Happy Thanksgiving Week

Sweet Memories

Skateboarding kept me sane through adolescence and well into adulthood. Oh man, I remember this beautiful summer night session of 1997. It was the best and funnest memory of "board stacking" that I can recall.

Photo by Tim Dieterle

Christmas

Pen and ink with Watercolor/gouache and a little touch up in Photoshop.

Wolfdog Monster

Buddies

Frantic scratchings

Christmas

Another panel

This weekend I'm attending a 24 hour comic day event. the goal of these is to write and draw an whole 22 page comic in 24 hours.

I'm not doing that.

I am going to work on my graphic novel though and hopefully put a dent in what I have left to do, which is still a butt-load of stuff.

Graveyard art

I love old graveyards.

There's a beautiful old Catholic cemetary I discovered over a decade ago that I still tend to visit from time to time. In the middle of tis graveyard there's a beautiful sculpture of Christ, Mary, Mary Magdalene, John and a couple of angels. I'm totally fascinated by this thing, and never get tired of looking at it. So over the weekend I took my sketch book and did a couple of drawings based off that sculpture.

Here's an intaglio etching I did of the whole thing 13 years ago in my printmaking class.

Messy...

Here's a spread I'm almost done penciling for graphic novel in process. My pencils are usually never "complete" per se and they're usually pretty messy, as much of my drawing is being figured out during this stage. This part is foundational though, Idefinitely have the most fun during the inking stage.


...and my messy drawing table.

Couple more portraits for Christianity Today Mag.

Here's a few more portraits, 3 of which will be featured in the December of Christianity Today.

Skull Spacemen

Detail

Here's a detailed close up of the inked spread I blogged on the other day. The technology stuff in the background juxtaposed with the figures in the foreground was challenging but fun was fun.

Children's Book

One more teaser image of the book.

Inking Process

For anyone interested in my inking process, here's a few snapshots that show how I inked a 2 page spread for my graphic novel in process.

While pencilling, I try to keep things loose. There are times when I find it helpful to rough in shapes with a red pencil (not sure why, but it really does help me to stay loose)Once I've got it roughed in, I go in with a regular 2H pencil and tighten things up a bit. At this point I'm contemplating light source and basic black and white patterns the shadows will make across the pages.


I've begun inking. At the beginning stages, I use a crow quill ink dipping pen. I love teh freedom of line this gives, and it's so much more expressive and emo than an average tech pen.


And my favorite part. I go in with a windsor newton series 7 no. 3 brush ( I think that's what size it is)I start spotting in large black areas and making use of alot of dry brush in shadows. I recently started using Japanese sumi ink via Doug Tennapel's recommendation, and I can see why as the ink tends to be a higher quality and doesn't dry as fast...also not water proof, so beware.

I was actually able to finish this spread as well as one other over the weekend.

Children's Book

Another page from the book.

Children's book

2 summers ago, A very talented writer friend of mine had a neat idea for a book. So we collaborated and finished a dang kid's book. Very time consuming, but stretched me as an artist.

I'll be posting a couple pages from it in the next couple of posts.

Sketch card

Final sketch card of DC character, Etrigan the demon and preliminary sketch.

Inkwash as a background element

Working on a Christmas card design, and while I rendered the Holy family portion of it in a traditional albrecht Durer style, I was compelled to try something a little different for the background. Thought I'd experiment a bit with inkwash as it's a medium that I was intrigued by with artist Gene Ha who absolutely stokes me out.

This is still rough and will likely have a very subordinate role in the final piece. Somthing I found fun about this though, because the ink tends to take on a life of its own.

When good drawings go bad