I grew up watching Star Trek. I’ve been indoctrinated to find green girls to be sexy.
(Nah. I find girls (women) to be sexy. Green. Blue. Jet black or any of the myriad real people shades.)
Just a Few Scars (Color)
Author Archives: skook
Just a Few Scars (Black and White)
Drawing scars is fun. I wouldn’t wish the process of getting wounded enough to get a cool scar on any living person but I like giving scars to the characters I draw. I’m sure I’ve drawn a lot more scarred characters than tattooed ones. I’m not sure why. Maybe because a tattoo is usually a drawing and since I’m already doing one drawing I don’t feel like putting another little drawing in the middle of it? Perhaps because getting a tattoo requires a person to sit still whereas getting a scar is a more vigorous activity?
Top Hat (Color)
I like formal wear and fashions prior to the 1960s. Suits, ties and hats just look cool. I wouldn’t trade the need to dress up for today’s casual comforts but drawing all that cloth is fun.
Top Hat (Black and White)
The illustrations I do for Oz Squad are in a simpler style than I use for my RPG pieces – clean line work with flat colors. Examples of what I’m talking about can be seen in the banners at Oz-Squad.com. I thought it would be a good idea to include some illustrations in that style at Skookworks.com.
Of Course There’s a Frankenstein Monster (Color)
And here’s the color version of yesterday’s Frankenstein monster. He’s got a little more green in him than I generally give my Frankensteins. I grew up with Herman Munster and the ubiquitous Universal Frankenstein and, however cool those characters are (or are not), I tend to react against them when I draw a Frankenstein.
As I understand it, the Universal Frankenstein wasn’t meant to be green. All of the original Universal Frankenstein movies were filmed in black and white. The makeup that Boris Karloff wore in the first films was green because it photographed as a sickly shade of grey. Color publicity photos and green shaded versions of the monster in later promotional material fixed his color as green in the public’s imagination.
The world is full of square headed green Frankies. I don’t need to add to the number. Mary Shelley’s version was a very different monster. There have been many different interpretations of the creature on stage and screen and comic book page in the last 180+ years. And I like different.
Of Course There’s a Frankenstein Monster (Black and White)
Here’s the black and white original version of my requisite Frankenstein Monster. It would be difficult for me to design a portfolio site without including a Frankenstein or two. He got a place on the first Skookworks.com banner.
I’m still in the process of figuring out how I want to arrange the galleries at Skookworks. I’m not sure if I want to have a specific Frankenstein gallery or if I should include him in a general Monsters gallery. Heck, I’m not sure yet if I want a general Monsters gallery.
Thinking, thinking.
They’re Not All Winners (Color)
I’d hoped that, somehow, in the process of coloring this piece, I’d find a way to make it look good. Or if not good then at least good enough that it would be useful to include in one of the headers at Skookworks.com for variety’s sake. Unfortunately I didn’t like it any better once it was in color.
Now I could be wrong. This could be one of my masterpieces. Sometimes I see more of the errors in a drawing than the good stuff. Feel free to let me know.
They’re Not All Winners (Black and White)
I liked the pencil version of this illustration but somehow, in the process of inking and toning it, I screwed it up. This guys is supposed to look ugly, lord knows, but the ugly that I ended up with isn’t satisfying. So he’ll get an airing today and again tomorrow when I post the color version but he won’t graduate to a spot in the Skookworks.com headers.
Man-Ant (Color)
And here is the revised version of yesterday’s illustration, colorized and with an added border. Eventually this piece will be part of a header over at Skookworks.com.
Man-Ant (Black and White)
I’d been intending to wait to post this next series of illustrations until after I’d used them to create header logos for Skookworks.com but that could leave this blog quiet for weeks. And we all know what a tragedy that would be.
Skookworks.com (also DavidLeeIngersoll.com and DavidIngersoll.com) will eventually be my main portfolio site/online home. If I were smart I’d just repurpose existing art for the banners and, thus, get the site up more quickly. But no. The first thing I set up doing was drawing new illustrations.
A big reason for the new art is that most of my currently available art is black and white. I’ve done a lot of interior illustration for gaming magazines and manuals since 2003 and, while I’m quite proud of most of it, if I didn’t do new color pieces the site would be pretty monochromatic.
So why is this piece black and white? Because most of my illustrations start out black and white and I color them in photoshop. This gives me greater flexibility over what colors to use. If I end up choose a set of colors that look lousy together or that don’t give the illustration enough contrast I can easily make changes. This illustration was done using ink and cool grey felt markers. I’ll post the colorized version tomorrow.
