Present Day

Here's the last piece of the tripdic I was working on last week.

For the third panel, I wanted to focus on the present day stage of my brothers and I. Growing up, we all went through the weird stages in panel one and two together. Now, we're at some point of adult "maturity" (BAH!) and all better understand each other and are really great pals. Yet, we all currently live in different states and most conversation must happen over the phone. Ah, the cruel irony of it all! ;D

Here's the thumbs/idea scribbles (I'm debating if this is a good stage in my "process" to post seeing how it exposes how off-track my thinking gets. Are those Shel Silverstein-inspired drawings in the lower left? And what the heck is Mr. Tagent? A terrible gag, that's what that is!):



The pencil drawing:


The final done in the "Bill Presing" technique (which was a lot of fun)! My oldest brother, Peter, is on the top, Shane is on the lower right, and I'm the youngest depicted at the lower left).


Thanks for all the nice comments on the tripdic pieces everyone. I'm glad you've enjoyed them! Have a good one!

Middle School...

Hey guys! Here's the second piece of my tripdic about growing up. This one is definitely about the middle school tween/teen phase. Wow, what a strange time that is, huh? I hope this painting captures a bit of that awkward and tough stage in life! ;)

The rough:

The Final:

Free Comic Book Day!

I almost forgot! Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday!

I'll be down at Green Brain Comics in Dearborn selling copies of my book, "Dailies", "Station 8", AND my buddy Miker is printing me a bunch of "Reed Gunther" issues to sell there as well! So if you're in the area, stop by and say howdy. It should be a lot of fun and BPRD's Guy Davis (who we were lucky enough to have as one of our pin-up artists) will also be at Green Brain!



*There will also be free Reed Gunther buttons available!

Imagination running... WILD!

Here's a project I recently had a preview for a few posts ago. I thought it would be fun to do a big watercolor (16"x 16") illustration of a bunch of things you do and play when you're a kid. It's the first part of a tripdic I did about growing up, but all three pieces are so loosely related to each other that they each work just fine by themselves. I'll post the next two pieces in the next two days.

So here's some process work for the "poster". I say that because, isn't it just crying out to be turned into one of those "Get LOST: in a book!" promotional posters they have at libraries? I specifically drew some stacks of books in the illustration because I couldn't get this idea out of my head.

Thumbnailing/list-making:


Next I drew a big loose inked drawing on a 16"x 16" piece of tracing paper. I later laid my watercolor paper directly over this drawing on a lightbox and drew right on the final with a pen.


Here's some very limited-palate color studies. I figured because the drawing is so darn busy, the color shouldn't be.


And the final:


Have a good Tuesday everyone!

Evolution of a Reed Gunther Page!

Hey everybody!

Well, the first 30 page issue of "Reed Gunther and the Steak Snacking Snake" is done! The book turned out really fun and Shane and I were SO lucky to get Reed Gunther pin-ups by Guy Davis, Kassandra Heller, Bob Flynn, Andy Gabrysiak, Dave Chow, and Pascal Campion! (We'll be selling the issue at production cost and won't be making a cent but these artists were nice enough to lend us a hand out of the kindness of their hearts. Thanks guys!) Shane did a great job making the story a blast and a half as well. I'll be sure to post when the issue is available to buy online.

Seeing how I sent it off to the printers yesterday, I thought it'd be appropriate to share some process work of how I worked on completing each page. From what I've seen, it's pretty standard but I always like seeing process work so hopefully you do too. ;)

First, I read through Shane's script and laugh at all of his jokes (some of which he puts in the panel descriptions that only I will read! He says it makes reading a script a lot more fun and I agree.)

I jot down any notes I want to ask him later on the phone or through email and try to work out a page layout to the side. Even though these drawings are so rough (some of them looked like I held the pen to the paper and sneezed), I'm really thinking hard about things like composition, page flow, etc.

Because those "script thumbnails" are so rough. I redraw them on a separate piece of paper at the correct size ratio and further develop my compositions. This is also a great stage to work out my spot blacks and try to develop focal points and blah blah blah...

Now it's onto the actual page! I don't blow up my thumbnail but I do reference it to draw with "col-erase true blue" pencil on illustration board. The blue pencil is great because after inking, I can through the page on a scanner and scan it in at "Black and White," which will ignore any of my blue scribbles.

Also, I try to leave the pencils somewhat rough because I always need to remind myself, "All of these pencil lines will never be seen by the reader. Spend your time inking, idiot!" (I try not to call myself idiot too much, either).

I do however want the page to be readable since this is the stage I check in with Shane and let him know what I'm up to. This is also the stage where Shane calls me up from LA to scream, "What the heck did you do to my script?!" I kid! Shane always has great advice and in this particular case, we needed to revise a couple panels.



