Saturday Nights Alright for Pencilling....

Pop quiz hot shot:

What thrash metal band did a cover of Elton John's Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting?

Now onto artsy stuff. Spent a good chunk of Saturday night refining the pencils for two Pimp cards...France and the Neutron Bomb.

Pretty happy with the France piece.

He went from looking like a cartoony Saddam Hussein to a cartoony French guy in only 3 sketches and 3 pencil attempts.

In case you are wondering what the hell that all meant, here is "my process".

1. Sketch out a few ideas.
2. Go play video games or paint minis.
3. Come back and look at sketches a few hours later.
4. Pick one, grab light table and start "refinement".
5. Once sketch is refined enough, get distracted with "work" and leave it alone for 5-7 days.
6. Pick pencils back up on Saturday and break out light table again...and refine some more.
7. After three more refinements, it is ready.
8. Remark that holy crap it is after 11.
9. Proceed to next piece.

Pretty awesome. Normally, I'll only do a few refinements, but this style is outside my normal work style...so it needed some more love.

Next is the Neutron Bomb. I sort of envision this one as more of just an object rather than a scene...so I kept is simple. It will probably go through one more phase of "refinement" just so all the seams look right. Normally, this would be a cut and dry sort of thing...but more than likely I'll turn the object into more of a scene...although I really don't want to draw motion lines or anything like that.

So there you have it. This is what I did last night (and part of this afternoon).

Sketch'ning: The New Era

The sketch for the Paris card I'm doing for Pimp. The figure himself needs a little more work...broader shoulders mainly. I also need to add a nicer Eiffel Tower in the back...which I'll probably cheat and throw a photo in there to get the proportions right.

Once that is all done, I'll go to the light table and get the final version done.