How to paint a Black Alpha poster in 10 easy Steps!

Well maybe these steps weren't so easy lol :) Anyways, here it is. As you can tell it changed throughout the painting process, especially with a little tweaking in the composition in the end. I had originally thought that I would add all of this typography to make it look like a real movie poster but sadly it's just not my strength. I just could never get the type to look cohesive so I decided to drop it and not focus on it. Anyways, enjoy!

-Blake

Black Alpha is a trademark and copyright of Tom Rasch

Black Alpha Poster

Here’s a little fan art love for “Black Alpha”!

If you don’t know who or what Black Alpha is then let me enlighten you! Black Alpha is the brainchild and upcoming comic book series from my buddy Tom Rasch. Without going too in-depth, basically think of it as an intergalactic space adventure that brings together story elements similar to Batman, a little bit of Iron Man tech and takes place in an expansive universe similar to Star Wars.

Every since I met Tom and saw his passion for this story I knew that it would be a success. The first thing I thought when I looked at the character designs was “This is gonna be on Cartoon Network’s Saturday night line-up”. Anyway, I fell in love with it and could see how this world would one day branch out from comics to all forms of entertainment and it’s starting to happen! Needless to say, if you haven’t checked out Black Alpha, you need to right now! Here’s the link to the Black Alpha fan page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackalpha3

Please like and share with you’re friends too!

As far as this picture goes, I’ve been working on and off on this for about a month. I knew for the past year or so that I wanted to do some fan art for Black Alpha, but as is so often the case it was easy to get caught up with other things. Finally, I decided that I really wanted to tackle it.

I knew that I wanted to do something different with it and my first thought was something that was like a Star Wars poster. I’ve always loved Drew Struzan’s work; especially for the Star Wars posters (he’s easily one of the greatest illustrators of all time in my opinion) so I decided to channel that type of feel into this painting. It was a real struggle, trying to figure out how many figures to put in. Initially, I had thought of doing a lot more but I felt it might get a little too cluttered, so I decided to streamline it a little.

Another struggle was to try and give a digital painting a feel that was similar to Struzan’s traditional work. It was a struggle but I learned a lot and had fun, since I do love texture! Anyways, you never get as close as you want but for where I’m at right now it’s as close as I can come.

In the end I tried to take a little artistic liberty with the color schemes and some of the designs to try and make it feel cohesive in the painting. It’s really just my interpretation of the Black Alpha universe, so there are some slight variations from the comic designs.

One last thing I thought I’d mention is that in order to try and emulate Struzan’s work, I decided to keep to a minimal color palette. Since most of his work has a very warm color scheme I decided to stick with that, hopefully giving the impression of working off of a burnt sienna paper.

Well if you made it this far congrats! Oh and if you’re curious, as always, this was painted in Photoshop CS4! Have a great day and don’t forget to check out Black Alpha!

-Blake

Black Alpha is a trademark and copyright of Tom Rasch

ProfX 01 Photo Study

Here's another one I did from Saturday night. This is James McAvoy as Professor X from X-Men: First Class. This was a lot of fun as I got to see all the different colors that made up his face. There were browns, yellows, greens, oranges, pinks and blues. All very interesting and very helpful for me when thinking of color palettes for future paintings.

This one was done in 60 minutes and as always in Photoshop CS4!

Study Work

I've been on a kick doing study pieces recently. Here's one I did of Gandalf from a still from The Hobbit and the other two are based off of pictures John Singer Seargent painted.

Gandalf took 1 hr and 5 mins, the other two were 2 hrs and 15 mins each, and they were done in Photoshop CS4. Enjoy!

Thanos

Hey everyone! Back at the first Denver Comic Con I met a super nice artist by the name of Jon Hughes. We hit it off and became buddies and a little while back he asked if I wanted to collaborate with him on a piece. He gave me a the line art to and I ended up painting it and what you see is the final :) Hope you enjoy! And by the ways, if you haven't checked Jon out yet, why don't you go take a peek at his work! https://www.facebook.com/overgroundcomics

Orc Mustering Ground

Hey everyone! Here's some more work from The Lord of The Rings Card Game. This one is called "Orc Mustering Ground". It was painted in November of 2011 and was for Fantasy Flight Games. Enjoy!

