patokon blog

My favorite Weapon X, Laura Kinney is my daily sketch today.  Immediately I want to start critiquing. I'm getting better at hair, which doesn't say a whole lot, and my proportions are so much better than before (the big head is on purpose, jeez!). The pose isn't dynamic enough - too stiff, the leather texture needs work and the head should actually be bigger to match the proportions I used yesterday (consistency dammit!). This might be a good candidate for re-drawing in the big notebook. 

Spider Woman was the first collected comic I ever got (back in 1980) and I've been fascinated by heroines ever since.  There were other Spider Women, but she's always been the only one for me.

I got a new Moleskine sketchbook in a human size after drooling over JR's (see  http://jimssketchblog.blogspot.jp/)  nifty LotR one. Mine is the ltd. ed. Mickey Mouse one, so there! Anyway, after talking to several artist friends, I've decided to use this bigger sketchbook to explore things I've drawn in my smaller one.  This is my first big sketch. It's Deadpool because I recently started reading Deadpool MAX (almost wrote DP MAX, but that would be oh so wrong) and I really liked it. Kyle Baker is so awesome and he's the reason I bought it.  This is the smaller piece I did yesterday that inspired the bigger one.  I won't be doing the big drawings every day, but whenever I want to explore new stuff or try new techniques I'll use the bigger book to do so. The challenge for this particular piece was doing all the scarring. The texture overwhelmed the costume tatters as I was afraid it would, but I'm still not unhappy with the results.  I'd be happy to ...

Sun. night I was sampling too much beer when I drew this pretty #monstober #inktober monster.  Then afterwards, I drew a li'l Deadpool which I'll share in my next post. 

Okay, I'm about to post some crazy $#!% so hang on to your ballbags. When living in Tokyo (and probably any other part of Japan), you get the opportunity to add a bunch of slashes to your skill set. Where in NYC, most of the people you meet are waiter/dancer, waiter/screenwriter, waiter/actor, most of the people I know are teacher/artist, teacher/voice actor, teacher/writer, or teacher/singer. Though according to my various targeted CVs I am a translator/interpreter, an artist/animator/illustrator, a writer/proofreader/editor/copywriter, and/or a teacher/lecturer, I've also been called upon to do voice work, motion capture work, and good-ole fashion acting. It started when I was asked to translate the script for a short animated segment and then was asked to do a test voice for one of the characters. The director, Yusaku Furuya  liked my portrayal and I ended playing a bucktoothed trailer trash yokel (my kinda guy) who joins his friend on a roadtrip a...

Guys (including myself) are seriously ugly when we cry. Nothing keeps me more humble than remembering how butt-ugly my cry-face is.  For contrast, I drew a Heian-kyo inspired lady of the court. 

[Note: Check This $#!% Out was originally a seperate blog but is now a feature of patokon blog ] Since my kindergarten class where we had a guest teacher with a monkey puppet that spoke only French, I've been interested in the French language. My interest never went as deep as my interest in Asian languages, but deep enough that I have several dozens of books in or about French. My first French movie exposure was the stylish thriller DIVA . The opening opera scene still gives me goosebumps just due to the amazing singing of Wilhelminia Wiggins Fernandez . It would be another few years before I got to see Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita . A few years after that I saw the fantastic comedic horror (or horrific comedy)  Delicatessen , and the classic slapstick spy comedy, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe .   I really enjoyed these two genres of French film, the comedy and the action thriller and always looked forward to finding new works by these actors and direct...