SpringCon this weekend!!!

I will be at SpringCon this weekend — May 17th and 18th.

I am selling the above prints, doing some sketches and telling people about Art Samurai!

Come by and check it out! It's a great local comic book convention!

For more information on SprinCon click HERE!!!

Art Samurai Homework for April 16th, 2014

This is my homework for tonight's Art Samurai workshop.

Here is the workshop description:

THEME: Anatomy: Veins!

ASSIGNMENT:  Design and draw a very muscular alien monster, but with these caveats:

•  very little to no costume to show muscularity
•  base the muscularity after human anatomy
•  make this character show extreme vascularity (tons of VEINS).  This assignment  will help you identify and draw the major veins on the human body that will aid in your anatomy drawing.
•  make sure this character is in an ACTION pose
•  feel free to use reference!

 Be creative and have fun!

Can I consider flexing an action pose?

Check out Art Samurai!

Conceptual illustrations

Here is some recent art I did. I can't share the whole image yet. I am under contract to not share.

Image it has something to do with MineCraft.

ArtSamurai Assignment for March 5th, 2014

Revised version 

Head turns

Tom Nguyen's critique notes

Here's what I turned in to Art Samurai for last night's workshop. I learned a lot and had some laughs.
Tom Nguyen gave a lot of explanation to how and why things look the way they do and how to think about things when drawing. It was good to see other attendee's work too. If I were to draw this again it would not be the same.

I found that I need to look at women's butts more. I need to study them. It's for art sake so my wife shouldn't get upset. I made my panties all wrong! More butt, more butt! I did put more 'junk in her trunk.'

It was a great learning experience and a good reason to have an assignment and practice!


For more info on Art Samurai visit the website: http://artsamurai.net

Comic Book Colorist

Artwork pencil and inked by Tom Nguyen. Copyright Tom Nguyen. 

Artwork pencil and inked by Tom Nguyen. Colors by Robb Miller. Copyright Tom Nguyen.

Artwork pencilled by James David Bui. Copyright James David Bui.

Artwork pencilled by James David Bui. Copyright James David Bui.

Colors by Robb Miller. 

Here are some commissions I did recently. The first one is for DC comic pro Tom Nguyen.
He created the line art and I did the colors.

For more information on Tom and his work visit his website.
http://tomnguyenstudio.com

I was commissioned by art James David Bui. He created the line art for Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker.

For more information on his work visit his Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/ArtofJDB

If you are interested in commissioning me as a colorist, contact me at:
robb@robbmiller.com

ArtSamurai.net Homework For Sept. 4th

Here is my homework for ArtSamurai.net for Sept. 4th.

The theme was storytelling and layout.
The assignment was: Imagine what it'd be like for a superhero (established or your own) to either change into or out of costume. Draw a one-page sequential of this character changing, and create a story around it. Use as many panels as needed. Be creative and have fun!

What I originally turned in for my assignment.

After the workshop I decided I wanted to do revisions to it based on critiques from instructor Tom Nguyen and what I learned from the critiques given to the other students. (Plus some other stuff I just wanted to do!)

I changed Bruce Banner's hair to something more like Mark Ruffalo's. I tweaked the face a bit too. I wanted to have the Hulk's face changed to face straight because that is the "money shot". (I also feel I wasn't pulling off the upward shot.) It's all about practice and trying to get better. It was a good exercise.

Revised Hulk transformation.

The workshops are fun and challenging. I want to improve with each assignment and make the assignments into prints that I could possibly sell. I recommend doing the workshops and doing the same!  :)

Check out Art Samurai!!!

Here's my third take on it. After more workshops I feel I am getting better. If I redo it again,  I should just start from scratch! 

Art Samurai homework for July 31st workshop

The theme for this workshop was "Light and Shadow". The assignment was:

Draw any character you want in an action pose, but try to show "dramatic lighting"

on the subject. Feel free to use photo referencing to help with your light/shadows, and be prepared to show the photo reference along with your homework. Be creative and have fun!

I decided to do the Punisher pointing a gun at the camera. Pretty basic concept but I wanted to concentrate on the focus of "light and shadow". 

I started by taking dozens of photo of myself in the laundry room. I used natural light from the outside window and then the laundry room fluorescent light. The TOP  photo is the original photo. I used Photoshop to lighten it (BOTTOM) to see more details. I duplicated the original photo and made it grayscale (MIDDLE) to see just lights and darks.

