A Sullen Bat

Forgot to post this. I did this about 3 weeks ago for my sketch blog KEEP IT FRESH batman week

I love this, one of my favorite pieces ive done

11x14 ink on paper with digital colors. For sale contact me for detail 

Aliens, The Cape, and Death's Head

Aliens Vs. Superman page

Dan Jurgens (Penciller)
Kevin Nowlan (Inker)
Larson James (Colors)

I had a lot of fun coloring this page, I've never read the comic before but this the second page I've colored if it (last one was Aliens vs Superman cover with James Whynot Link )

Anyway I love all the little nooks and carneys of the Xeno that are just so much fun

The Cape page

Line art by Zach Howard 

Colors by Larson James aka ME

again I had so much fun on this. I'm very proud of the wood, its not a photo texture, just a lot of texture brushes. Also I really like the Chainsaw blade 

Death's Head II

Lines by Johnny Segura

Johnny did this sketch for me awhile back of the great character in comic book history, sadly though the rest of the world doesn't agree so he didn't have much of a run.

Anyway back to the art Johnny did this awesome digital sketch of Darksider with this bright green back lighting and i liked it so much, so I decided to color this with that image in mind. Pretty happy with it. Normally for a Death's Head close up he has a big glare light coming off of his right eye, I was going to do that but decided it would be to much

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BEST!

Larson James

ART DUMP

what I've been doing while my computer was broke

Will add more art soon!

Sorry for not being around much and not updated. My computer broke a few weeks ago so there's not much I could do. Got my computer but it in the "shop" transferring all my stuff onto my new one, I'll have it back in a few days. Also I finally got a large scale 11x17 scanner a few days ago so I can finally scan in my pages! Because I haven't been able to do an digital work I've been drawing a lot so once I get my computer back I'll have an art dump on a bunch of pretty cool ink drawings. I've got a pretty cool two face, a few invader zim's, a new banner for this page, my Facebook, and my tumblr, and a few more random shit. I'll also be re scanning a bunch of old shit.

Im really getting into inking now, lately I've been drawing just so I can ink it. It's a lot of fun, I really enjoy it. Even though I'm mainly a colorist and all that is done digitally, I enjoy working traditionaly, pencil and pen on paper, I find it much easier and just more enjoyable. With inking the main things I have to worry about are spilling my ink jar and smudging the inks I just laid down, but with digital you have worry about how much space you have on your computer, make sure your not running a lot of programs at once, your computer crushing, saving etc.... Having said that there are some great advantages to digital, ctrl-z (the biggest thing!) less prep work (no scanning etc.) making changes are much faster and easier, no wet medium so there's no waiting for ink to dry to finish. All in all it tough to say which I like better they both have many pros and many cons.



Till next time..
Larson James

Tools I Use

Lately I've been getting a lot questions about what i use to draw, ink, and color with, so I thought I'd go over what I use and why


Drawing:
-For most of my drawing I use Starthmore 300 Smooth Bristol board at 9x12. no real reason why that brand its just the only kind I've used and I like it so I don't see and reason to try something new.
-For pencils I use a 0.7 mechanical pencil, with 2H lead. Most comic artist use a lead holder, I have one but I really don't like it it weighs to much, and sharpening it is a pain, with a mechanical all I have to do is push a button. I like 2H lead because its that perfect (for lack of a better word) blend of hardness. Its soft enough that I don't have to tear into my paper and kill my hand by applying so much pressure, and also hard enough so that it doesn't smear much. I used to use 4H lead but one my hand and wrist would start to hurt after a few hours, and the harder the lead the harder it is to erase. I wrap my pencils, even some of my brushes in gauze tape to keep my hand from cramping.  
-For eraser I only use two, a keened and a small click erase. They both do the job just fine


