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Showing posts from 2010

Have A...

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Lights

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I took this picture on my cellphone. I waved my phone around and took the picture while doing so, and that's how I got these weird light effects.

Scott Pilgrim Gets Drawn On Scratchpaper

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I got Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life , volume one in a series of graphic novels about the character, for Christmas this year. It's a great book. I like Scott because he's a real easy going guy. I wonder why they put all of the seven evil exes into the one movie, considering they're more or less one per graphic novel. They could have done sequels for that movie. We all know how reboot crazy and sequel crazy Hollywood is. I'm surprised they didn't spread it out into a series of movies. It makes me wonder how they leave time for other parts of the overall story from the graphic novels. It looks like a lot of the movie is probably action (I haven't seen it yet) whereas a lot of the books are the social interaction between the characters. I think the movie looks like it will be cool though. I plan on getting the rest of the series of graphic novels over time and reading them as well.

2011

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It's coming soon. I had a great Christmas, and I hope you guys did as well. One of the things I got in my stocking was a little pack of scratchpaper with a wooden scratcher. This is one of the drawings I've done on that scratchpaper so far.

Santa Claus Says...

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Kari

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I posted "Kari II" awhile back, but I'd never posted this drawing. This, like "Kari II," is a drawing of Kari Byron, the Mythbusters star and artist. Kari now not only stars on Mythbusters , but she's also got a show on the Science Channel titled Head Rush .

Ice

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This is sort of a sequel to the Jade drawing. Ice is a superhero that was in Justice League International. Here I have her using her powers to create a spiral of ice around herself and a snowball in her hand. I started this drawing in 2004 and finished it a few days ago. Back in 2004, I'd drawn her in just pencil and drew a band around her where the orange peel was around the Cointreau model in the photo reference, a Cointreau ad from 2003. I didn't draw the bottle in her hand. I didn't know what comic book character I wanted to draw her as at the time, so I figured I'd hold off on finishing it and pick up where I left off later. A few days ago I decided I'd draw her as Ice. Besides using pencil and colored pencils, I inked this one, whereas the "Jade" drawing was only pencil and colored pencils. I'm thinking of doing one more of this, as I've found another Cointreau ad from 2003, similar to the ones I used for "Jade" and "Ice."

Adrienne Roy, 1953 - 2010

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The above artwork is a digitally airbrushed work titled "Batman Face." Usually I title the post after the artwork, but this post is dedicated to Adrienne Roy, so I'm titling it after her. Adrienne Roy was a colorist who worked for DC Comics. She passed away on December 14 (Comic Book Resources). I remember seeing her name in the credits in the Batman comics back in the '90s. From what I remember, she did some great work. Information about her can be found here and here . She was very talented woman and she will be missed dearly. Works Cited Comic Book Resources. "Comics A.M. - Adrienne Roy Passes Away; Contract Changes at DC." Web. 20 December 2010.

Christina Aguilera II

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Yesterday I posted an artwork of Christina Aguilera. This is another one that I did around the same time I did the other one. The one yesterday had a little added color to it, and so does this one. With this one I added blue to her eyes. Also, I did some shading with a pencil. I thought since I had these two similar Christina artworks I'd post on each day this weekend. One Saturday and one Sunday. Merry Christmas!

Christina Aguilera

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I drew this back in 2006. As with most of my drawings, it started out with pencil and paper. Then I decided to do something the pros in the comic book industry do, like at the conventions. They do sketches for fans at conventions, and sometimes they'll ink them. Sometimes they'll throw in a little color. If there's some red on the character they'll add red to it and few or no other colors so that that color stands out. I did that with this drawing. I thought the initials on the head phones and the musical notes next to Christina would be nice touches. It's getting close to Christmas. There are seven days after tomorrow, six till Christmas Eve. So, merry Christmas!

Eliza Dushku 2004

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I'm dedicating this blog post to Eliza Dushku. I made this artwork in 2004, hence the title "Eliza Dushku 2004." Eliza has a new cause that she needs help with. This is her birthday present from anyone who wants to help out. The details are here .

