Ok. Now I’m starting to get the right pacing. As Milla said in the comments of .batbeyond thatshe likes the Amazing more than the Dark Knight I’ve done another speed painting, Spidey in the Black Suit. Once again, my new best friend among softwares, SAI, 40″.

Hello boys and girls!

I’ve decided to start a little Paint War with my good friend Santo. Yesterday he started a Batman painting in his blog. So here’s mine, although he’s Batman Beyond. 20″, Paint Tool SAI + Intuos4.

When I was a child in school I always got troubled with those guys, ostrogoths to one side, visigoths to the others, and blablabla… Though I was a little history book mouse those barbarians and their tricky names confused me. Then, one bright day, my brother told me that the complex names came from german for west-goths and east-goths, it all made sense. Still don’t know why the heck they don’t teach us simple things like this in school.

By the way, this is a painting and drafts blog, right? Here is a little fellow I’ve done in 40″ some two days ago, Paint Tool SAI from scratch. It’s a sort of gothic armored EVA unit. I’ve been developing the idea since I’ve started a 60cm tall sculpture of it one year ago, never finished it. This version was done without much reference, in a hurry, so it’s much more EVA-like than 14th-century-joust-amour-like…

“Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot“

Just spent the whole of the day with those rhymes echoing inside my mind. Needed to put them out.
Some 2, 3h of work, Paint Tool SAI, straight ahead.  And hey! I’m back to posting!

What a strange thing it is to walk all alone in the cold drizzly streets of the city, going back and forth in a time cycle that has no end nor beginning. I’m carrying a broken watch in my right pocket, the hand tightly grasping it, I walk with thin water in my glasses and through those polka-dotted windows I see those pieces, all dazzled, all messed up, this pieces of memories, right in front of my eyes. And in time I realize that I don’t care. It’s frozen on 4 o’clock, the watch. If before or afternoon doesn’t matter, it doesn’t cares. And the fragments of it’s stopped time are all around, coming and going back and forth in a time cycle that has no end nor beginning. I shall call it life.

What a awkward thing it is to stay all alone in your home, to stay inside of your own tower, and see the time passing, not speaking a single word all day, not seeing a living thing for so many hours, and thinking about so many things, that all seems to be otherworldly, in another time and space. But not, it isn’t. And you wake up back to life. The memories, so vivid, they are true. The people, so colorful, they are real. And slowly you do accept to be driven back to this infinite loop of experiences, of vinegar and salt, this huge bittersweetness. That strange thing, we shall call life.

This is the third paragraph.

¹ in time: indian ink on layout 180g paper. 35 minutes from first sketch to done.

Hello boys and girls! That’s right, I’m back! Or at least I’ll try to be. This last months has been very busy. I’ve moved, Thom and Cathy have got some decorative partners, adugestudio has moved to my home also, and it’s been great to live with the gentlemen and the lady.
The work of the studio is also great and progressing, and I have a bunch of novelties to show you all, hope later this week. By now, I’ll live you with my last loki. This is a very peculiar and particular kind of draw that now and then happens to come to my mind. It’s a sort of representation of all the too much inside my head, but somewhat less poetry-full than it may sounds. And I love to do them. This time they came in a pair, this’ the second one.

Oh! And so this is 2009! Welcome, my dear.
I’ll use this most splendid opportunity  to think about me past and bring something very interesting from back then. Being then the year of 2005, my first in the Design College, and most remarkably, the one in which I’ve settled the foundations of  Les Incroyables Aventures de M Laslande et Petit, not a children’s story. The first idea for this project is probably forever lost in history somewhere between 1997 and 2001, the earliest known concepts of something vaguely containing a background history for the characters are some sketches that I’ve found the other day in the bottom of a drawer in my old room in my parents’ house. They’re from 2001. But today we’ll talk about something slightly more recent, a series of illustrations I’ve done in the second half of 2005, just after a long period of creation and refinement of the characters and their surroundings. Today the count goes something like 40 characters, situated all around a sort of electropunk fantasy world: the time is a alternative version of the 30’s and the main place is Paris. Petit is a Secret Agent for the Europol and best friend to a lonely private detective, Monsieur Laslande, his owner. Petit is a 4 years old dog.
Just to start, some character sheets:

More soon. There are many other characters, including M Laslande and Petit themselves, and some illustrations done for inexistent comic-books imaginary layers.

Can you dance with the leppers in the madman’s house???¹

—-
Hereby I present these very preliminary  sketches done for the “Flavour of the Month” section of John Howe’s website². I thought it would be interesting to have them here. The December’s flavour is The Silmarillion:

And February will be Dragons:
 
 

That’s it. I’ll probably do the Morgoth and the Feännor ones this month and Ancalagon, The Nightmare and possibly two old drawings that I should’ve done a long time ago.

¹ Part of Arabian Sand, by British band The Coral.
² Every month there is sort of a little contest in John’s forum. He gives a theme and the best 5 os so drawings get the right to stay in the site.

There and back again…
Did you missed me too much? Sorry for the absence. My brother has come to visit me, the ravens and some of his friends, ’twas his birthday last 26th and we’ve spent some time drinking our lives away. What does it mean? Well, I haven’t drawn a single sketch for many days! Shame on me.

Remember that Molly from Neuromancer I’ve talked ’bout? Finished her today.
All references to real life are mere coincidence (or not).

Other good news is that I’ve re-opened my account at John Howe’s forum¹, and will be participating on the next competitions, soon… So wait and see, here may be dragons. 

Back to the point. Molly and her dart gun; indian ink, pitt pens and color pencils, a4 layout 180g paper. 

¹ this one i mean.

Today is a good day! I’m quite happy! GameArtisans has annouced the posters from DominanceWar III, it’s Blizzard supported competition. And hey! I’m in! The third edition of the contest has taken place some months ago, and I’ve sended my entry. I’ve been accepted, but not qualified to the finals, so I wasn’t expecting any news about that, but here are the posters! My illustration apears in the CG Society poster, in the right, above the funky Eel guy.
Basically the plot was to create a hero to save all system’s planets from a alien machine invasor, without using any complex machine and with some kind of magick power. The result of a long process of creation, that I may show thee someday, was that guy:

In the final step I’d sent a concept and a model sheets and a final illustration.

Saddly this last one isn’t sharply what it should be… I was coming all the way in traditional drawings, all the pieces of the modelsheet, except the crystal, are washed ink, paper, oldschool. Whem the time for the final one came I just don’t had it, and due to possible risks of making a traditional drawing (a.k.a. the inexistence of cmd+z in real life) in so short a time I’ve decided to go digitalway. As you see, not my strongest arm…

Sad story. Hohoho. But hey! The poster is nice and I’m there!
GameArtisans and Blizzard just opened a new competition, something about Death Knights and WOW. This time it’ll be paper based all the way!