Wednesday, August 31, 2005


Here are the inked and color steps for the GI-Robot.

Here are the steps from loose layout to finished color for my GI-Robot. He will appear in my upcoming Gung Ho!: How To Draw Fantastic Military Characters book.

Here is a sample of Brett Booth's work for one of my upcoming books. Will it be the military book or the kung fu book? You'll just have to wait and see.

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they fought with expert timing

They were funky China men from funky Chinatown
They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down
It's an ancient Chineese art and everybody knew their part
From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they fought with expert timing

There was funky Billy Chin and little Sammy Chung
He said here comes the big boss, lets get it on
We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand
The sudden motion made me skip now we're into a brand knew trip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they did it with expert timing

(repeat)..make sure you have expert timing
Kung-fu fighting, had to be fast as lightning

Tuesday, August 30, 2005


Amargasaurus was an unusual looking dinosaur. It had a set of double sails running down its back which may have continued up its neck or may have tapered off into a double row of spikes. It is one of those dinos which scientists and artists are working hand in hand to come up with a logical appearance for. This is what is so fascinating about being a paleoartist, it allows you to play mystery sleuth and piece together the clues to come up with a complete animal. Bryan Baugh knocked this illustration out of the ball park, as he did with everything he contributed to Thunder Lizards!: How to Draw Fantastic Dinosaurs.

Monday, August 29, 2005


Giganotosaurus by Brett Booth in its penciled/digital inked stage.The wonderful thing about working with so many great artists is I learn tons of tips and tricks in the process of putting my artbooks together. By the time a project is finished I look back at my early pages and think, "I could draw that better now." Brett was especially helpful with providing insight on how to apply details without allowing them to over dominate a piece. You can see how Brett seperates the underbelly from the rest of the dino by how much detail he puts in.

Sunday, August 28, 2005


I sometimes get asked why I don't just do all the drawings in my books myself. If you had the opportunity to work with some of the best comic artists in the world wouldn't you take it? I was a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was growing up. Besides their creators Eastman and Laird, Jim Lawson was the artist I loved to see draw the shelled butt-kickers the most. He put out a terrific sci-fi comic book mini series called Dino Island before creating a wonderful dino centric series called Paleo which he is still producing. I was thrilled to line Jim up for a couple pieces in my Thunder Lizards! book.

Friday, August 26, 2005


Brett Booth did a ton of work in Thunder Lizards! so I went easy on him for Gung Ho! There are about half a dozen pics from him in it. But the Kung Fu book I got cook'n now is wall to wall Brett Booth Kung Fu goodness!

Thursday, August 25, 2005


Here is a wonderful Allosaurus example by my long time friend Bryan Baugh. I really learned a lot about how to draw dinosaurs from looking over his shoulder during our college years. I was so excited to get to use many of his stunning depictions of dinos for my book Thunder Lizards!

Wednesday, August 24, 2005


This is the first image you see in Thunder Lizards! when you open it up; this is the page I usually sign and do a quick sketch on. I've had tons of fun coming up with all sorts of sketches and stuff to goof off with around this guy. I should have saved a copy of the version with the party hat and noise maker.

Here is another picture from my upcoming book Gung Ho! This time I want to showcase the incredible coloring by Joseph Damon, an alumni from the Wildstorm coloring studios.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005


I'm going to try to alternate showcasing artwork from my current book Thunder Lizards! with a few sneak peeks from my upcoming book Gung Ho! This is a bad guy drawn by the one and only Dan Norton who did tons of work on Gung Ho! I know you guys are going to go ga-ga over all the great designs he did.

Monday, August 22, 2005


In Your Face! Here is one of the heavily armed troops from my next book Gung Ho!: How to Draw Fantastic Military Characters. It has tons of great artwork from me, Brett Booth, and the stellar Dan Norton! Check it out this October!

Sunday, August 21, 2005


Here is a real treat. This is a Kung Fu character from next year's book Hi-Yah: How to Draw Fantastic Martial Arts Characters. This power kicker is by Steve Hamaker the colorist of Jeff Smith's Bone and my old cubicle neighbor from my Resaurus Toy company days. Steve is one of the best colorists I know and he is a delight to work with, hunt down his indie comic Fish'n'Chips if you want a tasty treat for the eyes.

Friday, August 19, 2005


This mammoth elephant man is for an upcoming super secret project. I designed him after I recently watched the Hulk movie again. I wanted to draw some sort of super muscled freak and this is what came out.

