August 22: "Summer" LP work-in-progress

This is a WIP of the album artwork for the upcoming "Summer" LP by supergroup Benson & Henson. I'll be colring this digitally at some point this week, but I felt like putting this up here to show you guys how it's coming along. I did this all digitally, too, which is a first for me, so I'm pretty happy with it. Lemme know what you guys think.

Later!

July 26: Published!

This is an illustration I did that's actually being used for a column in a newspaper out in Texas. The story's about funny police stories, so they wanted a drawing of a cop laughing. A friend of mine told me about it so I gave it a shot and they're going to use it. Pretty exciting, huh? I think so. Anyway, here it is, hope you guys like.

July 26: Drawn by the light of my laptop screen

...I almost hate it that I get ideas so late at night. I started drawing these two little comics last night around a quarter to 3 AM. I drew them in the dark of my room, with my laptop monitor as my only lightsource. I don't know why I decided to mention that, I just sort of felt like doing it. Anyway, here they are.

This comic doesn't have any sort of meaning. It just sort of evovled into what it is, which is nothing. It's stupid and unfunny, but, then again, that's kind of what I was going for.



If you're put off by bad language of any sort, then you probably shouldn't read the next one, as swearing is what constitutes as the "dialogue" of the comic in its entirety.



Why 14 people? I dunno, I just thought it sounded like a good number.

Well, that's all I've got for now. Hope you liked, or at least found it moderately tolerable.

Later!

July 18: Pual

This is something I was just playing around with yesterday; it's some prep work for a house portrait I'm working on of the guys that I live with. I did this with my wacom, but I think when I actually do it for real it will be done traditionally with ink and a brush. But I just sort of wanted to see how this shading technique would turn out on a portrait (other artist definitely prove it's doable and that it looks really good, but I wanted to see if I could pull it off). Pretty rough and only good in a handful of places, but I hope you guys like.



I guess that's all for now. Later!

July 13: Put it somewhere with a good view

If there were a contest for Creepiest Wall Art ever, I think this would at least take 2nd or 3rd place, if not first. I did this for a couple friends of mine who wanted me to do something to put on their wall in their dorm room. They never specified what they were looking for, so I just sort of ran with it. And here's what I came up with. This was about 8 or 9 hours of work from start to finish. The dimensions are 11x14, and it was done with Sakura Pigma Micron pens and a Brush pen. Hope you guys like:

Did I mention that the people I made this for are girls? Does that make it creepier?



Creepy, huh? Well, I think so. Let me know what you think, too. Oh, and if you'd like me to do something for your walls, drop a comment with some contact info and we'll talk. And if you'd prefer it NOT be a picture of me watching you with a camcorder, that's fine, too.

Later!

July 2: iT'strueandyouknowit

Not a lot to this comic. Simple, straightforward, to the point, just like the Apple ad department. Enjoy:



If you're wondering if this comic is autobiographical, it isn't. It's what everyone who bought one of these things should be thinking as he or she is walking down the street bumping into people while trying to watch youtube videos on the way to Starbuck's. Hope it was worth it, that's all I'm saying.

Later!

June 25: This is a tricky one

Okay, so it isn't a drawing, but it's a little mini-comic I made after I saw this picture on Random LiveJournal PIcture Generator over at toothpastefordinner.com (check the link on the right). Hope you like.



Especially the one in the green t-shirt.

I admit it it's in the style of some of the stuff over at TPFD, but I think I made it my own. It's pretty simple, anyway.

Later!

June 7: IIII aaamm IIron Maaan....

So I've decided to take full advantage of my Wacom and start trying my hand at digital coloring. So that's what this is. It's an Iron Man drawing done by a guy named Jake Bymers who posts as jaybob over at DeviantArt. But I thought it was a pretty badass drawing of ol' shell head so I decided to try my hand at coloring it. But if you think the drawing's cool, all I can say is "I agree," because I didn't draw it. Just giving credit where credit's due. Anyway, here it is:



I think it came out pretty well altogether, and for a first real attempt at digital coloring, too. But I'd love to hear what you guys think. Fire away.

Later!

June 6: "Morbid Priestess of the Flesh Eaters"

This is a little sketch I did for a weekly sketch group on a comic artists message board. This weeks' theme is "The Morbid Priestess of the Flesh Eaters." Sounded pretty cool, and an idea popped into my head, so I whipped this up. I did it with my Wacom, which I'm starting to become a lot more comfortable with with each use. I'm not great with it, but I'm slowly getting a hang of the learning curve. Hope you guys like:



I'm not sure if dead baby jokes was the "morbid" they had in mind, but it's what popped out to me, at least...

Later!

June 4: Braaains part 2 (with Tales of Controversy!)

This is a "husband and wife" zombie portrait sketch I did for some very good friends of mine a couple weeks ago. I would have posted it then, but I mailed them the actual drawing and didn't want to post it up here until I knew they got it. Turns out they just got it this weekend, so I figured I'd go ahead and post it now:



Here's kind of a funny story to go along with this drawing, that I figured I'd tack on for kicks. So I post every now and then on a comic artists message board; I won't name the place, but it's a site I've frequented off and on for the past 4 or 5 years where a bunch of comic book artists, from amateur artists to semi-professionals, post their work and comment on each others in the process. It's a pretty good place to post your work and get some good feedback as well.

ANYWAY I posted this drawing there after I finished it a couple weeks ago just to see what people thought of it. So I post it and I wait and wait and wait, and no response. Finally a couple people respond, with honest, yet slightly abrasive responses--to me, at least. Now, weeks later, they aren't as abrasive as I thought they were, which makes me feel like kind of an ass.

