Alex Heizer

Star Princess! Colored with @copicmarker Sketch markers.

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:19:22 -0500

Star Princess! Colored with @copicmarker Sketch markers.

New sketch - Star Princess!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:43:12 -0500

New sketch - Star Princess!

Kami - main character from my upcoming Black Chrome manga....

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:04:08 -0500

Kami - main character from my upcoming Black Chrome manga. @copicmarkers & moleskine

Character sketch from a manga I’m working on. Pencil /...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:14:21 -0500

Character sketch from a manga I’m working on. Pencil / Moleskine.

Guest Tutorial on the Copic Markers website: Taking your Comic Art to the Next Level Using Copic Multiliners

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:48:40 -0500

Today there is a new blog post on the Copic Marker website which features my Kwaidan manga adaptation,

Guest Tutorial: Taking your Comic Art to the Next Level Using Copic Multiliners. Go check it out, because it’s written by ME!!

New character sketch card: Velocity! For a new comic project I’m...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:38:12 -0500

New character sketch card: Velocity! For a new comic project I’m working on. Done with @copicmarker Sketches & Multiliners

Art Education: Be Careful or It May Suck!!

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:08:14 -0500

I’ve drawn all my life. Most kids draw on the walls. Instead of yelling at me, my mother put paper on the walls to protect them.

I grew up creating my own versions of my favorite Marvel comics, and some of the few childhood memories I have are about drawing. As a teenager I won 3rd place at a comic con against older teens in my age group, losing only to 18 year olds. In the early 90’s I got turned on to Japanese manga. In the mid-90’s I interviewed at Marvel and was given a 6-page Tom DeFalco script to draw, along with some helpful critiques of my work. This inspired me to finally go to art school.

At art school, I studied in the Fine Arts tradition — live models, oil paints, Conte crayons, quick 2-minute croquis and longer 3-hour, 8-week sessions, with world-class teachers! I was in all my artistic glory! I lived for my classes, even with the hour-long commute into the city on the train or driving. So, how did that suck?

That part didn’t suck, but there was an aspect of receiving advanced education which did. Formal education is the process of passing knowledge, experience, wisdom and style from those who have it to those who need it. In the process, the student learns how to create art according to the teacher’s rules. And, as they learn to create according to the teacher’s rules, their own artistic voice gets put aside. This should be temporary, for the purpose of learning skills which will reinforce your natural talent. Skills like discipline, focus, technique… So, what sucks about that?

What sucks is, often it takes some time for the artist to allow themselves to listen to their own voice again after years of listening to their teachers. Learning from a master can be a valuable experience in the development of a creative person’s skills, but to truly reach your potential you need to apply their teachings to your own artistic voice. I’ve seen countless examples of people’s work which looks good, but looks like student work, or worse, like someone else’s work.

Education is the best thing you can do for yourself if you care about your craft, and it comes in all shapes and sizes. You can learn new knowledge all over the place, especially if you live near a city. The key to making it not suck is working hard to make what you create not limited by the learned behaviors of a structured classroom and its teacher.

Totally custom @Tokidoki iPad cover with @copicmarker Skeches...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:01:52 -0500

Totally custom @Tokidoki iPad cover with @copicmarker Skeches for @michelletrevino!

New character sketch card: Sawbonez! For a new comic project...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:03:32 -0500

New character sketch card: Sawbonez! For a new comic project I’m working on.

Coloring a Manga Character with Copic Sketch Markers...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:22:00 -0500

Coloring a Manga Character with Copic Sketch Markers (Part4)

Have you ever wanted to create beautiful, vibrant manga characters like you see in books and magazines? Using Copic Sketch markers, you can!

In this final part of a four-part tutorial, I’ll create a textured background using Copic Sketch markers. In part 4 I’ll complete the background. If you haven’t already seen it, I invite you to watch Part 1 first!

To learn more about creating characters like these, also check out my Drawing a Manga Figure tutorial and my Dynamic Eyes with Copic Sketch Markers video tutorial!

I use only the brush end of these dual-ended markers, to get a nice, gentle blend between multiple colors.

Here are the colors used in this tutorial:

B00 Frost Blue
YG03 Yellow Green

Watch the rest of the series!
Part 1 - The Face
Part 2 - The Hair
Part 3 - The Kimono

And for more tutorials, don’t forget to visit my tutorials page and my YouTube page, which will have more videos soon!

peterpayne: No one reads book footnotes or introductions,...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:24:48 -0500

peterpayne:

No one reads book footnotes or introductions, either.

