Conte Basenji

literally just finished this one, it's done in grey and black conte on brown paper. The basenji is a very unique dog instead of barking it produces a more high pitched yodeling sound. we have a dog here at home that is half basenji she is very active and is always looking for a little critter to chase after. love these dogs!

spring hare

This is a new one for me, I've been trying my hand at conte and charcoal lately and have been having lots of fun with it; I never got into using these materials before thinking I couldn't do it but all it takes is a little time and patience, enjoy!

            

close up of the eye

Tattooing - a career path?

 Just recently a friend and I decided to order a tattoo gun kit, which comes with all the necessary items and materials to tattoo with, so we pooled together some money and put our order in.

The kit came with 4  cast iron tattoo machines (guns). The cast iron makes them a bit harder to overheat, even though it makes them a little bit heavier then other lightweight machines you can acquire ; but weight preference is different with everyone, i do not mind or really notice the extra weight of the cast iron. We both have 2 each, i have one setup for doing lining, and the other is set to do shading.

 The case the kit came in is shown above; also, sitting within the case is the amp, cord and pedal, a box of metal sterilized needles, practice skin pads, black non latex gloves, and it also came with 40 1/4 OZ bottles of ink.

 The 40 bottles of ink just taken out of the package, all different colors.

 Above-my first tattoo on real skin! i used a piece of pig-skin to practice on, since it is the closest type of skin to humans. this is just the out-line of it.

This picture was taken just as i finished shading it; practicing on the pig-skin was so much better than using the fake-skin that the kit came with since the pig skin reacts just like human skin would.

More tats to come soon!

Black and white portrait in pencil

 

 

 

 

 I was asked to do this portrait by a friend for their parents. This took about 6 hours to complete, and maybe a little longer since i also did a quick practice one before i attempted doing the finished piece; just so i knew i would get their faces right. This was good practice for myself; hope you enjoy.

New Beginning- The Joker

Inspired by comic and graphic novel illustrator Lee Bermejo, here is the drawing of the Joker i did as a practice for myself; this first photo is about 3 quarters of the way done.

A close up of the Jokers evil grin and his victims forced smile.

Me adding some of the finishing touches to the sketch.

The finished project. I did the whole sketch in graphite first and then began to go over it in ink using micron pens; the graphite allows me to add a large range of light to dark shadows and the pens were good to use for the darkest of the shadows. The whole sketch took about 10-12 hours in all to complete.