FINALLY finished the Gambit and Rogue piece tonight. I'm gonna get a nice clear scan tomorrow and ship this out to it's owner. I hope she likes it, I had a blast working on it. It's 11x17 on comic art board, done in a combination of Copic markers, Watercolors, Micron Pens, and Sharpie paint pens.


Here's an update to the Emma piece I'm coloring by Nick Bradshaw. I'm actually doing 2 versions of this one, one in all watercolors and one in all Copic markers. This is the copic marker version.

Just another quick update before I go to bed. Finished up Gambit's coat after my friend's b-day dinner, added a bit more contrast and deepened some shadows overall too. Next step I think is to saturate the background with a bit more color, it feels a bit too light in person, and then do the paint effects. After that it should be done. Unless I think of something else that is.

I managed to get a little bit of time in on this today after all. Changed the X outline to black, tightened up some shadows on Rogue, and added some blush to her face. Also finished rendering the bottom of Gambit's coat. I haven't mentioned in a few posts (although I did mention it at least once already) original pencil drawing is by Brian Ching, colors are by me. I'm using a combination of Copic Markers, Watercolors, Acrylic ink, and soon I'll be adding a little Sharpie Paint pen.

I stopped by the art store on the way home and picked up a pink and a purple Sharpie Paint pen. Both of the colors look to be good for what I have in mind with the effects. I just hope I don't screw it up when doing it. I haven't done effects with a physical media before. Squeezed in a little more work tonight while watching some family guy too. Once I finish the coat, there's a few shadows I'm going to deepen, add the energy effects, and figure out what to do with the background. Oh, and that orange around the X is going to become black. I played with that in photoshop and it looks better in solid black to go with the rest of the image. My friend's birthday is tomorrow, and thurdsay is Battlestar Galactica Thursdays at my friend's house, so Friday is looking like the next chance I get to work on this unless I can squeeze a bit in before going out tomorrow.

Got a bunch done on this today, almost finished. I need to go to the art store and check out their paint pens. I have an idea for this I think would make it look cool. Gotta spruce up those energy effects. I probably won't get another chance to work on this until Tuesday or Wednesday though. The hardest part about these browns (and the reason this is taking me so long now) is that there's so much brown touching each other I need to find ways to differentiate the areas, to they don't get fused together when you look at them. So, I'm mixing colors and lightness values. I'm also inking the edges to help separate. It seems to be working so far. Still a little ways to go though.

FINALLY! I got my brown markers. I had a few neutral colors, and some reddish browns, but not any plain browns. Well, now I have a whole family of browns. To celebrate, I'm finally finishing up this Gambit and Rogue piece that I've had on hold. Wanted to get more done today, but had a friend who I don't get to see often over for a while today and a few errands to run. I didn't really get to start on this again until about 6:00 pm or so and it's been pretty sporadic focus since then. I need some sleep now, but I'm going to try and finish this up tomorrow, especially since my whole schedule is clear.

Ok, so I did some more with the watercolors tonight, but my attention span went to shit because I had Return of the King on in the background and I kept looking up to watch. Then I just stopped altogether when it was time for Lost. So I didn't get a lot done with those. I did grab another copy of the same print and start on it with markers though. I decided I'd like to use this piece (which was pencilled by Nick Bradshaw, for those who don't check out the older posts) as a sample for the marker colors I'm going to offer. So I'm working on both of them now.




Here's the progress I made on the watercolors too.

So I meant to have more done by now, but some stuff came up, including posting almost my entire DVD collection up for sale on ebay, so I went from having Sunday completely free to work on this, to having my all day Sunday AND my entire post-work Monday evening schedules filled. Tonight was the first time I got to do anything since my last post. And I've been distracted all night too so I didn't get a lot done. Looking good so far though, these pictures don't do it justice.

Decided to start on a new piece today while waiting for some new markers to come in. I'm tackling this one with 100% watercolors. I made a print of a piece I own, an Emma Frost "The White Queen" Pinup done by Nick Bradshaw. I love Nick's art and was amazed when I saw this piece he did for me. I've wanted to color it for a while now, and having to wait for my new markers for the other piece, it seemed like a good time. Above is the progress shots I've taken yesterday and today, I'll post some more later today also. I hope to finish at least everything that's not Emma herself by this evening. My attention span is made of suck lately, so probably not. The "Hellfire Queens" piece is finished and on my deviantART page too.

This is almost finished. I did a bunch more work yesterday and today, and finished up everything I can do for now. I was going through my markers and realized I have no browns in the family I need for this piece though. Friday is payday,and most of my bills are due monday, so if I have a bit of leftover cash, I'll hopefully be able to fix that problem and get some browns. After I do the hair and coats, I've got a couple finishing effects in mind, and if I see anything else I think it needs, I'll add that, but for the most part it'll be done. These pictures kind of suck, but they're more just to get an idea of the progress. It looks good in person, I'm happy with how it's coming out.

I started playing with some color holds, and wanted to see how it'd look if I whited all the parts of Emma's corset. I really kind of like the way it looks, it gives it a sort of a nice contrast to the whole picture being relatively dark. I'll probably finish this up tomorrow, and post some more progress I've made on the Gambit/Rogue piece.

Emma's skin finished, her hair started.

Finished up the Black Queen before heading out to my friends place to continue enabling his recently found addiction to Battlestar Galactica.

Little bit more work done on this tonight. I'm going to sleep now.

Chris Stevens (chris2d.deviantart.com) is an outstanding artist. I've never met him in person, but he frequents an art forum I visit every day, and from talking to him there a few times, I'm under the impression he's also a really cool dude. He did this piece as a commission for someone recently, and between the art being so goddamn fantastic and my obssession with Emma Frost, I just got inspired to color it. Obviously, it's still in progress, but I think it's coming along nicely.

Got a pretty good amount of work done on this today. Filling in a lot of the background area mostly, and finishing the black border. These pictures really don't compare to it in person. I'm hesitant to color the brown areas still though. I'm going to test doing them in water colors on a couple scrap prints I have. If I don't like the way that works though, I'll need to pick up a couple markers to expand the range of browns I can do. I'll probably finish up the background and effects in the next couple days, then do that though.

Drama caused me to lose many hours that I planned on using last night to work on this, so it should be a lot further along than it is.