Rocky Raccoon - Beat Boards

Now somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota
There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon,
And one day his woman ran off with another guy,
Hit young Rocky in the eye.
Rocky didn’t like that
He said, “I’m gonna get that boy”.
So one day he walked into town
Booked himself a room in the local saloon.

Rocky Raccoon checked into his room,
Only to find Gideon’s Bible.
Rocky had come, equipped with a gun,
To shoot off the legs of his rival.
His rival it seems, had broken his dreams,
By stealing the girl of his fancy.
Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil,
But everyone knew her as Nancy.
Now she and her man, who called himself Dan,
Were in the next room at the hoe down.
Rocky burst in, and grinning a grin,
He said, “Danny boy, this is a showdown”.
But Daniel was hot, he drew first and shot,
And Rocky collapsed in the corner.

Now the doctor came in, stinking of gin,
And proceeded to lie on the table.
He said, “Rocky, you met your match”.
And Rocky said, “Doc, it’s only a scratch.
And I’ll be better, I’ll be better, Doc, as soon as I am able”.

Now Rocky Raccoon, he fell back in his room,
Only to find Gideon’s Bible.
Gideon checked out, and he left it, no doubt,
To help with good Rocky’s revival.

Rocky Raccoon, Lennon & McCartney 1968

As you might know I'm a big fan of The Beatles (it's right up there in my blogger profile). The song Rocky Raccoon is a combination of a Folk song and a traditional Murder Ballad. It can be found on the White Album.

The song seems to suggest Rocky is a cowboy in a typical western setting but I wanted to place it slightly later, somewhere in the 1920's. (I envision that Nancy's new beau Dan is an outlaw, not unlike Clyde Barrow or John Dillinger.) While I was working on these I actually wasn't listening to the song, instead I listened to the soundtrack of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Digital.

Thief - Next Five

Another Next Five.This one was based on the picture below; London in 1899 by Léonard Misonne. 

Torpedo Sketch

A sketch of Torpeo. I'm a big fan of Jordi Bernet and his Torpedo is great. (And I should add that the first two Torpedo stories were of course drawn by Alex Toth, who is also one of my personal heroes.)  I have been sketching quite a few Torpedos recently, he is pretty tough to draw. I think this one turned out okay, though.

Ink on paper (Papermate Flair & Pentell Sign).

Lara vs. Oni

A digital doodle of the final boss fight in the latest Tomb Raider game. If you haven't played it, you should pick it up. I didn't like the trailers but picked it up second hand, and it is really good. As in really, really good. Probably one of the best games I ever played.

Access All Areas

This little storyboard is part of my final homework assignment from the schoolism gesture course. We had to use the models poses as inspiration for a little storyboard. The poses of this chubby rock fan were all based on the model, who in reality is a slim Asian yoga lady. It was a lot of fun, just like the rest of the course. I'm a bit sad that it's almost over now. (I'm still waiting for my final review)

We were instructed to choose a character to use for this exercise and I had this guy lying around from an early abandoned concept for my graduation project, from back in 2011.

Digital storyboard, drawn in Sketchbook Pro.

Red Fox Studies

Recent homework from the Gesture course on Schoolism. Apart from our usual model drawing assignments, this time we also had to research an animal of choice. We are to study the anatomy of one animal so that we are able to draw it without using reference.

As you might have guessed, I chose a Red Fox for this assignment. This is only a selection of the many sketches I did, both on loose sheets and in my sketchbook. One of the many great things about this course it how much it makes me sketch. I have started a new sketchbook early october -one of those thick old-fashioned a4-sized hardbacks-  and it is already filled halfway through! Mostly with gesture sketches and café drawings done for the gesture course. 

All of these are 100% traditional: ink, (Pentell Pocket Brushpen, Pentell Sign, Pitt Brush Pen) and color pencil on paper.

 

James Bond - iPad Sketch

About ten years ago I was a huge fan of the Dutch comic artist Hanco Kolk. At the time I really wished I could make beautiful brush-inked line drawings like him. Since then I have moved on to other influences but I still love his work very much.

