stubbies

This was based on a photo I found on the internet.  I'm not going to say where, just that the subjects are unknown Canadian college students of yesteryear.  I was drawn (yuk yuk) to the photo because all of the subjects show different, somewhat inscrutable, facial expressions.  I was trying to do the drawing fairly quickly and simply, hence the lack of a background.  If I remember correctly, there wasn't much there anyhow.

character sketches

some of the cast

the old devil-on-the-shoulder trick

brothers

These are recent sketches of characters from my current work in progress.  I'll probably regret putting this up, as the final artwork is still a long way off, and by the time I draw them for real, the characters will probably  look somewhat different.  Oh well.

how to make comics and influence people

Books -- sometimes they are big.  And red.

A little while back I bought this enormous tome about one of my biggest influences, Jaime Hernandez.  From the introduction (by Alison Bechdel): "The Locas stories may have been, in part, a masturbation fantasy -- the women are certainly beautiful, and drawn with an unmistakable sexual vitality.  But that same vitality -- voluptuous, palpable, acutely observed -- infused everything in Jaime's stories, from the telephone poles, to the exhaled plumes of cigarette smoke, to the folds in a sleeve, to the precisely calibrated tension in the ropes of a wrestling ring.  This drawn world had a pulse."  Yes.  I think this is why I sometimes get hung up on doing backgrounds; I want everything in the panels to seem like part of a living world.  I know I'm not quite there yet, but I'm trying.

In conclusion, I am aware that tons of people have said that J Hernandez inspired them to do comics, but I'm just gonna get in line with the rest of them.