Arthas The Lich King

Black and White with ink wash commission of The Lich King from the World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 series. Easily one of WOW's best villains.

Some "In the Land of Lunatics" Pages

I've been working on a book pitch with the awesome Shane Houghton of Reed Gunther fame for the past month and I thought I would show you guys some of the promo material I have going into it! These are a few random pages and  a promo image/future cover. I think you'll dig it when we get to release it!

So yeah I've been a busy bee! There's quite a few more pages but... well... spoilers as River likes to say! 

God bless,

Zak

Working on a book...

So just a quick update.... I've been incognito because I'm working on a book. A secret sexy book. But anyways here's a little preview. More to come soon!





Hope everyone is well!
Zak

Coloring a Balrog

So after a bit of time my colors of the Lord of the Rings illustrations I was hired to do have been approved and as I finish them out I'll be posting them here. I'll be posting both b&w and color versions so you can see how it all went down.


Smote His Ruin Colors by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


Smote his Ruin by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

Remembering the Macho Man

Macho Man Randy Savage by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

No music cue for this entry. I just thought I would reminisce a little about one of my favorite wrestlers of all time; The Macho Man Randy Savage aka Randy Poffo. He passed away from a heart attack last Friday & thinking back on it all this week I can definitely say I lost a big part of my childhood. I just wanted to draw something that would give an adequate homage to one of my favorites. I did the color as just his famous pink that he'd wear to the ring. Almost did the whites in the yellow he wore with it but decided against it.

For as long as I can remember I've loved wrestling. I've had my years of drifting in and out of it but I always remember Savage's era fondly as watching it with my Dad and brother. Then getting worked up and wrestling with Dad in the living room or on the bed. Much to Mom's chagrin. I was 6 years old when the first Wrestlemania happened and the same age when Randy debuted in the WWF. I'm trying to pick out all the stuff I concretely remember because I also have a lot of nerdy stuff like GI Joe, Transformers and Voltron clogging up those memories.

It's funny, with my Dad we always watched WWF. And when I went down to visit my uncles in Lubbock we always watched NWA. I got more figure four leg locks there than I care to remember!

But getting back to Randy I just really remember him standing out sooooo well. Throughout his entire career the man stood out. But especially in the 80s. That insane voice. How he opened so many promos with his back to the camera. The weird color choices that no other wrestler would run with (well aside from Flair and maybe Valentine. Oh and Rick Martell... maybe). Plus I just remember Savage being quick! In the era of the big, lumbering slow men Randy brought the speed. And of course Ms. Elizabeth. Oh manzies... it was so insane that he had a female manager. I loved that they built up to her with all the male managers courting Randy. That was just an awesome angle! Just the intensity... so amazing, slightly making no sense but amazing intensity. Time distortion anyone?

What I think really made me actually bummed out & sad about all of this is the fact that Savage was so engrained in my childhood. I mean, these days you just get numb to the fact that wrestlers die way too often. I don't even want to think about how many of these guys have died due to substance abuse - mainly from issues stemming from back pain. Falling on your back often most days of the year no matter if there is a mat or not is going to make your back hurt a lot. I know, I've seen it - especially when we used to run Fusion here in Colorado. You'd see how guys would walk after that adrenaline wears off. So sadly you kind of get used to it. But with Randy it's different... I was just reading how his brother was saying that he was happy, newly remarried and how he'd never return to the ring again. But man was I ever hoping to see him one last time at a Hall of Fame induction or something along those lines. So hearing that he's happy and living his own life after this amazing career... it's kinda just nice to hear about something finally ending nicely for a wrestler.

But no one really walks off into the sunset, and life is tough like that. But what I can say is that I was always entertained by Randy and will continue to. The day I heard he died I came home and watched hours of videos of his on YouTube and his WWE dvd. It was great then, and it's still great today. He's had amazing runs with virtually all of my favorite wrestlers and I can faithfully say that I was entertained by every one of those feuds. Especially the big Flair feud. And the amazing Michaels match that followed after the Wrestlemania finish. I could go on and on, but I think I'll let what I've said above be the extent of it.

Heartbreaking.

R.I.P. Macho Man Randy Savage and thank you. Check out the WWE video below if you haven't seen it and you'll know what I mean.

We're Gonna Burn This City!

I thought a little Franz Ferdinand was only appropriate for this post. I come to you this week with a four page short story I did for my boy Dave Hendrick for an anthology comic he'll have printed up for your lovely consumption at Heroes Con weekend after this one! I was really super stoked and flattered that he asked me to put my work in on one of his stories. And I'm especially excited that it involved carnage in the form of SPACE BUGS! Man, I love drawing two things... shit from space and robots from the future.

Also The Macho Man Randy Savage (R.I.P. Macho!)

SO without any more rambling here are my four pages. Get ready for carnage! Glorious glorious carnage!!


The Look PG 1 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART

1st page... The only page I took a more subtle tone to. I wanted it to stand a part from the other three.


The Look PG 2 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


The Look PG 3 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


The Look PG 4 by ~spicypeanut on deviantART


Mmmmm... love those blood splatters! I found some pretty amazing zipatone splatter brushes and I was pretty stoked for that. I think using that with my toned down colors really made the reds pop! And therefore making the carnage oh so much more awesome! What can I say? I love the gore... I like that a lot of people don't expect it when they see a style like mine and I find that super awesome. When Dave first saw the alien taking out one guy's jaw he said "WOW! You weren't kidding when you said you were going all out with the gore!" hahaha nope! Rock n' roll baby!!

What can I say? This was a lot of fun & I really hope to do more in the future. But for now I'm finally going to be able to focus on my webcomic, Tokens Only. You'll be seeing a lot more of that in the next couple of months!

Hope all is well & God Bless!
Zak

Get yourself to bed, blow out that cherry bomb!

I could listen to Spoon's You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb all night tonight.

Music always makes my mind swim. I love drawing to it, and I thought I'd do more sketchbook crap to post. Kept this to the entirety of the above song, and I love being scribbly. I loves the motion, you see.

Anyways, I got nothing else. Just wanted to say I love Spoon and drawing way too much.
God bless
zak