Insert Joke Here?

Having a tough time deciding if this piece works better with the Joker squaring off against Batman, or if I should go with my initial instincts and make it an anonymous thug. Either way things are coming along nicely and I have little doubt that this piece and Wonder Woman will be ready for the con. 

Not sure if I mentioned this, but I ran into a big problem a couple weeks ago when I began test printing. Turns out my fancy new monitor had the contrast and brightness jacked up to the max, so everything that I saw on screen was looking killer, but everything I printed out looked muddy and dark. I'm still tweaking settings and debating other options (anyone out there with a Spyder? I'd love to hear some feedback on them) but my knowledge of color management is limited to say the least. 

Other than that rather pressing issue things are moving along quite nicely. My wonderful wife just picked up some new boxes to organize prints in, and so I'm looking forward to having a much faster/easier system ready to go come con time (last year I had 2 flat boxes with my prints piled up in each... it was occasionally embarrassing how long it took to find and prep a print that someone was asking for). 

Also, holy crap Lexxy's back?!  

WW Hydra

Hey folks! Apologies for the gap between updates. Last week I was feeling pretty burnt out and finally decided I needed to take a break. I opted to step away from digital work for a few days, instead working up some sketches that I'll bring with me to the con. I also let myself slip into Dishonored long enough to wrap up the game I had going on, and then started up Sleeping Dogs to see what the hype was all about (man I love steam!). Then we were hit with the passing of a family member and the plans I had of getting back on track were shaken. On top of that a co-worker lost her husband the following day, and so I was trying to juggle picking up shifts along with spending time with my family, and getting back to the drawing board fell away.

Now I'm back, I'm still loving the hell out of Sleeping Dogs and I picked up Injustice on iOS and have been throwing a lot of my spare time into that, I've managed to sit down and eek out some real progress on the Wonder Woman piece that I plan to bring to the Calgary Expo. I also made some real progress on the secret project that I'm developing with Dan and I've gotta say I think we're on to something cool. I doubt we'll be revealing anything until late summer/early fall, but for now it's got my mind engaged and gets me excited to sit down and work.

Oh and a final note. If you're a reality TV fan I highly recommend you check out Penny Arcade's Strip Search. Maybe it's just because I'm an artist, but I cannot get enough of this show. Check it out.

I... am too tired to think of a title

Spent a little time coloring this and am really enjoying it. I think I could easily lose myself working on this piece, trying to bring it up to a polished level. Sadly that's not really something I have a lot of time for at the moment, but with any luck I'll pull it (or another like this) off before the con hits. I'd really like to see how a smaller, less expensive piece works at my table.

JENN!

I made a drawing for you. I doubt it's exactly what you had in mind, but I had some fun with it and I hope that comes through. I don't have a proper title for it though, so I'd like to ask you fine readers to give me a hand with it. Off the top of my head I was thinking "Yum"... but I feel like we can do better.

Hit up the comments if you've got suggestions.

11x17/3

Trying to push myself in a couple different directions lately, so I spent some time tonight working on this. Last year I added 5.5x17 (11x17 cut down the middle) prints to my table priced at $10 a pop, and found that they sold very well. So this year I'm considering 5.66x11 (11x17 cut in horizontal thirds) as the final price point for my table, giving me $5 prints, $10 prints, and then my usual $15 prints (full 11x17). I'm not sure if it's really something people are after, but I think it'd be worth testing out to see if there's much interest. I had a lot of fun working with the 11x17/2 pieces as I was able to put together a set of rules to govern what kind of illustration I would allow (the black background painterly character studies). It helped to get me working out of my comfort zone and lead in a direction I'm really happy with. As such I'm going to be doing something similar with these new pieces. The 11x17/3 will all be landscape format illustrations where the environments play a major role. Right now I'm just sketching out random ideas, collecting them and then I'll see what's worth developing later on so these are just the tip of the iceberg. However, I've found that I'm censoring my posts quite a bit lately (deciding that what I've been doing isn't interesting enough/cool enough/new enough), so I wanted to try to pry myself open again and just post about the things I've been working on. Clearly this Spider-man piece is far from finished, but it took me a while to get the perspective and then figure out that I couldn't make every building rectangular in shape, so this is what I've got.

Unfortunately this experiment likely won't be live for the Calgary Expo as I've got a ton of other work that I'd like to prep for that, but Edmonton Expo was where I tested the last additions I made to my table and so I'm pleased enough to keep that symmetry going.


Below is a really quick sketch that I did based off of a photo I found in my reference archive. Sadly I can't be more specific than that as I have no idea where it came from, but it got me throwing color around and for me that was enough.

Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to make a request, it's always fun to see what you guys can come up with.

Quick catch up

Superman is complete, and the Trinity piece is getting pretty close. I'm debating the colors on it at the moment, but so far I'm enjoying the process. I got lost in the inking last week, and so I'm pretty happy to be on this side of that.

I've also been sacrificing sleep a bit too frequently, so I'm going to keep this brief so that I can go to bed.

Thanks!