'Father & Sons' (Birthday Gift)

I completed this for the purpose of giving it to my mother as a gift for her birthday this year.  From left to right; myself, my late father Walter Langley Sr., and my little brother Joshua Mobley.  My father passed away from a massive heart attack five years ago, and my mother still misses him every day.  So do I and my brother.  So do my other half-brothers, for that matter.  I actually did each portrait separately, from pencil to inks to digital paint--and then I pieced the the three of us together and added a background.  I chose the stars in the night sky as a symbolic representation of the ethereal, the heavenly--the realm beyond man's grasp.  The realm of God, man's ultimate creator, and master of his fate.  My mother ended up loving the gift--I presented her with a 11x17 copy, framed.  I have an aspiration to add my other three brothers to this drawing--I think my dad would've loved having a drawing of himself along with his five sons!

'Stan Lee Caricature'(FanFare 2010)

My wife and I attended the Detroit Fanfare Comic Con on October 30th.  Guess who the Guest of Honor was...?  You guessed it--Stan "The Man" Lee!  I mean, I've dreamt of meeting this guy since I was like, seven years old.  I imagined it would never happen, but 'lo and behold, I got my chance--and he didn't dissappoint.  Not only did I get to meet him (who, btw, is very nice, funny, and amazingly fit for his age), but was also able to take a photograph with him, and get a print of this caricature I drew signed BY him.  Cool, right?


I ended up meeting a lot of great creators while I was there--all of which were extremely nice and kind enough to share their knowledge on the business and the art of making comics.  The group of them really inspired me to continue pursuing my storytelling passion.  Super Thank Yous go out to Thom Zahler, Christopher Sanchez, Dirk Manning, and Mike Okamoto--all phenomenal talents that you should check out if you haven't already!  God Bless them.

And thanks, Stan--meeting you was just as cool and inspiring as I thought it'd be.  God Bless you as well.  Excelsior! :D

'African goddess: Chibi-Style'(Painted)

I originally drew this as an art trade for my fellow artist-in-arms, Jeffrey White a.k.a JDubb(If you haven't checked out his art blog--do it already!  His stuff is genius!).  I had planned to digitally-paint it a long while ago, but college caught up with me, and I ended putting it off a lot longer than I intended.  I decided to do Astonishing X-Men member Storm in a superdeformed(chibi) style.  

As far as the coloring process goes--this one turned out to be surprisingly difficult.  The initial attempt was thwarted at the flats stage, when my old computer couldn't handle the strain, and crashed under the MB weight of the file.  Eventually, I was able to clear enough space out to make room for it, but it took me a few days to complete.  This was partly because I took a different route as far as technique, deciding to use the polygonal lasso sparingly, as I got lazy and didn't want to trace everything.  I quickly found out that using the lasso is by far, the LESSER evil! lol

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the final product, and I'm hoping to create my own visual brand through the combination of my disgustingly-stylistic doodles and my Brian Steelfreeze-inspired painting chops.

'Ayani Sketch'

My wife and I have decided to embark on a collaborative quest to create a children's book.  She's currently writing the story, a story centered around an adopted Asian little girl named Ayani.  While she's crafting the story, I'm hard at work on establishing the visual presence of the main characters.  I drew this sketch after a few attempts at establishing Ayani's fundamental physical profile.  I found this drawing amusing(as did my wife), so I gleefully loaded it into photoshop and laid some color.  This probably won't be her final color scheme(at least as far as her clothes go), but I had fun with the exploration.  I'm really looking forward to illustrating this story!:) 

'Quote of the Day' (10/12/10)

"It is my aim and duty to change the world--not allow myself to be changed by it."


                                                                                                          -Me

'Ocean City Hero' (Promo Ad)

This is actually a drawing I completed of Okto back in 2009.  I completed it on my spare time and had planned to use it as an advertisement for the comic series, but ended going with some other drawings.  Now that the first issue is available on www.comixpress.com , I thought it would be cool to come back and find a way to use this as an ad after all.

I scanned the image into Photoshop and created a channel layer for the line art as usual, then I decided to lay out a color scheme for the background.  I wanted to experiment and attempt to hone my skills a bit, so I decided to depict a sunrise.  The gradient tool helped me create this, and I added the stars in the upper sky to invoke the sense that the sunrise is happening before the viewer's eyes.  From there, it was simply a matter of laying the flats, shadows, and highlights of Oktopus' body--making sure that the colors reflected the atmospheric change taking place.  I really enjoyed exploring this, just as I did creating the rain and lightning effects for Issue 2's cover.

After finishing the piece, I came back in with type to complete the ad.  In all honesty, this took the longest amount of time to complete.  Do not be fooled--writing/drawing the work is not the most difficult part of the creative process.  The art of selling/promoting that work--that is the most difficult part.

'Quote of The Day' (9/20/10)

"Breaking into comics is, er....HARD to do. :D 

                                                             -DBM