Okay, this Blog will follow the previous two others as everything written in them happened in the span of one day. The point of talking about and showing my successes and failures of that particular day is to show that despite how the day started with a less than ideal piece of artwork, I didn't give up but continued to push my limits of patience,concentration and skill. The Black Cat drawing gave me just enough of a boost that I decided to do a quickie Baroness pinup. Keep it simple and don't put too many lines on the page and see what happens.

For drawing women,less is the ideal way to go. Granted this version of The Baroness is slightly different than the one most people are accustomed to seeing but I still think doing this drawing was well worth the effort. If I try a type of artwork that I've never attempted before the most important thing is to learn from the experience. It doesn't hurt either if the artwork exceeds your expectation either.

The Baroness piece took about an hour and fifteen minutes, a new personal best for me. The tools I used were Sakura 01,03,05 and 1 Calligraphy pens, they are acid free, dry very fast and are very easy to work with. They are also very cheap to buy,last a long time and are disposable. I also used a B5 Speedball nib to fill in any large black areas. Speedball Super Black India Ink is my favorite Ink out there right now. I mix this type of ink with a cheap chinese no name brand of India Ink and this has worked great for me over the past few years. I know some artists might think this is sacrilege mixing two different inks together but I just follow my instincts when it comes to drawing. So far they have never been wrong.

This was a great day of creating for me, despite being heavily drugged with painkillers and anti-immflamatory pills. I also tried very hard to allow myself a certain amount of creative freedom and not forcing any one subject over the other but just going with whatever I felt like drawing at the time.

Rich.

Experiments part 2

Okay, so continuing directly from the last Blog.

Once I had finished the coloring of Indiana Jones and saw that I hadn't completely lost my feel for using watercolors, I took a small break and had a quick bite to eat, let the colors dry and try and see how the final image would look.

Once I finished eating and saw the final image, I continued drawing and took a longshot and drew a female character. Drawing women can be very tricky, too much detail and you age the woman, not enough can also have a negative effect. To a lot of people Adam Hughes is one of the best at drawing the female form so I grabbed a few covers that he did and tried to get a feel for what he was doing. After about 30 minutes of brushing up on cheesecake pinups I grabbed a Playboy too. I figured it couldn't hurt. I wanted to draw Black Cat from the Spiderman comics and wanted to make her as sexy as possible, maybe derobe her a bit. Make her sexy but not too over the top and make her crass. What I ended up with was more or less some cheesecake pinup work with a slight edge but the background seemed a bit bare...

Taking a few minute to let the ink dry, I walked away to drink some water and wash my face. Checked my e-mails for a few minutes and then came back and took another look at what I had done. I think I did a decent job but something was still missing. I put the image aside and went to work on another, working on the template for a Baroness image, which I'll show the completed image another time.

Now it's a few weeks later and I'm glad I stopped working on the Black Cat image because now I can go back and add in some color with a few adjustments to the background and overall image and yes I'm doing it on the original and not in Photoshop. Once I've completed the final image with the colors and reworked background I'll be showing it. Following my hunches I don't think this will be a failed experiment but the final image will be something completely new for me. Trying new things is good for your growth as an artist.

Rich.

Painted artwork 22 feb

Hi and thanks for checking out my stuff.

These days it seems that as much as I try to do less seems to get done. That's probably because I was doing an insane amount of work before and needed a LOT of time to try and recharge my batteries, so to speak. As much as we'd like to think that we're unbreakable, this is far from true. I'll get back to this in a minute and what this has to do with me starting back to play around with painting my artwork again after such a long time away from color work. At some point I was just pushing myself too hard and I got a rude wake up call a few weeks ago, I hurt my back and it's been a while that I felt pain quite that intense. So after a trip to the clinic, some time off prescribed by the Doctor and two different types of medications, I was off for my first week.

I'm really not sure if it was the meds or a longing to see my work colored the way I wanted it. Here's the thing, as much as I love working with other colorists, it's a bittersweet collaboration. I'm way too much of a control freak, so either I learn how to color my own work the way I want or content myself with having to burst some poor guy's bubble on his coloring efforts. Which by the way is not something I enjoy doing. Ever. Maybe it was the heavy duty buzz I had during this period that made me willing to explore slinging some paint onto my black and white originals.

For the most part, it was an enjoyable time and as you can see this was my first attempt after several years.

