The Cooler King's Artwork

[Big Orange]

Thanks! Let me know what you think; I'm always up for critique.

You're great with ink and you've got a set style of drawing characters, but your fetish drawings are the very definition of too much of a good thing and are a bit repetitive (although to be fair many of them are commissions and I like Lara Croft in the happysack). Keep on branching out more with your drawings into horror/crime/sci-fi/war themes (like battlefields on Mars, vampires and werewolves dueling, mobsters dismembering bodies etc), and do more backgrounds, vehicles, and buildings (although backgrounds are shit hard to do).

[The Cooler King]

Thanks! Let me know what you think; I'm always up for critique.

You're great with ink and you've got a set style of drawing characters, but your fetish drawings are the very definition of too much of a good thing and are a bit repetitive (although to be fair many of them are commissions and I like Lara Croft in the happysack). Keep on branching out more with your drawings into horror/crime/sci-fi/war themes (like battlefields on Mars, vampires and werewolves dueling, mobsters dismembering bodies etc), and do more backgrounds, vehicles, and buildings (although backgrounds are shit hard to do).

Thanks for the critique! Yeah, I'm trying to pare back on the fetish imagery for a while. Some of my customers (a LOT of those are requests and commissions, as you mentioned) are a little upset, but I want to do a LOT more than just big boobs and ropes and stuff. I have an interview/portfolio review with the Joe Kubert art school next month, so I'm working on expanding my output to fill out my portfolio. Again, thanks for the critique, and sorry it took so long to respond.

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

As far as I can tell, your stuff is very good. Keep it up!

[The Cooler King]

As far as I can tell, your stuff is very good. Keep it up!

Thank you! Looking through your stuff right now...

[Big Orange]

I have an interview/portfolio review with the Joe Kubert art school next month, so I'm working on expanding my output to fill out my portfolio. Again, thanks for the critique, and sorry it took so long to respond.

I haven't checked your DeviantArt account for a fair while, and you've already done tons of stuff that I haven't waded all the through yet, but it sounds like you've got enough on your plate. I've done a few more pictures.

[Havok]

YES!

Now start posting more stuff jack wad.

[The Cooler King]

It's been a while since I posted anything here. I've been a bit busy of late. I've started to go back to school (20 years after graduating high school, no less!) taking a couple of art classes. I've decided to go to a state school, mainly because they're one of the few to have a major in sequential art (comic books). Also, even this late in life, I'd like some sort of general education along with my art training, a general education I would NOT get at the first school I chose.


These are part of my final for my Color Theory class. I had to come up with a theme; I chose movie monsters. I'm still not finished with the series, but this is what I have so far. All were done in gouache on bristol board.




Godzilla and King Kong (2005). Godzilla is obviously done with a monochromatic palette, while Kong is an achromatic palette.





Alien and Predator. These were done with limited palettes. The Alien was done with black, white, and two different blues and purple, while the Predator was done with the same palette, swapping out light green for purple.





The Thing (1982) and The Thing (1951). Both are done with a limited palette of light green and crimson, along with white and black.





Frankenstein's Monster and a zombie (from Zombi 2). Done with a limited primary palette of one hue each of blue, yellow, and red, along with white and black.





Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Freddy is done with two different reds, white and black, while Jason is the same with blues.

[The Cooler King]

More stuff, all from either Color Theory or my Painting class.



Christopher Lee as Dracula, and the titular American Werewolf in London.





Jaws, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.





Had to do at LEAST one Star Wars piece!





Vermithrax Pejorative (Dragonslayer), and the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.






Finally, a birthday present for my dad. He's a huge Redskins fan, and I grew up in the era of Joe Gibbs, Joe Theismann, the Hogs, and of course, the Diesel, John Riggins. I'm not entirely happy with ANY of these pieces, but I had to stop adding to them because I was only making them worse.

[loomer]

I've gotta say, I actually like the very simple style. A lot of people these days strive for photorealism and it's not always a good thing - while some practice on the flesh tones (whatever the vermithrax is mauling particularly stands out as maybe too crude) would be a good idea, that is one spectacular werewolf you've worked up.

[Tsyroc]

I've gotta say, I actually like the very simple style. A lot of people these days strive for photorealism and it's not always a good thing - while some practice on the flesh tones (whatever the vermithrax is mauling particularly stands out as maybe too crude) would be a good idea, that is one spectacular werewolf you've worked up.

Vermithrax is breathing fire. It's very much like a shot from the movie in how it's laid out/set up. I have a lot of DVD captures of Dragonslayer scenes on my computer.

His other artwork inspired by films also looks to be interpreting classic shots in his own art style. I like them.


Also, got to love The Diesel.

[The Cooler King]

I've gotta say, I actually like the very simple style. A lot of people these days strive for photorealism and it's not always a good thing - while some practice on the flesh tones (whatever the vermithrax is mauling particularly stands out as maybe too crude) would be a good idea, that is one spectacular werewolf you've worked up.

