Re-imagining old characters

When I was in high-school, I created this world where the Soviets and Americans were fighting a Cold War on a secret alien planet called Demeter. The war would escalate to the point where they lose contact with Earth, and the story takes place 100 years after this. The game would be played through the perspective of an Earthling explorer who rediscovers the planet, who then ultimately has to choose to help either the Soviets or the Americans settle the conflict on the planet.

I imagined this as a video game, knowing full-well that it'll never get made, but it was fun and I used some of the pieces for the grad art show (you can see them here).

A few days ago, while looking for a subject to draw/paint, I thought back to this weird idea and started drawing one of my favorite characters I did as a 17-year-old:

This guy is a psychopathic outcast who is on neither side. I re-sketched him in several ways:

I didn't like this one so much: 

Then this just to show off his insanity...

I then water-colored his helmet. Did more of the same technique I used on the Merc dude... Got a bit lazy on the neck.

I think I'm going to try paint some of these sketches digitally, or maybe redoing some other old ideas from high-school -- I enjoyed doing that a lot.

Watercolors update

I realized that I needed work on environments so I made this painting on my over-priced Moleskine watercolor pad:

It started out as me wanting to draw a demon standing in the rain... but then putting it on a building made more sense for some reason. After drawing this building, I realized that buildings were pretty cool after all.

When it comes to subject matter, I have a difficult time choosing between whether or not it should be fantasy, or science-fiction, or something in between. This castle is the most "fantasy" I've done in a while... Most probably because I've been playing lots of Dark Souls and Witcher 2.

But of course... You just HAVE to draw guys with guns every once in a while:

In lots of futuristic video-games /movies, most of the military guys have camouflage and a pretty dull color scheme in general -- being inspired by real life organized armies. In this painting I wanted to portray a mercenary or private military contractor (PMC) who have less uniform policies and more of a shadier and unorthodox approach to things -- Hench possessing the less "tactical" colors like red and yellow.

Tried a new technique of going from light to dark in this one... debating whether or not I should add some sort of background. 

I should also start scanning in these painting instead of using the crappy iPad camera.