bought Manga Studio Debut off amazon for $10. Now I'm messing with it to see what I like. Love the drawing tools... for everything else, I think I'm sticking with photoshop.

This is a quick, let's-try-stuff-out sketch.

warm-up

Warm-up sketch experiment. I let various music played on the ALL SONGS CONSIDERED 24/7 channel decide the direction of this. First I treated it as various shapes (like looking at clouds for something recognizable. Then I would tighten up what I eventually saw, letting the music help determine brush type, color, line weight and final theme.

Witty Title Here...

Finished with the pastel drawing part of the print today, nest step will be scanning in and working out the final layout of the text.

on the easel:


detail:


Me figuring out my inventory for tabling at a local gallery hop this Friday:


For anyone curious, my space will be at the Blue Cat Brew Pub in downtown Rock Island. The hop goes on from 5pm to 9pm, December 3rd.

a quick shot of a little progress on the Lil Charlie print I'm making.

Also, I've had this putty forever, so I think I'll experiment a lil bit with some stop motion in the near future.

Charlie print under-painting

This is a stage where I'm avoiding any final decisions. Next I will start really laying in any dark areas.

Something I'm working on...

with writer Sam Costello, whom I've done some work with in the past. This will probably be the only page I show from this project, but it willbe posted in it's entirety in the future at Sam's sight, Split Lip. I'm sure it will also be part of one of the future anthologies that Sam puts out collecting stories. You can pick them up at conventions or order online.

underdrawing 11-11-10

Okay, here is a pretty rough underdrawing for a Lil Charlie print. Since I'm still on my chalk pastel kick, that's how I intend to finish this piece off. That means there will be a bit of simplification as I work into this. At the moment I still have to work into this with a darker line to keep track of my under-drawing a bit when the initial colors are put down.

being creative for me

I love drawing stories. Even if it's only one image I want people to be able to read a story from that illustration. I'm working with a bunch of writers right now, enough to keep me in projects for a few years. That's fun, and I love the collaboration.

Random Person: "I think I hear a 'but' coming on."

But... sometimes it feels best to have projects that are only mine. I want to be selfish and choose which of my "darlings" I'm gonna snuff and which I'm going to coddle.

To Keep myself sane, I'm working on some personal stuff, while working on the collaborative stuff. For a guy who pulls a regular "joe job" while trying to work his way into the comic world, this isn't easy... but necessary. You may have seen the post of the new Mr. Simian comic I'm working on down the blog page. Along with that adorable monkey-man I'm reviving my favorite inner devil, Lil' Charlie.

One of the benefits of doing this is that it will allow me to update my blog more frequently (writers tend not to like it when you give their entire stories away on your website).


Lil Charlie is coming back...

I am first developing some prints that I have been thumbnailing out, and will show more progress on in the near future.

In Progress

A bunch of stages working on a personal chalk pastel piece.

hey there

It's been a bit, and most of what I'm working on I'm not allowed to show... but, I have a personal project for the holidays that I can update with.

First post, stage one: Under-drawing



This is a pencil drawing on Reeves (or Rives... no idea how to spell the paper I'm using) that has been sealed with an acrylic pastel ground. Why you might ask? Because I love chalk pastels and never get a chance to break them out, hence using them on the personal project.

...

Working on a project I can't show any of. Instead, here's another sketchbook page.

A couple weeks ago...

Northern Illinois University had Sterling Hundley, come in and give a visiting artist presentation. The bulk of these pictures were taken during a break; when the demo was in full swing, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder.

a few pages...

... from my sketchbook. I was awaiting approval to go ahead on a project today, and took time to get out of the house and sketch a bit. These pages were all graphite, black pen, and pentel brush pen.

graphite...

I really don't sketch enough with plain old pencil anymore. This sketchbook page was done with Sanford Ebony pencil (I like the wide range in value I can get from it) and Staedler liquid point 7 pen (I like how cheap it is).

As a bonus, I'm starting to think of a follow up story to my Mr. Simian comic. Here's a thumb of the opening page.

more

trying to get a lot of sketching and plotting in before I jump head-long into a handfull of new & old projects.

follow me

Hats and big ole' walking sticks... both are full of awesome. Oh, and mustaches. I can't pull it off but they are full of win as well.

todays putzing about

a couple of sketchbook pages from today:

Just got to thinking, without the old ZUDA up anymore a few comics I did aren't online anymore.










This is the only entry that I did all alone. Looking at it now, the dialogue was horrible and a bit redundant but I had fun with the characters. The other entries that were up on the site were collaborations, and will only be posted if I get permission for it from my co-creators.

couple more sketches

sketching with mixed media today. trying to get into the swing of things with traditional materials again, so I can start designing some prints for next con season.

sketch dump

just scanning a few pages from my sketchbook. All drawn with either a office max pen or a refillable ink-brush-pen.

digital wiminzez

digital practice... very light stuff, but if your with a sensitive crowd, NSFW.

the door never knew what hit it

a page of art from the B&W crime story, "One of Us", I did for OMEGA COMICS PRESENTS #3.