Ars Militaria

Just... Got to post.

2011-10-20T20:12:00.000-04:00

Ahmad Shah Massoud

2011-09-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

Constantino Diaz-Duran

2011-09-05T22:37:00.001-04:00

This is Constantino Diaz-Duran. I met him at Crossroads Coffee House down in Richmond last month and noticed him walk through the door with an enormous pack on him, with a little US flag stuck into it. So naturally I had to ask him where he was going. Los Angeles, he said, and we talked a little bit. Turns out he's from Guatemala and came to the US as for political asylum, and is now celebrating his US ctizenship by walking across the country to get to know everybody. Of course I had to draw him. It's definitely not my best work, but what the hell ever. I'll post some better stuff soon, there's just a ton that I'm still scanning.

He has a website called Walk Like An American which might be worth checking out. Also, he needs people willing to let him sleep under their roof on his perilous quest, so take a look at his route, see if he's going through your area. He seems like he's doing a positive thing when things are really fucking negative in this country, so I hope other people will be willing to support him in it by giving him some couch space or something for a night. Here's his Facebook page that he can be contacted through if you're interested in hosting him.

2011-07-12T20:12:00.001-04:00

Summer tends to be the busiest time of the year at my unit, and we're severely undermanned for our level of workload, so I haven't had much time or energy to maintain my online presence. I'm still drawing daily, though not quite as much as I'd like to, and by the end of each day I'm too tired to work up the energy to do so much as scan and upload things. But here's a few samples of what's been going on lately.

The gentleman profiled in the lower right of this sketch is Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, brother of the prince of Bahrain. He happened to be one of the officers at a ceremony I photographed recently, and was surrounded by women throughout much of the event. Seemed like a nice chap.

Coffee house in Richmond. Wish I had more time to just go out in public with my headphones and draw people.

And finally, something semi-finished. Inspired by this song.

May sketches

2011-06-09T22:05:00.001-04:00

Crazy wolf thing above the cars on the left here was drawn by a very weird friend.

Pointlessly technological coyote, heavily influenced by somebody!

2011-06-04T19:35:00.006-04:00

Taking the Stahlhelm

Rise and Kill

Muse In Arms II

2011-05-06T00:19:00.001-04:00

Something for a good friend of mine, inspired by this song by one of my favorite bands of all time.

Angel

2011-04-12T21:22:00.001-04:00

March, and some April sketches

2011-04-06T21:20:00.000-04:00

Some more of February's sketches

2011-02-23T19:21:00.000-05:00

About that time again.

Sketch I did of artist Dustin Neece at the Marine Corps Museum, who I got acquainted with during a photo op in the Northeast.

Some heavily Jennadelle/Don Bluth influenced beast sketches.

And some of the Marines I work with. I was intensely hungry and sleepy and not really bothering with form or accurate anatomy here so please don't be mad at me if you appear in either of these pages with a grotesque face.

Early February sketches

2011-02-07T21:02:00.001-05:00

I'm on the rifle range this week. Long days and not enough sleep abound. Figured I'd start the week off with a quick life drawing of Graphics Sgt. Ellington while he was waiting for things to happen.

The rest is pretty self explanatory I hope. Cafe sketches, character stuff. Some of the character(s) in there are a friend's creation, so if they seem familiar, then they probably are familiar.

Some late January sketches

2011-01-29T22:25:00.000-05:00

Photo Work

2011-01-16T00:48:00.000-05:00

Once again I find myself regretting the infrequent updates. As I mentioned in previous posts, life's been busy, and time normally spent doing finished drawings has been spent exercising other skills; but don't worry, it's all stuff that will benefit my art in the long run. Hopefully I'll have some examples to share soon, once I feel like I have something presentable, since right now a lot of it's rather experimental.

Speaking of stuff not directly related to drawing, as most of you know of my job as a Marine involves a lot of photography as well as it does art, but I haven't really shared much of my photo work yet. Due to the slightly complex and hazy process of images being approved for public release, a lot of it never sees public eyes, but here's some of the stuff which has been approved in the past. All of these images were on the USMC's Officer Candidate School webpage at some point.

20101206 speedpaint

2011-01-11T06:31:00.001-05:00

Quick digital paintjob I did last month.

20101208 speedpaint

2010-12-15T01:29:00.001-05:00

Things have been ridiculously busy on my end. I've been on leave for the past two weeks while moving to a new apartment, so unfortunately I haven't had much time to draw or paint, but here's a quick thing I did a few nights ago during a break from lifting boxes.

When I was sick with pneumonia in bootcamp I had a series of dreams/nightmares over a few nights that formed an ongoing story. It's too long to describe in depth but at one point in the dreams I witnessed these things that used to be dragons, but now had assault rifles for faces. I've tried drawing them dozens of times in the past but this is so far the only attempt that was close enough to feel right about posting but even then it's not quite there, so, expect further attempts later.

Flight 5 comic

2010-12-08T21:07:00.001-05:00

I'm in the middle of moving to a new apartment, so naturally I haven't had much time to draw. But I figured I'd repost some old but still satisfying material from my comic which was published in Flight vol. 5 in summer 2008, put out by Random House/Ballantine Books. This is just the preview amount of pages that were originally on the Flight website.
Looking back on the art now, it's got several rough places that kind of make me cringe... I had no idea how to use Photoshop at the tine (and really didn't until my command sent me back to Ft. Meade to attend the Digital Multimedia Course, which was a blast), but I was good at making it look like I knew what I was doing. At least I think I was. Although I love my current job in the Corps more than anything I've done in the past, some day I'll get back to doing comics and continue Wyit's story.

That's all! Go buy the book for the rest of the story.