Jade

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This is something I drew back about the time I was taking art classes in college. I used an ad for an alcoholic drink as a reference. Originally it was a woman with an orange peel spiraling up around her and she had a bottle in her hand. I replaced the peel and the bottle with flames formed from Jade's powers. Jade is the daughter of Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern in DC Comics. I originally included that information in the titled, but I thought I should shorten it to just "Jade." Jade's mother is the villain known as Thorn (Wikipedia). Both Thorn and Alan Scott/Green Lantern are golden age characters. Basically Jade can do with her powers from her body what Green Lanterns can do with their power rings, which is create things from it, all of which are entirely green. Jade's first appearance was in All-Star Squadron #25 in 1983 (Wikipedia). Works Cited Wikipedia. "Jade (comics)." Web. 3 December 2010.

J'onn J'onzz

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I think originally, I was just drawing a character. It wasn't intended to be anyone in particular. But I digitally colored it, and it turned out it looked like J'onn J'onzz, Martian Manhunter from DC Comics. It looks like him in casual attire. I drew it in sort of an abstract style, hence the eyes being a little uneven. With the color scheme, it's fitting for a Christmas time post.

Two Turtledoves

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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was an inspiration for this drawing. If you've seen the movie, you know the scene where Mr. Duncan tells Kevin the story about the two turtledoves, and how if you keep one and give the other to someone special to you, you'll be friends forever.

Christmas Time

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Here's an artwork I did earlier. I thought I'd do a Christmas themed artwork with dA muro from deviantART, and this is what I came up with. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Draw!

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This is something I came up with last night. My sister had a calendar that she'd used up except for some blank sheets, so she gave me the rest of it to draw on those blank sheets. This is the first drawing I did on it. I scanned it and digital colored it, and this is what I came up with.

Clark Griswold

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"Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer." It's that time again. "The most wonderful time of the year," as another Christmas song goes. Here's a drawing of Clark Griswold. My family and I love to watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation every Christmas. It's a great, funny movie. Personally I think it's the best in the Vacation series. It's hilarious.

Superman

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Here's a drawing I did of Superman back in 2007. Like a lot of my artworks, this one started out on paper. Superman is a great character with a rich history. Chris Nolan, director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight , and the upcoming, so far titled The Dark Knight Rises , is overseeing a new Superman movie with Zack Snyder at the helm. I didn't get into Snyder's Watchmen movie that much, but I think he could be good for the new Supes movie, which is supposedly titled Superman: The Man of Steel . Hopefully it will be the beginning of a series of a movies. It will be great to see Superman back on the big screen.

Rogue and Jean Grey

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Here's one from 2007. I drew this on paper, then scanned it and photoshopped it to look like it's on rice paper. You can probably tell that this is the Rogue and Jean Grey from the X-Men movies, played by Anna Paquin and Famke Janssen. I drew this a year after X-Men: The Last Stand , which I think is underrated. The next X-Men movie is a prequel, titled X-Men: First Class . This new movie seems to be loosely based on the comic book series. It's got the same concept, but it takes place before the time of Scott Summers and Jean Grey and characters like those. Emma Frost is in it, which makes me think, either she ages in an unusual way or the blond girl in X-Men Origins: Wolverine wasn't Emma Frost. I'm not sure what age Emma Frost will be in the new movie. It looks like she could be older than the supposed Emma Frost in Wolverine . It is a prequel to the first three movies, so it's set in the same continuity. Anyway, I'm looking forward to X-Men: First Class

Thanksgiving Turkey

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Sledge Hammer!

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After I drew and inked this picture, I scanned and photoshopped it to look sort of like a Time magazine cover. Sledge Hammer! was a great show. For some reason it only lasted two seasons. I think they didn't give it enough of a chance. Basically it was an over the top comedic version of Dirty Harry. I think one difference between Harry Callahan and Sledge Hammer (that's actually the character's name) though is that Sledge Hammer would actually talk to his gun. He was a wild and crazy character. In one episode, he brought down a whole building with a rocket launcher. Sledge Hammer! was awesome!