I learned something very important about layering and colors. Overall coloring time was less than an hour. I tried to stay loose, unstressed and see what happened. To any artist this is ideal but the reality is that for most other artist types to get into this zone it happens without our control, which can be a very frustrating thing and that's pretty much what happened to me during the time I was painting this image. Another positive was blending the colors, it was a lot easier than I remembered and that part of this little experiment went off perfectly. I was using incredibly small tipped brushes that I bought cheaply in bulk. I like trying out different types of tools and I'm a firm believer that it's the artist that's the important factor and the tools are secondary. Please remember that this is just an opinion I developed from looking at a few artists that used whatever was at hand and still ended up with awesome looking images. I kept the color scheme based on varying shades of earth colors. That part worked but then I got the bright idea to make the background a shade of rose, not sure why. This is the point where I should have stopped and taken a step back and looked and what I had done. I lost patience and just wanted it done. That was the problem right there. I lost my concentration and just phoned in the background.

I think the fact that once I was done I didn't freak out and quit work for that particular day. I started back drawing another image which I will show at another time but the most important thing I want to talk about is not giving up despite being unhappy with the final result. The next drawing I would do turned out quite amazing And I still went back and painted another image and that too is for another time. For now let's just look at the painted watercolor version that I ended up with. Any comments are greatly appreciated. It's Indiana Jones by the way.

I will be showing a lot more failures as well as those I consider a success.

More to come soon.

Rich.

Holiday wishes,2010 and 2009 in perspective.

Hello Everyone and a very Merry Holiday season and Happy New Year to you.

For those of you out there that follow my work and blogs will notice that I've been silent for a little while, even though I post artwork fairly regularly on my facebook page
Now while I've been very busy with everything from getting ready for a lot of conventions, private commissions,Silent Scream and special images for the Cons that I'm associated with, there's a bit more to it than that. This past year has been incredibly busy for me,sometimes taking on way too many different things at the sametime.

Just for example: I jumped headlong into a new site that we launched at www.bluntforcebeating.com cranking out one review after another,while still writing multiple blogs(myspace and my blogspot.com and doing interviews with artists for www.optimumwound.com and it's Masters Of Ink series and other articles) drawing non-stop( commissions,movie review images,etc), meanwhile I still have a day job.....It's a lot to undertake. Most people don't even understand how much I create while still having a family and a life outside of all of these other things I've mentioned before.....
At some point all of these things can burn you out, despite that possibility I never looked back or even slowed down, I just kept going.
Unfortunately bluntforce didn't last too long as most of us involved couldn't update as much as we would have liked to and with a small fanbase it just didn't seem to be worth the effort. If I could have devoted the time to the site I would have taken it over myself and become the administrator and built it up properly to a very decent fanbase. Okay so this would taken a while but I truly believe this site had the potential to become something so special it would have eventually eclipse most others out there. It saddened me greatly to say goodbye to the site as it invloved all of the things that I love: Movies,Comics and the Crime genre.

Last year (2009)I managed to build up my myspace blog to a decent following doing illustrated movie reviews from a zero weekly status perspective,that coupled with my experiences at Toronto's Fan Expo made me push myself even harder.
I started doing more conventions and soon realised that this was a really good way to meet a lot of new fans and show off all the new projects that I was working on,get feedback and see people's reactions up close. I'm always trying to improve as an artist and I think that's very important in any industry or profession.
I see so many other artists out there that never seem to improve or change over the course of years and that has always troubled me. That's fine for them but I know what I wanted for myself. Lately I've been attemping a lot of new illustrations that I never would have tried before and very soon I'll be taking some drawing classes led by a Master Artist that has worked for Marvel for many,many years.

Now some people seem to think I'm anti Marvel/DC/Big Companies. In reality I'm not. One day if I'm good enough maybe I'll do work for them and I don't hate supeheroes in general and I've always had a soft spot for them in my heart. I just truly believe that the comic's marketplace need variety and in the last few years I've been seeing more and more of this happening. This is a vey good thing. I've just felt I need to say these things out loud on the net as a lot of people have this certain notion that I'm a certain way and wanted to clear up any misconceptions as far as that and a few other things are concerned. I have no axe to grind with any Company per se, apart from being pushed aside sometimes because I'm an independant artist. Unfortunately this is something that will happen in the industry, this is just the way that it is.
Unless I work on a major character for a big Company this will continue to happen or I make my own characters become so popular that it leads to me being noticed in a positive way. I think there's a few choices I have to make this year and 2011 will be a very interesting one.

