Digital Coloring Exercise

Today in the studio, I spent some time brushing up on my digital coloring skills.

Although I use Photoshop religiously, I almost never paint with it.
In fact, the last time I colored anything 100% digitally was 2010.

So, to break my digital dry spell, I found an inked image from a comic book (the cover of Uncanny X-Men #514 by Terry Dodson) and spent an afternoon filling in the color via Photoshop. It took me three hours, which is not half bad when I consider how long it's been since the last time I saw a swatch palette. I definitely want to make that go faster though and I'm certain that a few more exercises like this one will help me get back into the swing of things.

Adventure Time: Marceline - pt. 2

The Marceline piece is finally finished. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I'll post it here and see what people think.

I'd also like to give some long overdue praise to Marcus Ranum. I don't always have the time to stage my own photo shoots and Mr. Ranum's gorgeous stock photography has been an invaluable resource to me.

Any artists looking for a reliable source of free-to-use reference images should check out this link. You can thank me later.

Adventure Time: Marceline - pt. 1

After running into some extremely frustrating technical difficulties, I've decided to put the Cloud Atlas image aside for a little while. Until I resume working on it, (or can get started on any of the paid assignments that are sitting in my own personal queue) I'm going to devote my time to putting out a long-overdue Adventure Time themed image!

Marceline the vampire queen is one of my favorite characters from that show. Rather than feasting on blood like traditional vampires do, she eats shades of red- hence the strawberries.

Color Study

Planning out the image was more frustrating than I'd been expecting, but I feel like I've finally worked out enough of the kinks to take it to final. As of right now, the plan is to complete this image in watercolors with only a little bit of colored pencil detail work.

I've been in a bit of a creative rut recently and I'm hoping that this image will finally get me out of it.
So far, so good!

Cloud Atlas

I had the pleasure of seeing Cloud Atlas in theaters recently and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

Fair warning though, if you're looking for a passive movie-going experience, look elsewhere, because this movie requires you to be paying attention and using your brain at all times.

There are six intertwining storylines, each taking place in a different period of history with the same actors playing different roles (often with disregard to the usual barriers of gender or race). Each story relates to the others in ways that become more apparent as you go on, until it's clear that this is really one story with six different facets.

Each of the stories is tied together by shared themes and actors, but I also picked up on a commonality between certain objects. Some items (like the sailor's bright blue buttons) appear in several tales simply by standing the test of time until they are rediscovered by the next batch of characters. Others items are visual echoes of things that came before, like the broken china plates from 1930 and the shattered terra cotta pots that appear in the contemporary story line.

The basic concept of the image is this: I want to show Somni-451, in the same pose as the statue they worship after the fall, floating above a vast sea. There's the rubble of Seoul in the background, rising up out of the waves and snow falling from the sky. Upon closer inspection, the snowflakes are actually teeth. Somewhere in the piece will be my favorite quote from Somni-451: "From womb to tomb, our lives are not our own."

I briefly considered using the line "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?", but I like imagining that this image could be found on a religious icon after the fall, so it made more sense to stick to the other quote, which becomes a post-apocalyptic proverb after Somni's death. (That's not a spoiler. People don't live to be 300 years old.)

Originally, I'd wanted to have swirls of small objects playing around the form of Somni-451. A cloud of papers that start out as the sheet music from the Cloud Atlas Sextet and slowly change into the contents of the Swannekke Nuclear Report, as well as a mass of broken porcelain shards from the composer's story line mingling with shattered pottery from the publisher's tale. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to look good on paper though, so no clouds of earthenware for Somni.

I'd been planning on framing it as if it was an oval portrait, but after a while I decided to go with an art nouveau style design instead. It looks like that'll help me solve a lot of the design problems I'd been having. And besides, I'm such a sucker for art nouveau that I'll take any excuse to work Mucha-esque elements into an illustration.

I had to abandon the swirling object clouds, but now I have four mini-windows to work with and I can place one of each into the corners without making the main image too busy. Adding a bit of art nouveau flavor also allows me to add purely graphic elements to an otherwise realistic scene. I'd been looking for a way to include the sailor's buttons into the image and now I can work them in the background, beyond the horizon.

It's starting to come together and I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Shakespeare Shaken - Pt. 1

Since the Shakespeare Shaken Anthology is now available to the public, I can finally post images of my contributions!

The hardest part about this entire project was waiting to share my work online, especially considering that several of these illustrations are some of my strongest work.