Leonardo x 2

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Here's a picture I put together of Leonardo, of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , back in 2007. I drew Leonardo in the two poses separately on paper. Then I photoshopped them together, with special backgrounds and red masks. This was back when the TMNT computer animated movie came out. I think it was before the movie came to theaters that I watched each of the three live action TMNT movies three nights in a row. I think all of the TMNT movies, including the computer animated one, are great. There's a new animated series due on Nickelodeon next year and live action/CGI movie due out, I think some time in the next few years. Probably by 2012. I'm looking forward to that. TMNT is awesome!

Fish Food

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Here's a comic, or cartoon, I did a few years ago. It's inspired by some fish that my family and I used to have. I thought it would make for a funny cartoon. I'm thinking about putting a monthly or weekly comic strip on here, between the banner/header and the posts area. I'll work on it and see if I can come up with some story ideas, and I'll either make it a weekly or monthly comic strip.

Josh Ralls, Artist Movie Poster

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Here's a mock teaser poster for a documentary, which doesn't exist. I just did it for fun. I was thinking about what more I could do with my art logo, and I thought it would look good on a movie poster. I used a photo shop program, and put my logo on a cork board background and used clip art of thumb tacks to put on my logo. I gave the white background of the logo a drop shadow. Lastly, I put the text on there. I thought about making it for a biopic where actors would play me and people I know. If I did that though, I might want to show the actors on the poster. Halloween has come and gone, and it's November now. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving.

Josh Ralls, Artist Wallpaper

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Since Halloween is over I decided to use a new desktop wallpaper, the previous one being a Wolf Man desktop wallpaper. I got the idea to do this wallpaper and I went with it. As you can see, it reflects the design of my blog. I also did the version below because I figure it's better to have the icons in the white space instead of the space where the tiled pictures are. They are both 1024 x 768. I think these turned out really cool.

Happy Halloween!

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My sister and I did a couple art projects for a Halloween thing at her work place. The one above is a collaboration between her and I. She made the body, and I made the hands and face. She made sort of a styrofoam pyramid and put yellow and black cloth over it for the shirt and it's black zigzag stripe. I completely painted the pumpkin and hands with acrylic paint. She hot glued the parts of the body to keep it together. This was the first project we started on. The second was the window, which you can see below. I also used acrylic paint on that. I didn't paint a jack-o-lantern face on the pumpkin or anything like that because my sister wanted to keep it up there for Thanksgiving also, and a regular pumpkin works for both. Happy Halloween!

The Man Behind the Mask

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I was watching the Friday the 13th marathon on AMC last week and I decided one night to draw Jason Vorhees. The title of this drawing, "The Man Behind the Mask," is a nod to Alice Cooper's song for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives . The music video for that song is my first, or one of my first, memories of the Friday the 13th franchise. I seem to recall my parents watching possibly that very movie in the series in the '80s. I never got into it at all until recently. I'm generally more into the classic type of horror. Werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein's monster, that sort of stuff. Halloween is two days away. I might watch one or two more Halloween movies. Happy Halloween!

Stegogator

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I had a dream about this creature. It was mainly an alligator, but it had plates on it's back like a stegosaurus has. It's been awhile since I had the dream or did the drawing, but the red eyes were either part of the look of the creature in the dream, or I just added that because I thought it would look cool. I thought this would be good for a Halloween post. Halloween is Sunday, so the Halloween themed for my postings will be coming to a close soon, if not with this post. Everybody have a happy Halloween!

The Scarecrow

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Here's an artwork I did in 2005 of the Batman villain the Scarecrow. I figured it would make for a good Halloween themed post. I mostly digitally airbrushed it, and I digitally drew the stitches on the mask. The whole thing is digitally actually. I tried to make good use of darkness in the drawing, kind of having the Scarecrow in the shadows. As a bonus, I'm posting the first draft of my award-winning "Lucky Heart" artwork.

