I am very happy to announce that the first installment of Fox Head Stew is up on MTV Geek today! It’s been hard for me to keep it quiet recently, but the entire Fox Head Stew storyline will be released on MTV Geek! Not only is it a great fit for MTV (in a very Liquid [...]]]>

I am very happy to announce that the first installment of Fox Head Stew is up on MTV Geek today! It’s been hard for me to keep it quiet recently, but the entire Fox Head Stew storyline will be released on MTV Geek! Not only is it a great fit for MTV (in a very Liquid TV sort of way) but I think it’ll expose a whole new set of eyes to the story. Hurray for exposure and diversity!

Finishing a big project can be the hardest thing in the world. We all like to /talk/ about doing great things, but it’s a whole different challenge to actually follow through on it. I started the sequel to Weird Fishes shortly after the book was published in 2009. I was full of energy and propulsion from [...]]]>

Finishing a big project can be the hardest thing in the world. We all like to /talk/ about doing great things, but it’s a whole different challenge to actually follow through on it. I started the sequel to Weird Fishes shortly after the book was published in 2009. I was full of energy and propulsion from the signings and exciting press over my book. I had just moved up to San Francisco and covered my walls with new drawings and ideas for the characters. An epic story rolled out before me. I called it “Dee’s Siren Song” because I knew both I, and Dee, were searching for something, and I knew I had to create this story, following a journey through college and deciphering the meanings of dreams and fantastic imagery running through my head.

If you’ve been following me online for awhile, you’ve seen the Siren Song pages. They’ve  become the first 20 pages of Fox Head Stew. Upon their completion, they’d been displayed in two gallery shows, printed in a black and white ‘zine and posted on the internet. But I felt suppressed by them, by the pressure to create more, and so I put them aside, and instead created a lot of stand-alone illustrations of unrelated characteres that allowed me to experiment with technique and symbols and feel free. By this time I’d fallen pretty deep into the music scene in SF, and really wanted to bring more of that into my work. Suddenly all the pieces fell together, and I began resculpting my comics to follow some of my new interests, and that’s how the band Block Cocks were born on the comic page and the story became less about college and more about self-exploration and expression.

The rest of the story unfolded for me, and I managed to get everything pencilled on bristol board by mid-2011 and then only had the task of inking and painting all of it. I’ve never had the task of having to work on that many pages all at once (about 80 of them) but anyone who’s been around me in the past year knows, I am a complete workaholic. If I’m not out drinking after work, and that does happen a few times a week, I come home and paint/ink comic pages. The supplies are always out on my desk, my teacup of water ready, my watercolor sets open, and I’ll paint while waiting for dinner, I’ll ink while watching movies, etc etc. But sadly, even a strict work ethic doesn’t help when you get home from your work work at 8pm and only have a few hours in you before your eyes and mind completely go on strike.

Therefore: patience.

I have finally developed my patience muscles, and plotted away at a huge project. It has been a long time coming, and there’s still editing, some final painting, and 2 very sneaky pages that need to be inked. But guess what: the first draft PDF of Fox Head Stew went out to my editor this week.

All at once, great things are coming through the door, and I have a project I can promote.

I sit in shock, that it is finally going to have eyes on it. It has been, what, two and a half years that I’ve been working on this. It has been my second job. It is infinitely important and yet it doesn’t make sense at all. I have wanted to put it aside so many times, and yet I’ve kept going. Something has gotten done, and now there’s no going back.

I am greatly anticipating going on vacation, sitting on a mountain, and not thinking about comics.

Talk to you on Monday.

-J

I’ve been on a longterm hunt for a way to share the process of creating art with a greater audience. While the finished piece is an experience in itself, for me the process of getting there is what’s really thrilling. I’ve tried out livestreaming but it never really stuck for me. I enjoy events where I [...]]]>

I’ve been on a longterm hunt for a way to share the process of creating art with a greater audience. While the finished piece is an experience in itself, for me the process of getting there is what’s really thrilling. I’ve tried out livestreaming but it never really stuck for me. I enjoy events where I get to do quick drawings infront of people, but those events are more of a rarity. I’ve set up cameras to shoot video while I work, and I’ve gotten some neat footage, but I’ve yet to edit it down. This week, I got the answer to my problems in the form of a tiny little app for my phone called iMotion HD! Within minutes I set my phone down on my desk, set the camera to shoot frames every 2 seconds, and quickly forgot about it as I painted.

Fast, easy to use and the movies are easy to export! The magic of technology.

I’ll take more of these videos and post them as I go on. This weekend is a time of furious scanning and last-minute touch-ups on my next project. We are so close it is insane!

