Surf’s Up.

Just messing around with Adobe Illustrator.

I was trying to come up with a new logo for the “bad guys” in Father Robot, and someone pointed out to me how near I was to making up a new surfboard company.

So, here you go…

Clarabelle takes a break.

Or is she “making” a break (for it)?  I’m really loving the work on issue #3 as there’s lots of rocky landscape, and I find drawing that kind of environment very satisfying.

I have yet to take on landscape-illustration in any organized way, but the more I get a taste of it the more interested I get.  I’d love to learn how to paint landscapes or (zoinks!) make relatively quick sketches of environments with my Copic markers.

Until then, I’ll keep on with the line work, which remains my passion.

Where am I?

Time passes.

Sometimes weeks go by and I haven’t returned phone calls or messages.  I feel like all I do is go to work and draw.  On good days I also sleep, but there’s not much more than those few things.

All in the name of comics.

The good news is that I’m really happy with the results I’m getting from my work on issue #3.  I’ll try and put some previews up soon, but I’ve found that posting is one of those things that slip away in the temporal blackhole that is comic page-production.  For those of you who follow my work, I’m sorry not to post more.  I look forward to putting up more, regular updates soon.

In the meantime, here’s a quick, digital, color sketch from work on Father Robot.

 

This soldier from the future is supposed to be one of the “bad guys”.  I thought it interesting that when designing villains, I right away went to harsh angles and cool colors (in an earlier version).  I then started over, thinking about all those poor schmucks who just needed a job and ended up being on the wrong side of inevitability in stories like Cobra in GI Joe and Imperial Stormtroopers.  My uniform for those unknowing evil-doers is hopefully a little ambiguous as far as archetypes go, I hope.  He could be fixing his spaceship on his way to trade foodstuffs or burning villages of Care Bears, but you would never guess by looking…

There’s something on your shoulder…

Convention-season is upon me, and I’m eagerly awaiting the finished proof of issue #2, ready to go to print as soon as the final version is in my hands.  In the meantime, there’s lots to do on issue #3, as well as an overload of promotional material I’d like to have ready for my first table of the year.  It’s going to be back in my favorite city, Seattle, for the Emerald City Comicon.  I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, showing my girlfriend my favorite haunts (and rainy tourist spots), and introducing the denizens of that wonderful area to Father Robot.

The above image is from the cover of issue #2.  The book has a cropped version, and I plan to make high-res prints of the full shot available at the convention table next month.  I really like it, and I wish I could spend as much time and attention to every panel of the book as I did this one image.  It was hand-drawn, then cleaned up and colored in Photoshop.