The caricature illustrations of Hermann Mejia always make me laugh. His drawings are monstrous and remarkably accurate! These images are from Mad Magazine #481, dated September 2007.

This one of Tobey made me laugh out loud in Border’s. That’s one of the silliest faces he’s making, yet I can see him looking just like that in the movie.

Tobey gets creepier as the comic (and Spider-Man movie series) goes on. If Gollum had hair, I believe he would part it in this fashion.

Yes! This is exactly what I was thinking about Dunst while watching Spider-Man 3! Either her eyes are shrinking or her cheekbones are taking over!

Doesn’t it look like a fun job to ruthlessly make fun of the filthy rich through cartooning?

Here are a couple more places to see Mejia’s art:

• Hermann Mejia’s website Be sure to check out his sculpture, too.
• Lord of the Rings by Hermann Mejia - These caricatures are just as funny as the Spider-Man 3 stuff.

Iron Fist Hiii-YAA!

The new series, “The Immortal Iron Fist,” has been pretty excellent for the first six issues. I never was a fan of the 70s comic, nor the Heroes For Hire series where he teamed up with Power-Man, aka Luke Cage. David Aja makes this once cheesy hero look pretty slick. The story is great too, infusing Kung-Fu mythology with modern day action scenes and witty dialog. Iron Fist uses his powers to do all kinds of new things. And he still punches and kicks bad guys.

An Iron Fist movie is in production for a 2008 release, with Ray Park donning the green and yellow tights. It’s going to be directed by the director of “Are We Done Yet?”

Really, Marvel?

True confession: I never learned the names of the muscles! Truthfully, I barely remember where most of them go. Time to fix that! Here are a few books I’ve been using lately.

Anatomy References

Page from Figure Drawing for
All It’s Worth
by Andrew Loomis

• Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth
• Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck
• Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis - This one is really old, but for me, it’s the best. I really hope someone puts this back into print.

Both Loomis’ book and Hogarth’s book instruct on how to draw the figure from imagination, without a model or photos. I’m working on this in the sketchbook now. Nothing too exciting here in these sketches of Green Lantern. The back view is based on a pose in the Loomis book.

Just drawing some Green Lanterns

Sentry, pencil sketch, 6/26/07

Definitely check out The Sentry graphic novel by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, if you haven’t already. He’s a lost Superman-like hero for the Marvel universe that was “rediscovered” in 2000. The limited series tells the story of how he resurfaces and how all of the other Marvel heroes managed to completely forget about him.

He’s part of the Mighty Avengers title now, and is still trying to get a grip on the “superhero” role. His hair is long now, too.

I’m really enjoying Bendis’ work on the two monthly Avengers titles. He’s made some B-team heroes like Ms. Marvel and Iron Fist more appealing.

Ms. Marvel, pencil sketch, 6/23/07

Iron Fist, Peter Parker and Another Guy
pencil sketch, 6/23/07

I participated in a garage sale yesterday. It was pretty dead for most of the day, so I got in some sketching. I’m currently heavily under the influence of Frank Cho and Leinil Yu, artists on those two Avengers books.

Captain America
Pencil, 6/18/07

I loves me some scale armor. I think John Cassady came up with this pattern for Cap. There’s some debate on whether this looks like feathers and whether he should have chain-link armor, scale, even hexagonal armor. I don’t really care what kind of armor he wears, just so long as it’s not Reb-tastic.

New Universals artwork
by Salvador Larroca.
Image taken from
“Lady, That’s My Skull”

Salvador Larroca is the artist currently drawing “New Universal,” Marvel’s revamp of Jim Shooter’s New Universe stuff from the ’80s. I don’t know if the series is any good, but I noticed that Larroca is using a lot of photo reference of real actors and you can easily identify the actors in most cases. I don’t know if this is a good idea or bad. Obviously if you go to this extreme, it’s bad.

Photo reference helps me break out of my drawing ruts. I tend to draw the same faces over and over again, but drawing from photos (or life, I suppose,) makes me look at what’s actually happening. Plus, it’s fun to try to capture likenesses.

The problem with using photo reference is that errors can be pretty glaring. If you goof, something just looks off, especially if you recognize the actor.

I’ve also noticed that my drawings look a little generic, for lack of a better word. If I’m going to use photos, I’d like to work on stylizing the drawings. I also want to make sure the characters “act.” Duncan Fegredo, Steve Skroce and Terry Dodson are masters at making good-looking art with characters who actually act, not simply pose. This might be the subject of another post.

In the case of science fiction or superhero comics, it gets more difficult to draw a page when I use photo reference. Backgrounds and other figures might have a cartoony, stylized look, while the main character’s face looks completely out of place. Also, big heroic poses look down-right goofy with photo-realistic faces.

I decided to draw from a photo this morning. Here’s John Crichton from Farscape (actor Ben Bowder.)

John Crichton, Pencil and Photoshop, 6/16/07

Sketch

Reference