What?! Another entry?! Impossible! —

Gonna try to update this blog every Friday. Here's some heads:



PLUS, I totally brought my sketchbook to the bar and drew these three old dudes just having a whale of a time drinking and bullshitting about something, probably sports. At first I was trying to be all surreptitious and secret about drawing them, but a couple of pints accidentally went down my neck very quickly and then I stopped caring about social conventions and just basically stared at them. I doubt they even noticed, sadly.



Oh, and I decided I wanted to start entering sketch challenges on message boards, but the only one I could find was a challenge to draw fucking Annihilus, which I really didn't want to do, hence this shitty marker sketch. I didn't even bother scanning and posting it, but I'm putting it up here and now, for some reason.

What it is —

Yup. Been busy. Not making any excuses. Here's some drawings. Trying to doodle more, since I picked up Toth's Dear John book from Jeff Parker at Emerald City. It's still kinda scary to just pick up my pen and go at a blank page without at least laying down some pencil lines first, but I managed it on the last couple of pages.

Emerald City, Ho! —

Going down to Seattle for a con this weekend and planning to try my hand at some sketches. Could be fun, could be a disaster. Here are some samples of sketch cards I've done up for the con (click the pic if you want a better look):


Also, here's the inks of a print I did up for the con:

With Gusto! —

Been drawing and coloring with my son a lot lately. He's 3, and a great little artist. These are a few of our collaborations (hopefully, I don't need to explain who did what):

Rhymes with "both"  —

Been totally obsessed with Alex Toth for a couple of months now. A master! Been just staring and staring at his work. Occasionally picking up a pencil to try to capture, understand, a line or a detail. I know I'll never be a tenth the artist, but it's nice to know what the gold standard is, how high the bar has been raised. 

"Toth was put here to keep the rest of us humble." -- Adam Hughes

"SWEAR TO ME!!" —

More Sketchiness —

Went to another Dr Sketchy's thing last night. It was really challenging because there were two models and they were both super fat. I'd spent the previous month studying my anatomy reference books, ironically, mostly focusing on muscles, none of which were really visible in these girls. In the end, I concentrated on drawing the figure through contour and shape, rather than overthinking the underlying structure -- drawing from the outside in, rather than the inside out, if that makes any sense at all. Also, I have a hard time drawing multiple figures and making it look like they're actually occupying the same space, so it was good to be forced to practice that.

Dr Sketchy's —

Hadn't really been drawing much of anything for weeks and needed a kick in the pants that Dr. Sketchy's was only too happy to provide. Dr. Sketchy's is basically an attempt to marry figure drawing classes with fun, good music, and booze. I've never done any life/figure drawing classes, so this was really outside of my comfort zone, which is probably why I'm happier with the results than I suspect I should be. I definitely need to make time at least once a month for life drawing. It's so great to sit down and dedicate 3 hours just to drawing.

Long Time, No Post —

So, yeah, it's been approximately forever since my last post. Things got really busy about a month ago with work (I'm coloring 2 books for Marvel at the moment, plus various other covers and commissions) so I haven't really had much time for sketching. And lately I've been pretty unhappy with the results. Oh, well. I'll probably have more time in the coming months, plus I've really fallen in love with Alex Toth's work lately, and that's been inspiring me to pick up the pencil more often. Anyway, here's what's worth posting from the lat 2 months. It's not much, but it's better than nothing!

Apparently, I am a cheap caricaturist —

I love my mom, but from time to time, she'll ask me to do things I really don't want to do, like draw a caricature of her boss on a train. Apparently, she talked to an actual caricaturist and he wanted like a whole hundred dollars, so she said screw that and press-ganged me into doing it for nothing. Actually, she offered me 50 bucks, but I'd rather get paid nothing for this lousy drawing.

Hilariously, I have no idea if this caricature even remotely resembles her boss, since the only ref she sent was a tiny jpg of the guy taken from like a football field away. Also, trains are fucking hard to draw. You will observe that I had no idea what to do with the front, nor did I care to figure it out.