-J

I’ve currently made it past the midpoint for finished pages of Fox Head Stew! It only makes it more aggravating to have so many pages left to paint, but I’m getting there. Being halfway done means I’m painting scenes that are fresher to me, still working out some of the little details that have been rolling [...]]]>

I’ve currently made it past the midpoint for finished pages of Fox Head Stew! It only makes it more aggravating to have so many pages left to paint, but I’m getting there. Being halfway done means I’m painting scenes that are fresher to me, still working out some of the little details that have been rolling around in my brain. I wanted to share a few panels I finished recently. Here is one of my favorite pages as of yet, of Sam (Bunny Boy) playing the guitar that I drew over a year ago, but the color really brings it alive:

I went back to the start of the book and re-drew Dee’s adventure moving from home to live on campus. Here’s the last shot of her bedroom before she leaves her friends and packs up.

Can’t wait to share more!

-J

I finally started scanning in Fox Head Stew!

It is the most ambitious project I’ve undertaken yet, and it’s been an entirely new experience for me to work on a graphic novel without sharing it as I go, like I did with Weird Fishes. I sneak photos of the pages and [...]]]>

I finally started scanning in Fox Head Stew!

It is the most ambitious project I’ve undertaken yet, and it’s been an entirely new experience for me to work on a graphic novel without sharing it as I go, like I did with Weird Fishes. I sneak photos of the pages and share them on Instagram and Twitter, but still, not the same as having your audience follow the story right as you create it. The feeling of keeping it all secure has been powerful, and it’s allowed the story to grow and change. This comic started off as “Dee’s Siren Song” nearly two years ago, and I’ve had to start re-drawing the earlier pages because the story and art style has changed too much. Things have become more ethereal than they were going to be originally, and I look forward to seeing people’s responses as they read it.

For now, I’m sharing something that doesn’t really give away anything: Dee and her roommate Zack watching “Breathless” in film class:

Yeah, that’s right, no text for you.

I still have a pile of pages to finish painting, and an ending I still need to draw, but I’m aiming to get it all in a somewhat-finished state by the end of the year. So in 2012 I’ll get to tell you where you can read it! I have some crazy ideas about how I want to tour the book across the country, but we’ll talk more about that later.

I’m having a great time jumping back and forth between familiar watercolors and challenging guitar strings.

I’ve gotten a few emails recently from people who found this site after reading a copy of the Weird Fishes graphic novel. In case you didn’t explore around the site, I’ve posted the full-color version of Weird Fishes right here. Also, you can get a jump on my new project by reading the pages of Dee’s Siren Song that I posted last year.

-j

I’ve become a huge fan of Kelly Thompson‘s writing, specifically her drunk reviews of solicits for DC and Marvel comics. While looking at the covers for comics soon to be released, she drinks and critiques the drawing, storytelling, and bullshittery of each cover. It’s hilarious! Her solicits for DC’s December releases were great, and after reading [...]]]>

I’ve become a huge fan of Kelly Thompson‘s writing, specifically her drunk reviews of solicits for DC and Marvel comics. While looking at the covers for comics soon to be released, she drinks and critiques the drawing, storytelling, and bullshittery of each cover. It’s hilarious! Her solicits for DC’s December releases were great, and after reading and staring at the cover for Birds of Prey issue 4, I decided to design my own cover. I’m a huge fan of female superheroes, and Birds of Prey brings a lot of them together, and a book like this should be totally badass, and yet somehow it isn’t. So I, on a sleep-deprived warm Tuesday evening after work, did my own sketch of  the cover, copying the design but tweaking it a little and doing it in my own style. It ended up being a lot of fun, though it turned out awkward in composition and placement.

Just as the paint was drying on this piece, I get a text from James Sime asking if I’d be interested in hanging some new artwork in the store, and within a couple of hours it was hanging on the walls of Isotope!

We put up a whole new collection of pieces, a curation of what I’ve been working on for the past 6 months.

All of my prints and originals at Isotope are hanging for your viewing pleasure and available for purchase!

This week I also got to read the submissions for Isotope’s Award for Excellence in Mini Comics, and there was a great selection!
I’ll talk more about my favorites after the award is given out tonight.

Here’s my watercolor set that I’ve been using for the past 3 years. Nearly every watercolor I’ve done has been using this (notice, how worn down the red is!)

I think it’s a testament to how simplistic your art toolset can be: I just use this set of Windsor Newton paint, Fabrer-Castell PITT markers for inking, and bristol board. Done!

Just Watched: Trollhunter, and now I want to read old troll fairytales with turn-of-the-century illustrations.

Reading: Rip it up and Start Again, and raging against art conventions is pretty similar to punk music.

