I’ve been terrified of the idea of drawing Catwoman for years. She’s my absolute favorite hero/villain and she’s the reason I became obsessed with comic books. She’s been re-invented many times over since I started following her adventures, and when I was a kid I was just captivated by this feline, strong awesome lady running about and beating people up. But looking back at the comics I was reading (Balent era) I really don’t see the Catwoman that leaps about in my imagination. That said, I do like her more recent style, and I’ve been working through some initial sketches to tackle my own image of Catwoman.
Listening to: Das Racist
Watching: Eight Miles High
This got recommended to me by Netflix because I like “fashion films” and holy crap! Not only is it gorgeously shot,
but it’s about the model Uschi who dated Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. German models in the seventies who sleep with rockstars, are politically active, and go on a journey through Asia and Mexico? Need I say more?
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.
My guitar draws my comics for me now.
Recently I spoke with the Lovecraft-themed blog Innsmouth Free Press.
We did an interesting interview together where we talked about Weird Fishes and my inspirations, it was a good one!
More info on Fox Head Stew coming up, I’ll be serializing it right here.
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.
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 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 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
I’ve been avoiding my post on Comic-con and maybe it’s because there’s just too much to tell. I saw so many awesome people, went to some great parties, drew drew drew, made new friends, got the word out, and pretty much had a great vacation. It was all the fun parts of this business without all the sitting at tables trying to sell your books. On Friday, I didn’t want to go to the convention hall AT ALL, and so I didn’t. I hung out at the pool instead.
During one of my one-hour drawing sessions at the Cartoon Art Museum, I did THREE doctor who sketches in a row, requested by some lovely fans. I didn’t get a picture of my good friend and Weird Fishes editor Jennifer de Guzman, but she bought the third doctor sketch.
Here are thee of my sketches I did at the barbarian-themed life-drawing session at Trickster Friday night. Surrounded by great comic artists, great music, scantily-clad models and booze, well, it was a highlight to be sure.
 I can’t tell you all the juicy stories, but I got to hang with the likes of Jim Mahfood, Dave Crosland, Barron Storey, James Sime, have my new art/comic book “Fox Head Stew” released to the public at Tr!ckster and Allen Spiegel’s booth, I got to hash out ideas with my art rep Scott Z, and discovered my alter-ego wears a Mexican wrestling mask. Anything more than that would be telling.
The Tr!ckster pop-up shop was the star of the show, we all stumbled over there towards the end of each day, and while you know it’s near-impossible to find all the people you want to see on the convention floor, but you could surely find them drinking and drawing on the front porch at Tr!ckster. Here’s a neat report from the storefront.
A lot of the memories are a jumbled mess of fun, but I got back to a running pace at work the moment I returned (I’m designing in-game art for social games) but my desk at home is looking good, covered in sketches and half-inked comic pages I can’t wait to unleash on everyone.
Thanks to the crew and all the great faces at Comic-con this year!
My limited print run of hardcover, color art books came in the mail today! This is my first time trying Print on Demand, and they turned out great. Soon I’ll make them available to order, but I’m bringing copies with me to Comic-Con, and you might be able to find them at Allen Spiegel’s booth (#4701).
I have one scheduled appearance I’m making at the con, drawing at the Cartoon Art Museum’s Sketch-A-Thon, table #1930. I will be there Thursday from 5-6pm, and Saturday from 3-4pm.
The rest of the time I’ll be floating around visiting people, and I’ll try to send updates on twitter so feel free to follow me @ jamdye.
Into the belly of the beast…
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.
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Illustrator and flash artist, paints rock stars, space fantasies and dream walkers, a technology junkie, and graphic novel creator.
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