Kingdom of the Blind

2010-11-26T00:00:00.002-05:00

Couple November sketches

2010-11-14T19:44:00.000-05:00

Things have been busy, as if that's any surprise. I'm in the process of rent-hunting and preparing to move to a smaller/cheaper apartment sometime within the next month and a half so, I haven't had much time to do a lot of sketching. Sadly a lot of it has been on loose paper on base that I have a terrible time keeping track of, but here's a couple things I kept in my sketchbook.

Barbarian and Axe Cop

2010-10-11T00:48:00.000-04:00

My friend Ethan Nicole invited me to submit a drawing for his upcoming Axe Cop book, which I was glad to provide for.

Some of you might notice it resembling an older image I did below, which was a bit of a Frazetta homage, as well as heavily inspired by the guitar solo heard in the song "The Hammer of the Emperor" by Bal-Sagoth.

Re-learning watercolors

2010-09-23T21:42:00.001-04:00

Up until deciding I wanted to try out for the USMC Combat Art program, I hadn't touched watercolors in a good 3 or 4 years. It used to be my media of choice, but when I began working more on comics and commercial illustration that required more speed and flexibility to make changes, digital became my primary media. So these were the three paintings I did to kind of refresh myself on watercolors.

It's all referenced stuff, mind you. As time permits I imagine I'll be getting back into my more imaginary subject matter.

Referenced from my hand. My hand got very stiff from holding this pose over and over.

Portrait of Eddie, who I met on the streets of DC, screaming gospel songs and wearing an ushanka with the Republic of China flag on it.

More sketches

2010-09-21T21:44:00.000-04:00

Just some more stuff from the backlog that I still liked. I'm coming to the end of my current sketchbook, which is refreshing. Starting on a blank book is like getting a new car, with no monthly payments.

Really quick, slightly caricatured sketch of Col. Krumm, who was in my MCMAP class last winter. Really amazing and interesting man. He fireman carried me for like a mile or something when we all ran off into the woods to beat each other up in the snow.

Photoshop sketch.

2010-09-17T23:40:00.000-04:00

Some sketches. I know there's a previously posted one in there. I was just too lazy to crop it out from the rest of the page.

2010-09-17T05:11:00.003-04:00

Quick post before I head off to PT, this time of a more illustrated nature. Another piece I did for a friend a few months ago but hadn't posted to my still-down website:

Years and years ago I basically wanted to be Don Bluth. I drew a lot of animal people placed among jagged dark industrial scenery or apocalyptic scenes. I got nostalgic to give it a try again, so while attending DMC at Ft. Meade I figured it was time for a revisit with stuff I've learned since then.

Another oil sketch

2010-09-16T20:20:00.000-04:00

Taking a break from the previous image, so I started a second oil painting, this time on an actual gesso board.

This one's based off a photo I took personally, so it's a bit easier to work on than the previous portrait, which was just done off a photo reference found at Sgt Battles' studio.

Oil work in progress

2010-09-15T20:57:00.000-04:00

For the past few weeks I've been spending afternoons at the Combat Art Studio here on-base, occasionally working on my first try at oil painting, which you see here. It's still quite unfinished and rough of course, so expect something more finished later on:

Faces are pretty easy and fun subject matter for me, so this is a fairly comfortable way to get started in an unfamiliar media, since I've never touched oils before this. I'm also taking my sweetass time with this one so I can more easily notice my mistakes and learn how to correct them, rather than worry myself over making an awesome/perfect image. There'll be plenty time for that later anyways.

one of my personal heroes

2010-09-13T21:31:00.000-04:00

"I know there's a God... Because in Rwanda, I shook hands with the Devil."

- LtGen Roméo Dallaire

Merry Christmas

2010-09-09T20:55:00.004-04:00

Sketch/concept for a Christmas card I was assigned to do for General Amos, incoming Commandant. Not sure if I'm pleased with it, but I guess that's why we do rough concepts before doing a finished illustration in the first place.

Kind of used a different method this time that I'd seen a lot of concept artists do, that involved drawing it all in black first, then adding an Overlay layer of color on top. This was a bit new.. I'm not sure if it suits my intent, but it does warrant further experimentation. I'll definitely revisit the subject matter though, since there's nothing I like drawing more than wintery battlefield imagery, so Chosin Reservoir was a pleasant choice of subject matter to be assigned with.

Intro

2010-09-05T19:53:00.004-04:00

As most of you know my main website has been inactive for a while, since I suck with HTML and haven't had the time to work on it. The good news is that I now know the wonders of CSS, but things have been pretty busy on my end, so I haven't had a chance to put it to use yet. So for the meanwhile I figured I'd set up something I can more easily post my recent work to. A lot has changed since I last updated reaganlodge.com. I'm no longer working in comics or freelance illustration at the moment... Long story short, I ran away and joined the circus.

Except I forgot my glasses and mistook a USMC recruiting office for a circus tent.

Currently I'm stationed in Quantico, VA where I work as a Combat Photographer, though am currently apprenticing at the legendary Marine Corps Combat Art studio a little ways down the road from me. Originally I'm from a more commercial art-oriented background with illustration and sequential art (kind of weak in the concept art department) but have recently been expanding a little more into fine arts-oriented stuff. My current job is quite nice, and has influenced my art in a lot of good ways I didn't expect.

Not sure what else to put here at the moment. This sounded a whole lot cooler in my head when I got the idea to set up a blog, so stand by, I'll think of something amazing soon enough.

Actually, while you're waiting, here's some recent work that I've done that didn't make it to the website. Just some of my usual violent creature design stuff, with some Photoshop tricks I learned while attending the Digital Multimedia Class at DINFOS (Defense Information School) Ft. Meade.

Next up I'll post some sketches, or maybe some photos that I take during duty hours.