The Spoils Of Stumptown

This year I got a last minute table at Stumptown Comicsfest. It was a good time overall but, my hasty preparation, throwing poor Lindsey into the deep end of assisting me on the show floor, a diet comprised almost exclusively of doughnuts and coffee, appearing in the comic art battle, the inconsistent traffic of day 2 combined with my exhaustion from work and being fresh off the energy of ECCC made for a near-breakdown by the end of the festival. I did make some nice commissions (mostly on day one) and here they are:

I make T-Rex red. Maybe it is a latent affection for devil dinosaur that I'm not paying attention to.

This was for a 'super-pets' themed sketchbook. I like the Green Lantern and I love cats; this produced Meow Jordan.

I think this might have been done on day 2. The theme of this sketchbook was batman villains. I always liked Killer Croc and Poison Ivy so I did a quick doodle of them both.

I had a hard time deciding on a pose and I don't know the Sandman characters very well but I get the impression it is a really enjoyable series. The people who like it show a rare devotion to the stories and the characters. I like drawing fish even though I'm not great at it.

Here is my darling Lindser and me posing in a rare moment of mental composure. I think she is a gem.

What's My Name?

A few weeks ago I did a bunch of live drawing for the Dove Lewis Animal Hospital blood-drive at the Lucky Lab. People would bring up their pooch and I'd do my best to get their likeness in the limited time that the noble creatures would hold still. A few of them were better at it than people. Most of the pet owners were very nice and appreciative. I would do it again. It helped me get used to the idea that not all dogs want to eat my face off.

The First Family Of Comics

I've done another hero initiative cover. I'm not sure when the auction will be but I'll be sure to let people know via twitter and Facebook once I find out. It is a great cause (one I might be in need of someday) and I love the opportunity to try for the most fun and dynamic image I can make as a physical art object:

I used gouache, ultradraw ink and prismacolor colored pencil for this image. I like the way Galactus turned out and, as Jeff Parker pointed out, it looks like Johnny Storm has decided that he has better things to do.

Here is a picture of me painting it before I cleaned up my area of the studio, hence the rumpled paper bag behind me.

This is the sketch I did. It may have been posted a while back but there are things I like about it more than the finished piece (in some ways) so I'm going to hold onto it for a while until someone wants to offer me mad cash!

I Practice All The Time

Many of my studio-mates are natural cartoonists in the sense that cartooning was the first drawing language that they fell in love with and subsequently made concerted efforts to master. I was always more interested in 'realistic' or observed drawing for the same bravado-laced reasons that many aspiring young (typically male) artists often have. I assumed that because cartooning involved fewer lines and a distortion of visual norms that it was easy; I have learned just how difficult it actually is to capture the heart of a gesture, expression or setting with the perfect line. I have, after being inspired by the brilliant work of my many cartooning fluent studio-mates and comic art heroes, set about the task of revisiting the fundamentals of both construction and cartooning.


One way that I practice is to focus on an area I have trouble with like hands, mouths, placement of features on a face, torsos, feet etc. I go through issues of comics drawn by artists I like and copy their solution as closely as possible. In this case I took an issue of avengers and mimicked as many Stuart Immonen mouths as I could for about 2 hours. I learned a ton. I don't use that sort of thing when I'm making my own drawings because that would be plagiarism; it is totally fine to do it as a practice exercise in the same sense as learning a great Eric Clapton solo when you're trying to master blues guitar. It is worth trying to step into the shoes of your hero and get things from their perspective.


Michael Hampton's book on structural drawing has become a favorite of mine and I'm going through it bit by bit and trying out all the systems that he has developed. I highly recommend it to any of you that are experiencing a similar internal or external prompting to reexamine your stylistic leanings and tendencies. I plan to fill this sketch book with practice drawings and get as good as those artists I admire so much while simultaneously avoiding clear imitation in my final work. I'm only a little way into the process and it has already been a huge boon to me.

Time Well Spent

I'm grateful to the very cool people who asked for the image below; I am glad I could make this for them. It was commissioned by a lovely couple that met in Seattle during the convention. They were great: they paid in advance, the got a pre-paid mailer and they brought reference. I also learned a valuable lesson from doing the piece so I can thank them for that too!

Before ECCC I had read Chris Samnee's guidelines for commission work and I was surprised that he wouldn't do likenesses or non-licensed characters and clearly lists 'some background' amongst his bullet points. I found it curious but I now understand why.


Once I finished the painting on this piece, on Tuesday, I knew it would be difficult to take on similar jobs in the future; It was a ton of fun but it took a crazy amount of time. It ended up being two full work days of trying to match likenesses, put together a pose that would work with the faces I found in the pictures they provided, nail down the complicated details of the characters costumes, work out appropriate full/divergent themed background worlds for each side and lay in the colors so that each side was balanced without competing excessively.


I now understand that I have to put constraints on my commissions (and on myself) from this point out or I'll end up taking precious time away from deadline-dependent projects. If I were to charge my normal commercial rates no one would want to pay; I want to make sure I can offer something people will enjoy without compromising my own financial and scheduling needs. Freelance work is full of these moments of learning and that is a good thing. I also think that the final image turned out pretty cool!

Commission Missions

I love being down at Periscope in the morning before anyone else gets here. My studio mates are dear to me but there is something fun about being in a 'bat cave' of my very own for a little bit. I suppose Batman would be drinking something a little less flowery than vanilla flavored coffee but that is probably the only difference between the two of us. On a different note, here are a few of my ECCC commissions:








Lindsey loves to play various Iphone games and surprisingly 'drawesome' is one of them. Every now and then she lets me play a round when there is something fun to do or she needs a break from her 1,000 app-game commitments. I love Zelda; I know Link is not Zelda but he is most closely associated with the game franchise (along with the triforce) so here you go:

Game Of Thrones Post 2

I've been enjoying the new season of G.O.T. so far and listening to the first book on tape, via audible, while I work. I had read the the first book in of 'a song of ice and fire' in 2010 and enjoyed it. When the show came out I was excited and pleased with how they adapted the first book; now I'm in the reverse position of seeing the second season without having read the second book. It's just the thrill I thought it would be; this time around I've been surprised.


I thought it might be a fun little exercise in speed to draw the whole main cast of the first season on sketch-cards. It has been choosing and mashing references up. In some cases I find a great image and just go for it but I like to fuse disparate sources to make something new when I can; add a head to a body, put in a background element, equip them with new weapons or armor etc.


I should mention that I'm taking pre-stumptown commission orders too. I'd like to be able to have a few done before the show because I almost wasn't able to fit in the list I had at ECCC. I don't want to leave anyone hanging so contact me ASAP if you're interested. I'll be working on my upcoming Oni project and book proposal for Tragedyseries/TCBW. I hope your weekend will be full of sun and icecream.