In Search Of...

No reason for it really. This amounts to not much more then a sketch. The little rose added into the desolate landscape was a bit of an afterthought as I felt one piece of life in the rocky landscape would add a certain poignancy (even if it is a bit cliché).
It's always fun to draw fantasy type stuff like this though and with the right colors something like this could really rock.
Drawn on a scrap piece of paper (that I don't feel like measuring) from pencils to inks and p-s'ing the star filed and moon in it took about 2 and a half to three hours to do.

Go To Hell

...I saw my funeral that day,
I know who didn't show to mourn.
My judgment was life in hell,
with pillars of pain and thorns.
My only friend the goat,
with 666 between his horns...


An idea from a Megadeth song of the same name.
This REALLY needs good colors to fully make it work - and I'm just not good enough with colors to make it happen. I'll probably give the digital painting work in this one a try but until I do just use your imaginations I guess...
This was drawn 14x17 and from pencils to inks and a little "post work" in the computer it took about 3 and a half hours to complete to this stage.

Frustration in Red and Green

My color blindness is something I (probably quite obviously) think about a lot. The intent of this piece differs from my work The Grass is Always Greener in so far as that piece was about how I was interested in others points of view in relation to my own; how they desired to see as I do while I experience the same thing for them.
In this piece it is pretty much all about me. I'll admit I've been frustrated quite a bit at times by my particular disability (when I was in kindergarten one of my teachers made me cry when she yelled at me for finger painting in the wrong color - she was criticizing my "defiance" when I didn't even know at that point I was color blind). Anger is quite chaotic and that feeling was what I was expressing.
Red and green were chosen again for their common association with those who are color blind.
The work itself is photo silkscreen masquerading as mono type prints. Basically I took large sheets of acetate and duralar and inked them up with opaque relief printing ink. I then modified the flat with mineral spirits and isopropyl alcohol. Then I printed them in layers.
I did these this was to experiment with the idea of trying to get a reproducible mono type. As the name suggests mono types are basically a one off - a ghost image can be printed but it is never as strong as the original. Playing with textures, pattern and formal elements in mono type printmaking fascinates me and I was searching for a method of reproducing the work in a traditional way (I would like to avoid digital reprints).
The method itself needs work and for those who know printmaking the look of the ink on the surface gives it away as a silkscreen but it's a fun process and I hope I can experiment with it further in the near future.

Examples of my abstract and mixed media mono types can be found at the following links:
Tarus the Bull
Grizzly Truth
When the Storm Comes Down
Roots

Need

I could swear I posted this one here before but as I looked thru my work I've put up here I just couldn't find it.
This piece is a linoleum reduction cut (also called a suicide cut because it "kills" the block) utilizing the white of the paper as a color. It was done as a companion piece to my work Cyclical which can be seen here CYCLICAL LINK.
This appeared in my BFA show at Long Beach State University earlier this year.

Random Animals...

...are pretty cool.
There is a certain sense of fantasy to animals for me. Even everyday mundane animals because as a guy who grew up in the city they are just not as commonplace for me as one might think.
They can be immensely expressive and profoundly dynamic.
Mostly they are just a BLAST to draw.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This is a slightly older drawing - from early last year.
I had just seen the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and thought the portrayal of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde was well played. Shortly there after I busted out my ol' sketchbook and did this. I drew the character of Mr. Hyde here with his likeness from the movie in mind (Dr. Jekyll not so much..). I really liked they way it came out in pencils so I threw some ink on it as well.
Drawn at about 9x12, with pencils and inks it took about two and a half to three hours to finish.

The Animal

Sometimes we all just feel a little overwhelmed. I certainly am no different.
I mostly wanted to play with the little splatter pattern I used here and "paint" in a stylized abstract background in the computer. That is really why I drew this.
I had you going with the "overwhelmed" bit didn't I?
This was drawn fairly small at about 11x14 I believe (perhaps a shade smaller).
Total time for pencils, inks and digital color was about 4.5 hrs.

New Press

I was basically playing with typography and design with this as I was thinking about magazine covers. I've always felt my sense of design was quite lacking and it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately when it comes to my art.
Everything in this image is from scratch except the word "PRESS" which is, of course, a computer font.
The "NEW" part was computer generated but is not a font - it was made it in photoshop.
All in all I think this is still rather weak as far as design goes - it looks cool and is fairly well drawn but its design is just weak.
But at least it's a step in the right direction as I am thinking more about the very important elements of design in my comic book work.

Star Wars

This is a work in progress (and a splash page for my comic portfolio) based on an idea I had; Let's just say I personally felt Samuel L. Jacksons character Mace Windu from the second Star Wars Trilogy was tragically under-used.
It's based on an idea I had feeling he should have had a more central roll in the post Revenge of the Sith era as opposed to being killed of in the rather lame manner he was done away with. I threw in the "generic title" because I didnt want to put the name I had thought of for the story idea on there yet.
When I finish rendering this I'll post the results - probably with the full title for my little idea...

