Manga-style fashion illustration. 

Here is my latest. I know I goofed on the shading. And I need to work on the feet.

And next time - will use my thin pen instead of my brush to do her mouth. 

But for my first true Manga style fashion illustration. I think she came out ok.

Click here to buy a print. 

In particular what I did was decide to draw on blank 3x5 card for the pencil.  

I also put to use my new random system for coming up with the idea for the drawing. I have a book of Manga style eyes, a collection of Manga hairstyles and an app that has like 100 model poses.  

So I use another app to come up with random numbers of each item and then use that to get the eyes, hair and pose I want to use. Then I go search on Amazon for dresses.  

I'm doing this because I think the style I want to try for a bit is "manga-influenced fashion drawings."  

Which I know is a bit odd. In particular since my fashion style is non-existent. But I have always liked fashion drawings. And since I learned how to draw via manga - my body naturally gravitates to drawing Manga style heads :).  

Plus it's important to specialize. And while I think I do a decent landscape and bird paintings - they don't excite me in the same way drawing people do.  

P.S. The random number app I use is actually a Dungeons and Dragons dice app. Which is probably the closest D&D dice and fashion have ever come together. 

The 3x5 card has a lot of benefits going for it. It's larger than the sketch cards I have been using (which are smaller than a playing card) but still portable (I've actually started to carry them in a plastic baggy with a pencil & a Sharpie pen to sketch with) and of course cheap.

Portable an cheap are very good things for stuff you know is just going to be used for pencil sketch. 

And I planned to retrace the drawing onto good paper so that I don't worry about the smudges, the crap I can't erase plus allows me to put notes & other markings I need (for example I track the Prismacolor numbers I use in my colors). 

So after my initial pencil sketch, I get it on my lightboard to trace onto the watercolor paper. 

When I do my tracing - I only trace in ink. I don't use pencil. And then I start my coloring stage.  

In this case the dress I used was this sexy black number that also came in red. I decided to go with a dark blue though. I wasn't aiming for photo-realism. Just inspiration.

This was the final. The outline is in ink. The white of the eyes are white gel pens. And the colors are Prismacolor markers. 

P.S. My wife pointed out the left hip is off. I was trying for a pose where it went way left. But I realize now it just looks like she's a bit deformed :).  Will do better next time.

This is how I created my Green Bird 1 Watercolor painting.

Here is my reference photo. In this case I used Pintrest to collect my reference photos. I also use Evernote to collect and store reference photos. 

The first step is that I taped the watercolor paper to my board. In this case, I used my postcard sized paper. I used this paper because I had bought it a while back and started doing my bird series on it to get a feel for what it was like to paint on a small sheet like this.

The next step was to do the pencil drawing.  

The next step was to put masking fluid in place because I knew these parts I wanted to keep clean. Though now that I have my nifty white gelly roll pens - I think next time, I might just use them to put in any whites.

The next step was to put down the first layer of color. I picked up on that the green in the bird had a yellow tint to it. And thus, I went with a very strongly yellow tint with some green in it as the base coat.

Then our next step was to get the green down. The upper body had a fairly light green color. The legs and under the wings had a darker green. The feathers on the top of the head were done just by flicking the brush across the top. 

At this stage I applied orange for the beak and put the red in over the eye.

At this stage I went in and did the background in yellow pastel. I love how pastel gives a nice background to my watercolor birds. I also love the fact you blend pastels with your fingers.

We're nearing the end. I used my Faber-Castell brush pen to blacken the eye. I prefer this method for a couple of reasons. One is that I like the darker black from the ink. Plus it's easier to control.  

The eye highlight is done with a white gelly roll pen. I used to use a Sharpie white marker but I find the gelly roll easier to control. And less messy.  

The final step was to then remove the mask. 

Then scan. 

Click here to buy a print. 

Keel Billed Toucan 1 - watercolor and pastel

My friend Stefano is from Costa Rica. One time on a trip back home he sent me a postcard with pictures of animals of the jungle. I loved the color of the beak in the Keel Billed. So I did a watercolor of the bird with a pastel background. I used the pastel to soften the background.

Click here and you can buy a print.  

Lust from Full Metal Alchemist fan art.

This is the character Lust from the manga Full Metal Alchemist. It was the first fan art that actually impressed myself (yes, I grade myself extra hard :)).  

And got a couple of likes on the Anime/Manga community on Google Plus. 

It's pencil and Sharpie. 

My first Batman and Robin from 1966 series based on the new DC comic book

This is a bit of full circle. My earliest memory of comic book heros is seeing the 1966 Batman on re-runs. I was around 5. 

35 years later, DC launched a new comic book based on that series. And the art inspired me to give it a shot at copying because I would really love to put together my own comic book. 

But I'm still trying to find my style that I'm happy enough with. 

This is my first sketch based on the DC book. I'm pretty happy with this sketch.  

Steampunk concept art - Naturalist

I'm a bit fascinated with Steampunk. I wouldn't say I'm exactly a "fan" because I don't know anything about it. 

