Life has been a bit of a blur recently, so I'm not drawing as much as I should be. That being said I have a tendency to only want to post something here if it's a completed, colored to the nines piece. This only makes me look even less prolific than I already do. I think it's because if I didn't feel the need to finish it, I probably didn't like something about it once I completed the sketch/inks etc. I need to get over that a bit, and showcase the process more, warts and all.

All that being said, here are some brush pen drawings I've done in recent weeks, trying to get the hang of the medium a bit better. Just some characters sketches and whatnot. I'm also not quite ready to give up on the grey scale markers for shading.

Labels: brush pen, character design, goat man, third eye

This picture has been a bit of a personal failure of mine. It has sat dormant on my drafting table for far longer than I'd care to admit. The problem I believe is that it represents the truest example of the style I've always strived to achieve, and completing it was downright intimidating.

The pencils for this picture I've posted here before, and while I did enjoy those, I always intended this piece to be inked. Another challenge with this was that it was the first picture I tried inking with a light table. I chose all the wrong paper, so that seeing the underlying pencil was a muddied mess. There was a lot of flipping back to the original pencil to see just what I was trying to ink.

All of that aside, I've walked away from this picture with quite a few lessons learned, and hope to stay prolific in the coming months. Next on my plate will be coloring this piece, and cursing out each and every little twig and branch along the way. Enjoy!

Labels: brush pen, giant monsters, pen and ink, Tree Spirit

Trying to do all my ink work traditional with a brush pen, rather than on the computer or using a handful of different pen sizes. I find the speed boost is nice, but challenging still to get exactly what I'm after. Practice, practice, practice..

Labels: brush pen, ink, Nautical, robots

I had started this picture a few weeks back for the topic "Giant Monsters" at Drawer Geeks, but never got around to finishing it. Sort of plugged away at the inks over a few lunch hours recently. Came to some interesting conclusions about my art and where I'd like it to go after completing this one, but we'll see what happens with that later.


This was a character sketch I did after reading a friend's comic treatment. I'd love to be involved in this, but I have to be true to my prior commitments.

Labels: brush pen, Drawer Geeks, giant monsters, goblins

This is for the topic "Witch" over at Drawer Geeks. This was part of a challenge with an artist friend (Steve Ogden). The challenge was to finish the piece in an hour. I drew the original drawing in about 1/2 hour, then about an hour on the photoshop grayscale. So I guess I succeeded on the drawing, then failed in the Photoshop. One step forward...

Labels: brush pen, Drawer Geeks, grayscale, Photoshop, Witch

This is for the topic "Giant Monsters" over at Drawer Geeks. Probably the first time I've slammed together colors without looking back and nitpicking. Not that I'm saying it's perfect, but it was a good experiment. Done with brush pen, pen and colored in Photoshop, in about an hour or so.

True story, I got the idea to give this monster piercing blue eyes after hearing Stephen Harper described that way. I'm just sayin'...

Labels: brush pen, Drawer Geeks, giant monsters, Photoshop, Stephen Harper

This was my original sketch for the "Lord of the Rings" topic at Drawer Geeks, but I ran out of time. I decided to finish it because I thought it had promise. This was done with a brush pen and Photoshop. The things I tried to focus on this time were limited palette, and no fancy Photoshop tricks such as blurs or fancy brushes. This was done using the pencil tool and a few gradients. Often times I get caught up trying to add more bells and whistles and really eat away my time.

Labels: brush pen, colour, Drawer Geeks, Ent, Lord of the Rings, Photoshop

This week at Drawer Geeks the theme was "Star Belly" with an open interpretation. This is what I came up with. I tried to use this as an opportunity to try out new things and new methods (such as using a brush pen, spot blacks and speeding up rendering). All in all I was pretty pleased with the results. Let me know what you think!

Labels: brush pen, character design, colour, Drawer Geeks, Star Belly

I did this sketch yesterday while sitting in a coffee shop at lunch. It was done with a brush-pen with India ink, and completely different from how I work. I was actually stumped in sketching, and just picked up the pen and drew what was in front of me on the table. Very unplanned, and the majority of it done in one stroke. Let me know what you think.

Labels: brush pen, coffee shop, sketch