Waiting

This is a splash page I did for my comic portfolio.
In giving it a second (or third or fourth or fifth) look I'm not sure now that I'll use it.
I like it , but I may not use it for submissions.
Anyway Spider-Man is cool so I figured I could post it.
The basic idea is Spidey Vs. Venom, but a Venom that no longer has a host body.

Wendigo Re-Ink

This one is actually quite old. I really liked it when I first drew it (10 years ago or so) and recently dusted it off for another look.
Needles to say my inking skills have improved by leaps and bounds since then and I decided to beef up the inks and add a little detail to see if I could get it to hold up.
I also re-drew the stylized trees in the background as I felt no amount of re-inking would help the initial ones I had drawn in there. So I digitally removed the original trees and added these newly drawn ones in.
If you would like to see the original it can be found at this link .
I should note that the moon in this one is actually the original moon I drew for it while the moon in the version in the link was one I added in after I imported the image into my computer all those years ago.

Wolverine V. Wendigo Storyboard

This is a bit of an old one - I did this several years back for my comic book portfolio before I decided to re-do the whole thing with brand new material.
I went back in and re-inked it, beefing up the lines a bit and making it look more solid.
I liked it a lot when I drew it a number of years ago and I like it still with the updated inks.

Krenny Lavitz

This is just a bit of an inconsequential little thing. While I like Lenny Kravits music (to an extent) I couldnt help but see him as a complete and utter tool. He was featured in a commercial in all his weird glory not to long ago and I was struck by how much of a slave to the next big thing he seems to portray himself as.
Whether thats his doing or his management team I don't know. Either way he would do well for himself (in my humble opinion) to carve out an identity that is truly his own.

Head Go Boom

I have long been thinking about comic art as a vehicle for fine art expression. Recently I saw the work of artist Nathan Olsen. He's currently working on his masters in (I believe) illustration at California State University Long Beach. If I'm incorrect about his specialty someone please let me know.
Anyway he just had an advancement show and one of his comments in his artist statement that accompanied his work was about the "... absurd and impossible landscape..." that I felt he expertly expressed with his "absurd and impossible" imagery.
Something I quite enjoy thinking about.

In this work I felt like I wanted to express the way people tend to be bound by some nonsense from which it seems apparent they could easily escape.
Yet they don't.
Instead they go on to let said nonsense blow their mind (as it were) or somehow otherwise completely wreck their world.
Ultimately I believe I will be adding to this work to create more depth in meaning as well as a more unified whole.

Stains

Neither of these two "stains" I've posted are really stains at all.
They are not really digitally produced in their entirety either.
The "stains" were hand drawn and the backgrounds were texturally digitally manipulated.

I like the concept but the execution needs a little work - at the moment I have an idea or two in mind to spice them up a bit. Additionally I have a number of new stains that I am currently working on.

The Avenger After Jeff Jones

This is a little homage to the fantasy painter/illustrator Jeff Jones.
Years ago my brother bought me some trading cards featuring his work and at the time (around '93 or so) I did some drawings based on his designs. Well that was a long time ago and I wasn't a very good illustrator then so I decided to re-draw many of my little homages to his work. There are three others I am currently re-working. I'll post 'em as I get 'em done.

Pirate Monkey

Full title: Pirate Monkey - The Banana King Vs. The Unfortunate Blob.
It's kinda silly I know but it's fun.
Pirate Monkey is just a little character I came up with about a year ago - give or take.
I have no real background for him yet; only that he's a monkey who happens to be a pirate.
This was drawn at 14 x 17 or so and took about 3 and a half to 4 hours to do - pencils and inks plus a little work in photoshop.

For the Sake of...

I got into a bizarre argument with some kid on Deviant Art about nudity in art.
Basically his adolescent hormones were all about boobs for the sake of boobs and it appeared that nothing I could say would change his mind.
I drew this as a response to his mindset about the subject and his antics within another members site.
It took only about an hour to pencil and ink because I didn't put much effort into the inking.
I am going to go back into the image and beef up the inks and probably throw on some digital color. I'll post the result when I get it done.

I should add that the background is a digitally manipulated stock photo from the page of another member of DA.
Unfortunately I cant find the link at the moment.

My Robe Please

The Pale Rider, Death itself, coming up out of the pit to harvest fresh souls.
Quite the corny explanation but images like this are really fun to draw. Fantasy drawing in general has no real rules so you can do pretty much anything and justifying it is easy - hahaha.
Drawn at about 14x17 in. from pencils to inks to digital color (the background is a digitally manipulated mono type print of mine) it took about 6 hours.

Anatomically Incorrect

This one is slightly different than the one on my Deviant art page (Anatomically Incorrect). I couldn't decide which version worked better so I posted both at different sites.
There is quite a back-story behind this image but I don't think I'm prepared to get into it at the moment.
The quasi-angel as a mannequin missing some limbs is more work with displaced body parts. I guess in this case the whole body is displaced revealing a sense of incompleteness in supposed perfection; lifeless rigidity replacing tenderness...
The background splatter was drawn by hand and the whole image was drawn relatively small at about 7x10.5 inches (the ratio is a standard comic format at 2:3).
The whole thing from pencils to inks and digital color took about 5 hours.