New work

 This is a brief image collection of recent work that was posted elsewhere on Instagram. I've been drawing more and more as of late. Some of this work was done using Manga Studio but most of it was drawn and inked by hand.

Character Study- Digital Inks (Manga Studio

 Forever Carlyle "Lazarus"

Character Study

 Elliott Smith- Inks

Elliott Smith- Pencils

Unfinished "Interstellar" piece- digital inks (Sketchbook Pro) 

Interstellar - Pencils

Holiday Latte

Holiday Latte 2014

New work after a looooonnnnnggggg time! I wanted to mark the season with something familiar and fun. I'm still making work and I think that this is a good way to get back into the swing of things. I tried some color holds and different effects. All of the inks are digital.

Pencils 

I  think that I just like to talk about my process a lot. I'll spare you the details but I figured that I'd post up the pencils. The pencils were kept light because I wanted to get straight to the inks.

Have a great Christmas!

Best,

Josh

New Styles for Old Ideas...Old Ideas with New Styles

Retro Gurl- 2012

   I suppose that this is my last post of 2012. It's been a year of hard work and self discovery. I've experienced some changes in my convictions and revisited a lot of old ideas as the months have passed.

This year was the most political that I've ever been and my art took a backseat for a little while. Now I'm back and I've got a renewed sense of duty to make as much art as possible. Any excuse that I can find I'll use. For instance, this picture is mainly driven by the desire to make something pretty. I used Bat for Lashes, Natasha Khan as a spring board and it changed into something new. This is a sort of composite of multiple images of her but it's really not her at all. I'm not sure of who it is really, but does it matter?

   The colors are important to note here, as I was inspired by my long-time favorite comic artist, Paul Pope. He's my unofficial sensei. Mostly I stuck to simple & unnatural looking colors (not quite Fauvism but close enough). And what about the inks? I've learned so much about inking by reading his essays, watching youtube seminars of his, and just looking over every line that he makes. I've been messing with many styles lately, but his is a favorite of mine to return to again and again. (Remember my Portugal. The Man  Poster?)

   I've tried so many brushes in order to try and emulate his brush work and finally found that a lot of confidence and a number 5 watercolor brush will do the trick.

To conclude here, I want to have much more work in the coming weeks. I've been working diligently on getting City Girls off the ground (It's taking forever- I know!). Jake has been a huge help with the digital inks on that. Sometimes I just need a break and to experiment.

If you like what you see, please come back for more.

Have a Happy New Year!

God Bless 2013

-Josh

Unto Us a Child Is Born...

I had the inspiration over the weekend to make my own rendition of the Nativity scene. I chose to leave out the shepherds and animals and focus on the moment that Mary & Joseph shared together after the birth of Christ. I'll be posting up the process photos later.

Have a Merry Christmas!

-Josh

Paying Tribute to a Great Thinker

    This blog has primarily served the purpose of allowing me the opportunity to release my art on a wide scale. I appreciate being able to make my art available to all of you who are reading this now. It's not my intention to hit you over the head with ideas and beliefs, but I do want you to think critically (what else is art for?), which brings me to this portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville that you see below. I won't get into great detail of who he is, but I do want to encourage you to read about him on wikipedia, if you aren't already familiar with him. 

Briefly:

As a French thinker/ political mind, he was greatly impacted by the United States, and is a major figure on the topics of government & liberty. As a classical liberal (Conservative) he thought that the best government was a small one. He believed that a moral society could govern itself with little to no government intervention. Some might call him a Libertarian by today's standards, but regardless, he was in favor of maintaining a moral standard, that would later impact the fiscal society. I don't believe that he would be in favor of entitlement spending, abortion or legalization of marijuana, for example. 

  My politics have experienced a Great Awakening because of men like Alexis, who strongly believed that a great society is composed of good people, who honor God and country and take personal responsibility for themselves (hence the quote that I used for this particular piece). For that reason I made this piece, to show my respect for Alexis; a great thinker and patriot. He certainly made an impact on Democratic Republics everywhere. 

I hope that you enjoy it!

Pen, Ink & Photoshop, 2012

This is another version without the bells & whistles. Feel free to share this piece with anyone. I give you permission to use it for educational or argumentative purposes. Just make sure to link back here for all of the details! Thanks!

