When I was younger, I got my hands on a huge book called "Marvel: five fabulous decades of the world's greatest comics". It's mostly just a history of the company with tons of great old comic pages, but what I studied to no end was in the very back of the book. A few pages were dedicated to showing how a page of a comic was penciled, then lettered, ink and colored by Mark Texeira. Holy crap! I fueled my obsession for seeing how my art heroes broke the work down and applied it to the page. Since then, I've always been on the lookout for similar "in progress" pieces. Sometimes they're more interesting than the finished product.

It's one thing I hate about tattooer's "sketchbooks" that are flooding the marketplace like acne on a teenager's back. They're just boring. Finished line drawings of tattoos you can already see in their portfolios (for the most part). Rarely do you see actual sketching, where you see the process.....the road taken to get to the final drawing.

So, with that said, this blog will include a lot of that from my own drawing table....as well as whatever else I find interesting throughout my days and nights.
To start, here are a few shots from a recent watercolor I did. I got the idea of doing this blog during the stages of that painting, so I didn't really take enough pictures at the time....


Here's my initial sketch on bristol board.

Closeup of sketch.

After getting the sketch where I like it, I transfer it to the watercolor paper with very light pencil lines, then start to ink it.


After outlining, the fist stages of shading.

and the finished painting...