Firebird's Sketch of the Week Series

[Firebird]

As I mentioned in my Wrath of Khan comic book thread (https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/a-little-wrath-of-khan-comic-book-sketch.307439/), I'm taking some time every week in 2021 to draw something that catches my interest that week. This is to give myself a boost and restoke the artistic fires after last year put a serious dent in any motivation to be creative. I've been meaning for some time to create a parallel thread to share my artwork here in addition to my social media, so it's about time I get around to it.

To start, I'd like to share the highlights of the last few months before getting to the most recent drawings. The first sketch was in late January, and was supposed to be of James Garner. Well, it had been years since I last made a serious effort at drawing portraits, and it didn't come out great. But it was a start!

 

[Firebird]

I spent a lot of February trying to rediscover what artistic style worked best for what I wanted to do, so I drifted back and forth between portraits, Trek, and various anime that I started rewatching.

A tribute portrait of Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music after his passing:

Jaken from Inuyasha:

A self-portrait, based on a photo I took a few years ago (which subsequently became my avatar here):

Ryo-Ohki from Tenchi Muyo:

 

[Firebird]

A lot of March was spent on my Wrath of Khan comic book adaption, but in between those, I still did some other material.

Post-Third Impact, from The End of Evangelion:

A tribute to the Shatman:

 

[Firebird]

This month, I finally bought a set of Prismacolor pencils and made the jump into color sketches, to varying degrees of success. Overall, I think I still prefer regular greyscale sketching with my mechanical pencil for linework and a full set of normal pencils for shading.

Gendo and Fuyutsuki from Evangelion:

Bones and Scotty do their part to mindscrew Mudd's androids:

Another Evangelion shot, of the main cast trying not to kill each other while crammed in an elevator:

Everyone's favorite tailor, Elim Garak:

 

[Sgt_G]

Incredible.

 

[Firebird]

With this week's sketch, I aimed at trying to capture the color palette and overall vibe from Norman Jewison's 1971 film adaption of Fiddler on the Roof, while still working on my color skills:

 

[publiusr]

That last is my favorite.

 

[Firebird]

This week's sketch would like to register a complaint before things get far too silly.

 

[Santaman]

These are all great, nice work.

 

[StarCruiser]

This week's sketch would like to register a complaint before things get far too silly.

It's not dead, it's pining for the fjords!

 

[Firebird]

And we're back! This time, it's a drawing of my all-time favorite set from the entirety of the Star Trek franchise:

 

[Firebird]

Had some inspiration this evening to do a bonus sketch for this week, featuring the pets from some of my favorite anime and manga series.

There's a trope that goes "everything's better with penguins," but if you ask Pen-Pen, I don't think he'd quite agree at the moment.

 

[Firebird]

Coyote of Borg finds out the hard way that it's gonna take a lot more than Borg or ACME tech to finally catch that damned Roadrunner:

 

[Firebird]

Spending a day off dealing with some side-effects after getting my final covid shot yesterday got me motivated to try a self-portrait in my two main artistic styles for another bonus sketch:

 

[Firebird]

Started doing a marathon of movies starring Alec Guinness this weekend, and it inspired me to draw this portrait, based on a promo photo from the Ealing classic, The Lavender Hill Mob:

 

[Firebird]

Had this image stuck in my head the last few days and I'm glad I took a few hours to lay it out the way I wanted. I think this Evangelion drawing might be my favorite Sketch of the Week I've done so far this year!

 

[Firebird]

This week's sketch marked a return to my Wrath of Khan manga project, which I've posted over in that specific thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/a-little-wrath-of-khan-comic-book-sketch.307439/#post-13794453

 

[Kaiser]

Awesome arts

 

[Firebird]

Today's sketch is proving my theory that no Star Trek character is going to be safe from my attempts at adapting them into a manga style. I decided to take a spin at ol' Baldie, Jean-Luc Picard himself, based off a promo photo from Star Trek: Nemesis.

 

[Sgt_G]

I think that looks more like Batman's butler, Alfred. My wife told I'm wrong, that's it's obviously Picard. {sigh}