I’m taking some time this evening to play around with Carlos Grangel’s technique for creating character designs. I’ve chosen to focus on characters from the movie Enter the Dragon staring Burce Lee. In the opening of the movie, we find Lee fighting a Shaolin fighter played by Sammo Hung. My designs include Lee, the Shaolin Fighter, and the head Shaolin monk. The next steps are to flesh out these designs with more details.
Digital tools
I was fortunate enough to take a trip to the Caribbean with my family. During our visit, we spent a little time browsing the gift shops. We came across several Pirate displays. It seemed odd at first and then it hit me, duh you’re in the Caribbean. The Pirates of the Caribbean, that’s right this is the area where they flourished. That’s when I decided to create this piece of artwork.
This is a short example of my process.
There’s nothing quite like drawing late into the night and falling asleep during the process. Drawing takes me to a Zen state of mind where I lose all sense of time. Here are three images that come from those drawing sessions.
On May 25th, 1977 a movie was released that would forever change my life, that movie was Star Wars. Now, I’m not trying to sound overly dramatic or anything, but trust me when I say that I am not the type of fan that cares who shot first; we all know who shot first. Star Wars as it was simply called back then, was filled with amazing characters that any 8-year old boy would call awesome; CP3O, R2-D2, Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Han, and Chewbacca. Chewbacca was played by the actor Peter Mayhew who passed away on April 30, 2019. It’s bizarre how a fictional character could play such a huge part in a person’s life. Throughout the years I saw Peter Mayhew a few times at various comic conventions. I always wanted to go up to him and purchase an autograph. However, I was simply too timid to go up to him and ask. Silly I know, but it’s something I regret not doing. Hearing of his passing made me think that I need to stop being afraid and allowed myself to be vulnerable. On the day of his passing, I drew this picture as a tribute to the actor who portrayed one of my favorite Star Wars characters, R.I.P. Peter Mayhew.
There’s no deep meaning to this piece, other than I was just practicing my figure drawing. I decided to combine these two images in the hope that it would look interesting. I titled it Tossing out the trash just because that’s what it looks like she’s doing.
My lovely wife works very hard and therefore has a tendency to fall asleep at night while we watch TV. However, she has a very special gift and that is to somehow answer my questions correctly when I ask her how did the movie end. 😲 I don’t draw from life nearly enough, so when she sleeps it an opportunity to get in some life drawing. SHE DON’T MIND! Only my wife will get that reference. 🙂
This drawing was just a simple exercise to see how many different elements I could add into a drawing and tell some kind of a story. The title, The Battle at Monkey Village has no real meaning other than these two warriors are about to fight in a monkey village. With that said, maybe there is a bigger story here to tell. Why are they fighting? Why are they in the monkey village? Which warrior is good and which is bad? It might be fun to explore the narrative of this piece and see where it goes.
As a kid I always loved watching classic monster/horror movies, I still watch them today. Do you remember Fangoria? The horror film fan magazine. Man! Did I love those Basil Gogos covers, he was one of the best. This piece is just one of many drawings I’ve done through the years of those classic monsters.