I can now speak without fear of death (sort of)

After months of being required to remain silent I can say that I get to do a story for the comic book anthology being put out this summer based on the works of Tori Amos. The list of creators, which I'm not sure I can talk about is really fucking impressive. The book is talked about in an article in the January issue of SPIN magazine, and once that article is up on the SPIN website I will link to it from here. You will most definitely be hearing about this a lot in the coming months until it's summer release.

I'm not allowed to post any art at this time, but I will keep you updated on anywhere you can find info on the project.

LMS3 finished?

maybe done, I'm gonna sleep on it, and see what I think in the morning.

LMS3 in progress

Working on my first entry for the Last Man Standing contest at ConceptArt.org, and here's a couple of the in-progress picts.







this is the pencils on rives bfk with white charcoal






this is the picture with most of my flats laid in

Touching the Sun

This is a personal comic that has been floating around in my head for lord knows how long, and it's finally got to the point were I have to draw it just to draw it. It's only a five pager, the first page of which is right here. Once the rest of the pages are done, I'll post them all together.

prep work for an upcoming...

project. One of a handfull I got going right now. At least a couple of which, should end up bearing some decent fruit at the end.

a bit more done...

but still a bit to go

the more I work on comics the more I love a lot of panels... used to love splash pages, and I still like the occasional one, but give me a page with more than 6 panels and I'm in heaven.

Another page of pencils...

another page of my extremely rough pencils for the "Fitcher's Bird" story that just started at Split Lip with writer Sam Costello. From what I understand Sam will be posting 4 more finished pages every Sunday until the story reaches its 18 (not 17) page finish.

A Good Work Day... :)

You gotta love the days when working doesn't feel like work. I've gotta admit that I've been in a rut of having to push myself constantly to work, but it feels like I got over the hump today.

I'm working on my second page of the day (shown above)and it's a page that, in the pencils at least, I'm happy with. Not because of the domestic violence (I'm not that kinda guy, though drawing any kind of violence is usually a very strange stress relief) but because I'm actually happy with the story-telling I have going on in the page.

painting finished

needed a release...

so I did this, just needed an hour to swing at something that wasn't deadline driven. Anyways, I feel better now, so back to work with me.

another page...

in progress of course, to see them finished you'll have to check out the entire comic once it's finished.

done at the "Field" Friday

sketch I did while sitting in the North-west American section of the Chicago Field Museum Friday.

quick color study

here's a quick color study I did in photoshop, since i don't want a lot of trial and error on my colors. Now I just got to wait till the transparent gesso completely dries, and I'll do a bit of masking.



look how happy he is, he's even dancing :)

under-drawing finished

this would be the finished under-drawing for the painting I'm doing for the Field Museum Class. It was rather large and took way too long to scan in on my tiny desk scanner *sighs*.
Well, this week at least I'll get into painting the thing.

Field Museum Project

this is the project I'm doing for my final assignment at NIU, and it's gonna be a doozy. Aside from the work I'm doing at home, a lot of details are being taken from the Bob-O statue at the Museum. What you see here is the in progress underdrawing, which will eventually be traditionally painted over. When this is finished it should be added to my portfolio in time for Gen Con :)

A couple of roughs...

for the story with Costello:




getting to a particularly bloody part of the story, that will be a blast when it comes time for me to do the finished pages.

meet lil' charlie's buddy duncan

Meet BOB-O

Meet Bob-o, my Demon Buddy from Tibet, that I met at the field museum. I will be incorporating Bob-o into an environmental design illustration project I'm gonna be doing over the next couple of weeks, so yo will be seeing a bit more of Bob-o, or at least my interpretation of him.

Collected Lil Charlie...

if you wanna see all the Lil'Charlie pages I did for my graduation portfolio go to my Comics Space page: http://www.comicspace.com/john_bivens/

they are all put together in my comics gallery there.

Page in Progress--

I've been really sick the last week, so have accomplished next to nothing... but here's something I have inprogress. It's for the comic I'm working on with Sam Costello, and still has a long way to go to be finished. This shows just how rough my pancils are before I get to the inking stage, if I'm doing the inking myself.

Steam Man of the Prairies

a character remodel for The Engine.

So, what's going on this week...
Well, last week I received an offer to make a lil bit of extra money this summer doing a web comic with Sam Costello, which I am accepting so I will be doing some character development work and thumbnails this week.

Also, currently trying to put together a proposal to Adult Swim for my Lil Charlie character. Really don't know if anything at all will come of this, but I'm meeting with my writer friend, Devin Hansen, this week to go over script ideas. Devin is the guy I've been working with on a proposal to Image comics.

Oh yeah, and Thursday I will officially be another year older, and will most likely be hitting some bar here in DeKalb that night *sighs*

Then the week after this I start up my last two classes at NIU, a math class I've been avoiding since I turned 18, and an illustration class at the field museum in Chicago.

This is shaping up into quite the busy summer.

character studies

figured I'd try to put together a proposal package for Adult Swim with my Lil' Charlie character, so I'm doing a bunch of character study illustrations. This one is of God in all his alcoholicy goodness.

coloring done

Here's the colored page that will replacing a page in my Robert Johnson/Lil Charlie story.

ReWorking a page...

that I did over the last semester... it didn't fit with the story I had going as much as I wanted it too. This is the line work and shading I did today... coloring is tomorrow.

twisted sci-fi

Did this for fun to post on THE ENGINE, it's what I get for watching old sci-fi flicks late at night while I'm sketching.

a concept remodel for the engine

old stuff

some more old stuff... this page is from a practice group of pages I did a while back, I still enjoy this one a bit so I figured I would post it.

Quick update

just wanted to post a few things I've done recently

WOO HOO

I'm finaly graduating and this is the poster for the senior show I'm in... we're gonna have hot wings :)

What I'm handing in tommorrow...

mixed feelings on this... since I worked on it in a completely new way I'm happy that I actually finished it and don't completely hate it... on the other hand I don't know how I feel about each panel not having a constant stylistic feel.

roughed...

a couple of panels that I have roughed out, and need to transfer to clean up and ink:

what I'm working on this weekend

here is a panel from a page I'm working on this weekend... I'm going about it differently in that I'm illustrating each panel individually and then piecing the it all together in the end... we'll see just how well this works.

it's about time...

image and name are ©2007 Devin Hansen and John Bivens

more to come with in the next few weeks...

still going

painting project for over the weekend...

have an assignment due for critique in Advanced 2D figure study next Tuesday, so I'll be pulling a lot of hours this weekend working on it. I'll periodically post my progress as I go.
It's being done in acrylics on a 3'x4' canvas.

projects going on...

this is a splash page for the second short lil charlie comic I'm doing for the collection I'm working on...

and this is a thumb for a treatment I'm doing at the moment.

I've returned

After being gone on break for a bit and having no high speed internet, I'm back and a new semester is starting. I met with the writer of a treatment I'm working on and through a few ideas about in the sketchbook.


roughs for a page of the treatment I'm doing


sketchbook page for a cd idea


sketchbook idea for an editorial piece


fairly obviouse shoe add idea that I really just needed to get on paper... if I change some things around it might become a bit more interesting, but at least now it's out of my head.