I’m so horribly exhausted and tired and angry and miserable and it’s been ages since I’ve done a personal post so I thought I would offload on you guys.
Yup you can do the bolt now if you’re just looking for pop culture references and comic book geekery, this evening I just don’t have it in me.
So the other day we finally found the house. Â The house. Â Great price, great location, great yard. Â Great.
We put in an offer, we waited with bated breath, it was accepted.
We went and saw the bank again (this being the third meeting with them), we filled out all the paperwork, shook hands, smiled and for the first time in over twelve months the light at the end of the tunnel flickered on and for a second we let our guard down.
Today the bank changed their mind, after three incredibly positive, “yes you can do that, you have pre-approval for more than you would want” meetings they advised that even though we could easily afford the repayments we don’t meet the criteria.
Great.
The weight of over twelve months of less than ideal circumstances all came crashing down.Â
So emotionally drained we’ve had to go and come up with a Plan B, and it looks promising, but I can’t believe anymore that it’s going to happen and that has pretty much killed me inside.
So if it is a little quiet around here in the next couple of weeks that’s why (who am I kidding - I’ll be here).
I know I said no comic book stuff but I’ve got to reward you somehow - I really love the symmetry between Iron Man’s first appearance and the story of his last:
I’ve become quite the fan of Marvel’s Ultimate line of comics especially The Ultimates and Ultimate Iron Man (actually I really love Ultimate Spider-Man too). Â I’m not 100% convinced but I almost like the Ultimate version of Iron Man more than his mainstream version.
So I had an idea for a sketch showing Iron Man in the sky with some jets and I was trying to decide which version to use - my favourite the original mark 2 armour never looks right in the air - well it does but it wouldn’t in this drawing. Â I’m not the biggest fan of the current armour (it looks awesome and all but it definately isn’t my favourite).
So as I said I’ve been really into the Ultimate Marvel universe so that made the decision for me.
I start off with a pencil sketch, generally I’ve been using a 5h or 6h lead pencil which is really light but bloody awful to erase so if you make a mistake you have to work the image or just erase as best you can. Â On this one I used just a cheap mechanical pencil (HB) because of laziness and even though it’s a darker pencil it erases neatly.
I draw out a letterbox frame to draw within of 150 mm x 250 mm.
Â
I didn’t think about scanning until I had already started colouring but it still gives a good idea of what I start off. Â A couple of things about the image, Iron Man is a lot larger than I originally intended, or at least a lot more on the page. Â I wanted more space for the jet and after I finished the outline for Iron Man realised that the jets had become more implied and off page.
When I start to colour I don’t erase the pencil lines any more, I used to use the black ink first to cover the pencil lines and then erase the unused or corrected sections. Â With markers, they pick up the black to easily even when the line art has dried so I’ve started colouring first. Â The pencil lines will generally show through but will be covered by the black ink later. Â I did mess up around his head though and you can see the pencil line near his neck piece on the chest plate. Â Adds character I suppose
I generally start with the main colour which in this case was the red (scarlett), even though I use ‘old wine’ as the red’s deeper colours I still cover it completely with the base colour and then touch up over the top of that base. Â The darker wine colour was probably deeper than I hoped, I could have simply used a grey over the top to achieve the darker shades.
I then black ink using the marker over the top of the pencil lines that I can still see. Â Up till now that would have been all that she wrote but I wanted to try something a little different this time and after letting the markers dry I have added light reflection using a white pigment watercolour.
The added highlights will now become a standard for these marker pics as they’ve really helped the image come along. Â The larger pic can be found here.
I hope someone out there found it interesting - I’m always looking for character suggestions.
Have done a couple of Iron Man related pictures over the last few days:
Click the image to go to posterous and see the larger version.
War Machine:
I had a lot of trouble trying to scan this in as it is around A3 size. Â I was thinking of selling this particular drawing but Tracey took a liking to it so I’m going to keep it. Â Click on the image to see the scanned in version.
Oh the names of the people I get through here :), I have a suspicion that ‘Capt.’ Incredible is not really a Captain at all, I mean he does defend Neptune and all but would they really get a Captain? Â Maybe a Commander…
At any rate he’s been a welcome addition on the blogroll for quite a while now and it’s always a pleasure to talk comics with Captain Incredible…
Favourite regular series right Now? Daredevil
Comic book character you only recently discovered/started reading? Captain America
If you could draw/write one character who would it be? Batman
Are you a fan of the big multi issue crossover extravaganzas? Not a fan of crossovers - leastways, not on the scale we see these days.
Last comic book series that you dropped and why? Trinity - the second story was starting to drive me nuts. You could say it was in the cards.
Favourite character? Batman
Are you a DC or a Marvel? About 70-30 DC.
Do you remember your first comic/series? Batman - sometime in 1968 or so - my dad bought it for me because we both liked to watch the TV show. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Is Watchmen the movie going to be as good as the comic book? I hope so.
Favourite comic book movie? Iron Man.
Worst comic book movie? LXG (I haven’t seen Catwoman).
Character you’d like to see in a movie? Green Lantern (Hal Jordan).
Well it’s been a busy week in the camp this week, applied for three different jobs, I’m focusing on Government jobs because thats what I’ve done for the past fifteen months or so. Â Government jobs mean bloody selection criteria, selection criteria leads to frustration, frustration leads to anger, anger leads to hate and everyone knows where hate leads to.