Yesterday I was playing around with this Paper app on the new Ipad3 of one of my friends, when I discovered that one of the pen tools in this app gives a line very much like Hanco Kolk's smooth brushstrokes. I did quite a few sketches, this one is my favourite.

Please don't look at it for too long, though. The paper app makes it pretty hard to erase mistakes, especially since it doens't have a layer option. there are quite afew things I wish I'd be able to erase (I'm especially displeased with the arms) but this would also erase the rest of the sketch.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice this is supposed to be Daniel Craig's James Bond, I'm really looking foward to Skyfall!

iPad sketch in Paper with a Wacom Bamboo Stylus.       

Hylpen

This is a drawing I did as a gift for my parents. This month they celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary! It is a picture of the old city Hindeloopen, one of the eleven cities of the Dutch province Friesland.

This piece was done with brown bistre ink, I am having a lot of fun with this material. I used different washes of ink to create the difference in tone, mixing the ink with water to create lighter tones. To get those sheep I had to carefully tape of the areas where I wanted the sheep, using a scalpel to cut the tape in the desired shape (those sheep in my previous post were setches for this drawing), after inking the background with a brush I removed the tape to fill in the details of the sheep. I used brushes for the main shapes and background tones, and then used dip pens to fill in the details.

This piece is prety big (44 x 19 cm) and the ink has caused the paper to curl a little. Because of this it was hard for me to make good scan. I'll post another pic when I have it framed.

Do You Need Some Time On Your Own?

Can you remember when MTV actually used to play music all day? I grew up during the golden age of the music video, and I feel a little sad for kids today because they have to miss all these awesome videos. Of course a music video was never much more than a commercial for a band or artist, and I guess they helped the evil music industry to stay in power, but there really were some sweet videos back then!
 
The other day I was hanging out with a friend when I began to doodle Slash rocking his guitar outside that little church, in the video of November Rain. It amazed me how many details of the video I could remember. (This is not that doodle by the way, I watched the video before I drew this one.) It made me think how music videos used to be everywhere when I was in high school and how they have quickly disappeared in this digital age. Maybe I'll do some more drawings based on music videos, I had a lot of fun with this one.

Pencil, ink and (paint)markers on grey skectch paper.

Oh, and by the way... Happy new year!

Drive Corner

As you might have noticed I thought Drive was a pretty cool film. I especially liked the whole 1980's vibe of the film. I also think that Ryan Gosling's jacket is pretty cool. I had this image of the Driver as a comic book character; the jacket is really not unlike a superhero's costume, it even has a logo on it.

The image of the Driver as some kind of comic book hero inspired me to the illustration above, for the awesome Cornered Blog. Some of you might remember that I did another corner for them back in March. (That one was also based on a film, btw.)  

I really hope you also like my Drive Corner!

Ink on paper, digital colors and lay-out.

Another Driver

Another drawing of the Driver. The color is based on an effect I saw in The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke, it is not completely similar but that also has a lot to do with my lines, Darwyn Cooke left more open space and also draws with color; he does the inking and coloring of the Parker comics himself. The colors are also done tradiotionally with a PITT artist brush pen.

This drawing of mine was done with ink on paper and digital colors. I will try to do some colored drawings the way Mister Cooke did his, might be a cool exercise.

Recently I'm experimenting a lot with different halftone effects. I have always liked halftones and had a tough time to find out how to recreate the old fashioned print effects in Photoshop. It feels like I'm getting closer, though!

That line is from the book by James Sallis btw, which is also pretty cool.

Your Lips Are Venomous Poison

I hear you calling and it's needles and pins (and pins)

I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name

Don't wanna touch you but you're under my skin (deep in)

I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison

A warm-up sketch of Alice Cooper, inspired my iTunes shuffle. I love the song Poison, although I'm not really a fan of Alice Cooper in general. You've got to love that guy's look, though! 

Ink on paper (Papermate Flair, Pentell pockt brushpen, and Tombo brushpen) digital colors. 

Skateboard Dude

A sketch I did in my sketchbook. I threw some quick colors on it with photoshop. It was based on a pic from the satorialist.