Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Drawing!!

Well, it's been a busy week or so here. My Marvel contract is on hiatus for a little while, as they busily re-schedule movies, so I was left hanging a bit. Luckily my friends have been coming through for me with leads - remember how much we stressed networking on Ninja Mountain? Well, it's really been important as I try to rev-up old contacts and make new ones quickly.

So, that's left me at the start of several projects at once, as well as working on pencils for Starkweather: Immortal (my comic book series with Dave Rodriguez, published by Archaia). And what all these things have in common is that I'm drawing! Almost exclusively for the last week I've been working at my drawing table because since all this stuff is at the beginning phase, that's where they all happen to start.

Of course, I've done some penciling work at my Marvel gig, but I'd say easily 70% of my assignments have involved painting over someone else's pencils, with maybe a little "patch" work. You know, drawing a new arm or hand or face, or maybe updating the costume.

But now...

Aside from many, many Starkweather pages, I've done a drawing for a card for Upper Deck, a cover for Boom! studios, the drawing for a commission painting (now I have to get up the nerve to paint it!) and 19 drawings of Lovecraft creatures for a Necronomicon-based book. I don't think I've gone through this many pencils in the last year put together!

And it's funny - I think I'm getting better at this drawing thing. I say this with no false modesty: drawing is my weakest skill. I think I'm pretty good at rendering, which I love, and concepts and layout, but the actual drawing portion of things is my least-favorite thing. And sometimes it shows.. But this last couple of weeks - once I shook out the cobwebs - has gone pretty well. I'm not going to say I'm loving it, or anything, but it's been a little bit less of a chore lately.

But I can't wait to get back to rendering!

4 comments:

Kat said...

It's good to get back to things that you haven't done in a while. :) Which monsters did you draw for the Necronomicon? I'm currious about your take on them.

-Kat

Patrick McEvoy said...

Hi Kat!

There is a loong list (18 in all), some that I hadn't heard of (or maybe forgotten) and naturally some big ones. I'd done Cthulhu before, of course, and Shub-Niggurath, Nyarathotep and Yog-Sothoth, and a Zoog, so I tried to do something totally different there. Dagon, the Deep Ones, and the Mi-Go I'd heard of but never drawn. And then there's creatures I DIDN'T know of, like the Ghast, Gug, the Shantak Bird, and the Moon-toads.

It was interesting to do some just from the author's description of Lovecraft's description. But it worked out as they've all been approved - now off to rendering!

Metal snail said...

can you let us know when that book comes out, I loved your work on that Cthulhu card game a few years ago!
I just finished reading Dreamquest of unknown Kadath that those last creatures are from...crazy stuff!

Patrick McEvoy said...

I'll be sure to post updates! It's probably coming out fairly soon - the art was a sort of last-minute addition, I think. :)