Let Them Eat Stake

I just want to say how ashamed I am of that pun, double so since I'm generally pretty anti-pun. I just really wanted to draw some vampire hunting and then that stupid pun stuck in my head.

Lift Off comic/giveaway

This is a projet that's been kicking around my head for about a year and over the past few weeks I've finally forced myself to sit down and do it. It's a nice little mini-comic that's mostly about spacemen. My primary impetus is that i'll be attending the Stumptown Comics Fest in a few weeks and wanted to have something to give out or trade or what have you. Unfortunately I don't have a table so I'll just be wandering around, you should say hi if you see me, I'll probably be the guy looking overdressed with at least an 60% chance of bow tie.









Speaking of saying hi, this leads me to the second part of this post. All the cool kids seem to be doing giveaways these days so I'll be giving away copies of the book to 2 lucky people. All you need to do to enter is leave a comment on this post and you'll be entered to win. You can also retweet my twitter announcement (@penguinsdawn) for a second chance to enter. I'll be picking one winner from each place next friday April 1st and send them out.

Underwear Dance Party

Nipples are a weird thing to draw, you don't want to put too much thought into them but you can't really just throw them on. This was a lot of fun. mostly just throwing all the random things in the background. Also if someone wants to name all 4 albums featured in the piece I'll throw some sort of prize for your way.

Last year I really wanted to do a post a day but that ended up being entirely unrealistic with moving across the country and everything else, so I've decided to try this a little differently this year. I feel like setting the bar at at least once a week is much more realistic.

Wizard People

I went to see Deathly Hallows Part 1 opening weekend and it was really great and made me want to do some Harry Potter art. I in no way feel ashamed to occasionally indulge my geekier tendencies. Can't wait until July for part 2.
When I was drawing the original for this one of my staff saw me working and assumed I was working on a self portrait, I'm not entirely sure how to take that since I'm pretty sure i'd make a lousy Ginny Weasley.

This even has two figures who are, in fact, actually touching; progress, progress

He seems like a respectable chap.

Back from my brief vacation to Baltimore, had a chance to get some work done while I was there and then finished this one up over the last few days.

Ill Lucid Onset gig posters

I was recently contacted about doing some gig posters for the local portland based band, Ill Lucid Onset, They were great to work with and gave me complete free range for the project. I have to say that I've been wanting to try my hand at gig posters for a while so I was pretty excited to have the chance, hopefully this is something that continues.

People In Places

I've been looking back at some of the ladies that I've drawn in the past and was reminded something my bud Sam Bosma said a while ago about it doesn't matter how cool a character is that he doesn't give a damn unless they're in some sort of environment, so thought I'd try to put them somewhere. Also I've been really exploring what I can do in digital. I've been working completely flat for so long that it's been a challenge to thinking about making form this way again. Been looking at the great process post by the aforementioned Sam Bosma and the always great Meg Hunt and found them to be really helpful. Really love some feedback on this one.

Also finally working on drawing some dudes.

In other news I switched my art related flickr over to here in case anybody cares.

This one even has a dude in it.

...and a background

I'm more or less settled in Oregon now and have finally gotten to get back to work (which feels pretty great). I still feel like the part of my work I like the most is the pencil drawings and I'm not quite sure how to rectify that. Fun story this started as a digital piece, with which I proceeded to get frustrated, started a painted version, which at about 5 hours in I realized that there were two sweat droplets and was abandoned (painting over gouache never seems to work) and basically started the digital version all over again. I think I miss the critique world, maybe I need to look into studios in the Portland area or just make some art friends.

Colored Denim Dress

Not sure the colors on this are quite right yet.

Marvel Girl Colored

Bah missed my before midnight deadline by 15 minutes, it was around 10 and I realized that I only work I'd done today was something I can't share here yet so I thought i'd color my Marvel Girl from last week. Then I started tinkering with the texture work and suddenly it's later than I intended. Oh well.

I was thinking that if an X-men movie was based on the Jim Lee era stuff they should cast Christina Hendricks to play Jean/Marvel Girl/Phoenix.

Antler Girl Colored

I intended to have more than just a colored version of the antler girl today but it took a lot longer than I thought it would, still maybe needs some work (I think I want to play with the texture a bit.)

Somewhat Georgian Colored

Spent most of the day driving around trying to find supplies and working on an assignment so here's a quick coloring of the vaguely 18th century lady for a few days ago, just barely squeeking this in before midnight. Still working on the digital color business, and there are parts that are more successful than others but a good practice.

Military-esque Jacket

I need to come up with some real projects.

Shaggy Dress Girl

Still kind of mid crisis (though thankfully significantly less) and didn't have much time today to myself today so I decided to try and fix the legs and color the girl from friday's post.

Time to make a change

It's been kind of a wild year what with grad school and moving back and forth between continents a couple of times and now doing the whole job hunt thing (p.s. if any knows of somewhere looking for a jr designer, assistant creative director, or that sort of thing please get in touch where isn't so much an issue as I'm looking to move somewhere else anyways).

So I was kind of awful at posting on a regular basis in 2009 so my biggest resolution for the year is to drastically change that. Since the goal is to make illustration my actual job it's time to start treating it as such so my goal for this year is a new post every day monday through friday. Just at least something; a quick sketch, progress shot, preferably something more substantial.

Right so lets kick this thing off, lately I've been at quite a loss for ideas lately and I realized that I've never done the illustrate classics type of assignments so it's as good a place to start as any. I've been working on this first one (Alice in Wonderland) for a week or so, restarting several times.



Some sketches trying to get the look of characters right.




Okay so I got the drawing and then decided to go straight to the coloring without inking, most because I was feeling lazy.



Ultimately I decided that was a mistake because when it came to actually doing the line work on my tablet things just looked wrong.



And I scrapped it and spent a good deal of time today inking this and plan to move onto coloring it next.


Bonus: here's another fashion-y girl drawing I realized after scanning it and looking at it again that the legs are wrong, but the parts look pretty okay on their own.

Shirtdress

Here's another girl in fun clothes post, I have a couple more of these that are in various stages of completion that I'm hoping to get to soon. I've been pretty busy as doing the whole job hunt thing (if anyone knows of any sort of illustrators/Junior Art Directors/Designers/Creative/Editorial Assistants type positions please let me know) so I'm not posting as often as I'd like but I'm making it my goal to change that. Also I've decided that I need to work on some actual finished illustrations rather than these ladies so thats hopefully the plan for now.

This would be a tough character to pitch.

I debated if I should actually post this one or not because it's kind of tasteless but here it is anyways. The idea is she's kind of a cross between Nico Minoru from Runaways and The Darkness but in a hoodie and vaguely modish dress. Still playing around with digital color and there are definitely pros and cons, I think they need to move a little more towards the hand done so I probably need to practicing my inking.

Digital experiement

So I recently acquired a wacom tablet because I wanted to play with digital coloring a bit, mostly because of the frustration of trying to get colors to reproduce on screen versus painted. You may recognize this girl from the previous post and since she was just laying around I thought I might try coloring her, the version that you're seeing here is purely digital, retraced/colored everything. Still working on somethings and not sure where this technique is going or if it's going anywhere but totally up for feedback.

New Threadless Design

http://www.threadless.com/submission/138352/As_the_Clouds_Rumble_In

new threadless design, its been a while but here are some angry clouds. Vote please