Happy Holidays!!

Well, looks like another 2 months has gone by with out an update. Yeah, I'm a terrible blogger. But just got lots to deal with. Gonna be moving soon. Dunno where, but gotta be out of here by February 1. But I'll find something.

Just want to wish everyone who reads this the happiest of holidays! May 2011 bring you peace,health, happiness and success in your endeavors. I promise to update more. Really. :)

Off to battle the hordes of the dead!!

Hey all, been a while. But of course, I've been busy. But today I'm heading off to Minnesota so I can fly out tomorrow to Seattle. What's in Seattle you may ask? Why that would be ZomBCon! I will be there at booth #202 along with John Olson and Bud Hanzel, selling copies of our book. I will be selling sketches and prints, including a signed and numbered print exclusively for the show. Only 100 will be sold. SO if you are out in Seattle, stop on by. Oh yeah, and a couple of guys like Bruce Campbell, George Romero, and Malcom McDowell will be there too. Should be a pretty good time!I'll post pics when I return!

See ya!

What I'm up to...

Back from Wizard World Chicago, had a great time. Met lotsa great fans, and got to meet my studio mates in person. Oh? Didnt know I was in a studio? Well I am, its aclled Alpha Dog Studios and its got a lot of talented guys in it. I have a link to it here on my blog under "other places i'm at". That is for our DA page, and we are also on Facebook as a group under the same name.

I have been lax in pointing this out, as well as keeping up on this blog.

So here's whats been happening, what is happening, and what is gonna happen.
Working on Marlow with Dario Carrasco.Fun stuff, very much a pulp adventure feel to it.
Doing cover art for a band called ENEMY STAR. They are local and it was put together by a buddy of mine. They have a Facebook page (who doesnt these days!) so go check it out. They are doing a cd release party on October 9th in Milwaukee. I'll be there, details on time and place wil be made available as soon as I know them.
Doing more illustrations for Nick Cuti's third MOONIE novel. Moonie is an adults only novel. Nick created her many years back, and is now doing novels with illustrations scattered throughout. I'm inking the illos. It's a lot of fun to do when I have time to get to them!
Lastly, my zombie book is now out and available on Amazon.com. They are behind in their ordering so its been listed as out of stock often. Be patient, the books are coming.
As far as shows go, I will be at the previously mentioned ENEMY STAR cd release party on October 9th. I will be at Fallcon's one day show in Minneapolis on October 16th, and if all goes according to plan, I will be at the first ZomBCon in Seattle on Halloween weekend (Oct 29-31).

WHew, i dont think I'm busy enough.

Yeah, Yeah..I know.

Ok, remember when I said I'd update more..well,...yeah I lied. Another 2 months goes by and nothing. And it's not like I havent done stuff too!

Got a few things in the pipe. Working on a book called Marlow, with my old pal Dario Carrasco (A link to his site Panday Studios is in my links area). Dario pencilled a few issues of Nova that I inked way back in the day. He and I re-connected last year and have been doing some pieces here and there. But I'm looking forward to the Marlow book. Its a pulpy kind of Indiana Jones feeling book. So very fun.
Also hope to be starting some more Buckaroo Banzai with Shawn Van Briesen again soon. Shawn finally has a blog up, so go check it out. It is also in the links area.

Working on a webcomic that I hope to post weekly. Called Pub Dread, and will be at www.pubdread.com very soon. Got 3 weeks worth drawn up already, just gotta prep the site and have it looking the way I want before I post.

I finally have a release date for the DIY Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse.
We are going through Amazon for our initial print run. Diamond has been giving us a runaround so we decided to take the zom by the brains and get this thing out there! It will be released on August 13th, a Friday. Quite appropriate. I believe orders can done starting the 5th or 6th of August, with shipping on the 13th.
We are also doing a release party/signing at the Source Comics and Games in Minneapolis on that day from Noon til 9. John, Bud, and I will all be there, so if you are in the area, stop on by. It'l be an awesome time for sure. For more info, go to www.sourcecomicsandgames.com.

I also have an Etsy store now, so if ya feel the need to buy some of my art, you can. Also in my links area. I have prints, and some originals there as well. I will be putting some more originals in there soon.

Until next time, enjoy the art I've posted. One is a page from Marlow, the other is a page from another project of Dario's called the Mask Of The Gargoyle. Dario asked me to ink it, I had a blast with it! Enjoy!

Well well well, look who finally posted something..

Well I'm back after a 3 month lazy ass absence. Its not like I havent been working on something, but I just didnt get around to posting.

