Wondercon is over.

Exciting prospects for me that I can't mention right now. Made good connections, and new friends. I'd like to thanks Super Ugly, J.J. Kirby, Camilla D'Errico, Moritat, Jonathan Wayshak, and Kevin Leung for being extra rad and helpful.

Comics samples for Wondercon

These are some penciling and inking samples I've been working on for Wondercon (comic book convention). The first eight are from a sample script off the Dark Horse website. They provide it for would be comics pencil artists to complete as a demonstration of skills. The 5 pages after that are inking examples that I didn't draw, also provided by Dark Horse. The pencils aren't really pencils, you might have noticed, this is because I don't care for drawing with pencils. I rough my drawings out in pencil, but they're pretty messy and don't come together until I ink them. I completed these all very quickly. I was more concerned about keeping up the fast pace needed to be a monthly artist, and telling the story, than making the best pencils ever created. I'm hoping to find gainful employment in the comic book world this weekend, but if I don't I'll be back in the studio working on a series to pitch to publishers. Wish me luck!

11 portraits

I did 11 portraits for the new Graf Orlock record. Quick and dirty, but they still seem to have come out pretty good. The band wrote a screenplay, and it's about a time traveling assassin. On the cover there will be a cross hair, and you can put whichever person you want into it. Reagan obviously was not assassinated, but they felt he should have been, so he's in there as well. All members:
Julius Caesar
Tupac
Abraham Lincoln
Franz Ferdinand
Lee Harvey Oswald
Ronald Reagan
Leon Trotsky
Malcolm X
Jesse James
John Lennon
Robert Kennedy

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.