| Batman Ink |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|10:15 pm] |
I'm trying to figure out how to make black and white comics. This was me messing around with black and white (ink and some gesso).
If anyone would like the original, it looks like the one on the left and is on regular computer paper. $15 + shipping? Any takers?
(edit) This was already sold, thanks! |
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| Whine 2009 Comic |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|04:18 pm] |
Just playing with my new brush and working on doing black and white images. (Which I failed by adding the blue.) |
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| How to get a line drawing with a transparent background in Photoshop (Mac) |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|12:05 pm] |
This is a step-by-step process to get your scanned line drawing to lines with a transparent background (on a Mac).
1. This whole process is done in Photoshop. Scan in your line drawing. Adjust the levels so there are mostly dark lines and the rest is white. You can either create a Levels Adjustment Layer (shown here) or hit Apple+L to adjust the layers for the currently selected layer.
2. Then flatten all the layers in the layers pallet. Select all (Apple+A), then copy the whole image (Apple+C).
3. The next action is done in the Channels pallet. It is usually located right next to the layers pallet. Or it can be located by clicking Window on the toolbar at the top of the screen and scrolling down to Channels. In this pallet, create a new channel (by clicking on the button indicated by the red arrow.) The new channel will be called Alpha 1 by default.
4. You already copied your line drawing, so now with the Alpha 1 channel still selected, paste (Apple+V) your line drawing. Instead of flat black, your line drawing should now be in the channel.
5. Click back onto the Layers pallet. Create a new layer and name it "Line" (Shift+Apple+N).
6. Click on the Select menu on the top toolbar. Scroll down and choose Load Selection.
7. The Load Selection window will pop up. In the Channel option, choose Alpha 1. Also click the Invert box located directly underneath the Channel option.
8. A selection of your line drawing should show up. If you deselect the eyeball on the Background layer, it should look like this.
9. Select whatever color you want and then fill the selection (Option+Delete) or as shown below.
10. With the "Lines" layer still selected, click the Lock Transparency option. With this option clicked, you can color just the lines on your illustration.
11. You no longer need the original Background layer with the line drawing, so you can delete that layer. Any layers you add underneath the line drawing can be filled with color pretty much like a coloring book. But the best stuff is coloring the actual lines of your drawing. Try out different colors and you can even make some of the lines blend with the colors from layers underneath (shown below).
12. Have fun and mess around. And good luck! |
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| Record Day Process |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|10:23 pm] |
After finding the old process sketches and work on this illustration, I thought I should show and explain how I went about producing it.
The job was to illustrate Record Day, so I basically had to have a record shop. I like drawing people (and monsters) so I planned on putting a person in a shop and trying to make it look sweet. As you can see I got the final idea early on and did some different variations on it.
During the thumbnail process I drew this sketch. It sucked. So I kept going with the other thumbnails.
After I settled on a composition, I messed around a little drawing the character. If this was going to be a series of images, I probably would have done many more of these to work the character design out. If you notice, I tried a guy and a girl, but settled on the guy (I don't remember why.)
So I started the sketch. As you can see I draw in blue line first. I was working out which album covers would go where in the composition. Once I did the whole thing in blue, I used a mechanical pencil to draw darker lines. I did this to chose which lines I want to use and to make it easier to trace.
With blue pencil again, I traced the drawing and did a more refined version on another sheet of paper (I use regular computer printer paper). Then with a brush and ink, I inked all the big lines. After that, I used the mechanical pencil again to draw the small little detail lines. Because of the album covers this illustration had more little details than I often do.
Next I scanned the inked drawing into the computer. I took away the blue lines and colored everything. All of my lines are still there, I just colored a lot of them to blend in with the color of it's shape as well.
Here are the lines without the shapes filled in. I like working this way because I'm using the ink drawing I did, so the edges of my shapes and lines have a hand-drawn feel, but I can also spend time adjusting the colors of the lines and what lines I keep or take out.
Next I added some shadows. Some of my illustrations have a lot of shadow, but this mostly was under the guy's chin and on the legs of the table.
At this point I thought that the back wall was popping out too much and I wanted to bring focus onto the guy, so I lightened the color of the wall and added a grayish gradient behind him. I wanted to make the wall a duller color than the guy holding the record.
