Sketchbook Stuff

Sometimes when I'm stuck for something to draw I'll just draw animals. Most of these are composites of a few pictures. Some are straight copies. Some are loosely referenced.

I like how some animals are pretty much illustrations of concepts just on their own, although mostly I just like drawing animals. If you don't understand why I like drawing animals, why don't you just try and stop me.

That one's a crab.

Also I have like a bunch of these. If you want one let me know.

New Comic

Hello. I've been thumbnailing my new comic like crazy this past week. We'll see how much of what I'm doing makes the cut, but I'm pretty excited about these characters and stories. Anyway, since you probably don't want to look at scripts and thumbnails here are a couple of quick drawings I've done of the main characters. Stay tuned.

Excellence

I'll explain later. Excellence. There you go.

Focus

Eye on the prize.

Passion

Dedication means never giving up on what you love. Pursue your goals heedlessly. You're a champion; no one should be able to tell you what to heed.

(oh also apparently "resentment" is a synonym for "passion")

Pumpkin Bust

Hello. I have been working on laying out some comics recently, so I don't have a ton to show this week. But here is a fun little image I was commissioned to make for an event t-shirt.

The event is called Pumpkin Bust. They didn't know how many colors they would end up budgeting for so I designed the image to work with either 1 or 2 colors. Observe the halftone. Oh yeah also I decided to make this 100% digital so I could easily switch around colors etc when they figure out printing. Right. Halftone.

I also made a few type elements to go with the image; here is the main type treatment.

And there you have it. Print it on a T-shirt.

Imagination

Your mind will take you on amazing journeys. So next time you get a chance, instead of focusing on real things that are, try to concentrate on stuff that isn't.

New York

I'm a little behind on things because this week I went to New York. I liked it. Apparently nobody likes each other there, but apart from that it's really nice. While I was there I drew the people, because there are lots of them. I drew these on the subway or in coffee shops. Then I inked some of the ones I thought were interesting.

Witch King of Angmar

Hey, here's a low quality scan of a piece I made that I will be submitting to the Gallery Nucleus LOTR show. I'll probably update this tomorrow with something that better reflects the physical piece, but here's the gist. (edit: This is the better version now)

Final Devils

Here are some of the finished portraits for some of those New Jersey Devils from last week. I tried a few different ways of finishing these up, but same basic idea of taking the drawings I made and using scanned textures to color them. Hockey! Go Devils! Please win a game eventually!

Patrik Elias #26

Martin Brodeur #30

Travis Zajac #19

Jaromir Jagr #68 

(I had to use his pre-devils look because just try not drawing that beard)

Andy Greene #6

Devils Process

To celebrate the start of the New Jersey Devils hockey season, I'm in the process of making a bunch of portraits of the current players. Sometime soon I'll show a few of the finished pieces, but I thought this would be fun project to show some process on. All of the pieces were documented at the same time, so each step will be shown on a different piece.

For these portraits I wanted to try something new, and decided to employ a process that incorporates my favorite basic structure for drawing processes. 1- Make a drawing carefully 2- Make a huge mess on top of that drawing you just worked so hard on 3- Clean up where necessary.

Here is the first step which would be the sketch. This is Martin Brodeur of course. I spend a while trying to get the likeness down. Trying to get a recognizable portrait, but focusing on getting a certain mood from the player. When I get the line drawing down I trace it onto bristol. Then on the original sheet I go back in and quickly lay in a very scratchy value structure to make sure the way I want to compose the lights and darks will work. Drawing of a face.

The drawing on bristol (Andy Greene) gets a more descriptive treatment with colored pencil. Still fast and loose, but more refined. The way this part work is basically the same as inking the drawing, but with a colored pencil.

The last physical step are ink and gouache washes. All over Cory Schneider. I like the colored pencil drawings, but for nothing beats a brush when comes to making things a little more lively. From here I will take the drawing into the computer, where I do imaginary things to it until it is finished. Later. That got long; thanks for reading.

Opportunity

Don't think about the consequences. The world is your oyster. Eat the world oyster sissy!

Teamwork

Together everybody accomplishes more. Band together with the folks around you and take advantage of each other's strengths! The sky's the limit!

Skinjobs

Not sure if it's "Skinjobs" or "Skin Jobs." In either case there is a Blade Runner tribute zine that will begin kickstarting soon, and it promises to be awesome. So keep an eye out for that. A lot of cool artists are involved. I was lucky enough to be a part of it and here is what I made.

It will be printed two color riso, so the challenge here was to turn those two colors into a satisfying full range of value and hue. The colors are of course pink and blue. So I took ink drawing I had made by hand and colored it using two masked layers in photoshop. Each layer is one color that will be printed. Apparently it is a really fun way to make an image.