Thursday, August 18, 2005


Quit surfing the web and get back to drawing! This is me in my army uniform, an illustration from my upcoming military How to Draw Book. I use this illustration along with various word balloons as motivation to keep me working.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005


In my book Thunder Lizards I ended up with way too many examples of certain popular dinosars like the T-Rex, so I left out my versions to showcase the work of my friends. Here is a rampaging tyrant lizard who will find his way into the next volume I'm sure.

Monday, August 15, 2005


Here is one of my favorite characters Brett Booth drew for my first book "Freaks!: How to Draw Fantastic Fantasy Characters." Brett owns 16 dogs, so he really knows his canines. He is one of the truly great artists to come out of the Image comics boom of the 90's. I wouldn't be surprised if Marvel or DC threw him a nice exclusive contract in the near future.

Sunday, August 14, 2005


Here is an image from my upcoming book "Gung-Ho!: How to Draw Fantastic Military Characters and Vehicles." It should be out in October. This is a picture of an F-14 flying below the horizon line. The perspective lines go back to the two vanishing points, making this an example of two point perspective, pretty easy, huh?

Saturday, August 13, 2005


Here are the original pencils to the Brett Booth Spinosaurus in Thunder Lizards! (page 52.) Spinosaurus is called "spiny lizard" because it had a series of large neural spines up to 6 feet (1.8 m) long coming out of its back vertebrae, probably forming a sail-like fin that may have helped in thermoregulation, mating rituals and/or intraspecies rivalry. Spinosaurus had a relatively flexible upper spine (these vertebrae had modified ball-and-socket-joints) so it could arch its back somewhat, perhaps being able to spread the sail (like opening the ribs of a fan).

Spinosaurus was bipedal (it walked on two legs). It was about 40-50 feet long (12-15 m) and weighed 4 tons or more (some paleontologists estimate it weighed up to perhaps 8 tons); it is the largest known spinosaurid (a type of large, meat-eating dinosaur). It had a large head with sharp, straight, non-serrated teeth in powerful, crocodile-like jaws. Its arms were smaller than its legs but were larger than the arms of most other theropods. It may have gone on all fours at times.

Friday, August 12, 2005


Here is a fun experiment. I just started doodling with a marker and I ended up with a pretty cool horn-headed monster guy. This piece appeared in a UK fantasy magazine along with several other muscled brutes from my sketchbook.

Thursday, August 11, 2005


Well I usually start the day with a fun little drawing just for myself. Today i decided to try my hand at the V-Rex from the upcoming Kong. This is still pretty rough, but not bad for my first attempt at a new creature. Looks like I need to keep practicing.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005


A weird thing happened on my second book Scared! (Co-authored with Bryan Baugh), I got to draw Frankenstein's monster for the first time. I was equally influenced by Bernie Wrightson's work and the MAD cartooning style of Jack Davis (remember his 6 foot wall Frankenstein advertised in most comic books during the early 80's?). I never had given Frankie much thought, but I discovered I really did enjoy drawing this man-made monster. I think the strength of the character lies in Mary Shelley's original depiction of the creature as a sorrowful reanimated monstrosity of nature. The story's central warning of man should not play God also holds great appeal for me. Since that initial drawing I've received lots of interest in my depiction of the monster which have resulted in me landing a few new jobs, so that pale faced patchwork man has been pretty good to me.

Page 69 of Thunder Lizards! has the colored version of these Ornitholestes. I just thought the original linework was too beautiful to go unshown, so here it is with a little digital inking from yours truly.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005


This rather simple illustration took days to research and draw. The classifications of dinosarurs are always being reordered and shifted around, but I think this gives a pretty stable view of the current understanding of the dinosaur family tree.

Here is one of my favorite characters from Freaks!: How to Draw Fantastic Fantasy Characters. I thought if would be funny and appropriate to costume a raccoon as a Pirate since they are both known for their thievery. I was reminded about this on our recent camping trip when several "masked bandits" made off with the contents of our treasure chest (well, actually it was our Igloo cooler.)

Monday, August 08, 2005


Here is an example of what you'll find in Thunder Lizards. Anatomically accurate skeletons and stunning illustrations with easy to follow steps. This is an Acrocanthosaurus (meaning "high-spine lizard" because of the spikes growing out of its spine.) It was a fierce predator that was roughly 30-40 feet (9-12 m) long and weighed about 5,000 pounds (2300 kg). It had a big head, with a 4.5 foot (1.4 m) long skull and 68 thin, sharp, serrated teeth. It had 17-inch (43 cm) spikes extending from its vertebrae, along the neck and tail, that may have formed a thick, fleshy sail on its back. It had powerful arms, and each hand had three fingers, equipped with long, sickle-like claws.

