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 spent a good deal of my late teens and early twenties acting and dressing rather boyish, and it seems like not too long ago I decided to start growing out my hair, filled my wardrobe with dresses, and have started a respectable shoe collection. My fascination with fashion has always been there, but the realization [...]]]>

I spent a good deal of my late teens and early twenties acting and dressing rather boyish, and it seems like not too long ago I decided to start growing out my hair, filled my wardrobe with dresses, and have started a respectable shoe collection. My fascination with fashion has always been there, but the realization that you can transform yourself into whatever creature you want is a fun new challenge.

One of these days I’ll have to do a comparison of Dee’s fashion versus mine. My love for color in my drawings is obvious, and when it comes to dressing my main character, it’s all about drastic and sometimes obnoxious color patterns and combinations. It’s unique and lighthearted. But with my own wardrobe I wear mostly blacks and greys, I love geometric patterns and textured tights, though I do have a few bold colored dresses. This evening I went out with some of my lady buddies from work and red was a theme!

We all went out to see Russell Brand entertain us at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a very relaxed show, and Russell was hilarious and brilliant and silly. I felt giddy seeing one of my favorite comedians, at an event that benefitted the David Lynch foundation for transcendental meditation no less! Yup, I love San Francisco.

So there you have it. It’s all on the table. All I can think about are shoes, dresses and Russell Brand.

J

It’s black Friday, and I’m at home scanning in Fox Head Stew! I can’t describe how gratifying it is to be finally getting these finished pages on my computer. I now have the first 40 pages all ready to go, the rest are sitting in a stack to be reviewed, touched up with some [...]]]>

It’s black Friday, and I’m at home scanning in Fox Head Stew! I can’t describe how gratifying it is to be finally getting these finished pages on my computer. I now have the first 40 pages all ready to go, the rest are sitting in a stack to be reviewed, touched up with some paint and ink, and scanned in! This thing WILL get done.

I spoke at Ed Luce’s Comics University at Isotope comics last weekend, and it was insightful and informative, even for me! A lot of the tips I came up with for creating a compelling online community with your readers are things I wish I was better at: consistency in releasing comics, frequent updates, behind-the-scenes posts and constant contact with other art bloggers. This more-than-full-time job of mine really eats into all of this.

I’ve been re-visiting some old sketches and working on some new ones. It’s funny how sometimes images you don’t like when you first draw them seem to resonate over time, and then it’s your job to finish them up.

I’ve been working on some t-shirt designs for my friend’s band! This is an image I threw at them and I’ll probably make my own prints of it.

Sometimes it’s hard to stay focused on writing just about my drawings and interests. I try not to get political, but shit is crazy right now! I’m in awe as I watch the horror being broadcast online, shot on my friend’s phones, and the constant steam of tweets on current states of invasion… we’re living in a new time of media, and watching a revolution occur in real-time. It’s shocking, revolting, and everyone is watching. The fact that all eyes are on it is what will make things change for the better. I hope.

I’m just noticing the darker tone of my more recent art…

To wrap it up positively, I am filling up every free moment I have drawing art, learning to play guitar, listening to music, spending time with fascinatingly talented people, party party party, and forging into the future with my fiance. Yes! Taking the amazingly wonderful day-to-day life along with the shadow of brutality and change.

It is our job to walk the line between reality and fantasy: persevere, reflect, and create beautiful art.

-J

I caught the bug that’s been circulating through the offices of San Francisco, and got quarantined to the apartment for a week. For a few days it was just time-wasting, movie-indulging, blankets and hot tea, but then I started to get ideas: stories and songs and dialogue running through my mind while I’m physically unable to pick [...]]]>

I caught the bug that’s been circulating through the offices of San Francisco, and got quarantined to the apartment for a week. For a few days it was just time-wasting, movie-indulging, blankets and hot tea, but then I started to get ideas: stories and songs and dialogue running through my mind while I’m physically unable to pick up a pen to write them down. I completely re-composed the ending for my next book, every detail put in it’s place.

During this time I missed the gallery opening at Public Works and a lavish business trip to Vegas. (I’m beginning to thing Vegas is my kryptonite: every plan to go there has been sidetracked)

Yesterday I was able to sit at my desk and draw, and I’m putting together some of my favorite sequential pages yet. Working from rough pencils, painting from memories and places, then inking and lettering right on the page, mixing fiction and lore with the excitement of painting new colors and compositions. It makes me realize how defeated I was starting to feel from constant work, no breaks, and no time to think and let my mind wander.