This is the final drawing cropped the for the paper. I had always planned on cropping it like this which is why I never finished the drawing of the Ramones or Rancid album.
I hope this has been instructive and/or interesting. If you have any questions just shoot me an email. |
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| Fall Colors, Some Old Sketches |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|02:19 pm] |
For "The Pitch". When I was thinking of Thanksgiving, I thought of rapping Pilgrims and a Thanksgiving make-out session. The rapper sketches were odd, so I went with this. I am kind of in love with these fall colors.
This is a little illustration for Thriving Family Magazine. My wife suggested the fall colors that really helped me get going. I was messing around with the light glare from the window. It reminds me of being in an attic minus the dust.
I found some old sketches when I was throwing out old papers. I decided to scan these and put them together. I like "Young Skeletor" the best. |
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| Cute + Pink Batman |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|08:59 pm] |
Sometimes you just want to draw Batman.
I really liked these colors by Dylan McCrae, so I stole them from his site. |
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| 2nd Vulcan Sketch + Detail |
[Oct. 23rd, 2009|06:41 pm] |
I've been thinking about Vulcans because I'm dressing as Spock for Halloween. This is a painting with a "Rake" brush I found online. It's very similar to a brush in Corel Painter. |
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| Spanish Dude Sketch |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|03:05 pm] |
I'm having fun doing these sketches and digitally painting them. Maybe I should see how I can match this to my usual style. |
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| Ninja Elf Sketch |
[Oct. 19th, 2009|05:10 pm] |
Drew a Ninja Elf today. Is the color stuff with the lines too much? |
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| Vulcan Paint |
[Oct. 14th, 2009|04:55 pm] |
I decided to try painting a sketch I drew today. In some ways I love how it turned out, and in other ways I think it's just weird.
And thanks to Melanie Matthews for sending me some brushes to try out and suggesting one of the photoshop default ones. |
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| Vulcans on the brain |
[Oct. 14th, 2009|11:02 am] |
I plan on dressing up as Spock for Halloween so I've been thinking a little about Vulcans. I usually draw with a lead holder using non-photo blue "lead". I do this because I draw really hard and so I can ink or pencil over it and remove the blue in photoshop. Today I decided to use a darker blue pencil I have sitting around. I kind of liked it. Also, this guy might be related to Mic Jagger. |
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| Madman Atomic Comics #17 Pinup, Twitter & Some Stuff |
[Oct. 10th, 2009|03:23 pm] |
So this might be a little long and random. In September, Madman Atomic Comics #17 was released. Click the image to buy it.
Well a while back I did a Madman Commission for Simon Miller. (Click his name for his Original Comic Art Shop website). He is connected with everyone involved in creating Madman and offered to send them a copy of the commission I did. I thought that was cool but forgot about it. It turns out that my commission is one of the pin-ups printed in the back of issue #17!
(I look scuzzy in the pic because I need a shave and a haircut, but I'm happy)!
Looking at my artwork printed next to some amazing artists, not to mention Mike Allred, has shown me how I can improve on my inking and details. I'm especially into the pin-ups by Rafael Grampá and Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá.
In other Mike Laughead news. I have a Twitter account now. You can follow me under the username mikelaughead. Very original!
I recently visited Iowa for a friend's baptism. While there I got to meet Phil Hester who is an awesome guy. If you ever see him at a convention, say hi and talk to him about being from the midwest.
While I was in Iowa, my nephew Bob showed me this abstract art pen drawing he did. Bob just started middle school and is on his way to becoming a great artist.
I haven't been doing much artwork that I can post on my blog recently, but I'm posting a sneak peek of my current big project. It's a children's book about a little hippo girl that goes with her mom to buy her first pair of shoes. I'll post more when it's further along.
Finally, here is a poster I just finished yesterday. This is the art minus the type that will be used to promote GamingForCause.com. I was so happy to just mess around on this as a break from working on kid's books. The colors seem to have the "growth" feel that I was going for.
Thanks for reading, or just looking at the images like I sometimes do. |
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| 3 Hands? |
[Sep. 11th, 2009|12:53 pm] |
I'm now working on the 8th and final Robot & Rico book. I just started coloring this page and I realized that I gave Robot 3 hands without really noticing it. Have any of you reading this done something similar in a drawing? I thought it was kind of funny. I'm going to end up taking out the left hand holding the paper.
