Bond, James Bond

With the new 007 film, Quantum of Solace, coming out this Friday, I thought it'd be a good time to draw a little character sketch of my all time favorite fictional character, James Bond. This little drawing was done on dark brown paper using colored pencils, a warm gray Tria marker, and a couple of pastels for subtle shading.

I grew up in the Roger Moore era, however, even as a kid I always preferred the Sean Connery films. Connery just seemed like more of a threat. Living Daylights, with Timothy Dalton was the first Bond flick I got to see in the theaters, and I've gone to see every one since on opening weekend. I'm rather excited about this new film because for the first time in 007 history, they've actually made a direct sequel, continuing the story from the wonderful Casino Royale. I can't wait to see more of Daniel Craig's take on the character. With the exception of his blonde hair, he looks and acts the most like the Bond from Ian Fleming's classic novels, even more so than Connery. Any true Bond fan will tell you that the character in the original books is much darker and more nuanced than the cartoon superhero he's been portrayed as for the past 40 plus years. It is the Bond from the books I really enjoy trying to capture in my drawings from time to time. For instance here's a painting I did a few years ago to highlight my favorite book, Goldfinger:


I remember back in the mid nineties when I found my first Ian Fleming book, a worn out old paperback copy of For Your Eyes Only, in a great used book shop in Philadelphia called the Book Trader. It was two creaky floors of mismatched, loosely organized shelves filled with ragged old books, just waiting for curious minds to dig through them. If you were looking for a slick Barnes & Noble shopping experience, this wasn't your place. No, this place had real character, a motley assortment of folks perusing the racks, the heavy quiet of an old library, and the unique smell of old paper and woodwork. Finding what you wanted was more like a treasure hunt, it required patience, perseverance, and a willingness to get your hands dirty. This was the place I first met the real James Bond, and found many other old literary gems I never even knew I was looking for. I guess the point of my nostalgic rambling is sometimes to find the truly interesting, life changing stuff, you need to look past the flashy, glossy, commercialized facade and get some dirt under you fingernails and dust on your knuckles.

Master Yoda

You know, as much as I love Yoda, I am ashamed to say I can quote more of his philosophical lessons than that of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Machiavelli, Jesus Christ and John Lennon combined. It's a sad commentary on the state of the world when you realize I'm not alone in this. Fortunately, I don't need to be some well read, deeply profound, inspirational beacon of humanity to draw pretty pictures. At least I know my place.

Mighty Marvel Sketches!

Ok, it's been a while since I posted anything other than the weekly Boxcar Astronaut strip, but I'm here to change that. In the past few months, my wife and I have bought a house, spent a lot of time on necessary fixing up of said house, moved in to this very same house, celebrated my daughter's first birthday, and went to Disney World all while working our full time jobs, raising our little girl and me putting out a weekly webcomic. Anyway, I don't want to bore anyone with any more excuses, so on to the pretty pictures!

For this post, I bring out a couple of older sketches of two of my favorite mighty Marvel characters I did just for the fun of it. First up is New York's favorite wall crawling menace, the Amazing Spider-Man. Spidey is one of my favorite characters to draw. Many a slow hour at the day job have been spent scribbling the webbed wonder on post-it notes and scrap paper.


Next we have a bit more detailed sketch of the clawed Canadian, Wolverine. I know Logan can sometimes come off as a bit cliche, but when handled right, he's just plain bad ass!

So that's it for now. More sketches to follow soon, I promise!

Hi Yo Silver!

I'll bet you're humming the William Tell Overture right about now, aren't you? Yep, me, too. I love the Lone Ranger. He's one of my earliest childhood heroes. As a matter of fact, if you could go back to when I was six and ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have probably said one of three things, Spider-Man, an eye doctor, or the Lone Ranger. My Spider-Man fantasy, I'll go into in a later post. The eye doctor thing came from the fact that my childhood eye doctor was really cool, had Bill Cosby Picture Pages books in his office, and was always taking photos of my eyes because he thought they were so cool. I obviously grew out of that phase, but, I digress... The Lone Ranger, with his classic iconic look, ranks right up there with King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Superman on the all time greatest noble hero list. I've heard the rumors about a new Lone Ranger movie in the works and I can't wait to see it all come together. Personally, I think Nathan Fillion of Firefly/ Serenity fame would be a dream choice, but that could just be the little sci-fi fan boy in me doing a bit of wishful thinking. Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I'm going to go ride off into the sunset now.

Tough Guys

Here's a recent sketch book page of random tough guy faces. Once in a while, as an exercise, I like to quickly sketch as many different versions of the same character theme as I can think of.

Gabba Gabba Hey!

I've been listening to the Ramones in my car lately, so I drew this on my lunch break the other day. That's it, no big story.
Enjoy!

The House of El

Every once and a while, between other projects, I find myself sketching some of my favorite comic characters. For this sketch, I wanted to try out my own spin on Superman's origins. I've always been a big fan of the Man of Steel. Ever since my young eyes first witnessed Richard Donner's classic film, I've been in love with the story of Jor-El's son Kal coming to Earth and protecting his adopted home from the clutches of evil. Doing this sketch brought me right back to being a kid dreaming about Krypton.

Boxcar Astronaut Sketchbook #1

(This post was originally published on 4/6/08 at BoxcarAstronaut.com)
Greetings, Fellow Astronauts! I'm your friendly neighborhood boxcar artist, Marc Lapierre here with a brand new section of the ol' Boxcar Astronaut website called the Sketchbook. In this section, I'll be posting all sorts of fun stuff. Periodically, I'll be bringing you early concept designs of you favorite Boxcar characters, rough pencil art of some of you favorite moments from past strips, and anything else I feel you might get a kick out of. So watch this space, you never know when I'll post something new! And now, dear Boxcar fans, I present to you a glimpse into the inner workings of your new favorite comic strip.
-M

This here is a very early concept sketch for our favorite automaton. Robot went through several different design possibilities before I fell in love with this version.

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Here we have Ben and Devin's first meeting from strip # 2.

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Ah, good ole Diogee! Even in this early design sketch, he's as loveable as can be.

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