I've always been a very outspoken person in regards to what I consider to be unfair practices( such as being rude to fans or ignoring/bashing media/fanboy types). It's true that I can't stand when other artists consider themselves too good to talk to a fan or even show the smallest modicum of civility to anyone that approaches them. Don't get me wrong I'm a very private person but when I show up at a Con I want to interact with people and I think it's quite obvious when you meet me at a show.
If you don't want to interact with fans then why book a table at a Con for? All of you out there that read this need to know that YOU are the ones that provide an artist with his or her income and any artist or writer that doesn't treat you properly should be boycotted and his work should be as well. There's one artist in particular whose name I won't mention but has several websites apparently devoted to how much of a jerk this person is. I find this totally incredible, that this individual no matter how talented can continue to act so badly and still be given work. I think that things like this need to change in the industry.

Now a lot of things I've mentioned in this Blog hopefully makes a lot of people stop and think.

I'll also be doing a LOT more blogs on all types of subject matter. Covering everything from movies,comics and everything concerning the crime genre. Yes, all of my efforts that I was putting into BFB will be transferred here and as the New Year goes on I hope to be revealing quite a few new surprises.

Have a very Happy new Year everyone and may it be prosperous in all aspects of your life: love, money and creativity.

Future posts

Right now I'm working on several different projects. Some of them are for next year,while I have others that I'll be able to share with you very soon. Those that I can share will go up on myspace,twitter,facebook and here. I'll be catering each ptoject to the platform I launch them on. I'll also have a little column that I'll be talking to Jason about doing soon. If that comes to pass,it'll be interesting to say the least.

The fiture is going to be very,very busy. I hope everyone sticks around and checks out my posts.

There is one I can mention right off the bat and that's Zombie Survival School 101. It'll be a multi part look at a zombie attack and what you'll need to survive said attack. I'll be including everything from techniques based on military survival tactics to pure common sense,body armor and more.

I'll try and get the first chapter up this week.

It'll be fun. I'll aslo be throwing up a few movie reviews as well in the upcoming weeks.

I'll also be getting ready for another 2 Conventions in the next 2 months. One in November and another in December. Like I said it's going to be very busy for me. I'll also be drawing a few Star Wars pinups and maybe even a Manthing too.

Have a great week......

Be good.

Rich

7 days movie review

It's been a few weeks since my last Blog and I noticed that it flew by incredibly fast without me even realizing it. So I decided to do a Blog about a movie that I've been looking forward to since I first heard that it was being made.

The movie is called 7 days.

It's about a man and his wife whose daughter is raped, beaten and killed by a pedophile. The father being a doctor and a man with quite a bit of wealth, starts planning the abduction of the pedophile as he is being taken to prison until he can be tried for this horrific crime. He also equips a cabin in the middle of nowhere with all sorts of equipment to help facilitate the torture and killing of this individual. Just this premise alone had me totally mesmerized with the possibilities of the type of story that could be told. That is, if it was done properly.

This is one of those subject matters I feel incredibly strong about and have no sympathy for pedophiles or anyone of that nature that take away the innocence/life of a human being pure in nature and unsullied by life.

The movie starts off well and I was horrified that they actually showed the little girl's corpse as she was found by the police officers and her Father. It was a necessary part of the story as far as I was concerned. Still very unsettling. I think that for most people this opening 15 minutes of the movie would have most regular humans freaking out. Myself on the other hand is another completely different story.

There are a few scenes where the Father starts to torture the pedophile and then stops as he is incredibly disturbed by what he is doing. He is also suffering from an incredible amount of guilt and has a lot to deal with in his head.... The last time he saw his daughter before she died,she asked him to come with her as she had to deliver some invitations to her Birthday party in a few weeks. He was exhausted after finishing his shift as a surgeon and needed some time to sleep. If he had gone with his daughter she wouldn't have been abducted and would still be alive now. That kind of guilt will eat you alive and it becomes quite clear that the principal actor playing the Father( Claude Legault ) does a great job at bringing this point home to the viewer. His guilt has become a black hole and it threatens to devour everything close to him, including his marriage.

Each of the 7 days of the pedophile's torture is shown and I know some people once again might not be able to deal with subject matter this intense. Again, I was a bit disappointed with exactly how little the pedophile was tortured. If it was my child, God help that pedophile, because I have no forgiveness in my heart and certainly no conscience in exacting bloody revenge on someone like this.

