Pony Express

Here’s me in 1860 riding cross country to deliver mail for the Pony express, fighting outlaws and bandits by day and sleeping under the stars by night. I realize the bg is kind of a cop-out/hack (its actually a photo I took when we visited Arches national park in Utah) but it kinda fit the style i was going for.

Below is the actual recruitment poster for the Pony express. I like how honest they are: "must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred” Damn, dude that is no joke. You might die, but if you don’t die you will get 25 dollars a week. Was that even a lot of money back then? I have to believe that anyone that took this job was a stone cold badass. Also, these people had to make it from Misourri to San Fran in 10 days or less on a horse! That’s some serious haul-assery!!

Hair

My hair is like my security blanket and source of power. I'm trying to force myself to work in color and get used to the idea of creating lighting from my head. I think to do this really effectively you must have done enough still life and portrait studies that you are comfortable with color theory and can easily pull from your mind. Definitely out of my comfort zone...Well my new gouache set arrived today, I guess we'll see what I end up making with it! Fun times ahead!

Cat logo

Properly remade the logo to my site hi-res for my business cards. Cat branding, it's the way of the future..

I mean, who doesn't love a slightly wall-eyed striped fat cat with tiny toothpick legs??

A lot of people?

Oh...

Robin

I wanted to do Robin from Batman the Animated Series in a creepy jamie hewlett-ish style. I always had a thing for Robin when I was younger. Now that I'm older I see its because he’s the full package,

-smart

-athletic

-edgy

-obsessed with revenge personality disorder

..wait a minute.. Oh well …

Typical New Yorker

Doing 2 things at once.. Just funny. I finally picked up a w9 marker so now my sketches can get those darkest darks. Hurrah! I realized its my dream to one day have every color of copic marker.. I'm dead serious. Like just casually stroll into Blick and be like, yeah I'll take that whole rack.. KThanksbai...

Bananas

That is all.

Today's Paintover

Today I took an old marker sketch and spiced it up in photoshop, adding some dramatic lighting. Here's a before and after..

I thought the moon was competing with the jack o lantern too much so I scaled it  back quite a bit. Definitely need more animal anatomy, and trees are also a challenge for me.