horse portraits

Ladybird and Sweet Pea, ink and watercolor pencil on paper.

last gasp of autumn

hibernation

turning of seasons

Some recent pencil drawings from my little Claire Fontaine sketchbook.

giant eyeballs

Though I'm not in the habit of doing parodies, the other day I saw a poster from this movie and had the urge to redraw the characters like figures in one of those 1970s big-eye paintings.  The first person to correctly identify the movie wins a prize.  I haven't decided what the prize is yet.  UPDATE: ID has been made!

pastel goddess

Conte crayon on toned paper.

the (terrible) twos

ink drawing -- brush pen, no pencils

I recently realized that as of this month, this blog is two years old.  Happy birthday, li'l blog.

Stella

Dog portrait, finished!

in progress

One of the few things I've had time to work on lately: dog portrait, ink on paper.

scaredy cat

Black light painting -- acrylic on cardboard.

in costume

Some quick brush pen drawings based on old photos of people in their Halloween getups.  I like how different the two mouse costumes are, and the kids dressed as cows are pretty creepy.  You can't see it in the drawing, but the cat mask involves a ping-pong ball (split in half), a gumdrop, a candy corn, and lots of Scotch tape.

night rowing

Watercolor pencil and gouache on paper.

with wings

Can't you just see these guys in a Renaissance-inspired painting?

blargh

Maybe this says something about my mood lately.

gemini

Recent sketch for a future painting.  Revisiting the twins theme + a somewhat irreverent take on the old memento mori.

fisticuffs

Old timey.  "Fisticuffs" is an underutilized and underrated word these days.

mug shots

I've been reading this book by the guy who helped to pioneer the FBI's Art Crimes division, and spent several years chasing down art and artifacts that had been stolen or were otherwise being sold or traded under dubious circumstances.  When I looked at the photos section (people who have read a lot of true crime books will be familiar with this), I noted that most of the people who were arrested for shady dealings were real characters.  I wanted to draw them, so I did.  Apparently, you don't have to have a mustache to get arrested by the Art Crimes division, but it certainly does help.

welcome to my castle

So, I recently resumed work on a painting I abandoned in the fall of last year, and it is slow going.  I never actually took a painting class despite my art degree*, so I'm teaching myself as I go.  Anyway, this has taken up a lot of my time lately, so I haven't really worked much on other projects.  Also, much of my sketching these days has been done at a weekly meeting that takes place at Cafe Racer, so yeah.  Not a lot of sketching going on for me.  I know, I should get back on it.

Anyway, a little while back, I took these pictures of my drawing space.  I know nobody really cares about one's (makeshift) studio unless one is famous, but here it is.  

*I can just hear all of the "does not compute" thoughts going on here, because when most people think of art, the first thing they think of is painting.

The incredibly well-organized top of my filing cabinet.  Note high-tech items such as the coaster, mostly-empty bottles of ink, and multiple rolls of tape.

My drafting table and (1970s?) office chair, which I snazzed up with a flag purchased several years ago at 826 Valencia in San Franciso.  The window and the top of the table are all overexposed because I, uh, meant it to be that way.

The table top, featuring actually invaluable items such as the full-spectrum lamp and the Vyco board cover.

you so crazy!

Nom nom!

 

eavesdropping for fun and profit (okay, not really for profit)

The story behind this begins way back when I was in a teenager and I started writing down random things that I heard people say.  Eventually I had quite a collection of these quotes in my notebook, and many came from my then-daily rides on the Metro buses.  In 2003 I mined this material to make a one-page comic called "Overheard on the Bus," which was published in Seattle's alt weekly, The Stranger.  This comic is unfortunately not online anywhere anymore; I have a copy of the file somewhere on a CDR, but hell if I know where it is.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was given a copy of Syncopated (vol.3), an anthology of nonfiction comics.  Imagine my surprise when I reached the third piece in the book, "Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo  -- not only was another weirdo out there writing down overheard snippets of dialogue, but she had also written a comic about them!  Her comic is very different from mine, as she actually reflects upon the nature of these acts of voyeurism ("The majority of overheard conversations are more commonplace, even mundane.  But it's often these that intrigue me the most..."), in addition to including a whole collection of funny, mysterious, and otherwise thought-provoking fragments of conversation with fictionalized speakers.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking through my notebook and rereading some of the quotes I'd written down.  I'd been wanting to do a finished one-page comic for a while, since for the past year-plus I've been primarily working on the seemingly endless rough draft for a graphic novel.  What better idea, I thought, than a sequel to the original "Overheard."  So I dug out a couple of my old notebooks to reference along with the current one, and the result is what you see here.  Ta da.

