Mercy: Hero of the 21st Century!!

Hey all!
This is a little something I've had on my mind for a while now. I've been playing with the idea of a pulp-action style, two-fisted hero. Or, in this case, heroine. I've immersed myself in everything I could find related to the era of the ridiculous, over-the-top action hero, and I ended up with this character, Mercy. I noticed how just about all female protagonists in pulp-action stories are so horribly exploitative, and I wanted to do something to undermine that.
Mercy was born Helena Dare, is the daughter of a famous explorer and scientist, Prof. Hugo Dare, and younger sister of noted hero and vigilante, Marcus Dare. Little Helena never saw eye-to-eye with her family, so she instead took up the life of the academic, working closely alongside archeologist and naturalist Prof. Maximilian Ramsey. The two grew to be quite close, until the fateful day when Prof. Ramsey was found assassinated with a bullet through his head. Helena was able to turn up the calling card of her beloved mentor's killer, the international criminal mastermind, Umberto Umbra. Now, resurrecting her family's history of daring-do, but keeping it a secret from her immediate family, Helena has taken on the personal of Mercy to thwart Umbra's plans at every turn and battle his hideous minions at every turn, in order to uncover what made her beloved professor worthy of being a target of one of the most vile men on earth.
More to follow, I promise. I've been thinking about this idea A LOT :)

Necromantia

Hey all!
Sorry that I haven't posted anything new for a little while. In fact, I've been working on a rather large project that I'll show you as soon as I get some batteries for my camera. In the meantime, I haven't been sitting idle. Here is one of my latest sketches, with a little photoshopping to give it some depth. This is a character I came up with months ago, really just for fun. I call her Necromantia. That head at her side is being kept alive by an Herbert West-style green chemical used to resurrect the dead. She's a bit of a steampunk necromancer. Basically, my excuse to draw beautiful woman and severed heads together ;)

Pascale

Hey again! I've been making a point of attending regular model-drawing nights at my old alma-mater. The other night they had about the best model they've ever had. I don't know if I can identify particularly why she was the best, but she was. Great poses, great presences, just totally worth it. Of all the pictures I did that night, this was my favorite. I messed up a little on the hand, but she moved her hand a bit during the 15 minute pose, so I figured I'd focus on the main element, her back and the associated muscles.
This while piece was done with a brush pen, which some people couldn't believe. My secret; brush pen's leave pools of ink. I used that ink as a reservoir to make fingerprints. I used those as my texture. I really enjoyed it. Next model night, I'm bringing some wet mediums.

Jeremy

Hey again! This is another piece I made especially for my litter vernissage. This was part of a series I had in mind to center around adorable things and horrible monsters. I have a few more that I'm working on, just in time for Halloween. Until those get a little further along, here we have the first of these creatures I've ever put to paint. I call him Jeremy. He has a teddy. It is a nice teddy.
This was really fun to paint, if only because I felt a real affection for this creature. I love monsters. As such, there will certainly be more to follow.
Oil on canvas board. Also, I don't think I'll be using canvas board again any time soon. I'm experimenting with some new mediums to see how they work for what I want to do.

The Beauty No One Sees

Hey all! This is one of the pictures I made for my vernissage, about two months ago. I finally got to varnishing and scanning this. Granted, I should have photographed it, but live and learn.
By the by, the place I had my vernissage at is now closed. Go figure.
Anyhow, this piece was really just a test, both of oil paint and of a style I've wanted to explore for some time now; the juxtaposition between ugly monsters and beautiful women. The woman in this painting is meant to be supermodel-ish (not necessarily beautiful, but alien-pretty) to contrast the piggish ugliness of the other figure in the painting. This was really just a test. Now I need to test some new mediums. Coming soon.

Koschei The Deathless

Hey all! I've been wanting to get this piece submitted sooner than this, but it took me about two weeks to get my hands on a scanner big enough to accommodate this piece.
Before I get into the real nitty gritty here and just paraphrase my deviantart entry on the same piece, is anyone familiar with conceptart.org? Frankly, it's a very pretty website, but actually using it? Bloody forget it. This website hates its users and wants to make the whole process as complicated as humanly possible. Unless you're a spectator, stay far, far away. So, they don't get this piece and you, my readers, do.
Now, back to the matter at hand.
Koschei is a middle-range figure from Russian mythology. He's sometimes a servant of Baba Yaga, but generally he is simply a monster who rips people to shreds and can't be killed. His main concept is that he hid his soul in (and I'm not making this up) a needle, which he hid in an egg, which he hid in a duck, which he hid in a rabbit, which he hid in a box (or nesting dolls, depending on who you read) which he hid in the roots of an old tree which is on some island way out in the middle of nowhere with a million billion trees on it. Only by finding the needle (and, in some cases, breaking it against Koschei's forehead) can you kill him. Otherwise, Koschei is an insane old monster who can't die. I kept very close to the original myth while making this piece, wanting this guy to look just pure evil.
I had a lot of fun with the mark-making for this piece. The many textures I worked into this piece gave me great opportunities to try for the full extent which graphite could give me. I'll have to try more soon. There's something very nice about this medium; it's simple.
HB and 6B graphite on sketchbook paper.

Pumpkin Johnson!

Hey all!
No better way to begin October's posts with a little bit of monster action. Here's one of my own original characters. My schoolmates can attest to how many times I drew this little bugger on my desk. I wanted to make the most ridiculous action hero type character that I could who would still be a viable badass. Also, I can't begin to explain why, but I've always loved Pumpkin-headed creatures. This is about an hour's worth of graphite and brush pen followed by about four hours of photoshopping. I was really experimenting with this, trying new stuff. It was fun to get back into photoshop. I still love my traditional mediums, but it was good to get that out of my system.
Also, as soon as I can get my hands on a slightly larger scanner, there'll be more goodness on the way.