Commissioned Piece

A commissioned piece for the client's co-worker, whom is retiring to Hawaii.

Thanos Sketch Cover

One more sketch cover before the show.....

Walking Dead Sketch Cover

Another sketch cover for Big Wow! This one is a double page cover.

The BASA Anthology

Missed it the first time out? Get the BASA Anthology "Ray Guns, Heroes, & Babes...Right Here!" at this weekend's BIG WOW! COMIC FEST in San Jose! Tables AA140.

Cookies!

My girlfriend surprised me with her not-so-secret project a few weeks back. She is working on some cookies with my Ishi art painted in food coloring on the frosting. I've been tasting the samples and they are really good. She knows how to cook. Now you can get one at Big Wow. So Yummy! :)

Got Monsters?

Missed the MONSTERS SKETCHBOOK from last year's Alternative Press Expo?
I got more at Big Wow!

The Walking Dead

Walking Dead Sketch Cover. One-of-a-kind original art. Pick it up at Big Wow! Comic Fest May 18th & 19th at Tables AA140.

Sketch Cover: The Fearless Defenders

Besides my ISHI comic book, I'll also be selling one-of-a-kind original art sketch covers at Big Wow! Here is one for the new Defenders book but also a homage to a Dave Stevens Jonny Quest cover from the 1980s.

FCBD Ishi Sampler Page

It's FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! Visit your local comic shop and there is a good chance you can pick up some free books. Lots of kid-friendly books too.

Today, I'll be visiting the home of Free Comic Book Day in Joe Field's Flying Colors Comics in Concord, CA and then the IRON MAN 3 movie tonight with friends. There always seems to be a big comic book movie playing at the theaters every time one of these rolls along. Lucky me! :)

And while I don't have a free comic to give away (I'll be selling mine in two weeks at BIG WOW! in San Jose/Table AA140), I will give you this free sample page of what to expect.

Artist Steven Yu at Big Wow!

My buddy STEVEN YU will be my table mate at BIG WOW! In many ways, we are complete opposites in how we work and in our styles but the guy has got the fire in his belly for making art and has his own distinct style. Come check us out at Table AA140.

The Countdown to Big Wow!

Cover to ISHI

Wrapping up the ISHI comic and it should go to the printer in about a day or so. Here is the cover.

More Ishi Art

The artwork moves slowly but there is a lot of inking and detail going on. So hopefully the results are worth the wait.

Ishi Continues...

 The work on Ishi continues. I hope to be done with the inking in a week but here are some of the panels from the past few days that I like.

Portraits

I was helping out some friends two weeks ago with a church fundraiser by doing portraits. My original sample portraits were completely watercolor but they took way too long to paint and I over-rendered them. One of the samples was of the Pope, who promptly announced his resignation less than two weeks later. I think it was the shock of me doing a religious painting that got to him. :)

So I went back to my more comic book style to speed things up. And I managed to wrangle four commissions out of the gig, which I finally finished tonight. Above is my portrait of "Tala". I went heavier and darker on this first one compared to the ones below, "Mary" and two kids. I've also included the pencils and the inked/pre-wash versions. I've always been a bit nervous about nailing a likeness, especially with these where you try not to exaggerate the features too much, and I'm proud that I was able to draw them from looking at a photo rather than tracing.

Ishi Pencils and Inks

Work on ISHI #1 continues......

What the....?

I'm not sure what it all means. Just random stuff but I really wanted to test this new Rendr sketchbook with my inks. I'm liking it. The thicker paper holds up against those thick Sharpies and I miss the brighter shade of paper that you don't get with the Moleskines.

Calendar Girls

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had some good holidays. It always goes quick for me, especially that time from Halloween to New Years Day, and it is tough to get any artwork in with all the busy work with cleaning for company and shopping for relatives and friends.

I have some aggressive art goals for 2013. I'm looking to publish a couple comic books, one including the ISHI storyline, which I gave a sample of last month. That is really just a sampler zine that is part of a larger story along with some other Northern California historical themes I hope to get to. 

But between all of that sequential work, I wanted to get back to doing more sketching. I have a sketchbook that I set aside for months that I finally did some damage in. The goal of this sketchbook is to study more artists in the industry that I like and copy their works to learn from. I feel I really haven't done enough of that over the years.

 

So I printed out a bunch of drawings I liked from some of my favorite artists in Terry Dodson, Steve Rude, Mark Schultz, and Adam Hughes and started sketching. Other that the opening image at the very top, all of these were sketched at a small BASA gathering at the end of December.

I didn't want to limit it to copying other artwork either so I had some photographs to study from. All of those drawings are below.

While there are a few male figures in the bunch here, I noticed most of them being women. Being the end of the calendar year and the start of a new one, I'm calling these my calendar girls.

The first three months of a new year tend to be the most productive for me so I was anxious to get back to my art once the holidays were in the rear window. But, as luck would have it, I rang in the new year getting sick with a cold and have been nursing it for a week and a half. But the image at the very top is the start of yet another sketchbook and the first drawing of the year as I try out this new RENDR sketchbook.

And so, 2013 begins! A year of Arting it up!!