That image really cracks me up, no one considers the nameless Storm Trooper’s hopes and aspirations. Â I was talking about selection criteria though and unfortunately that has been sucking up my time. Â I have been posting over at my posterous site though generally everyday, had to suplement old stuff in with the new stuff:
 Â
I’m really happy with the Iron Man pencils and I’m going to add ink to them after I finish my hot cup of java and chatting to you. Â The Robin drawing is my background for Twitter too.
Speaking of Twitter, I had a major culling of people I follow on there. Â I got sick of seeing conversations that I wanted to contribute to and then being ignored so I just got rid of them. Â I also noticed that there were such a huge number of ‘how to blog’ people on there that I was following and frankly there is only a certain number of ‘make movey writing good titles’ posts I can read before I wonder about these people who blog about blogging about blogging.
I am of course not infallible so if I dropped you from my list I apologise and if you send me a message I’ll add you back straight away, anyone who comments in here will get added automatically generally too.  I do also want to send a big word up to janetwheeler, kathleenjoy (permission required to view) and gamerbabe360 who always converse with me despite neither reading this blog to my knowledge.  They are good salt of the twitter earth people.
I had to set aside the speed reading book, though I have increased my speed by about 75 words per minute, job applications come first unfortunately but I’ll try and finish the activities by the end of the weekend.
I have been playing World in Conflict though whenever I get the chance, picked the game up for $8 at K-Mart!!! Â It is brilliant, fun and challenging, if you like RTS then I highly recommend it!
Still reading Saga of the Seven Suns book one - it is really really good. Â So much detail and so many characters. Â No I will not be going over to fantasy books though, it’s as close as I get (which isn’t that close!). Â Trying to track down a copy of City of Ember but Australia doesn’t seem to stock it so it is off to the import shops.
Started watching the new 90210 series, I can easily get hooked on this, I’ll write about it when I finish the two part opening episode, found myself grinning though when the ‘revamped’ 90210 theme played over the credits.
Upgraded Wordpress to the latest version, had to go through and remove all the weird generated characters. Â
Also have officially made Chrome my default browser.
Well that’s about it for me, finished the coffee, I hate instant coffee but it went down alright, how was yours?
With Arjan requesting a photo of me wearing my replica Mark 2 Iron Man helmet it reminded me of something that I thought of a little after I realised that the helmet was actually wearable. Â There is no way I could fit my glasses underneath it so not only will the tiny eye holes (maybe they’re not so tiny, I haven’t opened it and don’t remember to be completely honest) reduce at least my peripheral vision but with no glasses my visual acuity will also be greatly diminished.
Fortunately it is a helmet which for safety sake might come in handy. Â Although I don’t know what padding may be contained in the helmet either so my head could get banged up a little in there.
People would be surprised to hear that 0.0000000000000000000297% of all household accidents can be attributed to wearing Mark 2 Iron Man Helmets.
It makes you think, or not, then again I wonder how many household accidents can be attributed to stuff like this:
Every time just lately I go hunting for an blank art book to draw in I always seem to be picking this one book up which has awful, textured paper that is completely wrong for what I want it for!
But for some reason I keep on settling down and using the bloody stuff.
Yes it is an easily solved problem.
It’s just one of those things.
Anyway here is a pic I did of our favourite armoured Avenger:
I like the early Iron Man armour, the golden one that he developed to not appear as a monster to people. Â It’s the replica helmet I own and I’d like to see some more storylines revolving around the old clunky armour which even by today’s standards would still be incredible.
Anyway here is one of my favourite Iron Man images from ‘Heroes’ artist Tim Sale as featured in Hulk:Gray (which is brilliant).
Ok it’s been a long hard six nights of film festival joy, did you have a good time? Â Catch up with some old friends? Â Did you try that corn cob on a stick!? Â That was pretty awesome.
Tonight’s movies will be a little harder to watch tonight, so you may have to wait a couple of months to fulfil the check-list, unless of course you’re my cousin Larry and then honestly the less said about you the better!
Last night we visited DC universe and tonight it is Marvel’s turn. Â I wanted to usher in the new age of Marvel films with them managing their properties directly now, it’s all been pretty good… so far.
Iron Man
I don’t know if I’ve waited longer with as much anticipation as I had for Iron Man. Â Long time fan of the comic books, I’ve loved everything about this film from the moment I saw the first teaser poster and handycam footage of the suit.
It is one of those perfect comic book movies, it actually transcends it’s source material rather than limply imitate it. Â You don’t get much better casting than this.
The Incredible Hulk
The second Marvel controlled film seemed to be put in place to fix some old mistakes, honestly I don’t even think about the first one, I watched it at the cinema, didn’t really like it and just figured it was my general apathy for the character.
This film on the other hand really dragged me in and I actually found myself liking the Incredible Hulk, something I don’t think has really happened before. Â I’ve since read Hulk: Gray and thought it to be another masterpiece.
This film is just plain fun and raises itself above whatever criticism one might have of the special effects. Â I’ve read some people ask why we even needed a second Hulk film. Â Why? Â Because it was bloody good fun is why!
Well that’s it, all over, time to clean up the cinema, shut down the festival until next year!
 
The added highlights will now become a standard for these marker pics as they’ve really helped the image come along. Â 
With 
