Color study

This is the quick color study I did before I started actually painting. Photoshop makes it pretty easy to adjust colors quickly so that I can have an idea of where I'm going once I start using REAL PAINT. This is going to be my first painting in acrylic, so I'm nervous but I'm really excited to be doing something new. As you can tell, I'm most excited about painting that burning building on the right since I spent too long on it getting details down instead of just blobbing color on it like I did with the other two buildings.

Concert Poster Drawing

 Earth vs. The Sonictopi

18" x 27"

Charcoal on Arches 140lb hot press

Well, I've been trying to bust this thing out as fast as possible since it really is a distraction from what I should be focusing on artistically, but man is it fun to work on.  This is final drawing that I am going to try painting on top of, I'm hoping that I can lock the drawing down with acrylic glazing medium and then paint thin glazes of acrylic paint on top of so that the image is tinted but I don't lose too much of the rendering of the drawing (I was thinking of it as an underpainting).  I've never tried this before, so I really hope I don't ruin this thing.  Sure, it's a rediculous specatacle on par with a B movie by Ed Wood, but it has been REALLY FUN to draw and I'm rather attached to it.

Concer Poster Rough

One of the local rock stations is doing a contest to see who can design the best concert poster for MUSE and I thought it would be good practice and good publicity if I did it and got in the top ten.  I started looking at concert posters and decided that the ones I liked were just random illustrations that vaguely had the vibe of the band they were advertising. SO, I started doodling and here's what I have so far (I had to stop myself from getting too involved with the rough so its unfinished):

I like to call this "EARTH vs. THE SONIC SQUIDS!", note that the suckers are speakers.  Yes, I realize those are flying octopi instead of squids, but I couldn't think of a good alliteration for "sound" and "octopus" (sonictopus? cephalospeakers? you see my problem). I don't honestly think that the band would go for this, even though it is clearly awesome, but I'm going to use this as painting practice and as an example of cover art for comic books for when I go to the Emerald City Nerdicon in two weeks to throw myself at the feet of some art directors.

new studio!!

So the move is over, finally. I hate moving, but it is nice to set up a new studio. Its so clean! I'm sure I'll keep it clean forever! At least a week!














The new space is a little smaller, but its brighter and has light walls, so that should help my forays into painting.


















Setting up the "wall of dead things" is always a priority (which is Ashley's favorite thing in whole house, she's always like "hey, hang up more animal parts!!").















Still making progress on SK#2 and, I got a ton of photos for my zombie contest, so I'll be sure to show the final page along with all the reference photos that were sent to me (special thanks to my brother and to Cat, for roping her friends into helping me out).

Garden Piece

Every couple of years Oregon State sends me an invite to take part in a show.  This year's theme was "garden something or other", I'd give you the exact title but since I'm in the middle of a move I have no idea where anything is.  I had fun doing this drawing, but I'm definately going to be done with black and white for awhile.  Working on this while doing the comic just felt like more of the same.  Pretty soon I'll start my first foray into the strange land of acrylic paint for a roller derby poster. But that'll have to wait until the studio is unpacked again. 

The quality is a little blurry on this since its just from a digital photo taken with no tripod (again, no idea where that is) and the piece is too big to scan easily.

Bad math makes me happy

I recently discovered that I am half way through drawing the second issue of Salamander King.  This is partially due to my lightning quick speed and ninja like charcoal reflexes...but mostly its due to poor counting. I thought chapter two had 22 pages, but it turns out that it only has 19. It was like I drew 3 pages in two minutes.  This is especially good news since I have to move this weekend and the studio is about to get packed up.

Anyway, here is a panel showing one of those dastardly sneaky salamnders doing a dastardly sneaky thing. I wont be posting completed pages before the show for two reasons: 

1. a half hearted attempt to make you give me $3
2. laziness (my friend Josh has the new version of photoshop and I guess it will digitally assemble multiple scans automatically! My pages are bigger than my scanner bed and its very boring to stitch 4 scans together and get them to all line up)

Oh I also redesigned the blog to make it function more like a website, so now there are links to gallery pages underneath the banner. 

Salamander King #2 progress

Making some progress on #2. Here's a panel from I forget what page (I'm pretty organized...really, I just can't remember at the moment). I'm having a great time getting back into drawing comics. I can't wait for stumptown in April (though I 'm so far behind the slower it approaches the better).


Oh, and the winner to zombie contest 2010 goes to my darling niece and nephew (photos provided by my big brother) so they will get free comics!! Thats a six dollar value! Not to mention eternal glory.