Thanks Phoenix Comicon

Thank you to everyone that came out to make Phoenix Comicon such an awesome event this year.  Thank you to the the people behind the curtains that set up such a wonderful convention and to all of the workers and volunteers that made things run smoothly.  I also wanted to thank all the other vendors and creators who stopped by to say hi or sold me awesome new art and toys.  And most of all, I also want to thank all the great fans and people who stopped by and looked at or purchased my art, you helped make this a terrific experience and motivate me to keep on working harder at my craft.

Thank you again and please just message me if you need any new art.

Matt

New Everyday Hero painting and more!

Large post today!  So I've been posting for awhile now that I would do a fairly comprehensive description of my painting process and now I have somewhat made good on my threats.  But first, in other news, Phoenix Comicon is 2 days away!  I will be at booth 1001 with Spazdog Press which is prime real estate right across from the Zenescope Booth.  My latest contribution to the interior work is also being released this Thursday in Unite and Take Over: Stories Inspired by the Songs of the Smiths Volume 2.  I did all of the art for the story Oscillate Wildly (written by Chris Murrin and Andy Jewett) so come buy one if your in town for the con or order one from Spazdog Press.  I will also be taking commissions and I'll have several prints available for purchase too.  Hope to see you all there!

Oh and I forgot to add- I will be participating in one of the sketch offs on Friday from 12 to 1pm, so come and yell at us to draw some fun stuff!

Here is a painting from start to finish. This is Laundry Day... until I come up with a more creative title

Pencil drawing, I believe a number 2h lead.  The drawing/ painting is on 10x 16 Arches hot press paper.  I removed the paper from the block of paper because I like the freedom of the paper being directly on the board, rather than attached to a bulky stack of paper and having my wrist drop off the side as I paint.  If you aren't familiar with watercolor blocks they are usually the best way to paint with watercolor because the sheets are tightly packed together in a block with some special glue.  The glue that tightly packs the paper together really helps cut down on the paper warping as you keep applying water.  However, if you use enough tape and good enough paper (heavier weight the better) you should also achieve success going with my method of taping it to a large drawing board.

the general layout of colors.  For the most part this is all done with a lot of water and a mop brush.   I'll use a flat brush here and there for edges that I don't want to bleed.  The whole paper is not covered in water though, just the areas where I know I'm going to keep building richer colors into.  Areas that I'm going to have a high white/ light reflections are left white for now... also the areas where I'm not sure what I'm going to...   Also notice that really nice streak on the right?  Thats what happens when you don't pay attention to your materials and use a dirty rag to clean up an unwanted bleed.  Luckily I was able to cover most of it and it didn't ruin the piece...

Building a little more, working on the areas I know are going to be darker, the dryer and her purple pants... Why purple for Black Widow?  I don't know, I just figured she would be tired of black and gray outfits all the time and want some color in her life on her down time.  Plus they remind me of my wife's favorite pajama bottoms.

Getting some more dark hues in and some black for her outfit.  This is down with some grays I've built up and by mixing in ultramarine blue and orange.  I later cheat and use winsor & newton black because I'm lazy.  Hair is also darkened by adding some burnt sienna and burnt umber in with my orange...  Not all at once but in phases.

More areas worked on, starting to flesh her out some more, some work done on the shirt...

The clothes piles finally get a little detail.  Her face,  neck and shoulders get the details added in.  Also decide to go with black house shoes because the blue was matching my choice of cool shadows on the floor.  The belt, gun and Widow bite wrist bands get some work done.

Sorry, still haven't scanned this one yet, but final touches are added and I'm done.    Or I should say I'm afraid to take it any further because it's the look I was going for.... which is how I usually decide somethings done.  Or I swear and throw stuff and say stuff is done because I hate it. This one turned out fine though.

Some new paintings

Hello everyone,   here are the paintings I worked on this week.  Nothing too fancy, just some more watercolors.  However, with these 5 paintings I incorporated some india ink for fun.  I don't think I will be adding any india ink to the "Everyday Hero" series of  paintings since it is kind of cheating in traditional watercolor.  Next post (hopefully) will have some "creating of the picture" photos to show my complete process.  See you next week but for  now,  back to my awesome day job....

