I recently picked up one of my all-time favorite movies, Alien, on Blu-Ray. Watching it again inspired me to start a piece based on what, to me, is the scariest scene in the movie: the death of Lambert. There's just something about the way she just stands there, paralyzed with fear, while the alien approaches slowly, like he has all the time in the world.. It still gives me goose bumps.

Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show a little bit of my process, which is really pretty typical for any artist. It begins with a fairly rough sketch. I don't usually thumbnail (starting with very small loose sketches) per say, because working digitally makes size a little irrelevant. I do tend to work layer to layer though, dropping a rough sketch on one layer and then lowering the opacity and doing the next sketch on a new layer. I can build up 10 to 12 layers just redrawing and refining an idea.

That sketch is followed by some tightening, adding important details. I don't worry about getting everything right on this pass, sometimes all I need is to create some landmarks that inform the next go-through. In this case, I was mainly fleshing out the alien's anatomy a bit, as well as Lambert's costume. Don't even ask me why her hands are three feet long in this one.

This is the "ink" phase, though as I work all digitally, there's no actual ink, just another, tighter pass - adding detail as well as background.

Next I added solid blacks, because I wanted this piece to rely heavily on shadow. One lesson I learned long ago was not to be afraid to draw something the way I wanted it, and then lose parts of that drawing in shadow if the drawing required it. 

I've still got work to do on this one. There are some things I'm just noticing now that I want to alter, plus I'll add color. I save all of that for another post.

Everything drawn on the Wacom Cintiq in either Sketchbook pro or Photoshop CS5.

This is a really rough sketch that I banged out recently for what will become a Hellboy Drawing. Doesn't EVERY artist have a Hellboy drawing? This one will eventually become mine, when I get around to finishing it. Hopefully there will be some updates as I work on this. Hellboy copyright Mike Mignola.

Drawn in Sketchbook Pro on the Cintiq 21x.

Here is a little doodle I did recently while I was trying to develop a "Common Wombat" character to act as a sort of mascot for my business. The jury is still out on whether or not I'll wind up using him.

Drawn in Sketchbook Pro on the Wacom Cintiq 21x.

Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural post in my new sketchblog. For the past 2 years I've been a stay-at-home dad, which is an awesome job to have but it has put a real dent into my drawing time. Lately I've been trying to spend at least a little time each day drawing, either in a sketchbook or digitally with a Wacom Cintiq tablet screen. The plan is to occasionally share what I've been working on here.

Recently I've been rediscovering the Sci-Fi scow Farscape via the wonders of Netflix. I loved the first season of this show when it aired in the late 90s, but fell away from it. One thing it definitely has going for it is an array of very strange and colorful characters. As an exercise i thought it would be fun to draw a few of them in my own style. What you have here is the villain, Scorpius (fully drawn and inked) and one of the good guys, a warrior named D'argo (still underway). I plan on finishing and coloring them both, and hopefully will tackle a few more Farscape characters next. I'd love to end up with a full cast shot, but we'll see how it goes. 

Drawn on the Wacom Cintiq using Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop CS5.