I think back to Seven and what John Doe did to that pedophile, who he kept imprisoned for a year strapped to a bed and made him suffer a slow and painful existence. He cut off his hand, catalogued him as if he was a lab rat or experiment. All the while keeping him just barely alive as he slowly wasted away. Doe never allowed him to die until he felt that it was his time to do so. This takes an incredible amount of self control and discipline of a superhuman nature, it is quite impressive.

Maybe if someone like David Fincher would have directed this film I would have been satisfied with how it was done but honestly while there are very human emotions that are the primary focus of this film I think that the main point of what should have been done to the pedophile in question was secondary to everything else. To me this was a big mistake. Huge. I felt like it was an incredible anti climax to the whole film not having seen him being castrated and being tortured more in detail. A friend of mine read the book that this movie was based on and she had told me how incredibly brutal the book was with nothing but drawn out scenes of torture, just pure anger on the written page. The movie had a different tone.

Don't get me wrong this is a good film with solid performances from all involved and even though it's in French with English subtitles this was never an issue for me.

Maybe one day I'll get my wish and Hollywood will remake this film in English with Fincher helming it. I somehow doubt it though.

This a movie worth checking out even though it was far from perfect.

Cheers.

Richard Serrao

Optimum Wound Comics

Co-owner of http://www.optimumwound.com/

Creator,Writer and Artist of

Memento Mori and

Silent Scream

Book Of Eli movie review ( Illustrated)

Today's Blog will be about The Book Of Eli and I'll be adding in an illustration to convey my perception of this movie and it's subject matter.

Once again the Hughes Brothers have created another cinematic masterpiece with this highly underrated movie. Everything from the music score that flows seamlessly in and out of the film, to the pacing of each scene, the film flows and takes you along it's journey. The colouring scheme should be praised as well in it's lack of colour, giving a sense of a bleached,barren and desolate landscape inhospitable to most human beings.





Denzel Washington delivers another solid performance with class and enough screen presence that hearkens back to the days long gone.





Each actor or actress in this movie is perfectly cast. Ray Stevenson is awesome portraying a character that is as scary and single minded in his obedience to the town boss played with exceptional aplomb by Gary Oldman.
One of the biggest surprises was seeing Jennifer Beals as a beautiful blind woman whose daughter is also as equally stunning played by Mila Kunis. Both of these characters are indentured laborers whose owner Gary Oldman is obsessed with finding a special book. Of course it doesn't take very long to figure out exactly which book he's looking for, or why for that matter.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself in this review.

From the beginning of the movie you got the feeling that this "WAR" that happened was the end all and be all of wars. In other words the world is royally screwed up right now and it doesn't look like it'll get better anytime soon. When you see nuclear fallout snow falling from a burnt and depleted looking sky it stops you in your tracks and makes you think. There is no law, except survival of the fittest. Everyone is on their own.

The action sequences are brilliantly done and filmed with extremely deft and skilled vision on what it takes to craft an unforgettable action scene. I feel if I say too much more than that it'll give too much away and spoil some of the many surprises in this movie. The directors and Denzel Washington allow the viewer a rare chance to see some beautifully laid out scenes of carnage that just show what is happening without jumpo cutting in an mtv style that has permeated our culture and movies. Bravo guys, this is indeed a rare thing. Not only does it add depth to the film but shows how adept Washington's character is with a blade,his hands and anything els he can grab or use.





To me this movie stands toe to toe with some of my favorite post -apocalyptic films like Mad Max and The Road Warrior. There are many films that have tried in vain to live up to what was done by George Miller and Mel Gibson in these awesome movies.






Too many in fact.





This one though is not one of those and I say so with a big grin on my face.





I have gone back and re -watched this movie quite a few times already. Why? Because to me it says a lot of very personal things that makes me not just wonder about life in general but how we live our day to day lives, our beliefs and what kind of legacy we leave behind for our children.



Here's a little something I wrote after watching the Book Of Eli and hopefully it'll give you an idea of how powerful this movie was for me.





" During the last days of man, when all hope is lost, a stranger will come...He will be my prophet, he will be righteous and good, following the path I have laid down before him in this wasteland of lost souls. Be ye warned if you seek to do him harm I will unleash my wrath and woe unto you and yours. My wrath is limitless....So is my love. The time has come to stand up and choose sides."





If you have never seen Book Of Eli and want a different viewing experience then I highly urge you to check this movie out. It just might surprise you.





Richard Serrao


Optimum Wound Comics





Co-owner of http://www.optimumwound.com/


Creator,Writer and Artist of


Memento Mori Volume 1


Silent Scream





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richard@optimumwound.com