Here is a highly charged drawing by Brett Booth from Hi-Yah!: How to Draw Martial Arts Characters. I've included one of the how to draw steps if you want to try your hand at drawing a similar character.

Here is the character from yesterday's post with his mask pulled back. This is also a nice example of Brett Booth's pencils before and after my coloring.

Here is another example of an illustration with quite a bit of punch from the upcoming "Hi-Yah!" book.

"Gung Ho!: How to Draw Fantastic Military Comics" is on fire! This volume has turned out to be my fastest seller yet. It is rapidly climbing the Bookscan charts. Thanks to all you guys and gals out there who've made it a roaring success.

Today's illustration is what I drew for the frontispiece of "Hi-Yah!" Sometimes my editor will decide on using something else for space or design reasons, but I always try to sneak in one extra fun drawing that sums up the project for me.

Ninja (??) were said to be agents of espionage and assassination in feudal Japan in legend and popular fiction. Some modern practitioners of budo ninjutsu argue that ninja were used primarily as spies, not assassins; and this appears to be borne out by some historical records. It is popularly believed that the ancient ninja were peasants, forbidden under law from studying the samurai swordplay techniques because of feudal Japan's caste structure; but more likely they originated from a variety of castes.

Ninja are said to have made use of weapons that could be easily concealed or disguised as common tools. Weapons commonly attributed to them included shuriken and bo. In popular folklore, ninja also used special short swords called ninja-ken (or ninja-to see below for explanation). Ninja-ken are smaller than katana but larger than wakizashi. The ninja-to was more of a utilitarian tool than a weapon. Another version of the ninja sword was the shikoro ken (saw sword). The shikoro ken was said to be used to gain entry into fortresses. The shikoro ken supposedly could also be used to cut (or saw) through opponents.

When I was a kid on Saturday mornings I would watch cartoons all morning long, when they went off I would look for a monster movie to watch, if I couldn't find a monster movie then I would look for a kung fu flick. Perhaps nothing reminds me more of those old cheesey kung fu flicks than the old sword on sword sound effect they used, that ka-ching sound still makes me smile.

Here is another shot of my drawing space. One of the most important tools I have is a mirror. It is great for practicing expressions or flipping an image to see if it is skewed, plus you always have a smiling face to keep you company!

I sometimes get requests to see pictures of my studio. I imagine people have the idea they need a lot of space to draw for a living. My drawing table actually shares space with our washer and dryer in our laundry room. I guess I never totally learned the lesson to keep my room clean as you can tell from the toys, comics, and art supplies strewed about.

I wanted to go with sort of a Western feel to the colors on this piece. This guy looks cool and would have made the shoot out at the OKAY corral a whole lot more exciting.

Brett Booth threw down some pretty mean pencils on this Samurai. Coloring by moi.

Some ninja, just hang'n around.

Kung Fu pirate babe with a monkey? What's not to love?

Here are some of the steps to the Dan Norton character from last month.

Here is the previous Sumo drawing in colored form.

I love each new book I do. I get to draw stuff I never had to do before. Here is my first Sumo drawing.

Here lizard lizard. Not only can the frilled lizard run on its hind legs, but it can also practice ninjitsu when it is genetically altered in "Hi-Yah!"

steps for the frilled dragon

For every bad goth girl type there needs to be a squeaky clean girl next door...

Brett Booth was just announced as working on a new vampire comic book for Dabel Bros. Pro. But I have some early goth goodness from Mr. Booth in "Hi-Yah: How to Draw Fantastic Martial Arts Characters"