Drawing Dick Gregory - Pen and Ink Speed Drawing

Portrait of Dick Gregory - B90x 90 Day Art Challenge - No. 8

©2014 B. Lewis

So it’s been over a month since my last B90x entry and it took me a little while to get inspired. I had gotten burned out. But a few days ago, I was watching a special on Dick Gregory and in an instant I was inspired again. In my mind’s eye I saw this really cool ink portrait of Dick Gregory and I knew it had to be done.

I began this process sitting down and I started to draw my under-sketch but because it had been quite a while since I’d worked on anything in traditional media (pen/pencil on paper) I got stomped and a little discouraged. So I moved from sitting to standing to draw the portrait and I was much more comfortable and was able to get into a groove rather quickly. After drawing the initial drawing with a hard lead (H pencil), I went back to my table and began inking.

Close up

Sketch

I started with a light grey wash and blocked out the darker values then I was able to add detail. I used mostly ink and brush but switched to pen, adding really cool hatch marks that had dimension and texture to this drawing. Overall, it took a little over 3 hours and I’m definitely proud of this one! I even made a new logo intro for my videos to compliment it. I hope you guys like it!

Etsy Store Stocked!

I’ve finally gotten around to restocking my Etsy Store! If you’re interested in purchasing some of the paintings featured on this blog, you can no buy them at my Etsy Shop. Paintings: “Redd Foxx”, “Jenny”, and the “Shallot Still Life” are just a few of the paintings you’ll find. You can also purchase the Award Winning “Michonne”, a print of my “Muddy Waters” painting and the original “Bob Marley” Painting. As always, customs orders are available, just shoot me an email and we can discuss the specifics. To shop the store visit: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BnzyArts

Exploring a New Genre - Comics

prelim sketch - Luke Cage

Being an Artist is all about learning and growing and experimenting; it’s about taking risks with the reward of learning something new. Some time ago a family friend issued me a challenge and that was to create a custom comic book cover. Now admittedly, I had never drawn comics before but I have been a fan of super heroes in my lifetime so I said what the heck, why not. So recently, I began to break into this genre of art and with comics come a whole culture of creating. They are much more action/narrative driven where everything from the gestures to the line art has a significance to the story.

This week I’m working on that comic book cover and I think it’s coming along quite nicely. I’m in the process of familiarizing myself with the main character I’ll be illustrating and have begun the preliminary sketching. I’ve chosen to do the first sketch with my Wacom tablet in Photoshop. I can’t say exactly why I chose to go for the digital first but it may have something to do with the ease of use; pixels are cheap. So above you’ll find the first of many sketches I’ll do before I’m comfortable enough to draw on the comic book itself. The character: Luke Cage, his power is super strength and he is unbreakable. My challenges involve foreshortening and creating depth. This isn’t my typical face on portrait but I’ll use my knowledge of portraits to help my along the way. The overall goal is to create a really cool comic book cover by the end of this week.

Painting Redd Foxx - Acrylic Time Lapse Painting