The fascination stems from the fact that when I first started going to conventions - I'd run into Steampunk cosplay. And they couldn't point to having anything for inspiration except that they liked the look. 

And another reason why I'm interested is because it's challenging to imagine and draw (because of the details) and that's the only way to really push yourself in anything. 

And the past weekend, we made one of our rare trips to the mall. I'm not a mall snob but between Amazon Prime, the Hobby Lobby being a mile from my house plus the Walmart across the street from it - I just don't have as much of a reason to go.  

Steampunk Concept Art - Parasol Pilot

Anyway - while at the mall, I of course ended up at Barnes & Noble (a place where I used to practically live but Amazon Kindle being on all of my devices reliably - killed that. If Nook had worked on my iPhone instead of crashing every single time - I could have easily gone the Nook route).  

I discovered another how to draw Steampunk book. It's called "How to Draw & Design Steampunk" (aff). As with many of these books it's basically a collection of different types of Steampunk characters.

With basic steps on how to draw them.   

Though it also gives more background on Steampunk.  

However, more importantly for me - this is the book where I promised myself that I wouldn't just buy it and put it on the shelf to gather dust after 10 minutes of reading. 

Instead I would draw and post each character.  

And plan to do the same with each of the similar books I have in my art book shelf (for example the day before I had bought a fantasy art book at Half-Price books).  

So this is the first two concept art/drawing/sketches (pick your favorite term :)).

The first one is the naturalist and the second one is called the parasol pilot (though I totally fracked up the parasol. If I was doing it for real I would have started entirely over but I give myself a day per drawing for this exercise so I needed to just call it "done for now"). I would give  both a "B" for grades. I'm sure my Mom will give them an A but then that's her job :).

But they are not the best but by far not my worst and most importantly I learned quite a bit. In particular - I'm not sure if I'm one of those artists who likes to draw all of this level of detail - which is kind of a must for Steampunk.

However, that could also be a lesson in learning patience in drawing that I need to get to.

So hopefully the future ones will be better.  

My first celebrity portrait - Bar Refaeli in glasses. 

Because my fairy portrait turned out good - I decided to give a shot at trying to draw a celebrity portrait. My first shot was of super-model Bar Refaeli in glasses that I had seen on Instagram via Sports Illustrated's Hot Clicks. 

It's not photo-realistic. This is of course in part because I don't yet possess that skill. But also - if you want photo-realistic - take a photo :).  

While it's not 100% of what I wanted, I think I did a good job with the eyes. And it's well beyond anything I thought I could do when I first started taking up drawing seriously a year ago.  

My simple corvette sketch.

My first Dodge Viper sketch.

Two of my favorite current cars are Corvettes and Doge Vipers. These are a couple of simple sketches that I did of them. 

Not perfect thought not horrible either but when you are starting out on anything - you just have to keep at it. 

Plus keeping a copy of your earliest work allows you to see your progress. And I'm sharing my own early work because (hopefully :) - I get better. And when I do, I want to have a record to show future beginners how progress happens.  

My first fairy art portrait. 

This is the portrait I did from the second exercise at Fairie Tale Art. I'm reasonably happy with it.

My wife was impressed and said that it's by far my best piece.  

Besides still learning to draw - I'm also learning how to scan a shaded pencil art drawing. 

In this case - I scanned in and then used Pixelmator (I bought this before Adobe switched to the monthly subscription and I'm still on the fence about whether I really want Photoshop or not). 

All I did with Pixelmator was to replace the background with white. The actual background of the image which was on white Bristol Board -Vellum, scanned in grey & made the resulting scan very dark. 

This popped pretty good. 

I got enough crazy confidence after this to try a real portrait piece - which I hope to get done and post in the next few days.  

This is my cone fairy exercise result.

I am taking an online course called "How to draw Fairies and Fantasy Art" (no affiliate link). The course is cheap (I got in on the $7 a month promotion, though it might be more than that when you join).

This is the result of the first exercise "cone fairy". I'm pretty pleased about how it turned out. 

I think the shading worked best here because I used a B lead (in a mechanical pencil ) instead of traditional HB (aka #2) pencil.  Technically you can use a standard wooden pencil to do practically anything but I find the B lead to be easier to erase (I had started out using 4H which was light but ended up carving up the paper so you never really erased) and the blending is much smoother. 

Click here to see my current favorite pencil on Amazon (aff link). 

I also tried to take art classes in junior high but my art teacher and I never got along. I'd like to say I was some type of rebel - but we didn't click. I'll keep it at that.  

I do kick myself for the fact not leveraging teachers I had access to later in college. My boss's wife at university was the art professor. I'm sure she would have helped. And I still have fond memories of my art teacher I had for the course I actually did take (I took over summer back home). 

And while I still like using art books to help learn (though the books are more likely to be Kindle format on my iPad) - video is a great tool as well. And YouTube has many videos.

Some well done.  

Many are not.

