Yelizaveta Mironova, was a Russian sniper during WWII. During her service she was credited with 34 confirmed kills and over 100 unconfirmed kills. The reference photo was pulled from her wikipedia stub.

I did this quick drawing last night, trying to get back into gear with inking again. Over the weekend I finished the pencils (finally) to the next chapter of Steam War. Here’s to hoping for a productive couple of weeks to put this one to bed. It’s been quite the learning experience.

The subject matter was suggested by two people. Although when they sent the topic storm I’m not sure either was thinking of the X-Man when they did so. I recently came to the realization that I don’t think I’d ever drawn the Mohawk version of Storm before. Even though this was her look during the time I was haunting the spinner racks of my local 7-11.

Anyway here’s a link to the sites of the guys suggesting Storm.

Andy Denton

Paul Caggegi

As such I figured I’d do some ramp up drawings to get back in the saddle. Earlier I put out a tweet asking for subject matter requests. It certainly didn’t take long for suggestions to show up. The very first one through was from @asaschultz, and it was “an otter in an old timey diving suit”.

Sketch prompted by a message from Roberto Rubet (www.idodont.com)

This was done really really quickly to be used as a poster in the set for our animation this year. It also provided us with a way to have the line that was compulsory to the competition without resorting to dialogue cards since we’d pulled silent film.

The intent was to do a Russian constructivist style poster, but also still maintain the style of the animation itself. In fact those of you up on your Russian posters should recognize which one I was riffing off of pretty easily. Not too bad for just a couple hours, I guess.

It’s fun every now and again to draw in a different style. (especially one that is really fast)

A couple portraits of the characters we used for this year’s 48 hour film project.

These were done over the weekend with the intention of having them added to the closing credits. Due to some communication issues, that didn’t end up working out. But I think all told they came out pretty well. Especially for me drawing in a completely different style than I naturally work in.

The characters are based on character designs done by Roberto Rubet. Check out more of his work at www.idodont.com

I’m working up some pin ups for an upcoming kids horror anthology through the illopond. I’m using them as a good means to play with different tools and techniques than what most of my comics based work is done with. I’ve inked with a brush almost exclusively for a number of years. It felt good breaking out the crow quill and nibs for this one. I honestly don’t remember the last time I used nibs before this. The original is black and white ink on bristol board.

*ETA I just noticed I typo’ed “scalpel” when saving the file. Man I’m awesome!

This was a study warm up, for my participation in the 8: A Steampunk Anthology. An anthology being put together through The Illopond. I’ll be going into more detail as we get nearer to our print/pub dates on this. Until then here is the teaser image put together by contributor Lee Wiley.