Thanks! I was trying to be VERY simple, especially since I've just recently gotten into gouache... painting in general, really. I need lots of practice, especially, as you mentioned, on flesh tones. Thanks for the kind words on the werewolf; I'm just starting out, but so far, I think it's my strongest work.

Vermithrax is breathing fire. It's very much like a shot from the movie in how it's laid out/set up. I have a lot of DVD captures of Dragonslayer scenes on my computer.

His other artwork inspired by films also looks to be interpreting classic shots in his own art style. I like them.

That's exactly what I was going after. Of course, it makes things easy when you can just Google the images you want to work from!

Except Riggins. For some reason, it was a bitch finding a really good image of him to work from.

[Big Orange]

Your paintings are pretty good.

[The Cooler King]

Some new stuff, most of which has already been posted on Deviant Art.



Here's two different sketches of the same view at a local church. It's the oldest continually operating Catholic church in the United States, and it has a beautiful view of the Potomac River. The first one was done in a small sketchbook, using pen, marker, and white-out. The second is about twice as big, and is done with pen and ink, wash, and more white-out.










This is a sketch of a friend's RPG character, an ax-crazy dwarf obsessed with fire elementals.








A skull from the studio back room in my drawing class.






A still life with a mannequin.

[The Cooler King]

A rock-themed supervillain I designed for a friend's RPG sessions.






Animal skull done in pen and ink; this was part of my drawing class' unit on crosshatching.





Another hatching exercise, this one of a conch shell my wife's parents brought back from Bermuda years ago.






Rejected commission design; the commissioner had a specific model in mind, and wanted her in the Venom symbiote, but he didn't like that we couldn't see her face and hair very well.








Final, accepted commission piece of She-Venom. The commissioner wanted me to use fetish model Bianca Beauchamp as a basis.

[Havok]

Hey! I haven't seen the Rock Guy before. Dig it!

[Stofsk]

Holy shit these are awesome. You're very talented Cooler King.

[The Cooler King]

Thanks, guys. Here's some more stuff, too.


I did a (rather poor) sketch of Angus Young from the cover of the Highway to Hell album. I think this could have been a lot better, but I still kind of like the technique.






A drawing of my hand I did in my drawing class. We were trying different aspects of line, but I liked this one so much I added a bit of wash to it as well.





I drew this koala from a pamphlet my wife brought back from the San Diego Zoo.

[Big Orange]

I like the animal skull in dark ink and Bianca-Venom.

[The Cooler King]

A couple more pieces from my Basic Design class.


We had to 'upscale' a photo or drawing, by placing a grid over the original piece, drawing an equivalent (but larger) grid on a larger piece of paper, and upscaling the drawing, grid square by grid square. I used a drawing of Superman from the DC Universe roleplaying game (the piece itself is originally from Jim Lee's first issue of Superman, several years back). After completing it, I saw that I had drawn his head (and especially his jaw) a bit big, but I still like how this one turned out.






For our final project in Design class, we had very few parameters. The piece/pieces had to be least 12x16 inches, and we could design a movie poster, a CD cover, a postage stamp, or an advertisement. He also allowed us to draw a few pages of a comic book; I decided, obviously, on the latter. I decided to work up my own VERY basic storyline, which involved immortals and demons and all sorts of nonsense. This was the first page, showing the major villain on a rooftop from behind, watching the city burn below him.

[The Cooler King]

I did this one as sort of 'pipe cleaning' between schoolwork and commissions. Iron Man vs. a (growing) Hulk.

[The Cooler King]

A couple more pieces I've done in the last few weeks.


I just got this image in my head of Superman punching Darkseid so hard, Darkseid's face was deformed against the edge of the page. The final piece didn't turn out anywhere near as dynamic as I'd imagined; I'll probably go back and redo this one at some point.




Page 2 of my Basic Design project.





Page 3 of my Basic Design project.




I did this drawing for my sister. It's her three kids, all drawn from different photos.

[Big Orange]

Nice portrait of smiling kids. Don't be too hard on yourself about that Darkseid action pic. Who's the skull faced supervilain?

[The Cooler King]

Nice portrait of smiling kids. Don't be too hard on yourself about that Darkseid action pic. Who's the skull faced supervilain?

Thanks! I do want to redo that Superman/Darkseid one someday, but my drawing time is now limited again thanks to school and work. As for the supervillain, he was just something I made up for the hell of it. I wanted a supervillain, and I just liked the look.

[The Cooler King]

Some more artwork, some new, some old.




Hulk vs. Juggernaut. I wanted to really work on the rubble at their feet, so I studied the two modern masters of creating belivable rubble: George Perez and John Byrne. I don't think it was entirely successful (it's still too 'regular', without much of the chaos that distinguishes the work of Perez and Byrne), but it's a start.





This was my final for my Basic Drawing class. This eventually led into the final for my Basic Design class; I wanted to draw the events that led up to this drawing. I made several changes when doing the Design version, but I like this one better.





From Drawing class. This was an exercise in observed perspective.

[Big Orange]

I dig that passage way.