Dames! Drinks! Drawing! BIKES!

If you don’t know about the Dr. Sketchy’s live drawing scene you should definitely check it out, it’s a ton of fun. Here’s the Tandem Tootsies poster I did for this months New Haven, CT chapter. Sort of a mash up of Mucha designs and pin-up girls.

‘Dr. Sketchy New Haven celebrates the month of romance with babes on bikes! The lovely ladies of the Pink Cycle Skirt bike team strike pin-up action poses on some hot vintage bicycles on Sunday February 28… plus: art games, artistic camaraderie, and great prizes from Baby Tattoo Books.

Donate directly to the Pink Cycle Skirts here: http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?pg=team&fr_id=12790&team_id=184869

Christopher Joe, a great comic art collector and creator of Epsilon Realm recently asked me to do a pin-up for his book. I accepted, and since this wouldn’t require a logo up top I filled the top portion of the page with fire and a jumping character. Well, when Chris saw the pencils he liked it so much he decided to use it as a variant cover, which would mean, yeah, logo. No worries though, I had decided to do the colors myself so I was able to play around with the background composition and the character up top will be placed above the title logo, which actually worked out looking pretty appropriate and deliberate (I guess it’s just a force of habit to leave a bit of space up top for logos).

Here are the final results, and unless I’m much mistaken this will be my debut double-credit on a comic cover as penciller and colorist.

Inks were done by the always amazing Mostafa Moussa - - respect!

Although I don’t usually worry about coloring my artwork I do, on occasion, enjoy splashing around the old virtual paintbrush and have, again on occasion, tried to look up a new technique or tip from a tutorial. I find it entertaining that much like the old ‘how to draw’ instruction booklets from my childhood, these new online photoshop tutorials are pretty useless if you’re not capable of doing most of the work already. I remember having a ‘How to draw dinosaurs’ booklet as a kid and it was all: Step 1: Draw a circle, Step 2: draw a smaller circle, Step 3: connect the two circles with an oval, Step 4: draw a Brontosaurus. (Ask me to draw a brontosaurus one day. I’m really good.)

Anyway, despite all this I somehow managed to learn how to draw, paint, sculpt, count and fly. So to show my process of doing a little photoshop dabbling I figured I’d make my own cliche photoshop tutorial.

Step 1: Start with a drawing, doodle, or scribble. But really, a drawing would be best, because this is the most important part, you want to establish your basic composition and tone. In fact if you start with a crappy doodle or scribble don’t bother. Stop after step 1, Congratulations you’re done!

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Step 2: Build off of your drawing by slapping on some color. This is the most important step, you are establishing your color palette. For this piece my inspiration was Lady Elaine Fairchilde from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (in fact that’s pretty much been the inspiration behind everything I’ve ever done). Usually building color up from the background first is the best method. Building front to back (like I did with the elephant below) is the advanced difficulty method, sometimes called the ’stupid’ method. If you like unfinished looking work you may stop now, Congratulations your masterpiece is complete!

Step 3: Finish up by smoothing rough areas and clarifying your piece. Pay attention to detail because this is the most important step, the final product! At this stage you might consider changing up your composition or playing with your color palette as it suits your rapidly changing mood. Add flair and SFX as necessary. Also don’t forget to drown out all the subtlety you put in by massively saturating the piece before you send it anywhere, because as we all know, nothing ever ends up looking like it did in Photoshop. OK, Congratulations, you’re finished!

I recently gave an interview to Marie Claire mag (int) and was asked to do a piece for them relating to my work and also women’s fashion. This seemed natural to me since I’m known as something of a fashion icon around here (North America). I’ve rocked the always-in-style shaved head and have exclusively worn Khakis with unadorned grey t-shirts (from Isaac Mizrahi’s ‘Blasé Collection’) since 1999. Before that I used to wear jeans, ugh, how pedestrian. Plus I’m at a point where I can ALMOST keep my lunch down if someone switches my tv set to “what not to wear” (that’s right, “tv set”).

This piece came up right as I was leaving for a week of vacation; to swim with dolphins in the gulf and watch mermaid shows at Weeki Wachee springs (recently in the news over a manager getting fired for sexually harassing one of the mermaids. In which I played absolutely no part. Despite my lascivious winking and honking gestures during the shows) but anyway, I digest, my point is I had to come up with something on the heels of my vaca. I pumped out the pencils quick enough, no big, but I’m not really a colorist by trade. I felt the urge to have a go at it anyway and to make a long story short after flying down the coast, visiting water parks and feeling generally exhausted from sushi and liquor, I stayed up all night coloring this thing… with a mouse. It was tedious but I got it done well before their deadline. So what happens next you ask? Well they bump the interview several months back. Such is the publishing world.
Here’s the final piece.

Here’s a quick sketch I did for a side project I’m working on. I really have a thing for sepia tones, and muted tones in general. Which is surprising for a comic artist since as a kid I was attracted to comics precisely because of all the bright colors. Perhaps it’s a maturity thing, like that one teenage day you woke up and discovered you actually do like the taste of mustard and beer…

*Editors note* This image was recently used as the cover to the Greek translation of Professor Stephen Mithen’s book The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. It wasn’t originally drawn for that purpose but when it was requested it seemed to fit the bill, not only of the subject matter but my areas of interest as well.

Don’t forget to periodically check back in on the galleries pages. I upload new pages every now and again even when I don’t blog

So a few months ago I was trying to watch Eragon. Emphasis on trying . I kept falling asleep. The only thing it had going for it was that Jeremy Irons’ performance was crushing the main character. All I could think of was the Irons periodically busting out screaming “I’M JEREMY IRONS YOU LITTLE S#IT!”

So I decided to go ahead and draw him. But it turns out he’s a very difficult man to capture. He’s a chameleon; he changes his appearance constantly and therefore seemingly doesn’t have a quintessential look. However, after much market-research and wads of paper in the trash the consensus was that the above sketch was the correct Irons look.

Earlier in the week I was asked to do a MacGyver sketch to be used as a Yale University play prop. I don’t usually get the chance to draw anything with grey/shading so it was a fun exercise. Plus drawing that mullet was awesome! And a little nostalgia value to boot

No, that’s not ‘what she said’, I’m talking about the AMDAFAQ! It can be accessed through the right-upper-menu-bar, or though the side-bar to, well, the side, or by clicking AMDAFAQ. If you find any questions that are obviously missing, or you want me to add some new ones let me know!

  I’ve noticed that over on the hairy side of this site Maki has turned into quite the fecund blogger, giving updates on what we’ve been up to as well as posting sketches and other little chatchkies. I’m a little jealous because I cannot post the things I draw on a daily or even weekly basis for obvious [read: legal] reasons, however I assure you I have some fun stuff cooking! For example; recently I did a cover for Forgotten Realms: Starless Night featuring the character Drizzt Do’urden, and I have some random sketches on the way which I will post when I get the time. For now I leave you with a little Pencil-to-ink preview of this most recent cover (pencils by yours truly and Inks by Mostafa Moussa). I will post it in it’s entirety when I am able. (*Edit: this image is now available in the Covers Gallery and the thumbnail used to create it is in the Sketches Gallery)

If you’re interested in our sordid weekend affairs you’ll just have to check out Maki’s side Enjoy!