I'll be posting behind-the-scenes images all throughout the month. Process animations, photo reference, you name it. Pretty much everything I've been keeping under my hat since last January finally gets to come out. Prints of these fine illustrations are now available for sale online, both in my Etsy store and in my new RedBubble store.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER SHAKESPEARE SHAKEN

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE PRINTS OF MY WORK

Let's start with my Shakespearean bodice ripper, The Legend of The Ass Man!

The Ass Man was one of those rare and delightful anomalies where everything came together quickly and easily. This piece was an absolute joy to work on and I definitely enjoy the finished product more when the creation process is painless.

I pulled my inspiration from the very distinctive visual style of trashy romance novels. We all know the type: there's a muscular, conspicuously shirtless, Fabio-lookin' dude passionately clutching some swooning crinoline-covered beauty.

My brother Robert and sister-in-law Stacia were in visiting us when I first started working on this piece and they were gracious enough to pose for my reference shots. (You may recognize Stacia as the model I used for Magdalene)

I used cicada wings for the faeries, since I've always found them more appealing and solid looking than dragonfly wings. I also decided that faeries probably wouldn't think about clothing as something meant to conceal their bodies (They live in the woods! What's there to be shy about?), but rather as a means to adorn themselves. I clothed the center faerie in plants and the far-right one in a flimsy tunic. Originally, it was going to be made of something resembling spanish moss, but I eventually opted for gossamer fabric instead. I had also been planning on covering the far-left faerie in lichen, but I just couldn't make it look right.

The medium for this piece was mostly watercolors and colored pencil, although there was some digital work done on it before the end. What I'd do for the most part was put down a large area of color using the paints and then work in the details with colored pencils. At the very end I found that I'd picked a color combination for the center faerie that I hated.

The values were all correct, but the color reminded me of a frog and not in a good way. Rather than erase it all and start over, I scanned it in and used my (then) brand spanking new Wacom tablet to isolate that part of the image so I could alter it digitally. Worked like a charm!

The linework took about 20 hours and that's because I went into far more detail than was necessary on the flowers and leaves that adorned the trio of faeries. After transferring the piece down to watercolor paper, the final art took about a week. Designing the book's text and placing the image in context took another 8 hours, for a grand total of 60 hours start-to-finish.

Next Up: 

Detective Horatio!

NYCC and Other Assorted Chaos

The Shakespeare Shaken book signing at Stormwatch was a moderate success. I didn't sell as many books as I was hoping to, but most of that was because there were customers who had purchased copies before the event and were bringing those in to be signed. It was a bit slow, but I managed to sell enough prints to keep me from getting too disappointed about the turn out.

By the next morning, we were back on the road again- headed out to New York this time. NYCC was absolutely wonderful for me this year! I kicked off the weekend by landing a book cover job with a legitimate publishing house! I can't say about it much yet, but I am super excited about this project and I hope it's the first of many!

Photo Credit: Robert Hoskins

The first day of the con was spent showing my portfolio to every book publisher I could find. I got a lot of positive feedback, so hopefully some of those leads will turn into new projects within the coming months. After I finished making the rounds as a professional, I was free to kick back and act like a fangirl for the rest of the weekend.

I'd been adding some extra details to my Poison Ivy costume, with the intent of turning it into a Queen Titania costume for Halloween. After I saw another Ivy wearing a velvet cape, the temptation to take my dream cloak for a test drive was too strong to resist and I unveiled it a few weeks early. I am SO proud of how this whole get up has turned out. There are a few things I'd like to add, but the area around my face (the hood and clasp and the way my wig just pours out of the cowl) is exactly the way I wanted it.

I found out about a graphic novel adaptation of the Book of Revelations, illustrated by Chris Koelle. It's GORGEOUS and it does a really good job of staying true to the original text, while at the same time, making the story as coherent as possible. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

Photo Credit: Jason Torse

I must've stopped by the Jersey Jack Pinball booth at least twice a day. They had a new Wizard of Oz game that they were letting people try out for free.

As far as I know, there are only two pinball machine companies still in existence, so I'd never even seen a brand new pinball machine before! It was SO shiny! It had a gorgeous video display and surprisingly good voice acting! If I ever win the lottery, I'm definitely buying myself a pinball machine. ...And a copy of Magical Truck Adventure.

