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?

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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

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

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