Recent Work Update

Things have been busy lately. Here is an update of some projects I've worked on recently or that have recently been published:

Frosh Student Guide 2011 Cover // Offbeat // Art Director: Elsa Hahne

This is one of my favorite pieces this year. I loved drawing the giant gumbo dish. It was great working with Elsa on this, she pushed the crab bits larger and larger and I was happy to go along with it. I played with some layer options to get a nice glow to certain areas of the color. I worked with Elsa on the text color and placement to ensure this would work as a good, eye-catching cover.

Beer on the Bayou // Offbeat // Art Director: Elsa Hahne

Another fun piece for Offbeat about one of my favorite subjects, beer! You can read the full article here. This has a lot of good information on the growing craft beer scene in Louisiana. My wife, Heather has begun coloring some of my work and she did an excellent job balancing the hues and adding just the right amount of pop to the right areas of this one.

Queasy Rider // Portland Mercury // Art Director: Suji Allen

Full article here. This one ran in black and white in the paper, but color online. Heather did the color for this one too.

Just Crazy Enough to Die // Portland Mercury // Art Director: Suji Allen

Another quick weekend illustration for the Mercury. Here is the full article online. Suji knew exactly what she was looking for, so this one came together pretty easily.

X-MEN Variant // Comix Gone Rogue // Publisher: Edwin Vazquez

This is a great project I was invited to submit to. Basically, some comic companies released blank covered comic books with just the masthead (presumably for industry signatures or sketches). Edwin distributed these to a variety of great artists (not necessarily mainstream comic artists) to fill in the cover as they see fit. Fun stuff! NSFW - Other variant submissions and more info can be seen here. 

Transformers

My friend Ulises Farinas has been doing some cool stuff for the Transformers comics lately and it got me in the mood to draw a robot in disguise... or at least on his way to being in disguise..

Trickster Update

I just got word that the book I contributed to, TRICKSTER, just went into it's second printing.

Also, recently NPR posted this great video of the artwork I did with the author narrating it.

It's a great book with a strong variety of stories and artwork.

The Thing Vs. The Thing

The Thing from "Fantastic Four" Vs. The Thing from "John Carpenter's The Thing". Available as a print on Society 6.

Another Crash

More art for your eyeballs

Full of Pryde at Floating World Comics

Here is the piece that I am submitting for the 'Full of Pryde' art show at Floating World Comics in Portland, OR. All proceeds go to OHSU. FWC is a great little comic shop and it's owner, Jason Leivian does a great job organizing cool art events. Last year I submitted my THEY LIVE piece to the SUPERTRASH film festival that he helped organize. According to the website, the show opens May 7th. I look forward to seeing all the other pieces!

Side B

So I posted a preview of my submission to this about a month ago. Here is a link to the site. It'll be hitting the shelves early June. It's being distributed through Diamond, so I'll probably post an update once it's in the Previews book.

Litterboxx for Side B Anthology

Here are the first 2 pages of a 6 page comic that I submitted to a music-based comic anthology. It's called 'Side B' -- more info here: http://www.poseurink.com/sideb/ . It should be available sometime this coming summer.

Gravity Bomb

Viewer: Jon, what's a gravity bomb?
Me: I dunno, but I want two. One for up and the other for down.

I guess this is a one page comic. I wonder if there are rules or a definition as to how much content a one-page comic has to contain. "Use the gravity bomb" and then the other guy does... I suppose it falls under the 'Conceptual Product Demonstration' comic genre.

So I did this in my sketchbook, and liked it, so it got a bit of a Photoshop treatment and Voila! Now it's online for the world to see. Enjoy World!

Hoard, Illustration Friday

Well, I enjoyed doing this last week, so I'm going to try to get in the habit of it. The theme this week was 'hoard' and as I started to sort out ideas I kept thinking of the definition for 'horde'.. which is different.. Anyways, I looked it up to be sure.

I did a 3 page comic with this 'piggy-bank-for-a-head-man' character a while ago. It just seemed to fit for this idea. If you're interested check out the comic pages here.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures

I got a nice little surprise in the mail, it's the new comic textbook from all-star cartoonists Matt Madden and Jessica Abel. I was an intern for Matt and Jessica while they were writing it. I did a character construction exercise that they included in the book, which is really cool.

I mostly saw the outlines and some rough drafts, but I could definitely tell this was going to be big. They've really covered the art of comics from all angles in this book. I'll enjoy going through this in depth and I can already tell it's going to be a great resource.

It's published by First Second and available at Amazon (among other places I'm sure).

Evil Bird cover

One day I'll have time to actually get some finished pages done for this comic. Still slowly working out some kinks to the story and it's still pretty much on the back burner. But I had a hankering to work on this cover image, so I put it together. The bird was fully inked, but I decided to crop it for design purposes. I played with some photoshop stuff that I hadn't really messed with much before and I'm happy with the results. I was unaware that there were two methods of achieving 'halftone'. I like this one much better. It's filter>sketch>halftone pattern. Although it doesn't seem to be available in CMYK mode. No biggie though for this piece. I also worked with illustrator for the logo, played with gradient and layer options and pulled in and manipulated some grunge textures.

Blue Shift - inked

This is the inked version of the sketch I had up the other day. I'm working out a story based on this and hopefully I'll be able to keep up a webcomic. I'll probably do some more experiments in style, but I'm very happy with this image.

Blue Shift

Here is an illustration that I'm working up as part of some concept sketches for a new project. I'm planning on using a 2 color press to make prints of the final illo using blue and black.

Trickster

Here are some loose sketches for the short story I'm working on for the Trickster anthology. I'm in the middle of inking it right now and it's coming along great. It's been a while since I've done actual 'sequential' work, so it's a nice change of pace. It's definitely tougher than a single illustration though, for me at least. I'm a little behind schedule on it and will still need to color it when the inking is finished, but it's getting there. With the rate I'm going right now, I should be done by St. Patty's Day.

Here is page 2 of Evil Bird. Yes, it is violent, but it is a horror comic. There will be much more violence, adult language and possibly nudity/ adult situations.

Enjoy!