I'm usually pretty good when it comes to taking criticism, but combine the anonymity of the internet with a couple of slightly off-putting comments with having to wait several days to even hear any comments, let alone comments I didn't particularly agree with, and I'm going to probably let it be known how I feel. Basically I said that the guys who commented "took the fun out of drawing" and asked if anyone had anything "nice" to say.

"Nice." That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Next day I get a response, telling me that if I'm looking for something positive that I was on the wrong message board. Needless to say, I responded back with a shove of my own. To make a long story short, after a couple other people weighing in, me unknowingly telling a forum moderator to "take your 'we're not here to make you feel good' mentality and shove it up your ass," and a couple other random guys exchanging verbal blows, the thread was closed, leaving a trail of bitter men and bad blood in its wake. All over a sketch of some zombies. What's up with that?

Anyway, that's the drawing, and a little story to go along with it. I hope you guys dig, feel free to lemme know what you think (famous last words...)

Later!

June 3/4: Back on the horse

Something worth mentioning: at some point in the near future I'm going to get back into working on my graphic novel project. I don't know why this keeps happening; I spend maybe 3 weeks to a month working on it, get bitter and lose confidence, consider quitting, do random stuff for a couple weeks, and then get right back into working on the book (repeat ad nauseam). Maybe the book is more taxing on me than I think, maybe I start to overthink things after a while (maybe it takes me exactly 3 weeks of thinking about things before I over-think it; maybe that's my limit on thinking about something); I dunno, but it's starting to become a pattern.

Whatever, as long as I'm still working on it, I guess. Anyway, I made a post a little while back that made the book's outlook pretty bleak, so I figured I'd at least post my thoughts on it now if anyone (for some reason or another) was worried that I was calling it quits. I'm not.

Side reading: if you'd like to get a better glimpse into this weird cycle of self-doubt and almost calling it quits, check out the short comic "Two Questions" by Linda Barry, which can be found in The Best American Comics 2006 or McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13. I don't know if you can find it online or not, but I know it's in those two anthologies I just mentioned. It's a great little comic, and one that's definitely changed my thinking on comics and the creation of comics. It easily made Linda Barry one of my favorite artists.

Later!

June 3: In which I draw like a chimp (Even moreseo than usual)

The other day I bought a Wacom tablet, and so far it's pretty great. If you don't know what a Wacom is, it's a little drawing tablet that plugs into your USB port, and you can draw on it directly fromt the tablet to your computer. It's pretty neat, but there is a bit of a learning curve to it. That's what this little comic is about. It's not that good, and the art certainly ain't anything special either, but it gives you an idea of what it's like to re-learn to draw on one of these things.



Sorry there's been a bit of a post drought recently. I hope to remedy that. And I won't have immediate access to a scanner for a little while, so most of the stuff I'll post will be digital (aka done with the Wacom).

Ok, that's all for now. Hope you guys liked. Later!

May 21: New Direction

It's recently come to my attention (from the thoughts I've been kicking around and from other places that I've been reading about making comics) that if I don't really enjoy doing what I'm doing in terms of my drawing then I should stop. If I don't like working on a project, or on a certain book, then that dislike and disinterest is eventually going to show up in said project, either in crappy, uninspired work, or in half-assed craftsmanship. Suffice it to say that I don't want this to happen, so I've decided to take a break from the comic book.

FUCK! I hate doing that! I feel like such a quitter!

Sorry, I needed to get that off my chest. In any case, I've put the book on hold for a bit, with full intentions to at some point in the near future return to it. So what I'm doing now is focusing on drawing what I want to draw. More sketches for fun, more mini comics, whatever. I might even revisit the Last Resort script and try and make it a lot better. But I don't know.

I don't know why I feel so rushed to do this. Why is it so important that I bust my ass on this instead of on other projects? Whatever the reasons are, I dont' think they're the right reasons. The top two at the moment are 1) getting rich and 2) getting famous; both of which, let's be honest, never really happen to anyone who goes into comics. Bottom line, I'm not in it to tell a story and I'm not in it for the sake of expressing myself. Those should be my motivations, but they're not. It's my opinion that an artist does his or her best work when he or she doesn't give a fuck about what people think about it. And I need to get to that place.

So, for now, I'm not drawing to get published or to get noticed. I'm doing it because it's what I love to do, and I'm trying really hard to be satisfied in that fact alone. So if you're wondering how the book's going, that's how it's going. It's a tough thing to admit, but it's honest.

Later

May 17: It's a simple question, with a simple answer

Sup, everybody. Here's a comic I threw together this week. One page, and it took me only a few hours to do. I'm a bit frustrated with my comic because it's starting to look like it's not exactly, um, understandable...? Well, that's who a couple people I've shown it to have thought. Apparently the sequentials don't really explain much, leaving some people lost. So I need to remedy that (at some point). So, to get some frustrations out and to play around with some other styles, I did this. Hope you like.



I also did this at work, and thought I might as well post it here. For some reason I never know what to draw when I try to draw during a break at work. So that's what this strip is about.



Okay, that should do it for this time. Hope you liked. Later!

May 7: I smell like the beach, but I haven't been

I had to work outside today, and I have to do it tomorrow and the day after that. Standing oustide, in one place, all day, under the sun, with no shade (save for about 10, 15 minutes here and there), so because of the sunscreen I wore I now smell like the beach. And I feel like I've been to the beach, minus the fun memory of the day. It's like I went, but I didn't reap the benefits of going. This has nothing to do with this drawing.



I drew this last night about 2 AM, and it's about the morning to come when I had to get up 5 hours later. That's the gist; not that hard to figure out. Enjoy.

Page 5 is coming along soon, and I'm really digging it. Just in case you were wondering how it's going.

Later