While at NYCC, I learned about Red Bubble, which enables artists to sell their work in new & interesting ways and customers to obtain some seriously cool items. I now have a brand new online store that's chock full of lovely prints, as well as some t-shirts and even iPhone cases! There's something about seeing my own work on a cell phone cover that is indescribably cool to me.

On Sunday, I worked a one-day comics show
at the International House in Philadelphia.

While there, I did this Batwoman sketch cover for a customer and reconnected with my contact from Dynamic Forces. You should definitely keep your eyes peeled for new LG sketch covers on their front page!

All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend.

 

Upcoming Events:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! This year's Punk Rock Flea Market will feature a table manned by yours truly! It'll be in Philadephia on Sunday, December 9th in the "Punk Rock Flea Market Dome", which is a fancy way of saying "the old FedEx Warehouse across the street from The Starlight Ballroom". The building is at 9th and Spring Garden and the event will be open to the public from 10 am to 5 pm.

ALMOST FORGOT! For those of you who haven't seen it yet, here's a mini-comic about the thoughts that went through my head while waiting in line at NYCC.

Post Show Recap: Mid-Ohio

This trip flew by so fast I barely had time to realize it before it was over. The city of Columbus was just as I remembered it from last year, unbelievably clean and full of people so polite it's kind of unnerving. Here are some of the highlights:

• I saw Tony Isabella again and gave him a kiss right on top of his big ol' head.

• I finally met the international man of mystery, Dirk Manning. We have a ton of mutual friends, but had never actually hung out until this trip. Turns out, he's AWESOME. He gets the LG seal of approval. Anyone who was on the fence until this moment may now proceed to become friends with him. You're welcome.

• I went to Max & Erma's with Dirk & Sarah and we did nothing but make bawdy jokes and double entendres for the entire meal. Then ordered a giant plate of cookies. It was pretty much the perfect night out.

• I was able to spend some time with Enrica Jang and Matt Fletcher, both of whom are wonderful. Enrica (the head honcho of Red Stylo Media and editor of Shakespeare Shaken) is going to try to make it out to my signing next week, which is extremely exciting! Also, there is a Poe Anthology: Part II coming down the pike (Poe Twistier is the title, I believe) sometime in the not so distant future, so I need to start brainstorming for that.

• I finally got to taste some ice cream from Jeni's. This place is legendary among Ohio locals, who tend to speak of it in reverent/orgasmic tones. Since I've been spoiled by some pretty amazing ice cream experiences in my life, I wasn't expecting it to blow my brain apart the way everyone seemed to insist it would, but I will say that 2 of the 3 flavors I ordered were on par with the most delicious ice cream I've ever had... I know that doesn't sound like much of an endorsement, but it really is. The riesling poached pear sorbet was especially good, as was the brambleberry crisp. Whiskey and pecans was meh.

Me & Darth Maui

• Paul Storrie came out to dinner with us and he was as witty and entertaining as ever. I was also delighted to learn that he can do some decent impressions. I really enjoy silly voices, so discovering this talent of his bumped up Paul's coolness factor at least 6%… AT LEAST.

• This'll sound a bit silly, but I had Popeye's Chicken for the first time and their chicken tenders are one of my favorite foods now. The chicken itself is delicious of course, but the star of the show is their Sweet Heat sauce. It's like honey and Sriracha sauce had a baby. A sweet delicious baby.

The drive back home was unexpectedly scenic. Everything was covered in a really thick fog, which made even mundane things look mysterious and a bit foreboding at night. Even when we stopped at a Sunoco to fuel up, being unable to see anything beyond the pumps made it all feel like a dream - a sensation that was significantly enhanced by the appearance of the girl who we paid for the gas. She had bone white hair, which looked real, and pointed elf ears, which probably weren't. The boundaries between our world and the Never Never must've been especially thin in that area.

The next morning, I had the pleasure of waking up in rural Pennsylvania, with the sun just coming over the horizon. The scenery was all rolling pastoral hills and autumnal trees still silver with frost, and all covered in a low hanging fog that coalesced into clearly defined clouds that sat in valleys as if they weighed too much to float in the sky today. It was an absolutely delightful way to end a trip.

I'm back in Jersey, but there's no time to slow down yet.

This weekend is the Collingswood Book Festival, then my book signing at Stormwatch Comics on the 10th, and then NYCC starts the day after that. When I finally come to a full stop I'll probably collapse, but until then, momentum should carry me through to the end of the month.