p.s.  I wanted to have the text appear after the comic, but realized that on many peoples' screens (such as mine, ahem), parts of the panels would be obscured by all the crap on your right.  I can't make the comic smaller, because it is already more blurry than I would like at this size.  At the end of the day, after hours of coloring and other stuff, I am too tired to figure out doing anything about this.

beer me

sketch of graphic novel characters from a couple of weeks ago

Rule to remember when drawing in a cafe/bar: before you put your sketchbook down on the table, make sure you're not putting it in a puddle of beer (it was a small puddle of beer, but still).  You can't actually see the stain on the page here, owing to the b&w scan, but I just thought I'd put that out there as a warning.

doodles

Drawn on two pieces of scrap paper, approx. 6x9, that I have a whole pile of at work.

romance

I'm sort of fascinated by bears, even though the idea of seeing a bear in real life scares the bejeezus out of me.

black roses, oversized hat

Practicing rose designs, and a sketch very loosely based on a photo I saw in a book (basically, I copied the look on the girl's face, but everything else is pretty different).

not-so-scary creatures

Elephantom and Frankenstein's rabbit.

Jennifer Beauvais, protagonist of my graphic novel-in-progress.  I debated posting this, mostly because I feared stupid comments, but honestly, this is about as racy as a J.C. Penney circular, so I don't wanna hear it.

brand new bag

Recently I bought a canvas shoulder bag, and last week I decided to spruce it up by painting a lion skeleton on it.  I had planned to take pictures at the end of each of the three stages, but realized halfway through the third stage that I hadn't taken a picture of the second one.  Oh well.  Anyway, the end result looks a bit like an illustration from a grade school textbook to me.  Maybe because I read all those Zoobooks as a kid...

Stage 1:  After finding a good photo (thanks, Google image search!) and printing it off, I used it to cut out a stencil from a magazine page (the glossy paper is less permeable).  I painted the back of the stencil with a layer of rubber cement and let it dry, then stuck it to the flap of the bag.  After taping up the sides of the flap, I went to town with a stencil brush and some black fabric paint, then peeled off the stencil before the paint was dry, so it wouldn't stick too much.  In stage 2 (not shown), I used a small brush and more black fabric paint to add in details, referring to the photo as my guide.

Stage 3: Using the same small brush as in stage 2, I added in highlights with opaque white fabric paint, then heat set as per the instructions on the paint jar.  This caused the plastic backing on the lower part of the flap to warp a little, but whatcha gonna do?

happy anniversary

I just realized today that it has been more than a year since I started this blog (the first entry appeared in November of 2010), and I let the anniversary date slip by unnoticed.  Not that I'm going to do anything particularly special here to mark my year-plus of blogging, but I thought I should make a note and try to feel a little bit accomplished.  Anyway, here are a couple of recent drawings, both of which took far longer than they had any right to.

Jared Warren and Coady Willis of Big Business, from a photo I found on the internets.  Somehow, that super-ugly splatter-painted bandana sort of grew on me while I was working on this.

Victorian couple, also from a photo found on the internet.  The thing that struck me most about these people is that they looked so wary, as though they had been through a lot and no longer expected too much from life, though I'm not sure this comes across so clearly in the drawing.

radio radio

Recently I was asked to do an illustration for an unusual project; our pal Carlos is trying to put together a benefit album, due to come out for Christmas of 2012, to raise money for homeless youth.  He wanted a visual to include in his materials for recruiting musicians, and basically gave me carte blanche to do whatever.  This is what I came up with.

New Year Sudoku

Morgan doing Sudoku puzzles on New Year's Day.  I would have gotten his writing hand in there, but I was tired and needed to get to bed.

So, yeah, it's been a while, but I am finally back in action, now that the holidays are officially over.  Huzzah!