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!

Luke Skywalker -"The Empire Strikes Back" Photostudy

Here's another Photostudy, this time from my most favorite of the Star Wars movies "The Empire Strikes Back".

This did take a little longer than I wanted, about 2hrs and 20 mins. However, I'm really trying to learn how to nail faces and this was just one of those times that it was a little more difficult. Luke has such a recognizable face and I think sometimes just knowing that there is a self imposed time limit means that it can be a little more difficult to capture the essence of the character.

Either way this was a lot of fun and as always great practice. It's interesting too because I changing up my approach a little working more with soft brushes to have smoother blending and gradients. Not sure if I'll stick with it forever (since I do love texture brushes) but it's great fun to experiment. Also, I have to say I really love the high contrast of the movie still that I was studying from. I love cinematic lighting!

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

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!

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: