P.O.D Day 6 "Knightseeker 19"

Happy Sunday(or whenever you're reading this), and welcome to Day 6 of my "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. Every day in the month of October I'll be posting  a new piece of art plus providing some behind the scene sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.
Today features a piece done for the new Knightseeker illustrated novel written by Eric Cooper.
www.knightseeker.com

 This is Chapter 19 entitled "Disturbing Call". The description was:

(Single Scene) Setting: Ethan’s apartment living room.

Action: GUILLOTINE aiming FUSION BARREL of weapons staff at KNIGHT SEEKER. KNIGHT SEEKER aiming TRI-BLADE SWORD at GUILLOTINE.

LT. DIAZ aiming SHOTGUN at KNIGHT SEEKER. SGT. FLEMINGS aiming BOTH GLOCK PISTOLS at GUILLOTINE.

This one didn't come together right away, and I had to go through a lot of sketches to get what I wanted. Here are a few.

 

All in all the project itself was a fun one. This is the third(!) illustrated novel Cooper has dropped, and I've been lucky enough to have been Art Director for the last two books now. In addition to being AD, I'm also an artist for some of the chapters, primary designer as well as cover artist for all 3 books.

Shout out to Eric for the opportunity. See my last blog for more Knightseeker art.

http://shawnah-lean.blogspot.com/2013/10/pod-day-5-knightseeker.html 

 

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a better artist and more productive artist. Feel free to give any critiques or comments. Catch you tomorrow God willing.

Peace.
S

P.O.D Day 5- "KnightSeeker"

Hey peeps. Day 5 of my "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal where every day in the month of October I'll be posting  a new piece of art plus providing some behind the scene sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.

Today features a piece done for the new Knightseeker illustrated novel written by Eric Cooper.
www.knightseeker.com
This was Chapter 25 entitled "A True Test of Friendship".

The description was: (Single Scene) Setting: Subway tunnel by the single set of tracks.

Action: KNIGHT SEEKER shooting out one concentrated shot to GUILLOTINE’s chest peace. This will be a very violent shot that shatters the Guillotine chest piece.  GUILLOTINE whole body reacts to the hit. (Also Guillotine is unarmed. His weapon should not be in the scene.)

Here's the piece.

 

Knightseeker Book 3 illustrated novel chap 25 artwork. Pencils and inks Shawn Alleyne

So after reading the chapter and going over the description, I had a pretty solid idea of how it would look. I knew I wanted to play with shadows and action lines, and though I said in a previous blog that I'm not good at spotting shadows, doesn't mean I don't like to try. Due to the deadline I was at first going to use the blacks and lines in lieu of a background, but after trying, it felt cheap. So I added the subway tunnel to push myself. I definitly need to practice my action lines some more I feel.

The project itself is a fun one. This is the third(!) illustrated novel Cooper has dropped, and I've been lucky enough to have been Art Director for the last two books now. In addition to being AD, I'm also an artist for some of the chapters, primary designer as well as cover artist for all 3 books.

Shout out to Eric for the opportunity.

Here's the cover to the revamped edition of the first novel...

 

Knightseeker Book 1 illustrated novel cover. Shawn Alleyne on pencils and inks/ colors by Blair Smith

And the cover for book 2.

Knightseeker Book 2 illustrated novel cover art. Pencils- Shawn Alleyne/colors-Blair Smith

 

 

Look for more Knightseeker goodness soon.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a better artist and more productive artist. Feel free to give any critiques or comments. Catch you tomorrow God willing.

Peace.
S

 

P.O.D Day 4- "Jeb"

Day 4 of my "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. For those just joining us, every day in the month of October I'll be posting  a new piece of art, plus providing some behind the scene sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.

Today's piece is from the same client that commissioned the Deborah and Gideon pieces from previous days. This description read: "Jeb is a white man in his late 20's with dark, shoulder length hair, dark brown eyes, and scruff on his face. He is wearing military camouflage. He has a SEAL Team 6 insignia on his arm and a petty officer insignia on his shoulder. He is in the prone position aiming a M82A1 barret sniper rifle (.50). He has a slight smile on his face."

The final piece was supposed to be more of a pin-up, which is where I would've done the prone position (where a sniper is taking out his target), but I ran out of time. I also forgot to add the camo and I didn't give him the smile. For just an average shot like this it may not make much of a difference but now I'm sorry I didn't add the smile.I think that would've lent some more character to him than just the typical scowl. 

Here's my original sketch. This is the one I feel the most disappointed in as far as the transition from sketch to final product. Something about the finished piece's stance looks a little too stiff to me.

Sigh, on to the next one.

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a better artist and more productive artist. Feel free to give any critiques or comments. Catch you tomorrow God willing.

Peace.
S

 

P.O.D Day 3 Avengers Blank Cover

Annnddd we're back with another edition of my special "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. Every day for the month of October I'll be posting a new piece of art, plus providing some behind the scenes sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.

On the menu today is a blank cover commish, where the client wanted to see a wrecked assortment of Avengers. Specifically, Avengers weapons: Iron Man's helmet, Cap's damaged shield, etc.

With blank covers it would definitely save me a lot of time just doing the front, but my masochistic side just can't seem to leave well enough alone, and I pretty much always do a double spread. With this cover I felt just having the weapons laying there would be pretty boring by itself, so I thought it would be cool to have some sort of villain in the piece somewhere who viewers could speculate would be the cause of the destruction. And since Thanos is on everyone's minds nowadays, I figured, why not.

 For some reason this cover took me FOREVER to finish. Besides life getting in the way, I just wasn't feeling motivated. On top of that, the bird's eye view perspective shot of Thanos' legs gave me HELL to get right. And I still don't think I achieved my goal. 

I tried to "modernize" Thanos' look a little, and I plan on doing a Thanos solo print at some point. Yes, I'm a sellout. sigh.
I cheated a bit with a few things. One being the Falcon's wings. I know they're supposed to be holographic "hardlight" and they disappear when not activated, but I wanted  people to know it was the Falcon. Also, I felt it would show Thanos' disrespect and power a little more if he were standing on someone.
The second cheat is with the Hulk. Once again, if he's unconscious he should automatically revert back to "puny Banner" but I figured people wouldn't know who he was.

Bonus points: did you spot Thor's hands and Widow's bracelets? All in all I kinda like how it came out.

Well, another one down. Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave any comments or critiques.

Peace
S

P.O.D Day 2- "Gideon"

Welcome back to my special "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. Every day for the month of October I'll be posting a new piece of art, plus providing some behind the scenes sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.
And guess what, day 2 and I'm still going! Wheeeeee! Not much of an accomplishment? Ok, whatever.

This piece is from the same client that commissioned the Deborah piece from yesterday.
His description read, "Gideon is a young man sitting in front of a multi-screen computer system. The room is only lit by the various monitors. We can see his face from the side. He is a very light skinned black man in his early twenties. He is fairly thin. He is of mixed race, so his afro is not as kinky. He has light blue eyes. He is handsome."
Placing shadows has been a challenge for me, and I'm in awe of folks like Mike Mignola, but I tried. Once again, this character is supposed to inhabit the "real" world, so normally I would've put in some hi-tech computers and floating "Minority Report" style screens, but I kept it basic.

A pretty simple design, so nothing too crazy here, but I guess the hardest part was his face. In the future I had told myself I wanted to try and use actors to cast my characters after, and for Gideon I thought Donald Glover had the perfect feel I wanted to capture.  I didn't go for an exact likeness as you can see, I just wanted to get the essence.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a more productive and better artist. Feel free to give any critiques or comments. Catch you tomorrow.

Peace.
S

Piece Of the Day- Day 1 "Deborah"

What's up peeps, it's been a while.

Even though I feel like I've been gone forever, don't think I've been slacking. A lot of exciting things have been going on, and I'll be updating more frequently. Amidst all of the news that will be coming, what will be precedent for the month of October is my "Artpiece-of-the-Day" goal. Every day for the month of October I'll be posting a new piece of art, plus providing some behind the scenes sketches and commentary. Each pic will be as "complete" as I can make it, depending on what was called for with the project, meaning some pieces may be more elaborate than others, but the ultimate goal here is for me to be more productive.

So, with that intro out of the way, let's get the ball rolling with "Deborah"

Above is my sketch of the character to get her "feel". The client's description read "
Deborah is a beautiful (much more the urban standard of beauty than the typical Hollywood standard), curvaceous African woman with long braids not dreadlocks. She is about 19 years old. She is dark skinned and has very defined muscles, but she does not have overly large muscles. She has on dark pants and a light brown tactical vest. Under her vest she has a low cut green shirt that shows off her ample cleavage. An AK-47 is strapped to her back. In her hand is a machete dripping blood. Her face is almost in a snarl."
The first thing I did was check with the client to see what kind of world the characters inhabited- in other words, how fantastical did he want it and how far I could go. He let me know this was to be "real world" and present day. With any character design I believe in research first, no matter if it's based in reality or fantasy, so after some reference checks on military and police clothing, I had my look. 

With this being the finished piece. As you can see I veered from the AK-47 and gave her a more powerful piece. (I wish I had saved the info on what gun I used for reference). The description said she was pretty strong, so I just thought it would be interesting and visually appealing to see this young woman holding up this heavy, bad-ass instrument of death.
Sometimes I do a sketch and it comes out perfect and really fluid and organic, then when I try to capture that same feel to the final page without a lightbox I lose the appearance or energy of the piece, but in this case I'm pretty happy with what came out.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to follow me on this path of me seeking to be a more productive and better artist. Catch you tomorrow.

Peace.
S