convention commission i did for a friend of tomb raider

i've mentioned before that i like to think of the characters powers or weapons when thinking of a pose, i think it helps make the pose more unique...an easy exaple would be Ryu from street fighter...he's a martial artist...so i would have his knees bent and fist clenched as he would most likely be in a fighting stance...now imagine this same character sitting in a coffee house sipping his latte...that would look wierd no? having him in the spinning kick pose would work...i took the same approach here but in a very diff way when i drew this...the guy that wanted it REALLY likes big boobs, and as much as i love to draw the ass...i wanted to give him his money's worth...so as hard and stupid as this is to beleive, i designed the whole image around her big boobs..he wanted tomb raider and shes a action character and my second least fav female character to do..because i try and make sure she stays within her persona..a badass makes it hard for me cause im best at the sexy shit...so i had to fit in the badass element, sexy and bib boobs and try and make it work...incidentally this is my all time fav tomb raider drawing...

so i bent her over to best show off her assets and i figure a safe way to not make this look so overly cheezy is to show her in the aftermath...knife already inserted and that way she can take the time to pose for time magazines photographer in her victory kill..

i talked about a "Tangent" recently and a good example of it is shown here...the best way to describe what that word means is that when u look at a drawing and it makes u scratch ur head and say..."wtf is wrong with that"??? if u look closely at the "vines" directly behing her near her head...there are two vines coming from the top middle of the paper coming down tappering off to either side. well the problem is that these two vines happen to be too perfectly placed..they are identical to each other and makes the background look even more like a "prop" ( u know whats worse, the fact that i was NOT drunk this time and i made this kinda mistake...idiot am i) like they were purposely placed there...bad eric. the tangent comes in when u look at it and ur eye sees how odd it is that the vines are identical

i've noticed that what bugs me about shading and rendering in general is that rookies tend to over do it...ppl often ask me how do i shade so well or how do i make it look so realistic...well i think its the fact that i hold back..dont put so much on the paper...less is more..i think the key is to try and shade one side of an area if possible....lets say i were to shade or render and arm..and i shaded the tricep AND the bicep...what winds up happening is that i wouldve created a diff texture other than skin...more like a leotard...why? cause shading both side heavily gives a shinny effect...like the shirt shes wearing here..its heavily shaded to give a diff texture than the skin...

i have no idea what kinda creature this is and i dont care...all i wanted was a cool looking one...this gator like texture is fun to do cause i shut off my mind and just draw...i move my wrist in every which way becasue i know thats the best organic method ive found that works....a lot of happy accidents are created this way...and i made sure to not lose the contours of the belly of the creature...so i remembered to keep the lines close together to make sure i create the "round fading away look" and as the suface flattens out i spread the lines out more to get that illusion.

shading the belly of a woman is prob my fav. it makes her look soft, as a woman should...im tredding on thin ice though as i like to draw the individual bones on the rib cage, and if done wrong, i can make the girl look more masculan and i dont like my chicks all man like..yuk

eye candy is a must in my drawings, i like drawing detail and its fun to look at...i just imagine a bomb going off in the environment the character is in and use that as a launching pad...shit everywhere...

i try to emphasize texture in my doodles and this is a good example of it...lets count the diff kinds in this one...a "crisp tree"..."mushy vines"..."smooth leather"..."soft skin"...."jagged and ruff scales"..."sharp cuts and scratches" on her body..."wet" water...i think thats seven diff textures all accomplished by the kind line drawn...example...wetness is done by keeping the lines smooth and long and no stopping the pencil...when i stop my pencil and press, it creats the blunt end of the line...makes for a jagged line..like the nicks and cuts on her body...i forcefully pull and push..same with the tree...

finally good scan