sketchbook sundays

 
Instead of sketching this week, we devoted our sketch time to framing and listing several of our favorite pieces from the past year. It turns out to be quite a process: selecting and ordering frames, photographing each piece, and coming up with something compelling to say about them for the listing. Add to that unpacking, assembling, packing, and uploading, and you’ve suddenly got a pretty big project on your hands.

 

 
But, at the end, the final framed piece of art gives you a major feeling of satisfaction. You’ve taken an idea and made it real. In today’s world of goods and services performed virtually and delivered by email, we sometimes lose an important reward: that day you can step back, take a look at what you accomplished, and know it as a tangible thing.

 

Big cats and comic book themes in pastels, along with ink drawings of abstracts and animals, have now joined our art listings on eBay. If you see something there that you like, know that it is already packed up and ready to ship Priority Mail the same or next day. That goes for our readers outside the USA, too, if your country is covered by eBay’s Global Shipping program. If not, we can still do International Priority Mail to many more countries, for an additional shipping charge.

 

 
A few people had their eyes on Behold the Awesomizer! That painting, a tribute to jack Kirby, sold. We would really like the chance to create a couple more on larger canvas.

We have a 24×36 inch version of a similar “cosmic hand” on unframed canvas which has been waiting for a frame. If you’re interested in owning it and framing it yourself, send us an email and we will work out a shipping solution for you. For now, we have a 9×12 treatment in pastel, framed.

 

 
A couple more photos of framed ink drawings and that’s it for this Sketchbook Sunday. Happy sketching!

 

 

together

 
Together
NuPastels, Sharpie marker, and ink on toned tan paper.

Buy it as a print or card.

We ran the above scan through a couple digital adjustments attempting to get a ‘stained glass’ effect. Did we succeed? Judge for yourself.

 

 
We also added some white to our Tiger drawing, trying to get those highlights to really pop before slipping it into a frame.

 

 
Pastel Tiger
Buy it as a print or card.
Buy the original, framed.

pastel robot 3: GI Robot goes 16×20

 
We had fun last week doing 9×12 portraits of an old DC Comics war character called GI Robot. Would you like to see how we put him together on a 16×20 in. piece of Fabriano Artistico paper?

 

 
First, we played around with a small set of Inktense colors. These come in little bricks like pastels but, when exposed to or brushed with water, turn into colorful rich inks.

Maybe the vintage copy of The True Story of Smokey Bear we read before bedtime inspired this fiery, angular background – or perhaps Franz Marc, or both.

 

 
Next, we use white chalk to lightly sketch the outline of GI Robot’s big areas of color. We then fill them in with pastels. We blend the first layer of pastels with our fingers, go over the area with the same color again, and blend a second time. This did a good job covering up the background, and it has a kind of ghostly cool where it still shows through.

 

 
Once the color takes hold, we outline the color areas in black pastel. Then, right over the white areas, we fill in the black shapes in and around the face. For several areas, achieving the right darkness of black requires the same process as the color areas: apply, blend, apply, blend.

 

 
We hit GI Robot with a couple coats of spray fixative. Then we went back to the black and white areas of the face and gave them another coat or two. After another layer of spray fixative, GI Robot rocks, ready to frame.

 

gasmask girl

 
Obscured by smoke and a gasmask, her femininity may not be apparent at first. This study of a cartoon character we created zooms in for an intimate close-up, shrouded in mystery.

This is our first finished Gasmask Girl, but we’ll be seeing more of her. You can buy a print of Gasmask Girl, on everything from a greeting card to a full canvas print. Pretty cool!

pastel portraits 15 & 16

 

 
Here we have two pastel portraits on toned tan paper. In fact, these are the last two pages of the big notebook of tanned paper our art teacher gave us in July. Few gifts have ever been so well loved as this one, and we will definitely get a second notebook to fill with weird and wonderful things!

You can now get prints of Portrait #16, from greeting cards to full canvas prints, through FineArtAmerica.

We didn’t put #15 up for sale. She got some smudges on her. But she is fun, and we’ll do another like her with our next blank notebook.

Pastel Study of GI Robot

 

 
You can buy prints of our pastel enlargements of these classic panels through FineArtAmerica, here:
Robot 2
Robot 3
You may also like our painted robot based on the 1978 Tomy toy: Robot 1.
FineArtAmerica will print you anything from greeting cards to a canvas print!

Inspiration for this pastel rendering of a robot in an army helmet comes from Weird War Tales by DC Comics. One can find the original panels drawn in 1982 by Patrick Broderick and John Beatty in Weird War Tales #108, in the Robert Kanigher story “Robots Don’t Have Hearts.”

You can buy Weird War Tales #108 for around $5 to $10 these days, depending on its condition. It remains collectible as an early appearance of the Creature Commandos, another short feature that ran in this issue.

In our gallery below, you can view the cover of this issue and the complete GI Robot story. Enjoy!

 

pastel tiger

 
Pastel Tiger
Pastel and ink on toned tan paper.
Buy it as a card or print.
Buy the original, framed.