1. I began with a quick sketch of general shapes. I like to use a color while sketching so I feel more loose. If I sketch in black it makes me feel like I need to product the finished drawing sooner. Weird, I know!
2. I lighten the first sketch and draw over it. I either add a layer to do this or go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > Hue & Saturation then lighten. This is refining the shapes even more.
3. I repeat step 2 and lighten and refine.
4. I add in the dark areas and refine more.
5. I block in a quick background.
6. I add a multiplied layer and increase dark areas and shadow.
7. I stamp all layers into one (highlight the all layers up to this point and hit COMMAND+OPT+E) and hide the blue sketch layers. The new layer of all sketch layers I turn into black & white. IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > BLACK & WHITE. I took a photo of some clouds and made that into grayscale and placed it over my background clouds and adjusted it and masked out what I didn't need or like. I then merged it into the layer.
8. I found a good Punisher logo online and adjusted the opacity to low and put it onto his chest using FREE TRANSFORM and WARP located in EDIT. 
9. I inked over some areas and tightened some details.
10. I painted in some more shadows and added some highlights. I gave him a 5 o'clock shadow.
11. I cropped it and added my signature. DONE!

I feel I am improving with Art Samurai lessons. I am a little biased because I am business partners with Tom Nguyen but I get no special treatment. I am just doing the assignments to improve and for fun! Students get their homework critiqued before me.

For more information on Art Samurai, click HERE!!!

If you have questions for me, comment below or email me at:

robb@robbmiller.com

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Art Samurai Homework part 2

Here are some assignments from doing Art Samurai. I feel I have a lot to learn 

and I always learn something new from each workshop.

Character Reinterpretation - Gossamer from Looney Tunes

The theme - character reinterpretation. Take a cute character and draw the bad-ass comic book version or take a bad-ass comic book character and draw the cute cartoon version. I like some aspects of what I did. I never totally understood Gossamer as a kid. He was a good monster because he freaked me out. I love how he is smart enough to wear good running shoes to chase after people!

Three guys running

Perspective is the theme here. There's a lot I learned from this assignment. If I were to redo it, I am sure it would be much better. Tom explained perspective better than "How To" books ever have. I fixed my horizon line. You can see my old line on there a little. This was a lesson that went "click". When I do people in perspective in the future I will take what I got from this week.

Demon Baby!

For this one the theme was Layout and Storytelling. Draw a sequential page depicting a monster cornering a helpless victim against the wall. Finish the page dramatically with a hero killing the monster! I tried to have fun with it by not picking traditional characters in the roles needed. The layout could be improved to read it better. I learned quite a bit and had FUN! 

I will continue to do the homework assignments as much as I can.

Please check out Art Samurai for more info on workshops and assignments!

ArtSamurai.net Video

Watch video overview of what ArtSamurai.net is!!!!!

Watch 5 minutes of a workshop here!!!

ArtSamurai on Facebook!

www.artsamurai.net

Art Samurai

I just want to let everyone know about a new website that I have been lucky enough to help work on, ArtSamurai.net.  It's a live workshop that is affordable to artists who would like to learn from  comic book pro—Tom Nguyen. I know he is a good teacher. Why is that? Because, he taught me quite a bit! I may not be a pro comic book artist or a big name in art but I have been fortunate enough to make a living the past 13 years as an artist! In Spring of '98 Tom started teaching me how to do caricatures. I was hired in May '99 by Tom Richmond and I worked at ValleyFair and at the Mall of America.

Tom is a great teacher. I appreciate his patience with me and how he wants to help aspiring artists!

I wish something like this was around when I was in junior high so I didn't have to be a server at Embers, a warehouse worker at Burlington Coat Factory and Media Tech. Services, a pizza delivery driver at Domino's Pizza, a cookie maker at Ms. Field's, a busboy - cook- and "Bumper the Clown" at Circus Pizza, Hardee's employee, McDonald's employee, telemarketer at Stanley Steemer, and...that is not even half the list of jobs I had! Doing art is the only thing I have been able to be consistent with.

Whether you want to be a comic book artist or enjoy doing some other kinds of art, I am sure that you will benefit from Art Samurai. I thank Tom Nguyen for teaching me and Tom Richmond for teaching me and taking a chance with me!

In the future, ArtSamurai.net will have more art instructors and video-on-demand. For now it is a week-to-week workshop that will generally be $20 for two hours. I think it's a good deal considering it could be a live changing move to becoming a professional artist. 

Tom Nguyen

ArtSamurai.net

http://www.facebook.com/ArtSamuraiNet

https://twitter.com/ArtSamuraiNet