Assault

Hey everyone! Here's some more work that I did last year for the Lord of the Rings Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games. This one is called "Assault"

Troll Purse

Here's some more Lord of the Rings work that I did last year for Fantasy Flight Games. This time it's the Hobbit himself, Mr. Bilbo Baggins. Enjoy!

Grip Grab, Pinch Nab!

In continuing with this weeks theme honoring the upcoming movie "The Hobbit", here's some more work that I did last year for Fantasy Flight Games Lord of the Rings Game! Enjoy!

Copyright Fantasy Flight Games

Wind Whipped Rain

Hey everyone! In honor of "The Hobbit" which will be coming out this Friday, here's some more work that I did last year for Fantasy Flight Games.

This is once again from their "Lord of the Rings The Card Game" and specifically their "The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill" expansion. These two characters are Fili and Kili.

As you can tell, I've painted a lot of dwarves for them lol! By the way, if you're interested in the game here's a link:Link

Art Drop!!!

Hey everyone! Sorry but I haven't been keeping up with my blog for a while (though I do keep up with it on my Facebook fanpage: www.facebook.com/pinkhavok). Here's some work that I haven't posted recently:

Lord of the Rings The Card Game:

 
















Next up is some more work from Fantasy Flight Games. This time it's from their game Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game:

 Next up is a little fanart I did from the Cartoon Series "The Legend of Korra". This is Amon:

 Here are some photo studies I did, obviously superhero related. A couple of hours each:

And Finally here are some fan art pieces I did of The New Fantastic Four, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman:

Asajj Ventress

Here's my latest painting "Asajj Ventress". If you're not familiar with her you can take a look at her in action in the following video link: Link

There's a couple different versions of her when it comes to her design, so I tried to mix the elements that I liked from both and then do my own little spin on her. I wanted to keep a certain bit of beauty to her, though I found that difficult to do lol Anyways hope you enjoy!

Mater Yoda

Hey everyone! Here's a painting of Yoda I just did! It's about 60% Photoshop and 40% Painter! I keep experimenting with Painter but I don't think that I'm going to use it 100% yet....but maybe one day lol :)

Catwoman Pin-up

Sorry, I've been a little negligent on putting this one up here. Seems like my Facebook Fanpage and DeviantArt accounts always get updated first. Anyways, here's my third pin-up in my series of Superheroes, this time it's the ever lovable Catwoman!

So Here are two 1940's style Pin-ups of the comic villians Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. Obviously, if you keep up with my blog you'll notice that the white outline with Poison Ivy is a slight modification from the original. I did it with Harley and liked the result so I thought I'd add it to the Ivy Pic. Anyways, I hope you enjoy these two Batman Baddies :) Enjoy!

Here's a link to an animated GIF showing my painting process on my recent Poison Ivy Piece Link

Here's the first in a series of comic book pin-ups that I'm working on. I hope you enjoy one of Batman's most popular villains, Poison Ivy!

Animated GIF- TMNT vs Zombies: Michelangelo

Here's the final Animated .GIF in my series of "TMNT vs Zombies" pics. Just in case you didn't know it's Michelangelo :) Enjoy!

http://www.dolphinboy2000.deviantart.com/#/d4wxn4l 

Animated GIF "TMNT vs Zombies: Donatello"

Here's another link to an Animated .GIF showing my process for creating my piece "TMNT vs Zombies: Donatello". Enjoy!

Animated GIF: TMNT vs Zombies: Donatello 

Animated .GIF TMNT vs Zombies: Raphael and Leonardo

In case you haven't had the chance to see my personal project: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs Zombies", just click on the links to see to an animated .GIF showing how I created Raphael and Leonardo.

Links:
Raphael .GIF Animation     

Leonardo .GIF Animation