Valentines Day present

Yeah, I do cute sometimes. Umm, what else to say....Oh! Technical stuff. This is on a piece of multimedia paper (get some from Moses at the artist and craftsman supply, it's cheap and rad) mounted to a pre-made art board (from the same store). It was a good way to work. I got the joy of working on paper, but it was presentable without a frame, which is always a plus. I used orange and violet. I wrote those colors off in 2002 after an illustration went terribly wrong in Randy Chavez's class, but I decided to try again. It was troublesome, but in the end I overcame their powerful vibrancy and unpredictable tinting strengths. I wanted to make something cute, but not cliche, no hearts and such. I actually have lots of fun drawing things like this, but metal bands don't usually request it. Whatchagonnado. Oh, and I think I'm going to start putting my name of things, not with one of those awful watermarks, but as I did here. I know my images get distributed all over the world, and usually in blogs and such they link to my site, but I wonder if sometimes they don't. Any thoughts on this are welcome.

Punk and Dishonesty

I had a new assignment to make an illustration for a small article about how in the early days of Punk, there was a lot of songs about liars. I did tons of sketches, trying to stay away from cliche's and such (pants on fire, long noses) and ultimately decided that I just wanted to stay away from things being too literal. So that's the first illustration I did. Turned out that they wanted something more literal, so I did the second one.

Old comics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comics and I have a checkered history. I'm tried to make a comic book more times than I can remember and failed. If you've never tried, there's something you should know: It's way harder than it looks! Anyways, I'm thinking that since I can't seem to get myself off the ground as a penciler, maybe I'll try doing inks first, getting into it, then try to more to pencils when I'm ready. I was looking through my comic related stuff for some pencil photocopies I got from Dark Horse, and I found these old comics. They are really bad, holy crap. I don't mind seeing my old work and shivering at how bad it is, because it makes me realize that I have progressed. The ninja comic I hardly remember doing, but I think I had just gotten one of my wisdom teeth removed, and I'm sure that this ridiculous story was something I just daydreamed afterward. These comics are sooo bad, but I'm ashamed to admit, that I have story ideas, like this ALL the time. I might look like I'm having some deep contemplative moment, but this is probably what's going through my mind. The odd thing to me, is that when I'm tried to draw serious stories, I don't get past the first or second page. I lose steam really fast. I think when it's funny (subjectively) like this, I have a lot of fun making them, and I make it through.

watercolor moleskine.

Do I need to say anything more? No, not really, but I will. I bought a Moleskine with watercolor paper in it. The paper is thin enough make a book you won't burn through too fast, but thick enough to paint in. The book is small enough to be easily portable, but large enough to make whatever you want in it and not feel cramped. It's sort of a "widescreen format" if you will, and I just love that. It couldn't be more ideal. I think it's the best thing since the Hi-Tec-C. I highly recommend this for anyone else who picked up the habit of working heavily in your sketchbooks from Barron (Storey). That's the word.

Born Anchors CD cover

I worked on a CD cover for Born Anchors. It never really made it to completion, so this is it's last manifestation. The colors, concept, and type are not mine. This is kind of a sad job for me. I like the guys in the band, and the music, and I wish that the concept they wanted had worked out, but it didn't. I was not creatively active on this assignment, my role was more of "the hand." I just drew whatever the guy I was working with wanted and didn't really participate in the concept or anything. The comics style portraits I did on my own at one time in the process, they might become buttons. I like them a lot, even though they're certainly a departure for me. I've been playing around with a lot of different styles lately, and the projects that I've been conceptualizing have been all over the map. This was when I was thinking a lot about developing a comic book style. I'll be the first to admit a strong influence from Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl, Gorillaz). Fun though. But yeah, the cover, not so much. I'm not sure where it went wrong, but it surely did.

Last record cover?

This is a record cover for a Mexican hardcore band called Maladie It's got an Egyptian Death theme. Mummy, blue lotus, stars of the underworld. Good times. I got to do whatever I wanted on this one, and that's the way I like it. They did some of their own changes after passing it off, but I'm showing it the way I intended it to look. This is probably going to be my last record cover, at least for a while. I've finally finished all the covers I had committed to doing, and I don't want to do them anymore. They are labor intensive, and I don't get paid hardly anything to do them. If I got a decent offer to do one for a large label or something, that's a different story, but for what I'm making now it's just not worth the time and stress. I'm supposed to work on some drawings to go in the layout of a record cover, but that's a bit of a different beast.

I'm not sure where my next move will be. I have some editorial illustrations coming up, but if you haven't noticed, illustrations in magazines are waaayyy down. I don't think it's realistic to try to squeeze a living out of those alone. Possibly comics, or concept art. Maybe I'll hunker down in a master's program until the economic shit storm blows over. We'll see.

Nylon Guys - Richard Branson

The art director from Nylon Guys gave me a second chance to do a nice portrait, something that was so challenging to me with the Wonkavision assignment. This time I had a week instead of a day, and the assignment was Richard Branson! A gift from the illustration gods! Portraits can be tough, but the face makes a huge difference. Richard Branson has a truly great face. It's very easy to do a likeness of him. I did many many drawings and studies of his face. At my first attempts were poor and uninspired so I chose not to show them here. The first painting was the really polished and colorful one at the bottom. I was really proud of it, and excited because for the first time I had done a painting that was un-creepy. I personal mile-stone. The AD was not stoked on it though, and said it was too slick. He recommended that I not try so hard, and make something darker. I guess it's better to try too hard than not hard enough. At first I was taken aback, but I quickly realized that it was not suitable for that magazine, and it was not like the work in my portfolio, so probably an unwelcome surprise for the art director. He recommended that I do something less literal, so I have the blue and green shapes based on his directions. I think they came out nice, and it was a good assignment. The blue version is printed on the last page of the magazine, on news-stands now.