Each year the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo puts together an art book with pin-ups done by artists who will be exhibiting at the show. Proceeds from the art book sales and original art auction go to charity. This year the charity of choice is the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Southern Alberta.

The theme of this year’s art book was ‘Fairy Tales and Classic Monsters’, so I decided to illustrate my version of Puss In Boots. Here’s how it progressed from concept to final:

STEP 1-Sloppy Gesture: This is where I’m just playing around with shapes, trying to find a really basic pose and silhouette that will work for my initial idea – Puss swinging in with a swashbuckling flare. It’s sloppy and loose and doesn’t look like much, but that’s how it starts.

STEP 2-Initial Sketch: From there I sketch right over top, building in the form and attitude of the character, trying to keep a sense of energy while also adding a bit of volume and consistency. Still pretty rough, but at least now we can tell what it is and see some potential.

STEP 3- Refinement: Fading back my previous digital layers, I take another attack on it, refining my choices and adding details. I wanted to add a bit more of a sense of ‘drag’ on his clothing and pushed the expression a bit more.

STEP 4- Final Lines: With the gesture and structure defined, I’m ready to finalize the line work with a tight digital ink layer. While I’m working away on this I try to balance the structure and gesture and add thick to thin lines or gaps to help visually separate areas and add a bit of extra weight to the final look.

STEP 5- Flat Colors: This is where I work out the base palette of colors for the piece. These flats also become easy to select areas when I’m rendering the illustration. I also added a simple pattern behind Puss to give the background a bit of texture.

STEP 6- Final: Shadows, highlights, and all around rendering is added along with my signature to finish it off. Our courageous swashbuckling feline is ready for adventure!

If you’re heading to the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo you’ll be able to pick up your own copy of the 2017 Artbook and I’ll be thrilled to sign a copy for you.

As part of the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo each year there’s a special artbook that includes pin-up illustrations from many of their guests. This is the show’s 11th anniversary and I’m proud to say I’ve attended each and every show and have a pin-up in every artbook they’ve produced so far.

Thankfully, this year is no exception.

The theme for 2016 was “Fairy Tales & Classic Monsters”, so I put together a piece using a Jack and the Beanstalk as my inspiration. Here’s a walkthrough of the process for my piece. Click on each one to see a larger version:

STEP 1: Thumbnail – Sometimes it can be helpful to start really small and think only in terms of broad shapes and forms to create a strong composition. I thumbnailed out this quick sketch with a Col-Erase blue pencil and liked the possibilities it presented.

STEP 2: Rough – Scanning the thumbnail and working over top of it digitally in Photoshop, I added structure and gesture to the base shapes and it’s starting to come together.

STEP 3: Work Up – Fading back the other layers, I digitally draw over top of it again and add in character expression and details while trying to keep the energy from the earlier steps intact.

STEP 4: Final Lines – Opening up the work up version in Manga Studio, I digitally ink the final lines bit by bit, clarifying some of the looser forms and using thicker or thinner lines to help visually separate major areas and indicate depth.

STEP 5: Final – Bringing the lines back into Photoshop, I add color to give the whole thing mood and texture. I keep the rendering pretty simple to give it an animated appearance.

Close Up – Here’s a zoom in of Jack happily climbing the beanstalk. I’m pretty happy with how his gleeful expression turned out.

As part of the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo each year there’s a special artbook that includes pin-up illustrations from many of their guests. This is the show’s 10th anniversary and I’m proud to say I’ve attended each and every show and have a pin-up in every artbook they’ve produced so far.

Thankfully, this year is no exception.

The theme for 2015 was “Time”, as appropriate for an anniversary celebration, so I put together a piece using a time traveller with a nod to the H.G. Wells classic story “The Time Machine”. Here’s a walkthrough of the digital process for my piece:

STEP 1: Rough – After trying a few different thumbnail compositions I settled on this gesture drawing. It’s pretty loose but set up the key staging of the characters and the proportion of the dinosaur versus our happy time travelling protagonist.

STEP 2: Work-Up – Working digitally, it was easy to separate each part onto its own layer so I could focus on construction and expression, tightening up details while trying to keep the energy of the original gesture.

STEP 3: Line Art – A third pass nails down the line art, including fine details on the time machine and thick to thin lines to help visually separate forms.

STEP 4: Color – I wanted to keep the rendering animated-looking and simple across the board so I stuck with mostly flat colors and a simple light source. Some of the line art was also colored/lightened to help blend it in more with the rest of the scene.

Here’s a close-up of the time traveller and his machine. I had a lot of fun getting his expression down and building the golden-tubed time machine at the proper angle. I can’t wait to see the piece in print.

Here’s a series of links to all my previous pin-ups for the Calgary Expo artbooks. Collect ’em all 🙂