The Iron Grenadiers double as bodyguards for Destro, and popular army builders. Yet here they serve another duty; as the subject of HISS Tank boards member JohnJett’s illustration! Some of you may have seen JohnJett’s Iron Grenadier signature(sig) around the boards, yet he has also provided a behind the scenes look at this drawing….
…click on the discuss button to see his step by step tutorial on the creation of his illustration and sig!
Jettfire says
I drew up a new Iron Grenadier banner to use in the Joe/Cobra/IG game and thought it might be helpful to show how I made it. Hopefully one or two of you might find this useful or interesting. I had a lot of fun working on it and wanted to share.
This is probably going to be pretty generalized, but if anyone has any questions about specifics, I'd be more than happy to answer with my process and techniques.
Try not to look at the banner under my signature. It'll spoil the whole thing. I kid.
Everything starts with a sketch. To my eternal shame, I don't actually own an IG figure. So I skulked around Barefoot Jedi's IG album for reference and culled together the elements I thought worked the best for what I wanted. This is straight out of my sketchbook:
I scanned in the sketch, printed it out, and taped it down on to my lightbox. I don't always lightbox, but I wanted the final page to be extra clean and free of extraneous lines and erasing. Lightbox or not, my pencils are generally this tight at the final pencilled stage:
One quick note: I knew the IG's legs wouldn't be visible in the final banner, so I didn't need to draw them below a certain point. I didn't leave them out because I can't draw feet and legs. Honest!
From here, it's on to the inks. This guy has a lot of fine details and hard edges, so I inked him almost completely with Rapidoliners. I used a combination of .25, .35, .5, and .6 for the most part. I also use Raphael Kolinsky sable brushes, usually size 3 or 4, but not here.
At this stage I realized why the IG's probably don't show up too much in Joe comics. Having to draw this over and over would make an artist go blind.
Here's a section of the final inks in detail:
Jettfire says
With the inks done, it's time to hit the scanner again. I use a Mustek A3 11 x 17 scanner. They're fairly affordable and you don't have to stitch scans together. I scan in the inks at 600dpi on the lineart setting. This brings in the scan as a bitmap, which gets opened in Photoshop, where the fun really begins. See? I told you there'd be fun involved.
The first step to coloring our IG friend is flatting in the colors. I pretty much flatted all of the separate elements that I knew I would have to go back and render individually later.
Here's what the flat colors look like free of the inked line:
I use a combination of channels and layers to color. Here's the flat colors with the ink channel added back in, right before I start rendering the final colors:
Once I've finished flatting the art, I get in to the rendering. This is where I pretend to adhere to a consistent lightsource and add shape and definition to the art. I'm kidding about the pretending part. At this stage, I'm basically trying to define individual objects while creating a unifying, pleasing design. I pay careful attention to shape, lighting, and shadows.
I primarily use the lasso tool to create cuts and add the color with a soft brush and the gradient tool. Both the brush and grad tool are generally set to screen mode at varying opacitys to get the look and feel I want to achieve.
Once I've finished rendering out the colors, and also just plain tired of working and fending off the desire to watch TV, I'm left with this:
From there, it's all about opening the classic Joe card explosion and adding our thirsty Grenadier to it. I also dropped in the Iron Grenadier logo that I created a few weeks back.
And voila. IG drawing + custom logo + Joe explosion = this:
Anyway, hope you like it. Like I said, pretty general, but I like step-by-steps and thought someone out there might as well.
Thanks for checking it out!
solid_strider says
That's pretty cool John!
USAgent says
Dang. Very cool. Looks like I'm out of luck trying to get my doodles to look like this: at no point did you mention crayola crayons... blast! Great work JJ, thanks for the breakdown!
DrNightmare says
*jaw drops and dies*
Lokash says
Thanks for the step by step, now Im going to have to try this.
BvH says
Excellent work as always!
Big IV says
I enjoy the step by step. You did a nice job of putting in the steps that make sense. I hate when I read those how to draw-marvel books and it jumps from circles and straight lines to a fully penciled and inked Spiderman as if nothing in the middle happens.
Good looking IG. Sharp.
kneroh says
I am blown away! Fan-freaking-tastic JJ!
Wry1 says
Wow man, I'm doing stuff so.....wrong. "Flatting"...."channels"? I'm so lost, but so very impressed, thank's for this JJ!!!!
Keep reading: Iron Grenadier Step-By-Step - Page 2
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