As far as the concept for this image I did a lot of sketching. Blade Runner is conceptually meaty. A lot of symbols and themes to work with. What really stood out to me upon analysis was the way Ridley Scott put the film's noir trappings into a dialogue with the idea of artificiality. The way the viewer receives information about the story is so heavily affected by the noir style, and in pretty specific ways. Everything is perceived through a filter, providing alternate versions of the truth. And no matter what seems like truth, one can't help but feel that there is some other reality hidden in the film's shadows.

Woah. Sorry I went all Bade Runner there. Enjoy owl picture.

Another Page

I will not be posting all the pages I made here probably, but I thought I'd show just one more to remind about the discovered show.

Because they needed to be made from used books and needed to be sold as final art, these pages employed a process I've not used before. A time consuming one. These pages were made by first thumb-nailing and then making final pencil drawings 12x18 like I normally would. The pencils were a little tighter than I normally work. Still no tonal information in them, but tight, finalish lineart. Then I took the final drawing and traced a template onto some trace paper. Which I would then apply partially to the piles of paper I had glued together; mostly just tracing the shapes. After that I put down a little gesso where it needed to be then retraced the lineart on top of that. Then lots of ink. Finally I cut out the spaces in the top layer, and glued the two pieces together. Digitally it is hard to see the dimension of the page, but they were planned to reproduce flat as well, so here you go.

Discovered!

Go to the show 6:30 September 27th! Central Library in STL! This is a part of what I'll have at the show, and tons of great artists who are not me have stuff in it too.

This is made using old books, inks and gesso. It is comics. There are two levels of drawing, the effect of which has been attempted digitally. Enjoy.

Discovered

I just wanted to assure all my loyal readers that i have something cool to show you, but I have not been able to find a way to photograph it properly, as it is a made entirely by hand. And is also (mildly) dimensional.

I wanted to show ya'll one of the things I made for AIGA St. Louis' Discovered event. It is an benefit auction put on for STL Design week; it is at 6:30 Sept. 27 at the STL central library. A ton of super talented people are in the show, and you should check it out. It promises to be a cool thing. Here is the link to the event page: http://stldesignweek.com/events/discovered/

Anyway I'll give you a little preview of my piece as soon as I can figure a way to fit it into a computer. Cheers.

Sketchbook, Transition

I've just moved and gotten a job. So I missed a week of posting. I am also working on a very small comics project which has eaten up quite a lot of my time. As such, I thought it might be fun to post so super loose drawings I made in my sketchbook that I kind of like. Taking sketchbook work and dropping digital color quickly on it can be pretty rewarding. A casual, furious drawing exercise. Here are just a couple.

A Day Outside Victoria's Secret

I work at the mall. When I have a break at work I sit on some nearby couches. These couches have been provided for shoppers who need to take a moment away from the stress and hardship that apparently accompanies buying a pair of sandals; it is a small quiet space where people can come to escape loud stores, sore feet, and frequently annoying friends. I sit and I draw an eclectic mix of folks. I don't know anything about them save what they look like, but I generally like these people.

Across from the couch is a Victoria's Secret. If you don't know what that is, it is an underpants store. They intend to sell underpants to women. They do this by putting their underpants on women and taking pictures of them. Then they make the pictures 10 feet tall, put them in the front of the store and point a bright light at them. I've never sold underpants to anybody, but that seems like one way to do it.

In any case, when Lauren Kolm told me I should go draw at Victoria's Secret for our gendered spaces project, I did it from the perspective I was accustomed to. I took my sketchbook to the mall and drew for a good long while. These are the illustrations I made from those observations.

Mall Drawings

I am posting on a tuesday today. Delayed posting because I decided I wanted to pre-empt the next piece I've made for the project I do with http://laurenkolm.blogspot.com/. Without getting too specific before the full post, it was a reportage project. I drew at the mall. Quite a lot of my fellow illustrators at Washington University did reportage drawing at the St. Louis Galleria. I didn't until this summer when Lauren Kolm made me.

Anyway. After plenty of on site drawing I decided on a specific idea for an illustration. I needed to draw portraits of real people I saw in the mall. For the final to work as I envisioned I ended up working largely from photographs, making some formal changes where needed. Here are studies for some of the portraits.

I love how much character this guy had just in his goatee.

And here are the watercolors that I did over these pencils. These eventually make their way into the final illustration. For the most part my color strategy was to try to remain as true to life as possible while for the sake of the final piece keeping the colors mostly muted. At the same time it was important to try to preserve the attitude and character of each person through color decisions.

Quick Post, Guitar

Hello,

I'm in the midst of making something else, so this will be quick, but here is a personal piece I made last week. It is based on a thing that happened to me and I thought was kind of nice for a drawing. Any process questions, just let me know.