Here are 5 of my favorite - and all of them have more videos with them that you can check out. 

This is "How to Draw Gesture" from ProkoTV

This is Mark Crilley (the gold standard for teaching to draw videos on YouTube)  - "Explosion" 

Chris Hart - How To Draw Anime/Manga Girl. 

Fine Art EBooks - How To Draw A Ferrari  

Draw With Jazza - How To Draw Armor

This is my first Ferarri pencil drawing. I was inspired to start doing car drawing because of a video on Fine Art Tutorials on YouTube.

I plan to do a painting of this of this as well (I plan to test both watercolor and crayon). 

This was done entirely freehand. There was no drafting or templates. 

It took about a dozen tries to figure it out. The key is that the wheel wells are not circles. Or ovals. 

They are horseshoe shape. So if you're wanting to do a sketch of a car and struggling with the wheels think "horseshoe". 

I plan to do a series of cars because while I don't actually like to drive very much - I love fast cars.

And between the prices and how impractical these cars are -they are as much of a fantasy as any creature in Game of Thrones - at least for most people

I saw this interesting video from ProkoTV on "How to Draw Gesture". 

The most interesting part of it was to do repeated gesture drawing from reference in 30 second increments. 

While there are many poses and reference sites out there, I used a fitness magazine for my gesture drawing reference.   It had the benefit of many different poses, with basically tight fitting clothing and the ability to honestly say I didn't just buy the magazine because one of the models was featured in SI's "Hot Clicks" :).

I think it's pretty cool how the stick figures do map to the finished model. It's important exercise to do to help get comfortable drawing figures. And will help learn the variety of poses the body can do when I get back to my comic.

Here is the video:

Compare of iPad vs Physical watercolor

My sketch I used for my watercolors. 

Introduction

I decided I wanted to move into doing fantasy art. More specifically abstract impressionist watecolor fantasy art. 

I'm not exactly a hard-core sword and fairy-tale guy. But I think they do make cool images. And I was once a well respected Dungeon Master :).

And in my first attempt I had a vision in my head of a mage (aka wizard) fighting a dragon for gold. Actually I had an idea for a large part fighting a dragon for gold, but I started off making the dragon too large and just said fudge-it.

I'll come back and do the full battle later.

I'll just have dragon vs the mage. 

To the iPad and Procreate

Next up was the rough pencil sketch you see above. The mage is not too bad but the dragon is not. But this was just a base image to use for blocking because I would trace over it.

First I scanned in the image. 

And then via magic of Dropbox got it over to my iPad. 

Then I used Procreate to create a "watercolor" using the water brush. 

Mage vs the Dragon in Procreate on iPad.

The Physical Watercolor

This was nice. But I'm not sure if it's good enough quality to do actually make a print of. I want to make prints to sell.  

And then I took the original and traced it to my watercolor paper. Then colored using my Prismacolor water color pencils(aft).   

Which I then used my cheap brush (by cheap I mean a set of crappy brushes I bought for like $2 at my local supermarket).  

And this is what I got: 

Mage vs Dragon in physical watercolor

Both have their charms.  

What do you think? 

I hope someday I could figure out how to recreate that feel.

Of course I'll probably do it in crayon.

Until then click here and check out my store.

Maisel travels around places like where volcanoes have just erupted and captures these amazing photos.

And what struck me was that this looks like a lot of abstract art.

Except probably better than most :).

Anyway if you like to see some examples of not as cool as frozen lava abstract art click here and check out my store.

Cat Girl Singer - my first mixed media artwork

This is my first mixed media piece. The singer is colored with Crayola crayons. Yes - those same tools we pick up before we are even in kindergarden and then drop by 4th grade.

If you apply them properly they can be used as a fine art tool.

The background is colored with dry watercolor pencil. 

And this is on watercolor paper.

I had intended to actually wet the color pencil and turn it into a watercolor background but after I had colored in the background I decided to leave it.

The funniest thing is that I had intended this to be a copy of this art I had found on DevientArt. I was going to copy because I was working on improving my drawing. Then I wanted to practice coloring. 

But while crayons are cool - they don't really allow for detail. So the eyes got screwed up. When I took a step back, I thought they looked cat like. So I added the ears and tail to fix it.

And as usual please click here and check out my store.

Mark Wilcox Painting - Alps Mountains In Meadow. Click here to see my store. 

In March 2013, I visited Switzerland for work. I know that sounds glamorous (at least more glamorous than visiting practically anywhere else I go). While I didn't get a chance to visit much of the country, it did inspire me to do a series of paintings on mountains.

This one was also done because I wanted to practice giving more definition to clouds.

Created with Procreate on my iPad.

Click here to see my store.

Mark Wilcox Painting - Spooky Alien Eye. Click here to see my work for sale.

This is me playing around with the brushes in Procreate on my iPad. The background is the lizard skin brush from their (Procreate) brushes store. 

The eye looks a little too much like a peppermint candy for me but it is still kind of cool.

I'd love to know what you think.

Click here to see my work for sale.