Inking:
-Finding the right ink took awhile and a few bucks but I did finally the perfect ink (for me) it's Dr. Ph. Martian's   Black Star Matte. I LOVE this ink! its BLACK, the only time you have to double coat it to avoid browning out is big areas. But other then that its great! I've tried just about every ink I could find, some were to thick, others were't black enough and some were so glossy it scanned funny. Highly recommend this ink.
-Brushes, again a pain to find your perfect match but once you do you'll never go back. My favorite brush is Winsor & Newton Series 7 #1. I use it for most if not all my brush inking. I do use a small 18/0 liner for extra tight line work, but I could get the same line weight with the W&N #1. For filling in large areas I mainly use just some random flat brush I have from when I painted, I believe its a size 2 maybe 3. I do also use a W&N Series 7 #3 but not very often.  BE CAREFUL! These brushes aren't cheap so take care of them!! When I'm done with one of my nice brushes I clean it! I use "The Master's Brush Cleaner" ever time! If its a cheap $5 brush I don't care, dip it in some water get as much ink as I can then put it back. But for a $20 (the #3 was $47 >:( ) brush I take care of it, I don't have the money to go get a new brush every week or so. I know a few inkers who have been using the same brush for at the most 2 years, because they take care of it.
I do also use a crow quill Hunt 102. I like them a lot just most of the work I've been doing lately requires  lots of line weights and a brush is easier.


Coloring:
-I have a Wacom intous4 Large. I love my tablet! the only draw back is you have to look at your screen not your hand to draw, which makes drawing on it pretty difficult.
-Only program I use to color is Photoshop CS5. Again it works perfect for what I need so I don't see the point in getting another program.
-I use my MacBook, it is hooked up to this awesome 21' monitor a friend gave me. Because my laptop cant handle a lot of Psd. files I always have my 2 TB hard drive hooked up to it with all my files saved into it. 
-Two quick tips about coloring:
       1) ALWAYS KEEP YOUR FINISHED FILES! That way if your editor says "This needs to be a different color" you can change it in a flash 
       2) Because I live in Missouri and the humidity is crazy high my hand tends to stick to the tablet. You can buy a Wacom smudge guard but thats around $20, so what I did was make my own. It was very easy. You just take a thin felt glove and cut out   all the finger but your pinky and ring finger, be sure to leave the wrist part attached otherwise it won't work. Yes you kinda look stupid but who gives a shit?! It helps!! I even use it when I'm drawing or inking for the same reason so your hand doesn't stick and smear all over your hand.




Well thats pretty much all the tools I use. Hope this helped! If you have any further questions just shoot me an email Larson.j.art@gmail.com or message me on Facebook or DeviantART, I did just make a Tumblr so you have one be sure to follow me

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fartin around

Line art by Robert Atkins

Lineart by James Whynot

Aliens Vs Superman

Pencils by Drew Zucker

Inks by James Whynot

Colors by Larson James ME!

I had so much fun coloring this one! it was so easy, I knew what I was going to do every step of the way. It just flowed very well! I think this is one of my best pieces and a few others agree, theyve said some great things!

I made a video of myself coloring this, surprisingly only took a little less then 2 hours but I sped up the video to about nine mins. HOPE YOU ENJOY

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DEAD BY DAWN!

AWESOME LINE ART by GREG SMALLWOOD!

Colors by Myself LARSON JAMES

If theres one thing everyone should know about me it that I'm a HUGE EVIL DEAD NUT! I've seen all three over a thousand times, I can quote all of them by heart!
Anyway I color this same image awhile back before I got my wacom, and knew what i was doing, needless to say it looked like crap so I decided to go back and re do it! I did this in about 5 maybe 6 hours, which its pretty short for me. Something just clicked with this and I knew what I was doing at all times, there wasn't guessing or anything, I knew what I wanted the image to look like and went for it.

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BEST!

Larson James

Zombie Years Pin up

Lines by: Emanuel Sotomayor
flats by: Earl Ludwig Laguna Olimba
Colors by: LARSON JAMES

 Had tons of fun coloring this! It just was a great image! Emanuel Sotomayor might be making some prints of this for cons, so if you'd like one for yourself contact him. John from Creature Entertainment said he might make this a pin up in an up coming book, *fingers crossed*

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LARSONJ

Pyramid Head take 2

Refined the Pyramid Head painting I did a week or so ago. Added more pipes to the background, darkened the whole image, and added more detail to things.

Pyramid Head

This was a royal pain in the ass!! I'm still new to digital painting, and this wasnt the best thing to as a second painting but you'll never learn anything if you dont push yourself. I firmly believe that!
Anyway this was done in CS5 at 300 dpi, not sure what the canvas size is because i kept cropping in and out. When I color I use a lot of textures, somewhere around 5 or 6, but for this I only used 3, The pipes, the sword, and his helmet. At first I was going to just use stock pipe photos but i decided to just paint them in add as much texture as I could without texture overlay but it looked to weak with out it so I dropped in a rusty texture. I think the biggest pain about this was the chains, I used a chain brush (I think I got it from Daarken or Dave Rapoza) then went back with a very textured chalk brush and gave each and every link a highlight. I'll be seeing chains in my dreams lol.
I might start selling some prints of this but not sure yet. If you'd like one tho email me Larson.j.art@gmail.com or message me on my dA, FB, or on here.

