Good Friday service called "One Drop of Blood" written by Ray Boltz: One drop of bloodFell to the scales-It covered their transgressions And all the times they failed-The enemy was mighty He came in like a flood-He was defeated by one drop of blood-No greater sacrifice has any other made-Oh yes he paid the price With every drop he gave-. The idea then came to me to show the ripples of love coming from one drop of blood from the crucified hand of Jesus. I completed an initial sketch of the drawing in church. At home I re-drew it, ironically I struggled more getting the hand right than the ripple. As usual both the initial sketch and final drawing were done with a mechanical pencil with some shading done with a woodless pencil to finish it off.

Landscape I

To start off the new year, something a little different. I actually started this drawing a few months ago. One night the Family was all together in the school room (at our house) drawing and I decided to challenge myself with something I don't usually draw. This is the type of piece my fine arts teachers would have hated, due to the fact I did not draw this from nature or a photograph. It is basically a made up piece using some drawing tricks for the illusion of a mountain landscape (very "Bob Ross Esqe"). My wife however likes it, so that pretty much settles it.