-Josh

Prometheus

Hi,

After over a year-long blog hiatus I have managed to finish something, along with Jake, that is noteworthy and, more importantly, completed. This piece is a collaboration that started about 3 weeks ago and was worked on in the spare time that Jake and I had. It's largely an 80s manga throwback (think Crying Freeman). We thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if Otomo or Ikegami did a poster for Prometheus? What would it look like?" This is the result. We hope that you like it.

Prometheus by Joshua & Jacob Santa-Cruz, 2012

 Jake worked on the ship while I worked on the top & bottom portions of the piece.

David 8- croquil & graytones

Some details of the pencils. 

 

As I was drawing this piece I thought that maybe all

of those years of obsessing over Jean Giraud's art finally paid off.

This is a tribute to him, in a way. RIP Moebius.

Here's an isolated shot of the bottom portion of the poster.

As always,

Thank you for your support.

More to come. Get ready.

Progress for Pages 3 & 4

Hi All,
           I have finally completed the 8 panel monster of page 3. Below are a few details. This page really was the toughest one for me, considering that it's outside in Boston. Buildings are a pain- I don't care about who you are. If you're an artist, you have trouble drawing realistic buildings (I'm not gonna go there with cars!).

Good thing comics are about people and not buildings, huh?

      Page 4 was visualized when I was at work. I started it yesterday and almost finished it in one sitting.

This page is a lot more fun to draw than the previous one. I try to give myself breaks from time to time. If every page was as grueling as page 3 then I would just quit (not really). In the end, I'm pretty happy that the first 3 pages are finished, as they really are the set up for the main characters in this story. Now that they're established I can just focus on telling the rest of the story, which I promise will be a lot of fun to read.

Stay with me.... there's a story here.... I promise!

-Josh

Boston Comic Con- Day One

Hi All,
           Just checking in after Jake's and my first day at the Boston Comic Con! The show was a success, with attendance somewhere up in the thousands. There were loads of artists there, like us, selling prints and doing work on commission. Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Joe Quinones, Mark McKenna, Frank Quitely, Dexter Vines, and Frank Cho were there, just to name a few superstars. We had a good position, right out in the front, across from Dexter Vines and Scott Wegener.

We sold some trading cards and posters.

But the main action for me came from two commissions that I did late in the afternoon. The first was for Antonio, a college kid from Fitchburg State Univ., who wanted an entire Spider-man rogues gallery pinup.

He asked me to draw him the Shocker. Having never drawn him before I think that I did a pretty decent job. That insulation on Shocker's face is strange! Later on he came back with the finished piece, and I was blown away! I love what the other artists were able to do with the given space- comic art is something else!

Almost immediately after I did this drawing I was approached by Joe, who wanted me to do a drawing of the new character, Cyclone. I'd never heard of her but I was up for the challenge! I doodled for a minute to come up with a pose and then I started to draw.

Then came the inking stage.

Then the COLORS!

Joe looked pretty happy!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow! I hope that I can get the chance to draw more characters.

Thanks for stopping by!

-Josh

More Art...

Hi All,

I have just finished a new illustration for the Boston Comic Con. This one was sitting around the house for about a year before I finally added some finishing tones to it today. I like this illustration so much that I've made a few variations of it. It's one of those things, like graphic art, in which different versions broaden the interpretation of the piece/design. I hope that you like it!

-Josh

Kisses Kill- ink & photoshop

A Couple of New Things...

Greetings,
               I hope that you've had a great Easter holiday and that you've enjoyed the awesome weather that we've had today! Over the past two weeks I've been busy working on trading cards for the Boston Comic Con, as well as, a poster for the Portugal. The Man contest hosted by Creative Allies. This is my final weekend before the big show so I'm trying to be as productive as possible. Here're my latest creations!

These are pretty much watercolor except for a few obvious instances in which I used some colored pencil and ink. It felt good to be water coloring again. These will be on sale at the Boston Comic Con.

Here's my poster entry for the Portugal. The Man contest. I took the name of the festival quite literally, as you can see! If you would like to support this creation please visit the Creative Allies website and rate my design. Thanks!