Howling in the Night

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This drawing, from 2007, started out as just a pencil drawing of a werewolf head. I actually didn't draw a body on it. I just put the area where the body would be in complete darkness. I drew it on paper first, then scanned it and colored it. I'd gotten a Wacom tablet two years before and this was my third year coloring on computer. Before I colored it, my dad mentioned that he thought this drawing would make a good tattoo. I think you'd have to decrease the amount of the dark background. This continues my Halloween themed posting. If not this month, next month I may try to do things like comic book covers, etc.

Werewolf

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I did this werewolf drawing back in 2008. I scanned it and digitally colored it, using a fur pattern for the werewolf itself. I plan on all my posts this month being Halloween themed, although some, like this one, may feature a bonus artwork. The bonus in this post is a sequel to my artwork titled "Superman - The Blur Logo", which if you do a search in the search bar at the top of the page, you'll find a post for that one which also includes the one I did of the Zod logo. Check out "Superman - The Blur Logo 2" below. This is not an exact depiction of the Superman symbol on Clark's new red leather jacket on Smallville , but it's basically what it looks like. At first I thought the zipper going down the front of the jacket, through the symbol, looked like it disrupted the symbol. But the more I saw of it actually works really well. It helps if he doesn't pull the zipper down past the top of the symbol. This picture makes a perfect 1024 x 768 desktop wa

Who Ya Gonna Call?

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This would have made more sense if I posted it before the "Ghostbusters!" post, but here it is. This is one of a type of artwork I call "sketchback" drawings, because I drew it on the back cover of a sketchbook. I drew it in pencil and then went over it with Sharpies. I never thought about it before, but the Ghostbusters movies would actually make for good Halloween movies. I guess I never gave it any thought because it's a horror comedy, and not just horror, but then so is Shaun of the Dead .

Jack Nicholson Werewolf

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In keeping with the Halloween themed posts this month, here's another werewolf drawing. This is based on Jack Nicholson's portrayal in the 1994 movie Wolf , in which Jack Nicholson plays an aging writer who becomes revitalized after being bitten by a wolf, and discovers that he is gradually becoming one himself.

Imhotep/Joker Pumpkin

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I was watching the original 1932 version of The Mummy last night, and afterward I drew the above picture. It's not an exact likeness of the mummy in his more human form in the movie. I drew it from memory and didn't really try to make it look exactly like Boris Karloff in his role. I always imagined he'd appear with the bandages and the really rough looking face and hands throughout the movie, but he only appears like that in the beginning and throughout all but his last appearance he's in a more human form. He goes by a name other than Imhotep or the mummy in the movie, and I think it's spelled Ardeth Bay. It's a cool movie. Below are some pictures of a pumpkin I just finished painting tonight. I'm pretty sure this is the first pumpkin I've painted almost all over the whole thing. The only part that's not painted is the area where my signature is. This pumpkin, as I'm sure you can tell, is painted to look like The Joker. I drew the face on in p

Josh Ralls, Werewolf

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Here's a werewolf comic strip I made. As you can see, I digitally drew over and painted over the pictures of myself to look like I'm turning into a werewolf. I know that usually people don't turn into werewolves during the day in werewolf stories, but some do. It seems like I found out that the people in The Howling can turn into werewolves any time of day. And if you've seen the Teen Wolf movies and/or cartoon series, you know that Scott Howard and his family can too. I'm going to post this below on the blog for awhile.

Vampire Josh Speaks (Updated)

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I thought I'd make a vampire version of my artwork titled "Josh Speaks" for Halloween. I was planning on using it for my Twitter page and my "About Me" picture on here, but it looks like it would be too small to see the difference. If I were to draw a Santa Claus hat on there for Christmas or something like that, it would show up really well. This picture picture may not show up well small, but it's something to show on here in a blog post. UPDATE: I decided to go ahead use the picture as a profile picture after all.

