Lava Surfer

Kamoona's pretty laid back while surfing some bodacious waves, but don't rile him up-- he might blow his top.

I tried hard to make it look like there's lava running down his body, and not like he's bleeding to death. Hopefully I succeeded. An example of my illustration dumb luck: I wanted his surfboard to have a pattern on it, so without even thinking I started drawing Von Dutch-style flames on it. When I was done and stepped back to take a good look at it, it occurred to me that what else would a volcano monster have on his board? See? Dumb luck!

The background was originally all-encompassing (meaning the monster fit inside it), but toward the end I shrunk it down considerably for more visual interest. It went through a multitude of color changes as well, before I settled on pea green.

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.

Here's the original rough sketch. Looks like his legs got cut off in the scanner.

 

Here's the somewhat tighter second sketch, which shows the beginnings of the idea of having lava run down his body.

 

Finally here's a quick color study I did to help me get the colors just right. I don't do this very often, but now and then it comes in handy.

Cowabunga!

Hey, it's the very first post of the new year!

Holy crap, this new year's certainly a lot colder than the old one. It was a balmy 22° here today, and will probably be around 5° tonight. I'm tired of sitting around the house with gloves on--I've had enough of winter already! So to offset the brutal temperature, I thought I'd draw something nice and warm today.

The text was hand lettered. I'm trying to hand letter display text as much as possible and stop relying on fonts.

Drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.



Here's a look at the original sketch of the surfer dude. I don't know why the pointer on his word balloon is aiming at the ground.