ROM!

     That's one I haven't seen in a long, long time.  I remember having a neighborhood buddy of mine who had the toy, and later started seeing the character in a comicbook.  Drawn by Sal Buscema, no less!

     A simple character design, quite easily rendered.

Looking real good there, Bill!

     My memories of a drive-in theatre from my childhood: 1) cracking up at the stunt biker scenes in Gumball Rally; and 2) hiding behind the dashboard in my late mother's 1963 Oldsmobile at a screening of Jaws.

Before I go...

A sketch of another character from my original comicbook concept to close out the month of August.

Here's another question I'd have for Bill (and the other painters out here):

     When working with natural media in filling in large areas with color, but being pressed for time, I've heard of artists using a sort of mask coat that they place over parts of a line art drawing in order to prevent overstrokes from bleeding into the areas they want to keep clean.  What are the available brands of liquid mask available for use?  What other methods have been useful?

Here's a copy of a recent DeviantART.com gallery piece for example:

Downsized for the convenience of this forum.

   I can't imagine how much better some of my recent drawings would look if I wasn't tip-toeing around the edges of figures and backgrounds with a small brush or marker when a broad brush or big marker would do better.  As you can see with this, the streakies alone were a pain in the a**, and I was tempted to scrap the piece on account of the smudge that ran off of my sig on the side...

My first try on my iPhone 4 using brushes...

@ Didier: That's interesting, what you can do with iPhone apps.

@ Bill: Thanks for the suggestion.  I'm considering using it primarily for watercolor work and other matters where fine details will be needed.

     Since I'm here, I might as well throw up a couple of small sketches that I put together during the afternoon.  This is one of the main antagonists of my conceptual series.  I've been struggling with exactly how he's going to dress, as I'm looking for something that reads more like "international terrorist" than "costumed supervillain"...

     The Outsider actually replaced this guy, who was the original "Big Bad" for the characters who're protagonists in my story.

     A little background on the Outlander: he was created by me when I was still a lad of 9 or 10 years' age.  I was probably thinking of one of the Shi'Ar making their appearances in then-current issues of the X-Men comic that John Byrne was starting his pencils/co-plotting run on.  At the time, my young boy's mind conceived of him as little more than a generic power-blasting supvervillain.  I've kept him in the background now, primarily planning on using him to spoof supervillainy in a comedic role.