Josh Ralls Bobble Head

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I started out this drawing as a caricature. I was thinking about the last pages of the book titled Face Off: Drawing Amazing Caricatures & Comic Portraits , by Harry Hamernik, where in some pictures they show the kind of caricature where the person has a big head and a small body. I felt like drawing like that, but then at some point I thought it would make a cool bobble head design. So, I continued on and added a base to it. At first I had his hands in his pockets. It made it resemble myself in my first logo. But, then I thought it needed something to make it more obvious that I'm an artist, besides my logo which I decided would go on the top of the base. So I redrew the elbows bent and the hands holding art supplies. The right hand holding a pencil and brush, and the left hand holding a sketch pad I figure the kind of paper in the pad could be useful for either watercolor paintings or just sketches. A regular sketch pad wouldn't work quite as well for watercolor paintings

Jeep

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This picture, which I drew in 2005, is of a Jeep my parents had in the early '80s. It had an orange color scheme. My parents have had some cool cars. An El Camino, a Malibu, a Mustang, Jeeps, and more. My sister has too. My sister's got a VW Bug. It's a classy car. At the time my parents had the Jeep, they also had a '73 Monte Carlo. That was a cool car too. My parents have had a few Jeeps over the years. Jeeps are great vehicles.

Super Freddy and Max, the Bird Wonder

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Recently, I imagined what it would be like if Freddy, my teddy bear from my child hood, and Max, the family pet, were a superhero duo flying through the sky. I thought it would be a cool concept for a drawing. It looks like something that might come from a child's imagination, and I think that gives the drawing a cool effect.

Wacky Blue Face

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Here is my entry for the "Toshiba: Cool for School Laptop Skin Design Contest" on deviantART. I just found out earlier I didn't make it as one of the 25 finalists. This the second one where I didn't even make it as one of the finalists, but I figure if I keep trying I'll eventually get somewhere in one of those contests. I thought of a few different ideas for my submission, including some kind of abstract picture and a food design with a pattern consisting hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, things like that. I finally decided this "Wacky Blue Face" would make an interesting laptop skin.

Sword of Omens

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I was watching Thundercats last night and it occurred to me, there hasn't been a show like it since, or at least not many. For one thing, the animation is very realistic and detailed. Most animated action shows nowadays have a style similar to that of Batman: the Animated Series , or anime. Those types of animation are great, but there's been nothing that looks like Thundercats since the '80s or early '90s. Another thing is, as far as I remember, there also hasn't been many animated shows like it in the fantasy genre since. I think you could probably describe it as being somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. I know there aren't talking cat people, living in a lair shaped like a giant cat, in either of those, but it sort of has the feel of those. Third Earth sort of resembles a world like the one in Lord of the Rings, with all kinds characters, but there is also technology like in Star Wars. Star Wars also has some worlds that don't look as tec

Max Davinci, 8th Evil Ex

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I saw the 25 semi-finalists for the "Scott Pilgrim: Create the 8th Evil Ex" contest on deviantART, and unfortunately, I'm not one of the finalists. With that, I figure I can show it here on my blog now, in case you haven't seen it yet. The type of sword is actually a katana. The metal pencil darts are entirely metal, but the tips are left bare while the rest of each dart is painted. As you can see, he carries the pencil darts in the strap attached to the sheath, or holster, for his katana. The pallet blade is also bare except for the paint blobs on it. It has an edge most of the way around that is like a saw blade. It can be swung while held in the hand or thrown like frisbee. As it says, Max Davinci likes ninja movies. In fact, you might say he watches them too often. Ramona and Max had a mutual break up, but Max regrets the decision, and he gets jealous when he finds out that Scott wants to date her, so he is more than happy with the League of Evil Exes' decisio

Super Max

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My sister's peach faced lovebird, Max, thinks he's tough (smiling). I thought of him with that logo on his little chest and a cape, and I decided to draw it. He's already got wings, and doesn't really need a cape, but I figured he should have something besides just the logo.

Into the Vortex

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Here's another dA muro artwork. I may soon try to experiment with with dA muro more and do something else like a comic book drawing or a portrait.