Although abnormally skinny and frail in atmosphere,
Cobbler Franklin was surprisingly strong and earnest
in his resurrection work.
Another resurrection man for Illustration Friday's topic: Skinny. Resurrection men was another name for grave robbers, which was a lucrative career at one time. Pretty creepy...
Happy Halloween everyone.
Just in time for Halloween, Grady and Mo get into the act. As usual, you can see all the strips here. Happy Halloween everyone.
While going about his nightly resurrection work,
Lycurgus heard ghastly voices upon the air,
and his blood turned to freeze...
I haven't done an illustration for Illustration Friday for a LONG time and was inspired to do one today. Just something for fun.
Mo started something he didn't want to see finished.
You may have to read the previous few weeks to see how the guys got to this point HERE.
The first double-sized, full color, "Sunday" edition strip. I really think Loren and I are catching out stride. We're discussing speeding the frequency of the strips up. Maybe two a week, we shall see.
And, as always, you can see all the Mohagen strips HERE.
So here are the final inks for the dragon image I finished up this week along with some superhero illustrations I have been doing for Solarwinds, a network management software company. Just some random stuff that pays the bills.
So now for something completely different (I see this a lot it seems).
Dragons and fantasy shit are what got me into this whole art thing in the first place and it's refreshing to actually get a gig where I get to draw actual DRAGONS.
This is the second round of pencil roughs for the "dragon" card for a card game now in development for Slugfest Games.
Fun stuff.
What a week huh? Besides all the drama and death, this week will also be marked by the launch of a personal project of mine and my good buddy, Loren Hoskins.
Long story short, it's a cartoon about a goldfish and you can check it out here. We'll be updating it every Monday for now with plans to increase the frequency of updates as we catch our stride. Check it out, tell us what you think, and if you like it, tell your friends. You can add Mohagen as a friend on Facebook here or follow him on Twitter here.
Mohagen (and Loren and myself) thank you very, very much for your support.
I found this file while cleaning up my hard drive and realized I had forgotten to post it after the show. I drew this at the Staple! after party/liveart jam. I had just drawn a warrior in the same armor and the same pose earlier that same week so I just cheated and re-drew it big. And with a woman. While drawing it Stan Sakai (!) came up and gave me props ("That's really good!") which made my night (year).
Thanks again Mr. Sakai.
Okay, here he is. The main character for a webstrip my buddy Loren and I have been cooking up. His name is Mohagen and he's a goldfish. More details will be revealed soon.
The launch date for the strip is July. Stay tuned!
One of the freelance jobs I have worked on recently was a set of palindromes (A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward.). This was the first - QB BBQ. Fun stuff.
Here are three card-art character illustrations I completed recently for Slugfest Games. These are my three favorites. Bard, warrior, & merchant respectably.
So this is how most of my fish start off. As tiny thumbnails, almost just silhouettes just get a general outline and shape. Then I scan the page, blow them up individually, drop the opacity in photoshop, print them out and do the originals right on top of the print out.
Like I said, I am making a concerted effort to start posting regularly here again. I thank those of you who are still with me.
One of the many negative experiences I had at a show Friday night inspired me.
(click for bigger view)
So I'm back to fish. We'll see how long it lasts.
For those few that I have left watching my blog I apologize for the slow and seldom posts here. I will rectify that. I have a couple of projects in the works right now and I'm stoked to get them started. A couple of teasers: one's a spooky tale of a traveling "salesman", one's a horror comic in the vein of Lovecraft, and one's the daily life of a goldfish.
Stay tuned.
Just something for fun. While I was watching 24 last night I was doing some sketching and this guy came out. I realized his head looked like a football (unintentionally) so I colored him accordingly.
I was playing with a different palette and used different brushes than I normally use. A little outside-of-the-box thinking.
Here's another TMNT pinup I did, due out this month I believe, in Tales of the TMNT #56. My first piece in 2009 although the date says 2008.
Just a quick shout out to let everyone know of a couple of upcoming shows I'll be at. The first one is Staple! here in Austin March the 7th and the following weekend I'll be in Dallas for All-Con. (click the links for more info)
I'll have plenty of The Funky Fishbooks on hand and lots of new prints along with tons of original art for sale. So if you're in the area for either show come on over and say howdy.
So I hardly ever get a chance to draw hot chicks. It always seems I'm drawing creepy stuff and/or cartoony stuff so when I saw that All-Con (a show I'll be tabling at in Dallas next month) was asking contributing artists to submit designs for the 2010 All-Con Girl I jumped at the chance to come up with something.
I wanted to use the red, white and blue for her uniform in a way to not make her look like Supergirl as much as I could (ie: stay away from a red cape) Also All-Con takes place in my home state of Texas so I wanted to incorporate the Texas flag elements in her uni, thus the single star. Not a very creative costume I know but whatever.
You can see the linework here.
Here's a piece I've been working on for a couple of years now and finally (finally) finished. I did the lineart in a buddy's sketchbook a few years back and my plan was to add color later in Photoshop. I started dedicating an hour here and there working on it and then forgot about it. I have some conventions coming up and decided I really needed to finish this to have something new for the shows. I've already run some prints and they came out pretty cool.
Cookie was always one of my all time favorite muppets. I was really disappointed (pissed) to hear that a while back they were making Cookie more politically correct and that cookies were a "sometime snack". Give me a break. They have to start jacking with the muppets because parents can't assert their authority over their fat little kids and tell them to go outside once in awhile? Political correctness sucks.
So yeah, this piece is my response to that.
So The Funky Fishbook 2nd printing is finally here! They came out great. Whoo hoo! And just in time for con season. Pre-orders will go out this week. If you're interested in purchasing one you can get it by clicking here.
Those of you who pre-ordered, thanks so much for your patience.
So The Funky Fish Book 2nd printing has finally(!) been approved, approved again, double checked, approved again and is now in the final stages of production. Hopefully I'll have them in my hands and ready to mail out in the next week or two. The holidays really slowed the whole process down and for that I apologize.
For those that pre-ordered I appreciate your patience and thank you again. Sorry again for the delay.
Someone over at Deviantart suggested I draw Billy Bob from Slingblade so I gave it a shot. I love that movie.
20 minute sketch, brown col-erase pencil on sketch paper.
*Funky Fish Book update: For those of you who have ordered books, they're still at the printers. I am currently waiting for my proof to arrive. Hopefully I'll get them out by Christmas.
So The Funky Fish Book is back!
210 pages of fishy love, mostly black & white with 6 color plates. Super cool.
And to jump start pre-sales while it's at the printers I will, once again, be giving away 10 ORIGINAL, FREE fish drawings that actually appear in the book itself to the first 10 sold. What a deal!
The first print run flew off the shelves and I hope the 2nd run does as well.
The books are $20 + $5 S&H ($25 total). I can do overseas orders but please email me to discuss.
So I have a spot above the TV in the living room about 5' x 3' that needs filling and have had an idea to do an octopus sculpture for awhile now to fill it. I have a propensity towards octopi so it makes perfect sense. So after much mental deliberation I actually got down to working on it. This is my rough sketch to get my basic shapes down. I didn't do much work on the tentacles in the rough as I'll just let them take their shape as I sculpt. I had an old sculpture in the garage that I was doing nothing with and had a pretty good form already so I sawed it in half and recycled it to get the form I have now. This sculpture should go relatively fast, as unlike my other sculptures, isn't covered in 1000+ scales.