What I have been working on the last 6 months is this: The DIY Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse. Written by my pals John Olson and Bud Hanzel, withh 130 illos by me. This was probably the biggest art project I've ever tackled, but it was worth it. We had preview copies at Springcon last weekend in Minnesota, and I cried when I saw this in print form. It's just beautiful.

I know the picture I have up has a typo on the cover, but we fixed it!! So right now we're waiting to hear from a backer who wants to bankroll our first printing. Hopefully a bigger publisher will pick us up and want to get this bad boy out into the mainstream where it should be!

We plan to premiere it at CONvergence in Minneapolis on July 4th weekend. It runs july 1-4. I will be there in Artists Alley doing art, and selling books. John will also be there. Bud hopes to make it, but its iffy at this point.


Hope to see you there.

I do plan on being a little more frequent with updates. I promise.

Avengers Assemble!!

Wow! Was this piece fun! Recently in the past 2 years or so I have been discovering lots of cool new artists. This is one of them. Mahmud Asrar is an artist from Turkey who is rocking out comics right now. Bursting onto the scene as artist on Dynamo 5 over at Image, he has recently been doing stuff over at Marvel and DC.
This piece is from a recent issue of Avengers: The Initiative. Anything with Thor in it rocks, and the dynamics of this page just kicked ass. So i had to ink it.
I just recently upgraded my studio with a new Asus laptop and a Brother printer/scanner. The beauty of the printer is that I can scan at full 11x17, and with photoshop, I can take pencil scans, convert them to bluelines, and then print them on comic board. I can then ink them without having the actual pencils, and scan them again. Fuckin awesome,eh?
So I had to try it out on Mahmud's piece. Inked with a brush and Hunt 102 crowquill nib in some spots. Add a little white out for effects, and there ya go!

More cool stuff a-coming!

Iron Man coming atcha!

Nothing is more iconic of Marvel's silver age than a pic of Iron Man blasting some commies! Kirby and Heck did it with fucking style! Here's my shot at it. Done as a commission piece for my buddy Jason. He's going to Emerald City ComicCon next weekend and plans to have the pic autographed by none other than Stan "The Man" Lee himself. I dunno whether to be excited or scared pissless. We'll find out when he gets back.

Done on 9x14 bristol board with pencils, and Pitt artist pens. I used a brush for the blast effects on the ground.

Enjoy!

The Black Beetle

All righty then,back at it. Been a while, but Ive been busy with lots of things. Time to post some art though. This is a pic of Francesco Francavilla's pulp hero, The Black Beetle. It was last weeks subject on ComicTwart. If you don't know what ComicTwart is, it's a blog by a lot of different creators who talk a lot on Twitter. Every week, one of them picks a character, and they all do their version of it. Lots of great artists doing some great stuff there. I have a link to the blog on my list of links. Check it out.

Although I am not an official member of the Twart, I wanted to do something anyway.The character just looked too fun not to do.

This was done in pencil, inked with Pitt artist pens and some brush work as well.

Hope ya like it!

Welcome to Sherwood, I mean, Gotham

Cory Walker is one of those guys who has stayed under the radar for a while. Yet has a following that is pretty big. If you don't knw who he is, he co-created Invincible with Robert Kirkman, and recently did The Destroyer with Kirkman over at Marvel.

Cory's stuff is pretty cool. Very solid yet minimal in his linework, at least as far as using lots of lines. He makes forms so simple, even if its complex mad scienist machinery! His list of credits in comics isnt very long, but what he's done has been pretty damn kick ass. This Robin piece comes from his blog, where he posts almost daily. A link to it can be found in my links section.

For this piece I decided to ink Cory a bit differently than he is accustomed to. Cory usually inks himself, using minimal line weight variation. Usually opting for a fairly constant holding line. I decided to go with a slicker look for him. I used a sheet of heavy transparent vellum and went in with a hunt 102 crowquill nib for about 90% of it. Giving it a look much like Scott Williams early work, but less extreme in line weight variation. I then took a #3 brush for the cape and filling in of blacks. The border was done with a Pitt artist pen as was the staff.

I like Cory's inking on himself. I've been doing a similar style on some of my own pieces, and I like how its been turning out. Hopefully we'll see more from him this year.

Not George, Paul or John...

What can I say about MIKE WIERINGO that hasn't been said by everyone else in the biz?
Nothing. Not one damn thing.

Mike was a class act, a fantastic artist, and one of the best people to have walked this planet. It doesn't seem like we lost him 3 years ago this coming summer, but I don't think a day goes by that a bunch of us don't miss him.