New Pics

Hello all, not too much new too report here besides the 3 paintings I finished up this weekend.  All three of them are watercolor paintings done on cold press paper and are a mixture of different techniques.  The painting of the Flash is part of my "Everyday"(tentative title) series and 5 prints will be available for purchase at Phoenix Comicon.  The Ms. Marvel painting will also have 5 limited prints as well.  See you soon, hopefully with some more painting in progress images...

FCBD

Free Comic Day was awesome at Drawn to Comics yesterday! I was crazy busy for the 4 hours I was there drawing free sketches for the kids and adults out there. Thanks again to Ken Brown for inviting me and giving me a spot next to my table mates Mike DeBalfo and Jacques La Grange, it was great talking shop with them amongst the craziness.

New Stuff! FCBD! Math?

Hello everyone, here is this week's nonsensical ramblings-
First up, I finished up my latest watercolor over the weekend and here is the final scan of it... the scan is not perfect, they still seem to wash out the lighter colors and also add some strange textures to the image that are not in the actual painting.  However, these are only in a few small areas so I'm not going to worry about it that much.

Ms Marvel in Public 2012 watercolor, hot press paper

  The whole idea I have for this picture and for the rest of the series of paintings is based off the fact that I wanted to keep drawing super heros but I wanted to portray them as normal people doing the normal mundane things and routines that we have in our everyday lives.  I wanted to make these paintings as fine art rather than the graphic qualities we have today in normal comics.  Why?  I just want to do something different with the characters I love in different situations and mediums that I rarely see used now a days.

I also have been working on a few other ideas recently and it has to do with adding some math into my art... wait, huh?  I'm honestly the last person you ever want to ask about math, I'm sure I couldn't even pass math 055 at CMU right now.... but anyways, what I'm doing is as old as art itself or at least from the Renaissance period or so for painting.  I'm going to try to incorporate the Golden Ratio with a special focus on the Golden or Fibonacci Spiral into my work.  Look it up, it's way too much to type.  Wiki it...  Anyways, spirals have so much movement and are very aesthetically pleasing to me so I will be drawing my normal basic forms but there will be spirals creating the whole of my compositions.  I blame all of this on the band TOOL.  I've always loved them and recently I've really been listening to the interesting time signatures  and lyrics they were using in Lateralus and 10000 Days and it got me thinking about Fibonacci, art and life in general and now here we are... Here is a practice drawing I did the other day that has the general idea but without all of the measurements(which I'm sure I probably won't do perfect, because I'm lazy) or ideas I have for the backgrounds...

india ink, pencil on paper-  the hair will especially have all of the spirals the future images... does this one?  only in a few areas.  this is VERY rough btw...

     

I will also be at Drawn to Comics on Free Comic Book Day (May 5th) with a bunch of amazing artists so check it out here-  www.DrawnToComics.com

What I've been up to... Practice

Thats right, I've been practicing with my art techniques.  Nothing special, just trying to fix little things that i tend to mess up often in my art work, correct anatomy, especially hands (which are still a work in progress) and perspective.  Really exciting stuff, I know, but they are essential in professional art and if I keep slacking I'll never get to where I want to be...  So I've gone back to the basics when in reality I should be getting some really nice fancy art done for the Phoenix Comicon next month.  However, I'll find a way to cram in a couple of cool pictures for prints last minute as always.  Anyways, here are some of my practice images that I worked on mostly at work, a conte crayon drawing and a big painting that is a work in progress and still needs a little more work.

watercolor, hot press paper, this one is about halfway done, time for the little details.

more drawing at the job, took about a 30 minutes on this one, the shoulders and delts need some work but I may turn this into a more finished piece.

 

conte crayon, i haven't used these things in forever!  Love them but it is so different from using the old lead holder.

hulk practice, and the hands still suck but mostly due to the foreshortening of his massive right forearm.  Just needs some tweaks if I turn this into a more finished piece.