Gerhard's Blog, page 4

To the Vark Cave!

Daryl had requested a “Cerebus Batman… a scene in the bat cave might be cool with the T-Rex and the giant penny… maybe even a batmobile…”

While I was searching for reference images I quickly realized that what I was most interested in drawing were almost all from the original 1966 TV series. I was wondering if mashing up elements from different sources (like the T-Rex) was going to be a problem.

Then it registered that I was doing a cartoon aardvark in a bat suit and that things like continuity and constancy did really enter into it:

 

The post To the Vark Cave! first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Tilting at…

Terrence emailed me and asked, “…I’d like to possibly work with you on a commission for a gift… I’d like to go with something close to the amount of detail what you see in your piece “Falling Water”.   For the subject of the piece, I want to focus on the Dutch windmill in the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden in Golden Gate Park of San Francisco…”

 

…and here it is:

Okay… what’s next?

The post Tilting at… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Give ’em a Hand…

I got and email from Jimmy which read, in part:

“… I hope this isn’t too weird of a commission request. I’m trying to get commissioned pieces of comic character hands (can include forearm) that shows enough to give a clue as to who they are. I work with hands for my job so thought it would be cool to have commission pieces like this. I was hoping I could get a Cerebus hand or forearm either posed (as best as a single extremity can be) or with a signature weapon in hand. I have a “handful” of commissions like this already...”

 

For the record:

There is no such thing as a “too weird of a commission request“.

The post Give ’em a Hand… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Brian’s Portrait…

Brian Coppola: Alchemist at large:

Portrait by Sean Micheal Robinson.

Olde Timey alchemy stuff by me.

The post Brian’s Portrait… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Frank L’s Grandparents…

Here’s another commission that I had abandoned years ago. I liked it as a pencil drawing but Frank, whose grandparents this is, really wanted inked. I was absolutely convince that I would fu@k this up if I tired to ink it, so I set it aside.

I ended up with a hybrid of inked with pencil shading that we both liked:

So there…

The post Frank L’s Grandparents… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Oh, right…

…right… I have a blog. Really should post something.

After my “Big Studio Clean of 2022” I decided to finish commissions that I’ve hanging around waiting for the proper inspiration/motivation.

You can wait ’til hell freezes over.

The only way to get inspired/motivated is to just sit down and

DO THE FRICKIN’ WORK!

So… here’s one that I had abandoned and that prompted me to institute a “No More Superheroes” policy:

Okay… what’s next?

The post Oh, right… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Big Picture…

Tracing paper rough:

Final inked page:

Repeat as necessary.

The post Big Picture… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Lots of Room…

Here’s a technique that I rather enjoyed… a single, large illustration broken up into many little panels:

This allowed lots of thoughts to take place with a sense of the passage of time while I only had to figure out one background.

The reason this background is inset (the white border top, bottom and right side) is to tie it into the previous page where the background actually starts.

Plus…

white space = no crosshatching.

The post Lots of Room… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

First of the Last…

Continuing with my tracing paper prelims…

This looks to be for the cover of Cerebus 291:

Yup…

it is:

The Cerebus character was added later… digitally.

This was the first time that I used a computer rather than physically cutting and pasting.

(after all… it was 2003: let’s get with the new millennium)

I also did the colours on the computer.

Which means the original art still looks like this:

The little calendar on the side of the desk was added digitally as well.

I was working from home at this point and didn’t know that there needed to be a calendar there.

It doesn’t show up until issue 293:

Which means that Dave was working at least three issue ahead of me at this point.

He had drawn and lettered the calendar which I scanned and added to the cover.

 

 

The post First of the Last… first appeared on Gerhard Art.

Light me…

Here’s another thing I came across in my Big Clean Up.

Way back in the olden days I had software called “3D Home Architect” running on our pre-Pentium 486 computer. I could design and furnish a room in floor-plan mode, then click on the 3D render button and go for a coffee or go back to my drawing board for awhile as mere tens of minutes later I’d have something that looked like this that I could print out:

The lamp on the pillow and the floor lamp represent the characters. Lamps were easily resizable and positionable making them a great stand-in. The black splotches are from me drawing on back of the paper, on the light table, with a marker, very quickly figuring out what the lighting might be for this scene:

This was used as a guide to for the final renderings:

 

The post Light me… first appeared on Gerhard Art.