Bikes, Brews, Banks, Oh My! - Portland Mercury

Here are a few spot illustrations I did for the current issue of The Portland Mercury. I like the black and white versions a little more than the color versions.


READ THE FULL ARTICLE WITH COLOR IMAGES ONLINE HERE.

Kicking Our Own Ass - Portland Mercury

Here's an illustration for the latest Portland Mercury. Full article here. I did this character a few months ago, and they had an update on the story that the character worked for - so there ya go!

Dip - Illustration Friday

I used a new brush I got for the line work. It's actually a lettering brush, but I wanted to test it out. It was hard to get much variation in line weight out of it. The lines were coming out looking closer to sharpie than brush. I did some lettering testing after I inked this and it looked great. So I will definitely use this again for lettering, but probably only once in a while for inking.. depends on what I'm inking though I guess..

Rock Lee - Inks by Me, Pencils by Gabe Pinto

My friend Gabe and I were talking about working on a comic project together so we did this experiment. It's his pencils (see below) and I did the inks (see above). I had to lightbox the inks from a printout, since we're on opposite sides of the country.

I used several different brushes to get the right level of detail in parts. Gabe had tight pencils and I usually ink a little loose, so it's somewhere in the middle. I'm pretty happy with the results.

Moby Dick Illustration

Here's an illustration I did for a design contest. I've had a thing for drawing waves lately.. I inked this with a sumi brush, which I don't know why I don't ink everything with sumi - it's just awesome. The only thing is, I think larger paper would help to be able to ink the details..

Willamette Week - The China Syndrome

Here is a new illustration I did for this week's Willamette Week. This is the first time I worked with WW, and I'm happy with how it went. Hopefully, I'll work with them again soon. Read the article here: http://wweek.com/editorial/3616/13726/

Portland Mercury - Curiouser and Curiouser

Here is an illustration I did for this week's Portland Mercury. It was a simple one, but I'm happy with how it turned out: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/curiouser-and-curiouser/Content?oid=2264200

Loan Shark Hunting

Here is a new illustration for the Portland Mercury. I'm really happy with how this one turned out, and it started with an awesome concept from the AD.

I tried something a little new with this one, I inked it on watercolor paper. Usually I just ink on sketch or bristol paper. It's kinda hard to tell the difference when it's all finished, textured and colored.. but the ink on the paper looked really cool. So yeah, paper does make a difference.

Read the full article here.

Portland Mercury - Houses Not Handcuffs

Here is a new black and white illustration I did for this week's Portland Mercury. I did the line work with a nib and speedball ink, then filled in the rest of the blacks and did a wash with a sumi brush and sumi ink.

Full article here...

CRC in the Crosshairs

I did this editorial illustration for an article in the most recent Portland Mercury. This was a combination of pencil, ink wash and digital manipulation and color.

You can see the illustration in context and read the full article by clicking here.

Sketchbook - chase

This is a sketchbook sketch that I decided to try some ink experiments on. Not the greatest composition ever, but this was mostly about trying out inking with a nib again. So I used a nib, I believe a Hunt 99, and inked the sketch. I made an effort to ink most of the sketchy lines to give it some texture. The line looks much better than the marker pens (micron, pitt pen, etc.) I usually use. It's nice to be able to get the fine line, but with a little variation in the line weight. I guess that's the point.. I went back after the nib ink was dry and filled in blacks with a sumi brush. Then I went back with watered down ink and did some grays. I like how the slightly rough blacks work with the linework. I like the texture to the grays too, that comes from doing it with a brush rather than Photoshop.. The good thing about Photoshop though is the "undo" command.. but then you don't get cool organic textures and other 'happy accidents'.

Monsta

I played around with watercolor on this one. The ink I used was water based so I had to do the watercolor on a separate piece of paper - then scan them and put them together in Photoshop. This was a bit of an experiment.. next time I might try doing the watercolor first and a solid ink over the top..

Tyrannosaurus Ax

Here's a new t-shirt! So, this came about while watching an old slasher movie (The Prowler) while thumbing through an old collection of comics (The War that Time Forgot). I did a full page sketch of a scene that kinda looked like an old grindhouse movie poster or something. I started to ink it (Sumi brush & ink) and realized that the dino itself was much cooler than the whole scene in itself. So I thought it would look best like this on a shirt.

I'm a HUGE FAN!

Here's a piece I did over the weekend. Started off in my sketchbook, inked it with a brush and Sumi ink, scanned it and colored and textured it in Photoshop.

New Art - sketchbook

A few recent things. The Lloyd City piece is from my sketchbook - a fun little illo with colors and grunge textures in Photoshop. The other thing is a Photoshop brush sketch.. not something I normally do in PS, but I like it.

RipshaW - Haunted Hollow

I did this illustration for the metal band RipshaW. Listen to them on their Myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/ripshaw ...ROCK!

I used a new Sumi brush I got a Japanese bookstore. It's been a while since I used a Sumi brush/Sumi ink, so it was a fun change of pace. It worked well for this piece, I was able to easily get the kind of lines I was going for.

Diseasey Fly

Is 'diseasey' a word?.. I don't think so.. but 'Fly' seemed like a boring title. I loosened up a bit for this one. I did a quick sketch and loose inks using a brush pen (The kinda brush pen that uses real ink though, not those crappy foamy brush pens). I have one from Pentel that works well and kinda gives the result of a Sumi brush. Plus I can ink with it while sitting in bed.. always an added bonus. I like the ink work I did on it better than the color treatment. The colors came out alright though. They were done in Photoshop.. I've been meaning to do more coloring with watercolor or acrylics, but didn't get around to it this time. I think I could get some more depth and texture using paint.. next time maybe.

Pizza Party! tshirt

I finished coloring this shirt tonight and put it up for sale at MySoti! All the cheese drips and sauce splatters were fun to ink. Figuring out the saucy breadstick lettering was really fun too.

Pizza Party - work in progress

I did the inks for this project today. It's a t-shirt design that I've been working on the last few days. Next step is to scan it and do the colors in Photoshop.

Kids vs. Frogs

I've been working on a large project, but I felt like inking, so I made this illustration. Someone told me this story from their youth and I thought I could make a nice visual of it.

I inked it all with a size 2 brush and a bit with a Pitt pen. I thought afterward that a size 4 brush may have given a little more looseness, but I'm happy with the result.