Gears of War 2

An attempt to turn my pencil sketch of Marcus Fenix into a digital painting.

Coloring Samples

Line art by: Leinil Yu and Mark Morales, Ben Oliver, and Mitch Breitweiser.

Gears of War

Was asked to do a sketch of a character from a video game. I went with Marcus Fenix from GoW.

Cap

I colored this line art by Mitch Breitweiser for a contest he's hosting over on deviantART.

Sketch Cards

Messing around trying my hand at sketch cards. Took the some of the ones I liked and threw some digital colors on 'em. I never really understand the appeal of sketch cards but I actually had a lot of fun doing them. Will probably do more in the future.

Hulk cover Paintover finished

Well, here it is. Took a whole hell of a lot longer than I intended. Honestly, I got about 3/4 of the way done and just got really bored with this pic. I forced myself to just finish it up last night and now that it is I am pretty happy with it. There are parts that didn't come out great and parts I hate, but overall a good practice piece for digital painting.

Hulk cover Paintover WIP

This is a small section of a work in progress digital painting I just started. It started out as just another practice/portfolio piece when I found this kickass line art from Olivier Coipel and Mark Morales online, but as soon as I started it I thought it would be a nice challenge to turn it into a painting with my own feel to it. I guess I was inspired by the recent Marko Djurdjevic paintover of one of Coipel's Thor covers.

Nuclear Family NSFW

Took my pencil sketch into Painter X to do digital inks. The first time I've really tried to ink a piece digitally, not too bad, kinda liked it. I then brought the inked version into Photoshop 7 to apply the grayscale colors. Text done in Illustrator. I'm really happy with this piece, though I'm probably not quite finished with it. I'll probably do a proper background for the version that will appear in the comic book. I did kind of incorporate the more gruesome idea I first had, though it's not nearly as graphic as I had originally intended.

Hank Houston

Had some spare time tonight so I did this piece for the guys over at http://www.hankhouston.blogspot.com/ . Big congrats to them for making the top 50 in this year's Platinum Studios' Comic Book Challenge! Did a grayscale version but not sure I like it so I'm including both.

Nuclear Family

A sketch for a pin-up I was asked to do for a Horror anthology comic. Still need to add a background then I'll be inking and painting it in grayscale. I had a much more gruesome idea in mind for the baby and mom, but my wife forbid me from drawing it. Probably for the best.

Luke Cage

Today's daily sketch. Luke Cage from Marvel Comics. Not really a fan of the character the way he's written in the Avengers titles recently, but he's partners with my boy Iron Fist where he's portrayed as a more interesting character. Sketched in Painter X, colored in PS7.

The Punisher

Trying something completely different here just for the hell of it. I actually like how it came out. I may do more in this style. Basically just roughly blocked out the figure in PS, tightened up the sketch a little bit, then used the lasso and paint bucket tool to fill it in, using the linework as a guide.

Archangel

Another daily sketch that I did for the !!DRAW YOUR FAV CHARACTERs DOME!!! hosted by http://kizer180.deviantart.com/.

A was always a fan of Archangel in X-Men and X-Factor when I was younger. I liked how they took such a lame(imo) character like Angel and turned him into a tortured badass. I hated it when they gave him back his old wings, but it looks like he might be makin' a comeback in the current X-Force series.

Pencil and ink, colored in PS7.

Iron Fist'd

A daily sketch that I did for the !!DRAW YOUR FAV CHARACTERs DOME!!! hosted by http://kizer180.deviantart.com/

Iron Fist, one of my favorite characters and books out there right now. I was playing the mediocre but fun Spider-man: Friend or Foe with a buddy on the Wii last week and we played until we unlocked ole Danny Rand here so I could pit him against Spidey in the VS mode, which is why I felt inclined to include a punch to the kisser by Speederman.

Penciled, inked then colored in PS7.

BAMF! Painting W.I.P

The beginning stages of my Nightcrawler painting. Laid down basic colors and roughly reworked and blocked in the smoke from his teleportation effect. Started some rendering on the face. More to come.

Edit: 6/7/08. Added another progress pic. Didn't get much time to work on it today but line work has been removed and did more rendering on the face and body.

BAMF!

Daily sketch for 6/5/08. Nightcrawler, done in Painter X.

It was recently brought to my attention that my faces were lacking when it came to expressions and emotions so I've begun keeping a mirror next to my monitor. I think it's been helping and that it shows in the last few sketches I've done.

I spent a lot of time here on the face and I'm really happy with it. And since Nightcrawler is one of my favorite characters I think I'm going to stop doing daily sketches for a little bit and actually just work on turning this sketch into a finished digital painting. Stay tuned...

Cyke

Today's daily sketch. Mr. Scott Summers hisself. Painter X and PS7.

Remo Williams

Caught part of this movie on TV the other day, hadn't seen it in years. The good 'ole Eleventh Commandment. Classic. Done in Painter X and PS7, about 20 mins. Was done as my daily sketch, still trying to get used to drawing with my tiny Wacom.

Cheese and Double D's

Today's daily sketch. Captain Marvel (aka The Big Red Cheese) and Daredevil (DD).

Some daily sketches

Just some stuff I've done over the last three days as part of my new goal of doing a new sketch every day. Done in either Painter X or PS7. All done pretty quickly, about 10 mins each for the B/W's and maybe an hour for the color.

Concept sketches

Playing around with Painter X. Some fast, crude concept sketches done digitally, something I'm still trying to get the hang of.

Character Concept

This is a quick concept sketch of Gardner Orlando, one of the main characters of a Sci-Fi story I am writing. Pencils with grayscale added in PS7.

The Big Red Cheese

I originally did this piece in ink and Prismacolor markers but wasn't entirely happy with how it came out. So, I decided to rework it in Photoshop. The result is one I'm much happier with.

Practice

A sketch I did a little while back of a character called Ego by ECVPress that I decided to throw some fast colors on for practice. Just liked how it turned out.

Color samples

The above images are samples of coloring I've done. The Dr. Strange and Spidey pieces were digitally painted over my own pencils, while the Ultimates Saga is my colors over Travis Charest's line art. All three took approx. 2-4 hours for a finished page. The bottom two pieces were published in Raven Magazine and feature my colors over line art by Stirling Snow.

Some digital stuff

A colored version of the Spider-man pencils below and a work-in-progress of a Dr. Strange piece I'm currently finishing up. Both are done in Photoshop 7. The Doc Strange one is a bit different from how I'm used to working, which is doing most of the work/detail in the pencil stage and then finishing it up in PS. Here I wanted to try doing minimal pencils and then doing the majority of the rendering process through the coloring.

Ahoy-hoy!!

Welcome to my sketchblog. I'll be using this mainly as a place to post artwork and updates about what's going on with my life, mainly my progress towards being a published artist. As of right now I've quit my 9 to 5 job and am currently taking care of my three-month-old daughter. I use what little time is left of my day to further my career in the art field with hopes of either self-publishing my own comic book or getting work from an established company. I am also doing commission work and any inquiries can be sent to themarkroberts@hotmail.com concerning that.

I am most comfortable with a pencil and paper but have lately been moving more and more into digital stuff involving Photoshop and Painter. With the wealth of tutorials available on the internet; learning these programs hasn't been terribly difficult. In addition to experimenting digitally I've been hard at work updating my portfolio to present to editors, writing my own comic, and am putting together a small sample sketchbook which I will be handing out at local Sacramento comic-cons. The first of these cons takes place on May 3rd, which also happens to be Free Comic Book Day, and I will have a table there.

The works above are examples of recent work.