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

April 30: Not a drawing, but a little comic I did

I did this little comic for a profile picture. It took about 5 minutes and I thought I'd share it here. Ok I'm tired; I'm going to bed.

April 25: Oh, right, about page 3

I don't know if I mentioned it here or not, but there is no page 3 yet. I got stuck on it when I was working on it, so instead of just being stuck I decided to move along with page 4.

If you're confused by page 4, don't worry; you didn't miss much. The guy in the hoodie opens the door to the apartment, goes inside, and sees Ezra (the guy in the glasses) standing by the window. This is also where you find out that the note was written by Ezra.

Sorry if I forgot to mention that earlier, hope that clears up any confusion.

Later

April 24: "Day off" sketches - Zombies! and a work sketch

I think I'll start referring to general sketches as "day off" sketches. All my drawing is devoted mostly to the comic project, but simple playing around is still important to keep from getting bored or stuck in one style. So if the comic is like another job for me, the sketches are what I do on my days off from the job; hence, "day off" drawings.

The first is a zombie, which I think just goes without saying. I was at a comic convention this past weekend, and one of the guests does a lot of zombie-type work, and was doing zombie caricature type stuff, where he'd draw people as zombies for 20 bucks a pop. So after seeing that I got inspired to try my hand at some zombie stuff. This sketch mimics his style a little (at least of the quick sketches he did), but his were definitely a lot better. I still like it, though; not too bad for a rough sketch.



I think I'll probably do more of these, and maybe try my hand at drawing real people as zombies.

This next sketch is one I did on a post it note at work a few weeks ago. The message is pretty self-evident, I think: people who go to the length of wearing button-ups and ties with backward hats and flip flops negate their efforts with their dumbass fashion mixups. Now I'm not a fashion snob or anything (I'm a t-shirt and jeans guy myself), but come on. What's even worse is when a dude will be totally decked out in a suit, but totally ruin the entire thing by wearing some stupid Bass Pro Shops hat or something dumb like that.



Okay, so that should pretty much do it for this entry. Hope you liked the sketches. Oh, and I forgot to mention this when I posted the last page of the comic, but that's going to be the last full, completed page I'm going to post here. When it's all done I might do a little 5-page teaser or something, but until then it's no more full pages. But I'll post little bits and pieces here and there, and, of course, all my other sketches will go here; so there should always be something new to look at. So keep checking back!

Later

April 22: Page 4 - Done (for real this time)

After two weeks of drawing, erasing, liquid paper-ing and scanning, page 4 is finally done. And for some reason doing the page on just a larger sheet of paper really made things a lot more difficult than the first two pages...I don't really know why that is. But it's done now, so without further ado, I give you page 4 of "Last Resort."



I feel pretty good about it, and I think this is easily my best page yet. And now that I know the kind of technical issues I need to be aware of I think future pages will come along a little quicker than this one did. But anyway, there it is; sorry it's been so long without any new stuff up, but I hope this makes up for it.

Later

April 21: Page 4 is done...kinda

Ok, so I have good news and bad news.

First, the good news: Page 4 is done! The artwork's all finished and ready to scan.

The bad news? Well, that's where the scanning comes in. Because of the high level of detail in the artwork with all the shading and whatnot, just throwing the page on the scanner and clicking "scan" isn't going to do it anymore. I've moved up to 1200 dpi (which is pretty high), and I've had to start tweaking a lot of little settings to get all the detail in, and get it in without picking up the pencils left on the page.

So now I've got to go back, clean up the page a little, and then start trying to figure out that happy medium with my scanner. Hopefully I should have it all figured out soon, and then I'll put it up here. Until then, stay patient, while I try and stay sane.

Later

April 19: Graaaaah...

Page 4: still in the works. Basically? Fuck.

(Added later: Since I'm a generous guy, but also too tired to scan anything, here's another photo preview of the progression of page 4)



I just looked back at the first two pages, and I've got to say that I've really come along way already in the process of doing this book. Maybe it's just all the repetition of drawing these characters over and over again or something, but it's gotten a lot better, even about two or three pages into it. I think what I might even do is redraw the first two pages again when I finish the rest of the book, so that the proportions fit with the art boards I'm drawing on now and so that the artwork has a little more unity to it. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

But it's coming along, slowly but surely. Trouble is that it's hard to fit all the things I'd like to do during the day into the several hour time slot I have after work every night. I'd like to draw, I'd like to read, I'd like to go for a run, I'd like to fuck around on the internet for a while, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. So it's tough to really sit down and work on the pages. But it's coming along. Every little bit helps, I guess.

Okay, I need to go to bed (work in the morning!), but I thought I'd check in with the people that like to check in on my progress. Also, go watch Clerks 2, because Kevin Smith's a fucking genious. Make sure to check out the "Back to the Well" documentary, too, because it's also great. That's a random thing to throw in, but it's my opinion.

Laters