My mom and little sister are coming to visit today with my little sister's 3 boys. I'm really pumped. I hope her oldest is impressed by my artwork.
Have a good weekend everyone. |
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| Robot & Rico Books 1-4 |
[Aug. 17th, 2009|09:12 am] |
In my last entry I posted the covers to some easy reader books I did earlier this year. I realized that unlike before, I haven't posted much of the work I've done this year because I've had bigger/longer assignments. This is the first of a few that I'll be able to post. The following is an image of 4 pages, each from one of the first 4 Robot & Rico books.
I thought I would post the small PDFs of the books so you guys could all see them and hopefully I could get some advice on which spreads/pages are the best for my portfolio. I've asked some of you before, but I'm still considering.
Book 1 PDF | Book 2 PDF | Book 3 PDF | Book 4 PDF
You can buy the books here:
Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4. Or you can check on Amazon.
I'm working on the next 4 books right now. I'm especially proud of how the sledding one turned out. I can't wait to show you guys! |
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| Robot & Rico Covers 1-4 |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|05:02 pm] |
I've been busy on a few projects recently. The biggest one being the Robot & Rico picture books.
These are the covers to the first 4 books, I'm currently working on the next 4 of them. These are beginning reader books geared towards boys. Robot & Rico are friends that do fun stuff together and run into a few problems along the way.
Hopefully I'll be able to post some spreads from these books soon. |
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| Family Portrait + 2 Shirts for Voting |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|10:03 am] |
I do a themed family portrait for my wife every Valentine's Day. Well, I was crazy busy with work and... I dunno. So I just finished it. My 2 year old, Penelope, looks and talks just like an Ewok, so that's why I went with the Return of the Jedi idea. And as for why I made my wife and I brother and sister, well, I wanted a lightsaber. When I saw this as a kid I sure wasn't wishing I could be Han Solo.
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I also have 2 shirts up for voting.
The first is at Threadless.
The second is one LaFraise.
Please check out the shirts and comment on them. I appreciate constructive criticism so please tell me how you feel. |
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| Record Shop, a Logo, Sketchiness and My Favorite Disney Princess |
[Apr. 16th, 2009|08:42 am] |
This is an illustration for the Night & Day section in The Pitch. The section has a blurb about Record Shop Day or something. I had fun doing the album covers, please add comments for your guesses if you are inclined.
This Winter semester I have been teaching a Digital Painting class at KVCC here in Kalamazoo. I have the class upload their work to a blog for viewing and critiquing. Halfway during the class I made this logo for the class blog. I like how it turned out so I figured I would show it here. If you want to check out the class blog, here is the address:
KVCCDigitalPainting.BlogSpot.com
Much of the work uploaded is in progress, but there's some really great work on there.
Just a little sketch I did during a church meeting recently. I think this came as a result of reading Pride and Prejudice recently. The book is seriously awesome. I'm amazed that Jane Austen could write so well and so finished without an editor to help cut and change what doesn't work. The biggest problem I have with it is she sometimes doesn't say who is speaking in a conversation. That is frustrating!
Because Disney distributes the Studio Ghibli films in the US, I thought this little thing was funny. I guess I could have included Nausicaa in there as well, but that might not have worked as well. Just as a clarification, I did not draw this, I just photoshopped it together one day. I figured it should be available to everyone who wants it. |
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| Skeleton Kat, Squid Head, Buildings, Butterflies and Reptiles |
[Feb. 18th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
I was asked to do a sample for a children's book. The basic premise is a skeleton cat that likes to play the drums. Well, I went a little overboard with it. But the back and forth with the editors and art directors was really great. They had some great insights and advice. This is a progression of the ideas from first to last. There are things I like about all of them. I'm not sure if I like the 3rd or the last one best. But there are some great things going on in the first one as well.
I did this a while back as a t-shirt design. I really like inking with a brush, but my illustration style has veered away from it. This was an experiment.
This is from an old job. I had to do some building "caricatures". I'm posting a couple of my favorites.
My wife requested that I design a wallet she would actually like to own. This is the result. I think the tinymeat folks are pretty busy with their new store so I haven't heard back from them about it.
I did some spots recently and these were my favorite ones. |
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mikelaughead's journal
