Hellophant

 Playing around in Illustrator...

Space is Cold

A loose sketchbook comic I did for fun... Maybe I'll continue it.. we'll see.

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'.

Crash Poster

Here is a sketch I did as a concept for a band poster or flyer.

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.

Death Music

Here is a new illo from my sketchbook.

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!

Family Portrait

Found this sketch I did a while ago. Maybe will eventually ink/color, but figured I'd share.

Random Sketches

I was going through my sketchbook and found a few gems. I'm considering making shirts or something of the pizza=awesome and the robot whistling images. Also, I kinda like the weird Conan O'Brien face...

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.

Test coloring

I figured it'd be a good idea to test my 'coloring in illustrator' idea for my Wondercon promotional piece. Above is a sample I saved out. I wanted to try Illustrator because it has a Live Color option, which basically makes it insanely easy and fast to adjust all the colors on a piece. I found a ton of combinations I liked with this piece, including this 'high contrast' type of combination. Once I get colors all set, I'll pull it into Photoshop and do some shading and highlight tweaks. I think this method might work well. Adjustments to the pencil tool made it easy to outline the shapes. The only downside I can see is having to choose one scheme...

By the way, if you have Adobe Illustrator CS3, it's possible you don't even know about Live Color. This is the first time I've used it myself. It's not the most obvious tool, but a very powerful one. Here is the path to get to it: first, select color shapes to edit, then go to - Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork .

Sketchbook page