Samurai Tattoo Drawings PART I

I went to Maui back at the end of June with Laura and her family. Aside from the part where she tossed an entire pack of cards in my general direction after a game of BS, I’d say it was pretty amazing. While I was there her uncle Chris approached me about doing a drawing of a samurai for a tattoo he had been considering getting for some time. He wanted to get a samurai on his back and he was having trouble finding reference for what he wanted, so knowing that I was an artist he asked if I drew samurai. Now it might not be apparent from reading this blog, but I do love to draw samurai (vikings too, I will have to start posting more of them) so I was excited to work on this for him. Though without my numerous reference books and the glorious internet (all praise the giver of knowledge) I didn’t think I was quite prepared to start working on this right away, as I thought it needed to be slightly historically accurate because after all, I do love samurai and I respect the history. So in Maui I came up with a couple of rough sketches.






















































When we got back to the main land and good ole California I had the intention of creating a finalized version of the sketches I was working on in Hawaii using all of my samurai books and reference that I had at home. I eventually got around to making the drawing below.






















Here is the inked version that I gave Chris. He liked it, but he wanted the samurai in a different position, so it's back to the drawing board, or more like my couch while I watch cartoons and draw some more samurais.

To be continued...

Laura's Brain Exposed PART II (the final product)

Last night as Laura cooked me a wonderful dinner I drew on her red notebook. Here’s how it turned out.























This was more difficult then I originally thought it would be, as I thought I would be able to sketch on it and then ink it, but no such luck. The material didn't pick up the graphite so I had to ink it straight from the sketch I did. Now, this is not the way I like to work. Though I think it turned out nicely and I liked using the paint pen that I found.

Laura's Brain Exposed PART I (The Sktech)

Laura has started school again and once again she is stressed out of her mind. So to commemorate the occasion she commissioned me to draw her head cracked open with her brain exposed on her red leather notebook where she keeps a calendar of everything she has to do for school on a daily basis. These are the sketches I did.























Here is the first page of sketches that I did showing her brain exposed and steaming in different ways. My favorite was the one where she is crazy, mad and her brain is bursting out of her head (lower left hand corner). She however, likes the one where she looks dead or comatose (on the upper right). So I will be drawing that one on her notebook.






















Here is my bigger refined sketch of the one that she likes. Next step notebook!

Viking Fighting an Octopus PART I (the sketch)

I have too many blogs in the pipeline at the moment because I keep waiting to finish things before I post them. I do it for you, so I don't post an idea and then abandon it once you started liking it and so you don't start hassling me to finish stuff (which at times I may need, but shhhhhhh - don't tell anyone…). So I have decided to start posting things in process, this will hopefully do one of three things; make it so I post more stuff, (because at the moment I wait until it is done and then take my sweet time to writing a blog about it), encourage me to finish some of the ideas I start and get some feed back on what I am doing while it is in progress and I can still change it. So feel free to tell me what you think (though note that I will feel free to ignore you if you aren’t being constructive with your criticism).

If you know me and I have to assume that most people looking at this actually do (sad), you know I have an obsession with Vikings. I just flat out think they are cool. I have read a several Viking history books, some works on their mythology and an Icelandic saga, and it’s still not enough. I’m always on the lookout for more reading materials when Vikings are concerned.

This is a sketch that I did based off of the idea that me and a couple my friends had to do an animation based off of us as Vikings. The idea came from me sketching all of my friends as Vikings and drawing us into little scenes, though unfortunately we have yet to start working on the animations. This is me as a berserker, fighting a giant octopus that has rather impolitely attached itself our hypothetical Viking boat.

A Pathetic Family Portrait

Today would have been my friend Patrick's 23rd Birthday. To commemorate today I’m posting something that he started and I finished. This is a family portrait that Pat started to work on before he died, though he never was able to finish it. His mom asked me to finish it for him so she could have something to give their family, and I said of course I would do it and that I was honored and happy to do so. Pat had already drawn the majority of his family members, he just didn't have the strength to get to drawing the final ones. That was were I came in and as Pat's best friend and as the person who Pat claimed was the “best artist” he knew, I took up the task of finishing the project. I wanted to make sure that I copied his style exactly, something more difficult then I initially thought it would be.




















Here are the drawings that pat did. He did all of the drawings in pencil and then i went over them in pen and ink.















This is a sad note that ended where pat was working on the project. It says "I'm not done But I'm too tired to go on." when Laura and I saw this it made us incredibly sad.










Here are the sketches that I created in Photo shop to immatate Pat's style.










Here are the inked versions of Pat's additional family members









Here is the final version that i gave to Nancy (Pat's mom) yesterday after a very lovely dinner. Hopefully by posting this i don't ruin any surprises.