This saturday, inspired to draw comics and not wanting to stay isolated in my little studio, I brought my work over to Isotope comics where James let me set up at a desk and draw all day! It was extremely productive, I got a bunch of pages inked, and started watercoloring six pages, and got updated [...]]]>

This saturday, inspired to draw comics and not wanting to stay isolated in my little studio, I brought my work over to Isotope comics where James let me set up at a desk and draw all day! It was extremely productive, I got a bunch of pages inked, and started watercoloring six pages, and got updated on all the gossip about the new DC comics coming out. I haven’t painted in quite awhile, and it was fun to jump back into it. Later that night I started adding in the blacks, and it’s all looking pretty solid.

I then got asked to be a judge for the Isotope Award in Excellence in Mini-Comics! This is really cool, and I can’t wait to read all the cool books you send in! I don’t take briberies, but I will enjoy every minute of having an excuse to read new minis. It feels like not so long ago I was sending in my own ‘zines for this award (okay, like, ten years ago…). In the press release James reveals that I’m going to be serializing my new comic right here on my site! The wait is over my friends, I will be highlighting what’s happened so far, and begin posting new pages. You knew I wouldn’t stay away…

Of course, I’ll be sharing the process all along the way. Currently a huge stack of pages are going through the transformation of inks to fully-painted.

Here’s something else I worked on this weekend. It’s an image I’ve had in my mind for awhile, but once I got it on paper, painted and inked, I just wasn’t happy. I’m realizing that I’m way more of a storyteller than an “artist” who does single pieces, in that, when I try to reflect on pop culture and develop imagery and symbols that I think will “work”, I end up feeling disappointed. In the end they all turn out looking like pretty girls with things on their heads. I find this funny and keep on finding myself playing around with it, but this time around I realized clearly that I enjoy telling a story in a sequence of images much more.

I also got my very own toilet seat in Jame’s toilet seat gallery. If you haven’t seen it, the toilet seats line the all the walls at Isotope and they are all drawn and written on by ALL the greats in comics. It’s an honor to  be a part of it.

-j

I recently gathered together all of the unfinished comic pages I have scattered around, marking them up and organizing the story. It takes discipline and re-wiring to get your mind back into the groove of writing stories, but once it clicks back in place, it’s pretty smooth sailing. My sketchbook is filling with pages for the [...]]]>

I recently gathered together all of the unfinished comic pages I have scattered around, marking them up and organizing the story. It takes discipline and re-wiring to get your mind back into the groove of writing stories, but once it clicks back in place, it’s pretty smooth sailing. My sketchbook is filling with pages for the next storyline, and before I got too lost in a giant unmanageable state of unfinished everything, I’m going back and inking all the pages that are already done.

I’m finding that post-its with dialogue are working really well for me right now. Since these pages are going to get painted and THEN lettered, it’s really nice to have a moveable, ever-evolving script to work with visually.

Rather than work tight and precise, I’m trying to keep the spontaneity of my sketchbook drawings in my final pages. Quick pencil sketches and loose linework, which will then be painted over with watercolors and gouache. I agonize over the pros and cons of color, but at the end of the day I don’t want to do a book that doesn’t have color in it. The color is what brings it to life for me, I want to spend my time bringing in beautiful tones into my drawings, not hatchwork or Photoshop shading.

Here’s me this morning, on a mission. I love this feeling: waking up and jumping back to the drawing desk after only leaving it late last night. This is the feeling I had as a kid when I woke up with stories running through my mind and nothing to hinder it. I’m getting pretty good at moving in and out of this mode, and I feel myself slipping into an old groove as I hear Bunny Boy start singing me his new song as I walk home in the evening. With my new job, I’m now trained to work long hours at the computer, and I’m painting and rendering out game assets and feeling pretty damn satisfied about it. I feel myself becoming a power machine. But it is only a day job, and this schedule has put my mind in top-gear to complete new personal work in these fine small moments that there are in the evenings and weekends.

My sketchbooks are filled with all of these little disjointed sketches. This is one that I recently recovered: I wanted to do a line of romance pulp-style illustrations inspired by Raymond Pettibon (cute, right?). But now I’m taking on the challenge of  thread all of my ideas through my comic. I’ve taken on too many side projects and it’s time to consolidate. This sketch very well might become the painted cover for my book (sans text).

It’s always a game of managing insanity with creative output. Organize the chaos, find the elements that really work for you, direct your energy towards something that you love with every bit of your heart, and ignite.

Thanks Noise Pop! Thanks [...]]]> The comics I drew at Noise Pop, along with a bunch of other artists like of Justin Hall and Susie Cagle,  are up at 2011.noisepop.com/comics!

Thanks Noise Pop! Thanks James!