Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

I’ve decided to start this blog as an attempt to reflect and invite criticism on my artwork. Too often us artists work in a vacuum so I hope that this will be an avenue that I can use to continue to improve my abilities.

So, to kick off my first blog post I thought I would start at the beginning. And the beginning for me would be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is the beginning because the TMNT were one of my first real inspirations to draw and through my TMNT obsessed childhood I came to love and appreciate art. Being that I’ve been short on inspiration lately, I decided to crank out a little piece of TMNT fan art to hopefully get the juices flowing again.

I started by doing a little study of a TMNT comic panel from the Raphael micro series by Eastman and Laird. I wanted to try and understand the shading techniques especially. One thing that I loved about the old TMNT comics was the zip-a-tone shading. It creates really interesting texture and depth. It was further enhanced by the newsprint paper. Why don’t comics print on newsprint anymore? I’m sure for archival reasons newsprint isn’t the best choice but it did give those old comics a real “comic book” feel. Now when you pick up a comic it feels more like a magazine, all shiny, slick and hyper white. But I digress….

I then created a full-size sketch of my concept- Michelangelo running away from an enraged Raphael who has a couple eggs on his head. I find the areas I have the most difficulty with are always the backgrounds. Next time I think I’ll use some more reference. I also decided to frame the background and place Mikey outside of it to give it a more geometrically designed feel.

And here is the finished piece. For the most part I am happy with how it came out but I still would like to take another crack at the background. I’m still learning with the ink wash technique but I’m finding it is much more fun than photoshop. The unpredictability of water lends a whole new element to the process. I added a little text with illustrator to add some more context to the action and a little humor. What do you think? An egg-cellent piece of work or a scrambled attempt?