Sometimes You Get What You Want (even a BOOK DEAL)

Being an artist is really hard on your self esteem. I graduated from art school 9 years ago. I consider myself a good artist. I'm a good draftsman, pretty decent with color and composition,  but those 9 years were full of doubt and self loathing. I would get the occasional commission, art show, or illustration gig, but nothing that I would call a full time career. During those same 9 years I watched my friends start and succeed in their own careers. They bought houses, cars, had a savings account, and probably some sort of plan about retirement. I had a couple close calls with starting a real art career, but things fell through.

Then I got a book deal. I'm so so so excited about this. Having a book deal has been a life long dream of mine. To walk into a store, and see my book on a shelf. To see a kid reading my book. To see MY kid reading MY book! And now, in the Spring of 2014 it'll happen. 

I'm very pleased to announce that I'm illustrating a middle grade graphic novel called Muddy Max, written by fellow Portlander Liz Rusch, to be published by Andrews McMeel/AMP! Comics for Kids. Muddy Max tells the story of Max, a sixth grader who discovers he's transformed into a super hero when he gets muddy. 

Here's some early promotional artwork for the book.

Sometimes you get what you want!

Women of Wonder Day 2012

For years I've been meaning to contribute to the awesome Women of Wonder Day fundraiser. Every year they auction off art featuring strong female characters to raise money for domestic abuse shelters. Its a great cause and the events, hosted at comic book shops, are a ton of fun to attend. This piece will be up for auction in Portland at Excalibur Comics on October 21st.

This year I started early and have just finished my Women of Wonder: Dana Scully. She's smart, she's strong, she's complicated, she's a red head. 

Dana Scully

11" x 17"

Watercolor, Ink wash, Colored Pencil

Detail

Web Comic

I've started working on a web comic that I'll be launching this fall. I am really enjoying working in a horizontal frame, as opposed to a standard comic book page. I've been re-drooling over the Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strips and have taken those wonderful images as my inspiration. The entire comic will be done in watercolor and ink, I'll letter on the computer, but for the most part this will be a hand made comic.

My goal is to have at least a 3 month supply of pages before launching the comic, I'm a third of the way there.

Penciled page from my sketchbook

Finished page, watercolor and ink

Other Worlds cover for Comics Forge

I was asked to do a new cover for a limited edition comic from Comics Forge collecting three of Justin Zimmerman's Other World's stories (one of which I drew). The comic is the first in a series of books coming out called Comics Forge Presents that showcase indy comic book types like Justin and me. The art direction was pretty simple: "sexy space lady fighting a  monster". This is what I came up with.

My initial thumbnail

The inked drawing

11x17, watercolor and colored pencil on Arches hot press

sold

And finally, the painted image. This was painted with watercolor with a little bit of colored pencil for highlights. I don't have a title for it...so I've been calling it: 

SEXY SPACE SIREN TRIUMPHS OVER INTERGALACTIC CEPHALOPOD!!

Its fun to take a break from my kid comic stuff to do some high brow art like this.

Mural Design

Hopefully I'll be spending my summer painting an 800 sq ft mural in Portland, here's the design. The mural committee didn't have a theme in mind, so I got to wing it.

I drew this thing in ink and then painted it in Photoshop

Wild Boy

Wild Boy

9 x 12 acrylic on canvas

I painted this for my best friends' baby shower, they're conveniently making my son a best friend, so they get a painting. I've never painted something out of my head with acrylic on canvas. The surface was a bit too rough, but I had a lot of fun being able to paint over my mistakes instead of hiding them like I do with watercolor.

Facebook Portrait #2

Tyler 1/18/12

My friend Tyler, who also posed for me awhile back for my Little Shop of Horrors painting.

Facebook Portraits

John 1/18/12

In an effort to paint as close to every day as I can, I've started a new project where I'll paint one of my friend's facebook profile pics every week in my sketchbook. These are 4 x 6, which allows me to work on them upstairs whenever my 10 month old refuses to go into the basement studio.

The Tour

Here's the process behind my latest painting, "The Tour".

The initial sketch. To get the composition right I used Photoshop to help me with the layout.

Inked with with a crow quill pen (good ol' Hunt 102).

