jesus - this guy's really sweating it on this one. i prefer the initial illustration myself. that's very well done for a ballpoint pen. my favourite drawing medium.
keep it up...

a bit hot heaed, aye? lol...but very cool. great pen work and i like the colors.

I feel like that at least once a day when my kids are driving me nuts, lol. Great work!

I definitely like your style

Great work! Me likee

How do you do all this in Ball Point Pen??!! By the gods, that is just mindboggling. The photoshopped version ain't bad either.

Sexy beast. Grand job, to say the very least.

I love it... your style is Great!

Oh yeah thats awesome! Great stuff!

Fantastic - you have a great style.

In ballpoint? I'm amazed! Maybe I should just quit it with the graphics and start doing something else...

VERY NICE!

awsome jobs with the wrinkles and your style is really nice

[TASKINLUDE]

What kind of ballpoint pen do you use?
I personally can't find one that doesn't give me too much ink every now and then and you seem to have none of that on your works... great control and perspective.

Thanks for all your words people

Regarding the pen! I use the cheepest pen from Parker (about 8$ for it)
But any ballpoint will do! You just have to wipe off the tip now and then, maybe
every 5 minutes or so. I usually use the top corner of the paper I'm drawing on.

i never found such a nice frustration .........till date.......... too good........ ............. nicely painted also ......... keep ur frustration up always......... so we can get a chance to see such nice.. artworks........ ..........

Excellent!!!

Your artwork reminds me of tattoo art. Bet you learnt your pen skills in uni or something didn't yah, when lecturers drone on for hours, doodling's turn into masterpieces with a ballpoint!

Your work is nothing short of amazing, Nikko.
How long have you been drawing for? - chronologically speaking, that is.
What method did you use to create the glow on top of the cranium, please?

I am in constant search for personal improvement, so please forgive my questioning.

thanks heaps,
redfox

do you use the dodge/burn tool for your shading, other methods?
I have been using dodge/burn, since seeing it on one of the very helpful tutorials here on gfx, but I find that is a semi-inaccurate way of applying shade/light to a subject? (maybe I am just not using it right, or proficiently enough!)

I must thank all of you for such positive critice (that grammar can't be right)

Redfox: Thanks again
To be totally honest, I don't have much experience in PhotoShop. But a friend of mine showed me a greate way of putting the drawing as a layer, not multyply, but with a similar effect, but where you can still color the drawing as you want. Or put the layer in any mode you want to.
You create a layer, color it black (this will be the color of the drawing), give that layer a mask, you select the drawing (ctrl+a in the layer where the drawing is, usually the background), then copy (ctrl+c) the selection, then you select the layer with the mask, go to channels (the mask is its own channel) select the mask channel and turn off the others, then paste (ctrl+v) the drawing in to the mask channel, then go back to layers (having still selected the layer with mask), go to "Image", "ajust" and then "invert".
Then you have a layer with much more freedom than just putting the drawing in a multyply-layer.
I colored the part in the "glowing-section", yellow to get the cracks as the lightest part.

I bet there are ogther ways of doing this to, but for me this works very good.
This is actually the first time I did a full color of my drawing in PhotoShop.

Hope this made sence and maybe helped a bit...hehe

BALLPOINT!!!??!?!?
you gotta be kidding! it looks just like pencil~~~~*starts praying to Nikko*

ps: i still can't believe it... BALLPOINT!??

woah really nice, i myself am quite a ballpoint penfan
impressive the way you work it.

thanks for the brief tute, Nikko, very much appreciated - will try this technique
next time.
cheers!

absolutely stunning! is it a piercing in the eye??

No mam, not a piercing, but a tear....or sweat..... at least a drop of something
depending on wich drop your refering to.

Wow! I would find it very nice work if you had only colored the thing, but you made the thing in total? and the original done with a ballpoint pen??! wow again!

extremely nice work! +7, because i can't give more!

When looking at your work - feeling the same as this person at he picture. Very impressive. +7

excelent coloring, great sense of lights! ;D