THANKS!
LarsonJ

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 Comments/Tips&Tricks are greatly appreciated!!

P.S. 

Going to be putting a few videos together of weekly tips of things I've learned for coloring and art in general 

Heres the first one! 

Joker

This is my first 100% Digital Painting. Meaning I drew it on my tablet instead of scanning in a drawing and, for lack of a better word, trace it. This is based on a very crude sketch I did back in 2008. I'm pretty happy with it I still have A LOT and I mean A LOT to learn about painting.

A little bit about painting itself. The way I did this and i think will be my process: First I started by filling the canvas with a midtone gray and then using some texture brushes I have to make a nice gritty texture. I used the default chalk brush (which I learned from Feng Zhu) at first really big to block in the the overall shape. Once the shape is there I resized the chalk brush and began to sketch out the details. The big change for me was I set Opacity to Pen Pressure, the reason this help so much was because it made drawing feel more like a pencil, the harder I press the darker the color is. I did about 2 rough passes with the chalk brush then once I felt I had the drawing down I switched to the default Hard Round Brush turned opacity off and cleaned up the line art, with my two roughs on different layers at a low opacity, to make it kinda like tracing paper.

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Best

LarsonJ

Ghost Rider 2 Review

First off i wanna say that imm a huge Ghost rider fan, he was one of the first comics i ever picked up and have hooked ever since.
The first movie i was so pumped to see one of my favorite comics becoming a movie is always awesome! but the movie itself was very disappointing, the only part of the movie was the ghost rider senses themselves.
I felt that Ghost rider 2 was the same, the story was a bit better then the first (which SUCKED) but still very dry. I found myself thinking more about the new alien film that was previewed (link)then the movie itself. However the Ghost Rider senses were MIND BLOWING!!!! I really loved the day time part, I guess it was was because of the all the black smoke but that that was the best part of the film hands down. Another great part was when he turned the quarry digger into his ghost rider machine (im not sure what else to call it) and when he did the same to a big rig truck, which was also part of the amazing day time rider scene.
The only reason I'd see it again is the same reason I've seen the first Ghost Rider movie so many times: For the Ghost Rider Parts, and nothing else.

I'd recommend the movie if you want to see some awesome ghost rider fights and a good source of inspiration ( I myself got several ideas for drawings/paintings to do) But if your a die hard ghost rider fan like myself your in for another BIG disappointment


Best
LarsonJ

Zombie Years #4 Cover

Heres the cover for Creature Entertainment's Zombie Years #4
Layout by Xaq Bazit
Finish Pencils and Inks by James Whynot
Flats  by Ludwig Olimba
Colors by ME Larson James

I had a blast coloring this! But because I only had a day to color it I couldn't do everything I wanted to do. But overall pretty damn happy with how it came out, which doesn't happen very often. With every piece I do I always try to something new, with this one I did a few things, the blur on the action lines to really make the center of interest (girl and zombie) just that the center of interest, and also to help the image read better overall. I also dropped in a grain texture just to the reader know that this is a ugly time, nothing pretty about it. Anyway hope you enjoy!


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Best
LarsonJ

The Swamp Thing

I had SO much coloring this! Towards the end though I did  get a little bored/tired of rending the leaves thats why the leaves and cat tails aren't all that great. I wanted to add some rain but forgot so I might go back and add a bit of rain just to give it a more stormy look.The Swamp Thing dA if you'd like you can go to dA page and look at it bigger to see some of the details.

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THANKS EVERYONE!


LarsonJ

Coloring video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4xGL8uMTA4

Page 6 from TS-101.


pencils by http://loki003.deviantart.com/
Inks by James Whynot http://jameswhynotinks.deviantart.com/
flats by Ludwig Olimba   http://kokokrans.deviantart.com/
Colors by myself Larson James


this piece is for Creature Entertainment. still havent heard back on wether or not i got the job. i really hope i get it but i have this feeling i wont :/

test

this is just a test to see how this thing works im new here so im not sure how this stuff works