Sketchbook Adventures

Here are a few items from my sketch books. Keeping it short and sweet with lots of pictures. Lindsey says people like pictures.



I played a rare solo show and opened for these fine fellows. Then I did a drawing of them.



The one on the left was done while we waited for pancakes to come to our table. The painted study on the left was done with gouache but I did it over acrylic gesso so it's a bit streaky. I just got some 'watercolor ground' to try out. We shall see eh?



More Lindsey. I started by sketching with the gray brush and added the ink after. It was fun. This preceded pancakes as well. I eat pancakes every weekend if I can. It is my favorite treat.



These are my amazing friends Matt and Cathy Hastie. They just got back from Peru where they were living for 7 months. Matt was helping local people to improve their water quality. Cathy was working with kids at a Peruvian school. You can see their fantastic adventures on their website. I did these drawings while they were giving a forum on their experience at the Mc Menamin's Kennedy school in the public room.



I found this sketch I had done for a fella at a comic book signing event. No sketch post is complete without a little Star Wars.
And there you go...

Busy Bee, Busy Me

Tragedy series and a veritable cornucopia of commercial work have kept me very busy. This is mostly great yet, also, a bit overwhelming in other ways. In the next few months I'm only focusing on a project for Oni Press written by Paul Tobin and the Tragedy Series. Everything else has to wait!

My friends at the studio, in response to the very kind reception my daily strip has received, have prompted me to start an Etsy store mostly focused on Tragedy Series and it has been doing very well; thank you to those of you who have purchased prints! Below is a host of sketch cards that I sent out with those first orders as a bonus to show my appreciation for my initial customers' patience with my inexperience in E-commerce and shipping logistics.


More work including prints of images seen on this blog and tee-shirts are coming soon to the Ety Store.
Here is an hour-long study of poor Lindsey who was feeling sick and watching movies. She was wearing a slowly fading cosmetic-cream facial mask and doing crosswords part of the time. I love her and I really enjoy having her sit because she is patient and, to my eyes, very pretty.


This was done with a limited palette and some clunky brushes but I like studies (even more sometimes) when I know they are done under less than ideal conditions. This reminded me that I miss painting and that doing it from life is where it is most exciting for me.

Banner Fun.

I'm progressing along making my blog better and trying to get other aspects of my life in order. My first order of business was to make some appealing headers/banners. Lindsey suggested that I do a different one for every month like another blogger she reads. I started with a space theme featuring Lindsey herself but I decided that I need to repaint it because of proportion issues.

Here are the banners in various states of finish. The top is the redrawing of my 'Lindsey in space' banner. The bottom is the current banner before I added ink and highlights
This is the June banner in it's un-cropped, finished state.
I've got more ideas to come. You may have seen one in a previous post that involves woodland creatures. I several planned: undersea, old West, dinosaurs, rock n' roll, scientists, friend portraits, cats and more! Keep checking back to see what is happening.

Across The Finish Line.

I finished a big painting this morning after a month (roughly 30 hours) of fairly tedious, technical, educational, demanding and meticulous work. I can't show it to you but I can show you these lovely paint rags.


It is a splash page-style montage of historical fiction characters with vehicles appearing under and on the sea, in the air and thundering over the American landscape. As more info is allowed to circulate I'll post accordingly. For now, I'll celebrate with a handful of blueberries and a return to my main projects.

May the Force be with you.