Stefano Terry Art & Things

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about my next graphic novel, LYNCH, but it hasn’t been far from my mind! Between juggling work, my personal life, and the adjustments I’ve had to make to my daily routine due to the pandemic (still working from home! going on, um, almost 20 months now! crazy!), I haven’t had as much time to devote to LYNCH as I’d like!

So here’s a redesign of our titular character, Cassius, aka, Lynch! Even though I haven’t been working exclusively on the project, I’ve been drawing more lately, as well as doing a ton of studying and practicing to improve my art. As a result, I really wanted to take another crack at the character design for Lynch. I was never truly satisfied with the first iteration of his character, and I also hadn’t quite decided on an art style for the project.

So tonight, I took another go at him, and here he is! I felt the initial design was too plain, a result of a desire to be more restrained in the look of the characters and world. Well, that was boring, and I really wanted to give him a stronger silhouette, as well as inject a little more character and history into his overall design. I’m still not quite there yet, but I feel like I’m getting closer. A few more iterations and I think he’ll be good to go. Even the art style in this redesign is subject to change (ie, I didn’t add any shadows or grayscale, which the final comic book will have to add atmosphere. As a character study sheet, I left all that out. I included the first character design of him from way back in February 2020 (so long ago!), for comparisons sake. 

Drawing mechanical things (robots, machines, etc), has always been a huge weak spot for me, so I’ve decided to start practicing and studying various artists that are just absolutely amazing at doing that type of work (ie, Jon Lane, Akihito Yoshi, Masamune Shirow, Katsuhiro Otomo, etc), and I’m just so blown away and inspired by their skill.

Took the time during lunch break to finish the inks on the Akira tattoo I designed! I actuallyr ecorded the session, and will upload it to Youtube if anyone wants to see the inking process!

A design I’m working on for a tattoo I’m gonna get! Akira was one of the first Japanese animated films I had ever seen, and Katsuhiro Otomo’s art in the manga was a huge factor in my inspiration to become a comic book artist (that, and Todd McFarlane’s Spawn).

So, for my first tattoo, I wanted to get something that represented my love of art, animation, and comic books, and representing me as an artist myself. And then to have a tattoo artist translate that with their own art is very exciting to me! I have no idea when I’m going to get this tattoo, but I still need to finish the inks on this and polish it up before I do!

Finally finished my self portrait piece! I didn’t get to finish it on stream, but it was probably for the best. Lol

This was a really challenging piece! Fun, but a bit of a headache to do. Is it because of the process, or the subject? XD XD

Finished grayscale values of my self portrait! I wasn’t able to do it all on stream yesterday, but I felt the urge to work on it some more, so it was a very late night session! I really should go to bed now...

Next up: Colors! Not sure what I’m gonna do with the colors, but I’ll figure it out! Fun note: “Stefano” means “crowned” or “garland,” hence, the crown XD XD

Also, I really loved painting the vitiligo into this picture. It’s the first self portrait I’ve done of myself since I began to develop vitiligo at age 20, and I was super self conscious about it. Despite it being non-lethal (to me, obviously lol) and non-contagious (to others), it took me a very long time to come to grips with it, and the changes in my appearance.

Whew! Finally finished my latest piece! This was quite an undertaking for me, as I got to really push my confidence in minimizing my line work (which I didn’t completely remove XD), as well as attempting to draw an actual person (thanks, Amanda!), even if I still stylized things in my own way. I also got to learn some new tricks for lighting and other little things that I’m totally going to apply to more work going forward!

This was insanely fun to do, and challenging, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I’m going to keep at this “no linework” stuff for a while, until I really get it down and committed to muscle memory!

More work in progress practice from last night’s drawing livestream!

I really have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s fun to play around and experiment and try to get more comfortable with painting over my line work.

I don’t know if I’m gonna finish this one or move on to something new for more practice. Knowing me, I’ll probably move on to something new 😂

My goal is still to draw more pieces than I did last year, but I kind of like sharing the work in progress stuff with you all.

I have another 2 pieces in mind that I’d love to get to, so I think I’ll start on one of them this weekend!

Work in progress of a practice piece! I’m really trying to build my confidence with painting over my line work, but it’s so intimidating!

This piece still has a long way to go before it’s “finished,” but to be honest, I might just stop here and move on to another practice piece… 😂😅

This is also the first art I’ve drawn completely in photoshop, instead of sketching it first in Clip Studio Paint, then exporting to photoshop for painting.

And no, I totally didn’t stay awake drawing until 6:30 this morning…👀👀

Finished my Rivet fanart for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart! Whew, this one was quite an undertaking, but it was a lot of fun to do! I ended up staying awake way later than I intended, because I was determined to get it done! XD XD

Finished inks of my Rivet fanart for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. I included the original sketches too, showing a few potential pose ideas before I settled on the one I wanted to expand on.

I realized the last time I drew some Invincible fanart was back in, like, 2019 or something? And that was just of Omni-Man, so I thought it’d be fun to do a new piece in honor of not just my favorite superhero comic ever, but the new animated series airing on Amazon! I actually had never drawn Mark/Invincible before, so this was a lot of fun. I also love Allen the Alien, so I decided to have him thrown into the mix as well; an homage to their first ever meeting.