Here is an Ouranosaurus pencilled by the super talented Brett Booth. I inked it and tweaked the coloring for print. This bad boy arrived a bit late to make it into Thunder Lizards! vol. 1, but he will definately be in the next volume.

Sunday, August 07, 2005


About the size of a housecat, Compsognathus was a bird-like dinosaur that walked on two long, thin legs; it had three-toed feet. A long tail acted as a counterbalance and for stability during fast turns. It had short arms with two clawed fingers on each hand. Compsognathus had a small, pointed head with small, sharp teeth, hollow bones, and a long, flexible neck. Here in this example drawn by Bryan Baugh you can see just how thin and wirery the Compsognathus was. Hopefully from this and the other examples you can start to recognize some of the common anatomical shapes that appear over and over again in Theropods.

Saturday, August 06, 2005


Utahraptors by Brett Booth. There is still a lot of speculation about if Dinosaurs had feathers. I don't know if they did or didn't, but it sure makes for some cool looking Thunder Lizards.

Here is one more look at the Thunder Lizards cover this time in its black and white stage. Pencilling this baby almost put me into bifocals, it really gave my eyes a workout putting in all those details, but I think the final image was worth the trouble, what do you think?

At zazzle.com in the left side index click on Animals, Pets: Animals: Pre-Historic: Jurassic: Brachiosaurus to find the print.

or try the link below:
http://www.zazzle.com/products/product/product.asp?general%5Fcategory%5Fid=103288959224668130&general%5Frecs%5Fper%5Fpage=48&caching=on&product%5Fid=228961884991872005&index=1


Zazzle.com now has the cover to Thunder Lizards available as a huge poster. It would look great in a bedroom, studio, or a classroom. You should be able to find it by searching using key words dinosaur or lizards. If you have trouble locating the print drop me an e-mail and I will send you a direct link.

The cover to Thunder Lizards! went through many changes and variations during the editing process, here is a look at how originally I had planned it to appear. You'll notice from my website the final version is a little more chromatic and cropped quite a bit, it makes it a bit more eye-catching and for that reason a better cover. I thought you might enjoy this alternate version as sort of a look behind the scenes on how an image evolves from conception to print.

Dilophosaurus was a fast-moving bipedal predator that had a double crest on its head. Although it was depicted as spitting poison in the Jurassic Park movie, there is no fossil evidence that it did so (it was also pictured far too small, with an incorrect skull, and with a frill it did not have). Sadly this is another entry that got removed because of space limitations in my book Thunder Lizards! The first example is from artist Bryan Baugh (cryptlogic.net), the second is from artist Brett Booth. I supplied the coloring. I also inked the Booth piece. Dilophosaurus will definately be in my next dino book, but for now you can view it right here; sort of like a deleted scene from a dvd.

Pleisiosaurus was a marine reptile that lived in the open oceans at the time of the dinosaurs. Known to have swallowed rocks for ballast and for grinding food. The largest of the currently known marine reptiles. Originally this pleisiosaurus skeleton was going to be in Thunder Lizards! but I ran out of room for the aquatic reptiles chapter. I'm busy orgainizing this picture and others for a second volume of How to Draw Dinosaurs to hopefully be published in a couple of years (I have tons of other books coming your way first.)

Here is a nice bw picture of a Brett Booth drawn Theropod. It appears in its colored form in my book Thunder Lizards! I thought you all might like a peek at what it looked like before I threw on a little Photoshop magic Posted by Picasa

Friday, August 05, 2005


Here is an example of what you will find in Thunder Lizards!: How to Draw Fantastic Dinosaurs. These are four steps for drawing a Carnotaurus by Bryan Baugh Posted by Picasa

Here is a sample from my upcoming book "Gung Ho!" First step is a basic figure drawing. In the second step I roughed in the placement for all the straps gear, helmet, and misc. tech stuff. Third step I tightened the line work and of course added color. Posted by Picasa

Big Appleseed type Cyborg Drawing Posted by Picasa

Mecha Ape for Bryan Baugh's new space book Posted by Picasa

Butterfly Swords Guy. Here is what I'm drawing today, a picture for my upcoming martial arts book. Posted by Picasa

Thunder Lizards pic by Brett Booth Posted by Picasa