We'll see what I can get done to prepare for the show. It's gonna be a long week!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Josh

Figure Drawing- Pt. 2

Hi All,
           Checking in this week with a few new drawings from last week's figure drawing session up in the ArtRoom. I stuck with pencil for the majority of the session and it worked out nicely. I'd also like to mention that our model (Shandra) was amazing. She never broke a pose. Below are some of the better drawings that came from this session.

Week to week I'm having a blast attending these sessions. They're giving me a chance to experiment more with different techniques (you may not have noticed but I used different blending techniques in these drawings). In other news, I've been working on City Girls (page 3) when I can. Here's a rough of what will be going on: 

In preparation for the Boston Comic Con Jake and I are working on some sketch cards of some of our favorite characters. So far I have five done and I probably won't do more than 10. I'll have some pics of my progress later. I just need to get through this week!

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

-Josh

City Girls- Page 2

Hi All,
          I hope that all is well! I've been working diligently on City Girls in my spare time. When thing that is sort of off topic is that I saw the movie Sucker Punch over the weekend. Although the reviews were all around bad, I thought the movie was right on target for what it was trying to achieve. "And what was it trying to achieve?" one might ask. My answer is, "I have absolutely no idea!".  I do have a guess though- entertainment. As a fan of all things awesome I must say that this movie had some moments of magic. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see amazing effects with a hint of story (you can see that I have very low expectations when I go to the theatre). Did I mention that the girls wear leotards and skirts through the entire film? I digress...

Page two of City Girls is underway as you can see:

This is the final pencilled page after I light-boxed over the roughs (below). Unlike with page number 1, a lot changed from the initial roughs. The direction of panel 1 and the hands of panel 4 are the most noticeable. Let's see if you can find any other differences.

The third panel, if you look closely, is shifted to the right. I did this because I had to extend the panel on the right side. The dimensions were then adjusted on the left when I light-boxed over it.

Oh wait! There's more!

Here's a sneak peak at panel one of page three. It's a street view of downtown Boston where two new characters are introduced into the story.

Still more work to be done, but the perspective is all worked out.

I'll be posting up some new developments soon. The Boston Comic Con is just around the corner!

Thanks for your support,

-Josh

Figure Drawing: It's Just Like Riding a Bike...

Too bad I don't really know how to ride! Jk.... or am I? Anyways, yes, I believe that figure drawing is "just like riding a bike- once you learn how to ride, you never forget it..."! In my time at Salem State University I had a great drawing professor by the name of Haig Demarjian who taught my figure drawing course. He taught me to really see the figure and how to get the whole thing on paper quickly. We would do quick 1 minute warm-ups and then move up to longer poses. This was a great exercise in getting the important stuff down first and then moving onto the finer details. I've kept this approach with me with everything that I do. Start from the general and move to the more specific details. It's a rule that you can't go wrong with no matter how often, or not, you draw from life.

The reason for why I'm talking about this is because my brother Jake and I found ourselves at the lovely Art Room up in Topsfield yesterday. We braved the visually amazing March flurries and headed up old route 1 north to find that the Art Room is actually part of a small strip mall off of Main St. The space is cozy and inviting- and there's even a gallery up in the front. Check out their blog. Jake and I brought compressed charcoal as well as vine/ willow charcoal, Strathmore 18"x 24" white paper, assorted pencils and some ink for ink washes.

Trying to escape the clutches of the omnipresent line

First and foremost, I like to consider myself a comic artist with fine art tendencies so when I draw, I rely on line to describe the forms. Fine art tends to be the exact opposite- whether it's painting or drawing, everything is rendered with soft edges. This is where it gets tough for me- if I predominantly use lines in my work how do you I break this habit and begin to render things as they actually are? Below you'll see my attempt at trying to do this (I ultimately used line for everything!). I'm still satisfied with the results, as it had been about 3 years since I'd drawn from the nude figure (wayyyy too long for any artist!). I'm going to be doing this much more often now that I know where the Art Room is.

Jake likes the way that the face came out here.

"Maybe she's a little too voluptuous here Josh?" :P

I had to force some of the shadows because the lighting wasn't strong enough.

The bigger the contrast the more tones one can work into each drawing.

Notice the tones on her back that carve our her muscles. This is

how things actually are rendered in our world. No lines are required.

I should sign this one: Moebius!

Don't mind that second drawing...just terrible!