ON THE SURFACE Color Art Book for Sale...Signed and Sketched

Purchase my 32-page color sketchbook ON THE SURFACE and I'll customize it with an original unique sketch inside! You can purchase it in my online Storenvy store

Take a look:  

 

REAR WINDOW

Rear Window

Grace Kelly from Alfred Hichcock's Rear Window

Drawn in sketchbook while freeze-framing movie. No tracing!

ink on paper and colored in Photoshop.

Free Sketch

Typical free sketch. One of a thousand like it.

The New York Four Sketchbook

I loaded up some sketches for The New York Four on my photo site. Here's a few. I just got the script for The New York Four #1 from Brian. Isn't that exciting? How excited are you?

Portraits

Frankenstein


Abraham Lincoln

Iron Man Color

Ironman.color, originally uploaded by funrama.

I very unseriously drew this 30 minute Iron Man sketch after not seriously seeing the movie (mostly to practice my 30 minute sketches for convention season). It's Robert Downey Jr. wearing an old 80's suit. I usually don't see comic book movies for fear of permanent loss of brain cells but i'm hopeful/excited for Watchmen.

The Singular Adventures Of My Sketchbook

I love teaching but after eight years of it, I'm getting burnt out and I want to take a little break this year and focus on my comics and craft. I've been teaching an Inking class and in the beginning of the semester we focused exclusively on line and stroke...ONLY. All the while, referring to the classic pen and ink masters- Howard Pyle, Thomas Nast, Daniel Vierge, Edwin Austin Abbey, Joseph Clement Coll, Charles Dana Gibson, etc. Reexamining these artists has greatly influenced my own work. Proceeding on, we explored other rendering techniques.

Here's some quick stuff I ripped from my "sketchbook" that I used to try out new materials and papers and inks. These aren't that great. These samples look exactly like the art I made as an undergrad at MCAD!


Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran
tech pen, brush,Wash with China Ink, old marker


I popped open an old Koh-I-Noor technical pen with year-old ink and it still worked. I did all the outlining in thin techpen to contrast the heavy blacks. I used the palm of my hand to spot some of the blacks.



Lilly Allen
Ink, collage



I've been doing all the one-layer-washes in Non-waterproof ink lately but I tried to do the lines in grayed-out Higgins Drawing Ink. I actually collaged the dress pattern on instead of Photoshop which I think looks better. I miss real collage. I'm getting more impatient with art-making which is not good. I used to spend 2 weeks doing a piece, now I only want to spend 2 hours.




Tricky
Tech pen, India Ink, Non waterproof, China Ink, chalk, acrylic, collage



This is a really unfinished demo. I used it just to experiment different layered media. This is why I like handmade over digital even though digital gets all the love these days. I bought my Adobe CS3 with my teacher discount but I'm going to wait a few months to install it so I can make friends with Photoshop 7 for just little bit longer. I'm scared of progress.

Local Update

Local #11 is delayed at the printer, so the new Street Date is April 30. (Note to the Mean People: No, It doesn't take me 8 months to draw a comic book, #11 has been finished for 4 months, it's just been held back for a smoother finale). But now, it's delayed for a little longer. I ripped this off of Brian Wood's website:

Apr 30 - Local #11
May 28 - Local #12
Jul 23 - Local (hardcover edition)

In the meantime, here's a gray version of Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow...

Tigers are Awesome

I took a break from the madness to draw animals and garden stuff at the Como zoo for 2 hours.Colered with Copic Markers.


I used this drawing to try out all my crowquill nibs from various manufacturers. I’ve been teaching an Inking class this semester at MCAD which Is going aw’right I guess. I had to test out all the classic nibs on the market before I demonstrated them—Brause, Gillotte, WM Mitchell, Leonardt Hiro, Speedball/Hunt, and all the Japanese nibs.



I’m going back to using more nibs, in accompaniment with brush, in my work like I did in Lucifer. I pretty much have all the basics covered with a Windsor Newton Brush series 7 #2 or #3, the G-Pen (Nikko, Tachigawa) and the Hunt 102. Although, I ‘m dabbling with other Kolinsky brushes because the WN has some occassional problems. I still use Faber Castell Pitt Pens for preliminary “dead” monoline outlining and then finish with the brush like how a lot of classic inkers work such as Al Williamson and Alex Toth. I like their Inking. Plus I use the Pentel Tradio Stylo pen but it's not water proof.

If you don’t have the G-Pen, get a Hunt 99. Damn, that’s a great pen. It’s not as fine–line as the 101 Imperial and the 56 School Nib but it has the perfect brush-like flexibility and it’s super fun to ink with.

When I practised on this Tiger, I used mostly a G-Pen, Hunt 99, Hunt 108, and a Gillotte 404 and 303 but I was trying a little of everything.

Annabella Lwin Sketch

Annabella Lwin Sketch, originally uploaded by funrama.

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Starbuck

Starbuck, originally uploaded by funrama.

Max Roach

Max roach, originally uploaded by funrama.

Recommended listening:
Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street
Deeds, Not Words
Birth Of The Cool
Speak, Brother, Speak!
M'Boom

Humanoid Woman

© Ryan Kelly
Humanoid Woman
Ink on paper

Owned

© Ryan Kelly