90's X-Men Animated

It’s FINALLY heeeeeere!!!!

Yes I know I’m a bit excited but I’ve been working on this piece on and off for months and I am sooooooo glad that it’s finally over (though it was a lot of fun)!

This piece is my homage to the 90’s Animated X-Men cartoon, one of my favorite 90’s cartoons and easily one of the most influential towards me as an artist. I absolutely love that it was heavily influenced by Jim Lee’s designs, something that was so important to me as a kid since I was getting into comics during his legendary run on the comic book series. He’s always been one of my artistic idols and it’s great to have the chance to put my own spin on his work.

I will say that this piece was a lot of fun for me when it comes to my “comic book” style and I think I grew a lot through it. I’m continually trying to refine what I feel my comic book style is. I’m really striving to showcase a painted style that reflects some of my biggest comic book influences (like J. Scott Campbell, Jim Lee, and Marko Djurdjevic) while at the same time bringing an exaggerated style from animated designers that I love (Phil Bourassa influences me so much nowadays, probably more than anyone realizes).

For those of you that are still here and interested, artistically this was a real challenge for me. With my previous Batman Animated Collage piece I had worked with roughly 22 characters but with this one I decided to push even higher by roughly 10 more characters. That definitely presented a lot of challenges when it came to composition and layout. However, more than anything, the real challenge was the patience to keep going and paint so many characters in one piece. Luckily I made it through and while no painting ever truly gets to the level of epicness that I’m striving for, at least for where I’m at right now, at this point and time in my artistic growth, I can say that it was the best that my skills would allow me to accomplish.

Anyways, I’ve been sitting on this for a while and thought it’s best now to put it out there for all of you to see. I was hoping that I could unveil it at Emerald City Comic Con 2015 but it was too much of a rush and I didn’t want to sacrifice quality. So long and short of it, this piece will be making it’s debut at MegaCon 2015!

In closing, I hope this piece brought back some warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings for you and you remember the 90’s with fondness; it’s one of my favorite decades! Thank you for all your support and if you feel so inclined please like this and feel free to share it with your friends!

Gotham City Mugshots: Two-Face Painting Progression

Haven't done one of these in a while (sometimes I forget to lol). Anyways, here's the painting progression for my recent piece "Gotham City Mugshots: Two-Face". Enjoy!
‪#‎gothamcitymugshots‬
‪#‎twoface‬
‪#‎batman‬
‪#‎batmanandrobin‬
‪#‎batmantheanimatedseries‬
‪#‎btas‬
#twoface
‪#‎harveydent‬
‪#‎brucetimm‬
‪#‎dccomics‬
‪#‎comicart‬
‪#‎fanart‬
‪#‎pinkhavok‬
‪#‎blakehenriksen‬
‪#‎blakehenriksenart‬
‪#‎art‬
#comicart

Gotham City Mugshots: Two-Face

Here's my latest Gotham City Mugshot: Two-Face!

It's been a long time coming and hopefully I'll be able to do more of the series without such a long break in between like with the Joker. For now though, enjoy my homage to Batman The Animated Series' Two-Face with my personal take on him!

#batman
#batmanandrobin
#batmantheanimatedseries
#btas
#twoface
#harveydent
#brucetimm
#dccomics
#comicart
#fanart
#pinkhavok
#blakehenriksen
#blakehenriksenart
#art
#comicart

Daryl Dixon Animated .GIF

Here's a LINK to an animated .GIF I created showing my process for creating my recent Daryl Dixon painting from my Walking Dead Series (which you see here)

. You'll notice that I messed up and had to start over. Such is life lol! But I think that it's good for everyone to see the process, especially beginners because it's good to know that everyone still messes up from time to time. Just part of the Journey:)

P.S. If you're interested in buying this print please check out my Etsy Store LINK

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

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!

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!

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