Battle Armor Batman

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:29:15 -0500

Battle Armor Batman

New character sketch.

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:05:18 -0500

New character sketch.

Female Entrepreneurs

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:21:19 -0500

Female Entrepreneurs:

michelleltrevino:

I started my business in 2000. As a young woman in the tech sector, I faced many challenges, but the one thing I wouldn’t do was undervalue my work. I think that was the key to my success from the beginning. It’s also why I see so many businesses fail.

Unfortunately, women have to be twice as dedicated to get the same respect as men in the workplace. Especially in the tech sector. Actually, three times as dedicated in the tech sector, dispite having more tech-friendly skills and sensibilities.

Tutorial: Creating Knockout Letters

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:26:05 -0500

When creating your own manga, comic or graphic novel, you’ll usually end up adding some text to it. You can do this on the computer once you scan in your artwork (or as part of the process if you do all your drawing and inking digitally), or using a pen directly on your art as you ink. Typically, you’ll create the layout to accommodate black words on a white background or in a word balloon. But what if you have a black panel and want to letter it in white? You can easily do this on a computer, but here’s how to do it using a couple sizes of pens.

You can use technical pens or dip pens. For this tutorial I used 3 sizes of Copic Multiliners. Click each image to enlarge it.

1. Plan the layout of your page. This lets you know how much space you’ll be working with and the overall flow of the action.

2. On a separate sheet, mark out the space you are allotting for the text and draw in your guidelines at the correct size. Then lay out your text to fit and look attractive. This allows you to fiddle with it until it looks right before you start actually working on your page.

3. Map out your guidelines using a non-photo pencil. This makes it easier to scan and clean up.

4. Using a regular pencil, lightly add your text. You will be erasing this once you start inking, so don’t draw too heavily!

5. Using an ultra-fine pen, like a Multiliner 0.05, carefully trace around each letter. Often it’s a good idea to draw a sample letter using the correct weight of pen you normally use for lettering. That way you can compare the line widths as you outline the knockout lettering.

6. Next, trace around your lettering with a heavier pen. This gives you a buffer zone around the fine outlines when you go to fill in the large background areas. Let your ink dry and erase your original pencil lettering. Since erasing also rubs off a bit of the ink, erasing at this point is less noticeable than after you fill in the solid black areas.

7. Then, once you have a block of text outlined, simply fill in around it using a brush or a larger pen and you’re done!

A kawaii Merry Christmas, everyone!

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:46:37 -0500

A kawaii Merry Christmas, everyone!

For (late) #mangamonday - Finally finished Kwaidan page 1!

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:47:35 -0500

For (late) #mangamonday - Finally finished Kwaidan page 1!

For #mangamonday - finished Kwaidan page 2. Next, finishing page...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:03:01 -0500

For #mangamonday - finished Kwaidan page 2. Next, finishing page 1.

Coloring a Manga Character with Copic Sketch Markers...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:42:00 -0500

Coloring a Manga Character with Copic Sketch Markers (Part3)

Have you ever wanted to create beautiful, vibrant manga characters like you see in books and magazines? Using Copic Sketch markers, you can!

In this third part of a four-part tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how to create a subtle print pattern in the character’s kimono. In part 4 I’ll complete the background. If you haven’t already seen it, I invite you to watch Part 1 first!

To learn more about creating characters like these, also check out my Drawing a Manga Figure tutorial and my Dynamic Eyes with Copic Sketch Markers video tutorial!

I use only the brush end of these dual-ended markers, to get a nice, gentle blend between multiple colors.

Here are the colors used in this tutorial:

V12 Pale Lilac
B63 Light Hydrangea
BV08 Blue Violet
YR02 Light Orange
Y08 Acid Yellow
R46 Strong Red

Watch the rest of the series!
Part 1 - The Face
Part 2 - The Hair
Part 4 - The Background

And for more tutorials, don’t forget to visit my tutorials page and my YouTube page, which will have more videos soon!

"We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:51:55 -0500

“We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort.
And that is why we write.”

- Neil Gaiman, from his Newberry Medal Acceptance Speech (via neilgaiman)
And that’s why we need writers…
(via michelleltrevino)
Writers are the lifeblood of society.
We artists owe a debt to writers that we could never repay.