I always wanted to ink Mike. His work has a wonderful flow to it, his figures all have this energy to them, even when they are at rest. I printed off every piece Mike ever posted to his blog. They sit in a stack by my art table.I hadn't looked at them in a while, but when I paged through them all to find a piece, i just had to sigh a bit in disappointment. Disappointment in the fact that there won't be any more Wieringo books coming out. No more daily blog posts. This is all we got, so we'd better damn well cherish it.

I decided on this Superman piece mostly cuz it's Superman, and I really liked the pose. I used a lightbox to pencil it onto Canson comic art board. I really like their comic board. It's got a nice tooth to it, and it takes ink really well. Brush work turns out fabulous on it. I haven't used a quill on it yet, so I don't know if it bleeds. I inked it with a #3 size Kolinsky series 8404 brush. I used a Pitt artist pen for the 'S' shield and belt buckle. Ink was Dick Blick's Black Cat brand ink with a little Kohinoor ultradraw ink mixed in.

I think I could have done a bit better job on a few of the lines here and there, maybe making some holding lines a bit heavier, but I do like how it turned out. Karl Kesel is still my favorite 'Ringo inker. The work they did on Fantastic Four was pretty damn awesome. Check it out if you can find it.

Tell me about the rabbits George..

Well, here we are at the first art post of the blog. Woot!!
This piece is brought to us by the uber-talented Tom Raney (you can find a link to his blog here on my blog). Tom is currently pencilling the Black Widow mini series at Marvel. Tom's credits include Annihilation, Thor, and an exceptional run on Stormwatch written by Warren Ellis. Tom's stuff is pretty cool! He's got a graceful, organic feel to it, and it drools with texture. Texture is one of my big things. I love inking it!
He called this fellow Lenny. I thought that was a good name for a flesh devouring Zom. I inked this piece on standard 8.5x11 copy paper on a lightbox using Pitt artist pens. The Pitt pens come in various sizes and are pretty durable and inexpensive. I started with a size S (superfine) for most of it, and finished with a size F (fine). If I was doing this piece on comic board, I'd probably go in with a nib for a lot of the fine detail work and finish with a brush. But depending on the paper quality, I may just say screw it and go with all brush. I look at the lines the penciller has put down and see where the stroke began and ended. That gives me the feel for it, and tells me where the energy of the line is. It's a zen thing sometimes. But Tom's piece was a pleasure to ink. I've always liked his work, so I figured I'd let him break the blog in. His linework requires a delicate touch, but not so delicate as to let the depth of the form be lost. I think adding a bolder holding outline to his stuff would work nicely, but not too much as to make it look like a coloring book.

Speaking of Zoms, please keep an eye out in May for the release of The Do It Yourself Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse. I am lucky enough to be doing the interior illustrations as well as the cover. Written by my pals Bud Hanzel and John Olson, it is a tongue in cheek tome of guidance to surviving the downfall of us and the rise of the zoms. Publisher to be announced soon. I am proud of the illos I have already done, and cant wait to get through them all. I'll be posting some of the art on here from time to time the next few months.

So there you have it!

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

Welcome to the new blog. After totally screwing up my last one to the point of not being able to access it ever again, I've decided to start over. My goal with this one is the same as my old one, show off my art and make commentary about stupid crap.
But, I do plan to do some things differently. I do plan to make a concerted effort to post art on a weekly basis, hopefully several times a week. It's just a matter of doing it. I also plan to show what I do. I know, you're thinking "you draw, duh." Well more to the point, I'm an inker of comics, I take other peoples work and add my spin to it. To quote one of my favorite artists, Terry Austin, who stated in an interview once that "an inker's job is to take what's there, and make it better". If you dont know who Terry is, than you need to get slapped. He was the inker on Chris Claremont and John Byrne's run on X-Men in the 70's and early 80's. He also inked the late, great Marshall Rogers on Detective Comics in the 70's as well. The guy is a master and one hell of a nice guy.
I'm planning on showing off my inks. I'm a follower of a lot of different artists blogs, and lots of these guys post their pencil work, be it sketches, pages, whatever. Each week, I will find one from the many I follow and ink it, to see what I can come up with. It may not be in my style either. I might decide to go into a slick Scott WIlliams style, or a heavy Klaus Janson. I may just experiment with different tools. I dunno yet. I just know it will be fun, and hopefully will show how inking is an artform. Hope you will join me.

Not a tracer!!