Painted with watercolor, highlights with colored pencil (mostly in the nebula which was a blast to paint). Archival prints are available of this image through Imagekind HERE or signed copies are available on my Etsy shop HERE

October is the best

Everybody needs somebody. If a scarecrow was going to love anybody, it'd be a witch.

The Secret Admirer

 pencil and photoshop

Roller Derby Fire and Water Process

Here's the process behind my most recent poster for the Rose City Rollers.

1) Initial sketches sent to their Art Director, these were done separately and then arranged in Photoshop. Babs gave the okay so I moved on to polished drawings.

2) I decided to do the drawings in charcoal in order to force myself to figure out how to paint over charcoal drawings in Photoshop (yes, I really really really wish I was James Jean in his Fables years). I used so called "white charcoal" for the first time to tone down some of the stark blackness of the charcoal. I usually do my figures for the Rose City Rollers separately because the art director likes to have the freedom to move things around for all their print formats (posters, ads, signs, etc.)

3) I figured out how to paint on charcoal in Photoshop! I'm not going to describe it because its involvedish (mostly using a lot of layer masks) and I'm not sure how many people would be interested in it anyway. Needless to say, it works!

"Clean" Cover Process

Here's my process for the cover to the short story "Clean" that I did with my good pal Justin Zimmerman. I used a technique that I saw on William Stout's website (he made that Dinosaur book in the 80's that every boy has, he also most likely worked on every fantasy film you like).

Initial rough penciled concept, getting all the pieces in place

Inked with a crow quill using a mix of black and sepia ink

Raw Umber under painting

First washes of color

Final painting, but since watercolor looks washed out when you scan it in...

...I did some digital color correcting in Photoshop.

Re-Charged

Well, I wish I knew this watercolor trick a few years ago! I could paint 100 pictures this way. If you're interested in the process, I followed William Stout's "Rackham" process that I found out through Justin Gerard on the AMAZING muddy colors blog. It might seem slight, but laying down a wash of colored ink over your watercolor really unifies the piece (in this case it really cooled down the orange of the kid's apollo spacesuit). I am hooked and I can't wait to try this on a more complicated piece.

Oh, and consider this the launch sketch of Jet Pack Jack's successor! Painting this spun off an entire story in my head. If you're interested in buying this astro-boy, you can do so HERE, if you'd like to buy a print you can do so HERE.

Dissapointment

Well, I had a rather disappointing art-week. In the old days this would cause me to go through my flat files and randomly burn a few paintings to make myself feel better (looking at you BFA project). However, being the mature adult that I am, I decided to doodle something for myself instead. It turns out that doing fun things for myself recharges my batteries far better than artistic arson!

Here's the sketch:

Here's some ink:

I'm going to use some NEW TECHNIQUES to paint the image, so this may or may not end in failure in the next few days, which is ok since I'll have learned something.

Troll Kid

Some character doodles for a children's book project I'm mulling over.

New painting

The latest painting off the easel, this went on a two month baby induced hiatus, but I'm starting to get the hang of this stay at home artist dad thing.

Roller Derby!

I've been on a blog hiatus for awhile, but here's what I've been working on (besides being a new dad).

12 Days (left) of Pyramid!! My last Saturday!!

Today is my last Saturday shift at my day job! This painting was created for my portfolio, and to use some brighter colors, and show my ability to paint pirates. If you're interested in buying a poster of this you can do so HERE

The Twelve Days (left) of Pyramid! Day 10

This painting is special because its when I got good at drawing kids (which is hard, really, they have weird proportions). Also, its pretty stinkin' cute. You can buy the $12 poster of this painting at my Cafe Press store by clicking HERE.

Octopus!, watercolor

The Twelve Days (left) of Pyramid! Day 11

My lovely wife pointed out that I should be using my countdown to have a SALE!! So, I've launched a Cafe Press store where you can buy posters of any of the images featured in my countdown for $12.00. The posters are 11"x17" and are nice n' glossy. Apologies for the lame looking store, I'll spruce it up over the next couple of days.
My image for today is my Little Shop of Horrors inspired painting "Feed Me". This painting is special because I started using models other than myself and my wife! I hope to be able to use models more often in the future since it adds a realistic sheen to an otherwise fantastical image.

Feed Me, watercolor and acrylic