Tales from the Sketchbook 008 - Days 8 and 9

Day 8

Time got away from me yesterday, and I forgot to post a sketch. It's not a very good one, though. I was just playing around with a costume idea.

Day 9

Working on some robot design ideas for the current comic page I'm working on. I like the idea of single task robots or even a group of robots who come together to only do one task. It's horribly in-efficient and goes against all good design, but it also makes for a fun and lively scene.

Tales from the Sketchbook 007 - Day 7

Today, I'm a little bit rushed. Worked outside today, and in this Houston heat, that can be pretty killer. Just a quick sketch based on Japanese woodblock prints. The Edo period produced some amazing examples of showing internal and external space in the same continuous image. I expect to do some Action Man comics using those compositional techniques.

Tales from the Sketchbook 006 - Day 6

concept for kind of a Lovecraft inspired monster. A lot of inspiration from the Old Ones.

Tales from the Sketchbook 005 - Day 5

Playing with the idea of the city of robots for the next few pages of the Action Man Adventures. Thinking about how to keep scaling up the size of the robots as the view of the city widens out. I doubt I'll have much more figured out until I get to the page itself. Still gotta finish the page I'm on, first.

Tales from the Sketchbook 004 - Day 4

Not much today. Just sketching some ideas for the next page of the Action Man Adventures. Also, had an idea for a robot that should show up later. I don't think the bow-tie will make it to the final page, but here's hoping.

Tales from the Sketchbook 003 - Day 3

After drawing that comic idea yesterday, I got to thinking of people who returned to the water, in their own way. Really broke out the old R. Crumb school of portraits style on these two drawings.

Tales from the Sketchbook 002 - Day 2

I had an idea about a person getting rid of their limbs and turning back into a fish, choosing to devolve. I don't know what I'll do with this comic, but maybe if I get back to making zines, this'll end up as a two page story.

Tales from the Sketchbook 001 - 500 days of sketching:Day 1

I've always been something of a prolific contributor to my sketchbooks. That said, I haven't been doing much sketching over the last year. Some of this can be blamed on doing a lot more digital work, but either way, it's time to get back to a pen, a book and a random something in my head or in front of my eyes. This brings me to a new feature on this new and developing, little art blog: 500 days of sketching. I thought about a year, but I've never really liked the idea of doing something over the course of a year. The only logical thing to do was round up to 500, and then go from there.

So here it begins. I thought I'd start with a few items from the last week or so.

And here's one from today, Sunday, May 23, 2010

More to come tomorrow...

Illustration Station 002 - Action Man Page 5

There have been a good deal of delays, but I finally have the fifth page of the Action-Man Adventures done. For anybody who doesn't know, The Action-Man Adventures is a comic strip I'm doing in the traditions of early 20th century comics like Little Nemo in Slumberland and Krazy Kat.

Each page is something of a new adventure in composition and how that effects the storytelling. Page 5 is heavily influenced by George Herriman's Krazy Kay. Herriman didn't draw boxes around all of the panels in his comic strips. To me, it gives Krazy Kat a chaotic energy. You know where the boxes would be, but with that line being implied, your eyes just move between panels in a different way then if there were gutters. (gutters are the spaces between comic pannels.)

I can't really post the entire page, but I've got a little preview panel.

And work on page six has already begun.

Illustrations Station 001 - Space Girl pin-up

Just been working on a pin up poster. I'm a big fan of the Barbarella movie. I've only seen a little bit of the comics, since I don't think they've been republished in English for a long while.
I use pin-up imagery in my paintings, but I've never really tried to do just a strait, cheesecake pin-up. It's been a long standing weakness of mine to due a strait illustration. Doing comics allows me to compose a narrative over a span of time or through multiple views of a space. Trying to put a narrative into a single image has been a really tough challenge, but one I feel like I need to start trying. Things like book covers and posters are really necessary for drawing people in to experience the inside of your comics.
The other advantage to the single pin-up illustration, is that having fun with designs that don't ever need to be very logical. One of those great things about ray-guns is that since they're physically impossible, you can let for go wild and ignore function.

And here's the messy pencils. I've never been one for clean pencils. Everybody tells me work from thumbnail sketches. It's sound advice, but I think my painterly training has got me stuck on thinking on the page.

Art Post 002

Still just trying to get more of my artwork online. These are a couple more New Saint Trading Cards. Still to come are the Saint of Zombies and the Saint of Kaiju (Japanese giant monsters). I think those 6 will make a really good first set, which means it'll be off to the presses with these guys.