RIP Alan Rickman

This brilliant actor brought so many classic moments to cinema over the years, it's hard to pick the best. Here's a drawing I did of him five years ago for my 300 heads sketchbook:

Alan Rickman, 1946-2016

300 Sketchbook: Top Chef finalists

Brooke Williamson, Sheldon Simeon, and Kristen Kish.

I'm posting this a lot later than I was hoping, but here are the latest trio of portraits from my "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme was "the last three finalists of Bravo's Top Chef." From left to right are: Brooke Williamson, Sheldon Simeon, and Kristen Kish (who won).

The portraits were drawn first on paper (reproducing photographs from Chelsea Sektnan, Star Chefs, and Bravo), then scanned and corrected, then digitally painted over in Photoshop. The background colors were chosen based off the colors of competition ribbons.

WIP shots:

Raw drawing.

Adjusted lines in Photoshop with rotate/transform tools.

Overlay comparison between raw lines (blue) and final lines (black).

Final lines, post-adjustment.

Color flats.

As with all reproductions I do of photographs, I hold no copyright on that material. This is a non-commercial fan art piece.

New '300 Heads' sketchbook drawings: Rocket Jump

Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch, and Brian Firenzi.

More drawings for my “300 Heads” sketchbook. This week it’s the Rocket Jump guys: Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch, and Brian Firenzi. Their web series Video Game High School is a must-see.

New portraits for the "300 Heads" Sketchbook

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for this week was Top Chef judges, and in Bravo fashion, I introduced some bold color...

Tom Colicchio, Emeril Lagasse, and Hugh Acheson

300 Heads Sketchbook Update

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for this week was The Three Amigos.

300 Heads Sketchbook Update

More portraits from the "300 Heads" sketchbook. The theme for these was White House Cabinet members.

Arne Duncan (Education), Shaun Donovan (Housing/Urban Development), Eric Holder (Justice)

Ray LaHood (Transportation), Hilda Solis (Labor), Steven Chu (Energy)

300 Heads Sketchbook update

Barack Obama’s campaign “Dream Team”: 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, senior advisor/strategist David Axelrod, and 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina. Together the three controlled the two most dominant political campaigns of the modern era, and with Obama's re-election success this week, it seemed fitting to draw them for this week’s trio of quick portraits in my "300 Heads" sketchbook.

David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Jim Messina

"300 heads" sketchbook update

Five pages from my "300 heads" sketchbook:

Steve Jobs, Stephen Colbert, Mark Kelly

John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman

Robert Iger, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy

Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr.

Nothing all that pretty, but at least I'm keeping myself busy.

300 sketchbook update

Five new pages for the "300 heads" sketchbook:

The three richest people in the world: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison

The three tenors: Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras

Soldiers: Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, Specialist Pat Tillman, Sgt. 1st class Leroy Petry

Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd

Malala Yousafari, Neda Agha-Soltan, and Marie Colvin

More will come soon.

300 sketchbook update

Another page of 15 minute sketched heads, colored in Photoshop. Sure, it takes time away from the minicomic, but I have to keep sharp. These are more topical than the ones I've done in the past, which were mostly drawn from pages of the LA Weekly.

Chris Christie (Gov-NJ), Anthony Weiner (Rep-NY), Louis CK

300 sketchbook update

So this blog has been static lately, but for those who have been asking for updates, here's the latest 15 minute head sketches from my 300 heads sketchbook. I colored them up a bit in Photoshop. See how many you can recognize from the headlines over the last few months:

Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, Imed Trabelsi

Muammar Gaddafi, Vice Admiral Alex Gortney, Michael Keaton

Melissa Leo, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale

My spare time has been spent on a ten page mini-comic that I'm doing 100% digitally. It should be finished soon (before ComiCon) and I'll make it available as soon as I can.

February Art Update

Lots of new things in development this month, including an upcoming mini series of prints that I'm working on with The 8 Bit Cubist. Those who love video games will get a big kick out of them. On top of that, I also signed up for a class on making a mini-comic at Meltdown Comics. I've been developing several story ideas for what feels like ages, so I chose one of the shorter ones for the ten-page comic I'll be creating. My goal is to have it be a level of quality worthy of being on shelves of Los Angeles bookstores and beyond.

As for my ongoing "300 heads" sketchbook, I'm maybe 40% through at this point. Here's a scan of a page I did last week, with a spot of digital color. Strangely, my wife and I watched Love Actually yesterday and it turns out all these actors are in that movie. Weird...

Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant. No more than 15 mins on each head.

Last weekend I also watched the Lemmy documentary about the Motorhead frontman, and drew a cartoon of the subject while it was on. Oddly enough, there's an annoying DJ in Love Actually who wears a Motorhead shirt.:

Mr. Ace of Spades.

And lastly, some silly cartoons done while watching a spot of TV. This is in the second sketchbook I'm filling up, which has one single rule: "nothing based on reference." It's nothing spectacular, but I want to post this as something to compare later on when I'm hopefully much more skilled at drawing from scratch.

NFL 2011 Faces

Here's a selection of Superbowl-themed faces from my "300" sketchbook that I'm filling up these days. I put more time into shading the heads on this page, so I figured I'd throw it on this blog.:

QBs Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

Time for bed.

New "The 300" Sketchbook

I've started a new 100-page sketchbook that I'm filling with just portraits. Specifically, 3 portraits per page, totaling 300 when I'm completely finished. It's mainly for keeping sharp with my draftsmanship skills, so I'm trying to keep each head to around 20 minutes. The early ones used a lot of shading, but I'm now standardizing the style to be more line-based, with a head-on perspective.

28 pages into my "300 Heads" portrait sketchbook.

11/12/12 Update: I've started using #300Heads as the hashtag for my Twitter updates regarding the new portraits.