I think there’s an expected dedication to over-working, that your worth is measured in overtime, and that creative side projects are a novelty. I seek to defy this: work hard in the office but never allow the creativity after-hours to die, because that’s the real reason to live and fight. It’s so bizarre to be caught in a situation like this, of over-working, while my unemployed friends are across the bay being tear-gassed and arrested in the Occupy movement. We’re in a time of extremes.

I still need to learn how to take a break now and then, being bedridden for a week shouldn’t be the only way to get a mind vacation.

-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.

I spent a good chunk of last week listening to the preview of St. Vincent’s new album “Strange Mercy”. I think it’s incredibly beautiful and exciting, she manages to be moody and lovely and then rip into some crazy guitar riffs. There’s something about her version of “ugly guitar” that is right up my alley. Oh [...]]]>

I spent a good chunk of last week listening to the preview of St. Vincent’s new album “Strange Mercy”. I think it’s incredibly beautiful and exciting, she manages to be moody and lovely and then rip into some crazy guitar riffs. There’s something about her version of “ugly guitar” that is right up my alley. Oh and there’s this video of her on SPIN looking like such a lady and covering Tom Waits. Yes, please.

I’ve finally succumbed to my love of guitar and bought a vintage Teisco Del Rey this weekend. I didn’t expect to do it, I was just being a spectator at the guitar shop, but I laid eyes on this beauty and knew she had to be mine. Bright turquoise blue, covered in colorful buttons and with it’s pointy little horns, it’s right out of my fantasies. When she’s plugged into some pedals, she makes the loud ugly textured sounds I always fall for.

Now I just have to learn to play it.

This marks a big step from being a spectator of music and writing and drawing about music but always saying that I’m just a visual person. Personally, I really like being good at what I do, and it’s way easier for me to become a fantastic painter than to become a musician. I’m going to suck at playing an instrument for a long time until it starts to sound good. I’ve already gone through that ugly phase with drawing, do I really want to live it out all over again?

It’s these challenges that keep us young and excited about life, ever-evolving and working to better ourselves. I enjoy knowing that it’s possible to surprise yourself in big ways.

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.

I’ve been working too much. By the time I got to this past weekend I was able to do little more than babble and sit in the park with friends, completely unable to look at a computer screen without cringing, and I finished my commitments, drunk, on a Sunday night. And the really bizarre thing is, [...]]]>

I’ve been working too much. By the time I got to this past weekend I was able to do little more than babble and sit in the park with friends, completely unable to look at a computer screen without cringing, and I finished my commitments, drunk, on a Sunday night. And the really bizarre thing is, I can do some pretty decent painted drawings in a frazzled state.

As I finish up some previous obligations, work long hours at the day job, and cross the middle mark for my next book, I’m amazed by how it all seems to be going really, really well. Everything in the world is really scary. I try not to think about it. Sometimes I feel like San Francisco is a little island with a total lack of reality amongst all the madness, that delivers sunny gorgeous weekends and cold bitter weekdays, our little technology bubble repeating it’s morbid history all over again. Here’s the thing: I love my job, I’m obsessed with the story I’m working on, I’m 90% done with animating a really great music video (that you probably won’t see until next year) and I’m really excited about the ad campaign I just finished and can’t wait to share it. Luckily for both of us, I have some sketchbook pages to show in the meantime.

I LOVE:

Liqen – Piramidon 09

Tame Impala: It is Not Meant to Be

Baubauhaus : various rock posters

The Parking Lot Movie

Digging through my sketchbook and picking out drawings to include in a digital/print book I’m working on.

I’m preparing to go to San Diego Comic-Con in a couple weeks. I don’t have a table per-say, but I’ll update with info on my wherabouts as the time comes closer. I have little idea what to expect this [...]]]>

Digging through my sketchbook and picking out drawings to include in a digital/print book I’m working on.

I’m preparing to go to San Diego Comic-Con in a couple weeks. I don’t have a table per-say, but I’ll update with info on my wherabouts as the time comes closer. I have little idea what to expect this time around, it’s been a few years since the last one, and the convention is always so big and you end up hanging out with people you never thought you’d get to meet.

Today, all I have to do is clean the apartment and draw comics, which is a rare treat!

My latest addiction has been pinterest, a great way to collect images and watch a style evolve in your collections, and in your contact’s collections. I have some friends with amazing style. I used to collect images in folders on my desktop, but this is quickly becoming my go-to. Feel free to follow me on pinterest.