The Texeira Emulations

 This was the first time I deliberately tried to draw like Tex, or at least the first time I felt I was successful. I might have tried a few times before and failed miserably,  but here I hit on the right combination of techniques (which I wrote down in the corner of the page). The really crazy thing is, I did this directly in ink using dip pens and brushes, with no pencil guidelines underneath. I seem to do some of my best work when I go in without a net like that (not always, sometimes it's a disater). 

These don't all look as much like Tex's work, but they all have some of the elements, and in particular most of them have the outlines where I 'built up energy' by thickening in places, and the 'shadow mapping', where you draw a thin outline around shadows before filling in, completely or partially. This gives the shadows a nice designed look and interesting shapes.

Some of these are in my 90's Image Comics style. Or styles. I was emulating several artists, sometimes in one drawing. 

Here I was beginning to move more toward a Kent Williams emulation, but my knowledge of anatomy and proportioning etc was not good enough for that. I'm not sure if I did this page before or after discovering how to emulate Tex. I suspect it was before. 

Some of those elements I discovered in the Tex emulations made it into my later and much more artistic 90's Alternative style. I love the way I was drawing then, and I intend to get back to something like it, as soon as I feel I've learned enough about proportioning, anatomy and construction. I feel like I'm getting close—maybe I'm there. 

Again with no pencil guidelines. It really takes confidence and trust to draw like that, you have to be psyched up for it and just dive in whatever may happen. You can see I tried the Valkyrie figure once and then decided it wasn't properly shaped, so I attacked it again. The second one is far more dynamic. I think I wasn't psyched on the first try, or maybe I just didn't have my ideas together. In fact it looks like I was mainly trying to design the armor, and did it on that bizarre flat figure, then went to work to make a drawing from it, like with a pose and everything. It was from a story idea about a warrior who was trapped and impaled through the thigh, dying under the root system of a huge tree that had been blow by a tornado or something, and a Valkyrie came for him. Or something, I don't remember the details. They aren't supposed to take you unless you die gloriously in battle though, so I dont know. Maybe he was trying to bargain with her.

No pencils, just straight to the dip pens. I dont think I used a brush on these. Hard to tell in places. I believe all of these were drawn in a big Strathmore sketchbook, 11 x 14 or so. I drew almost everything in those in the 90's. From a story called Season of the Witch.