Inks! I whip out my #1 brush and ink that baby UP!

You can see the changes that had to be made. Without giving away too much story, we decided that the 2nd panel needed to be broken up and we also realized the cows shouldn't be mooooving (heh!). It'll make much more sense after you read the issue. ;)

We also decided to switch the camera view around 180º on the 4th panel to give the sequence a little variety and to also distance the viewer from Reed for a little comedic moment.

Lastly, I scan the page (on the school's VERY nice 11 x 17 Epson scanner) and lay down some halftones. This acts as a nice buffer between the harsh black and white and helps to seperate certain elements in each panel a bit.

Also in this last stage, I add all the lettering (referencing Shane's script) and sound effects. Then it's onto the next page!


Be sure to check back soon! I'll post as soon as the issue is printed and available for purchase!

Wow things are crazy busy right now. Here's a teaser of yet another project sent from my phone. Have a good one everybody!

Here's a sneak peak of one of the projects on my drawing board right now. Confused? Me too! I'll post the finish soon!

Superman!

Here's kind of a strange drawing of the man in primary colors for my pal, Juan.

OK, back to work!

I wanna be a Rock Star

Hey, it could happen!

Kassandra's book! Pascal's drawing!

Ok, I promise "normal posting" will resume soon but there are two really exciting things I wanted to tell you guys about.

First of all, Kassandra just published a GREAT book of her drawings and illustrations through lulu. There are some great samples of her work including children in danger, dancing food, and ninjas! Check it out here!



Also:

If you haven't heard of Pascal Campion then please go check out his blog here. Pascal has been a great friend to me over the past couple years. He was the inspiration for me to do four months of daily drawings last year which were compiled into a book that he was also kind enough to write the forward to. Pascal was also cool enough to do a GREAT pin-up for my brother Shane and my upcoming comic, "Reed Gunther and the Steak Snacking Snake!"

Unlike my measly four months of daily drawings, Pascal has been doing daily drawings for over the past three or four years! Yesterday, sketch #1271 hit me by surprize. Pascal wrote tons of nice stuff about Kassandra and I on his blog (more proof that HE'S the nice guy) and drew an incredibly special drawing of us!


What a treat! Thanks Pascal!

NCS Press Release

Hey guys!

Just wanted to say that the NCS just released their official press release on the 2009 Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship I was recently chosen for! Check it out here!

Also, I'm very proud to be featured on Tom Richmond's MAD Blog! Tom was actually one of the judges for the scholarship.

I was introduced to Tom's work (and his blog) a couple of years ago when my roommate and good buddy, Scott Daly spent a Summer working at one of Tom's Six Flags caricaturing booths. If you haven't checked out Tom's blog, please do. He offers up GREAT freelancing advice, process work, and just plain fun readin'.

Thanks to everyone who has recently called me up on the phone, left comments here on the blog, emailed me, slapped me on the back in class, and bought me drinks (wait a second, why hasn't that last one happened?!). I really appreciate all the support!

Thanks again to Tom and the NCS! Can't wait to see/meet you all come May!

SpongeBob Sample!

Here's a promo sample I did for a potential client not too long ago. I haven't drawn SpongeBob too much other than when I'm doing caricatures and kids ask me to draw him. He's fun to draw but I especially like Patrick. I tried to put my own "spin" on these guys a bit, not sure how successful it is though...

But if you wanna see a guy who can really draw a fun SpongeBob, click HERE! ;)

Downtown St. Johns!

A lot of my recent freelance work is all NDA for ever and ever, Amen, but here's a little job I did for my hometown, St. Johns, Mi.

The downtown area is going through some neat changes and in order to increase awareness and promote the business of the downtown area, the downtown management board contacted me to do a couple of drawings of some well-known buildings in that area for their website. Right now they are only on a small visitor's map but they plan on using them elsewhere in the future. It was a fun job and I'm glad they contacted me!

The Train Depot (I actually had a solo art show here back in my high school days!):


The Court House (I've also spent a lot of time in here... I kid! I kid!)

Little Camera Girl

Hey guys!

First off I wanted to thank everyone for all the wonderful comments and congratulations from my last post about the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship! I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and do a big ol' honkin' blog post about it when Kassandra and I get back.

Here's one of those $50 drawings for my pal, Jackie Palmer who works at Canfield Jenkins, a GREAT photography studio in my hometown, St. Johns. Thanks again Jackie!


Also, I've updated my website recently. I've added some more work to the "illustrations" and "characters" pages, most of which I believe has been shared here on the blog. I've also added a short bio to the Home page as well as on the About page (featuring a Polaroid of me sipping soup at Casi taken by the ever so wonderful, Kassandra!).

Thanks again everyone! Have a good one!