Everybody Comes to Peabody's

So I got this freelance gig to make a piece of artwork that will be sold at an Epica concert. for those (all) who don't know who Epica is, they are a Symphonic Metal Band. I.E. a metal band who plays to orchestral music and usually tends to feature a female vocalist who is trained in traditional operatic singing. (Paired with death growling of course!) Broodle-broodle-broodle blap-biddle-baddle! Broodle-broodle-broodle blap-biddle-blap! Whoa! Awesome! Anyway, here's the final poster I came up with. The printed size is 18x24.

The Old Man and the Sword 3

Oh, he looks mad. That other guy better get his act together before he's completely taken out.

The Old Man and the Sword 2

Apparently a second page to this happened! Will there be a third??? Stay tuned!

The Old Man and the Sword

Here's a little piece of sequential artwork that I was fooling around with. I'm kind of curious to see where this goes. Perhaps another page? hmmmmm.....

Blood Sweat and Beers

So, the latest project of mine is to design a beer bottle label. I'm having fun with it so far. I might turn this into a widespread alcoholic beverage label endeavor! Beer Label>Wine Label>Hard Liquor Label. Oooh! Fun! Well, Here's my progress thus far:

(e). Color! Also a more better "Royal Stout" font. Perhaps a different color for the castle...


(d). Yaaaaaaaay Typography! Still not too thrilled about that "Royal Stout" font though...


(c). More detail! More towers! More letters!


(b). Ooh! Notches! and Towers! Is that COLOR in the banner! Is gray a color?


(a). Humble Beginnings!


More updates as I progress!

The Howling Tempest of Color 5

Finished! Or at least I'd like to think so! I might tweak it here and there depending on the advice I get. Onto the next project!

The Howling Tempest of Color 4

Almost done! Finished the middle girl and added a background. (White can be so boring.) There's one girl left to do. Maybe I'll return to the Maxx drawing next....

The Howling Tempest of Color 3

Over a month??? Wowies, it's been over a month since I've updated this thing. How sad. Well, If you look at the last post I made, you will see that the girl in the foreground has all kinds of shaded goodness. Well, such is no longer the case. You see, I was extraordinarily unhappy with the turnout of the colors so I decided to try again. In the mean time I think I'll color the two background girls. I'm pretty happy with the one in the background. Time to work on the middle one!




Also for no particular reason, here's a quick ballpoint pen drawing I did at work. Nothing fancy, nothing fancy. At some point I'd like to do a comic page that is nothing but ballpoint pen. That would be so cool.... and so horrible to do all at the same time. I'll have to think about it.



Hopefully my next post won't be at the end of July! :P

The Howling Tempest of Color 2

Here's some further color work and more fixes to the line-work. Not too thrilled about the jacket texture though...

The Howling Tempest of Color

Hey Look! Some arts! Watch the TRANSFORMATION!

1. Still needs some fixing....


2. Okay, All fixed (as far as I can tell)


3. Base colors! (The middle girl's T-Shirt is sporting a death metal band called Job for a Cowboy.)


4. Shading! (Or at least the beginning of it!)


That's all I've got right now. I'll upload more as I get it done.

Doin' Time

So, today is pretty much the most accurate physical vision of "April showers bring May flowers". It's warm and comfortable, but the sporadic showers kind of kill the joyous temperature. However, as I'm standing at the window watching the rain, I see a mosquito fly by and it occurs to me that with summer, comes all the bugs. I'm not a super huge fan of the winter months (Actually, after the Christmas season ends, winter looses all of the magic and goes back to being a pretty dismal season) but there are no bugs to speak of. I wish that summer had less of an insect population. Yes I do realize that they're an important part of our eco-system, but they're really annoying. (Especially the overwhelming increase of wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. I can't remember the last time I saw an ordinary honey bee.) Oh well, nothing I can do I suppose. I'm excited for summer! (I'll just have to carry a can of Off with me at all times.)

Post-it!

So while at work, I did some ballpoint pen sketches on post-it notes. Nothing too major, but fun nonetheless.

April Fools!

For the first time in about 2 years, I'm sick. I feel like absolute garbage. Ironically, the weather outside is superb and I had plans to go out tonight. Siiiiiiiigh. There has to be some sort of karma at work here. Maybe I should be nicer.... or maybe I should get more Vitamin C. ...Maybe both. (Though the idea of drinking more orange juice is an idea I can get behind 100%.)

Guess what? This has nothing to do with playing pranks on the first of April.

The Little friend in the Box

What is a sure fire sign that you're loosing your inner child? That you're growing up? I'm sure there are many various signs as you progressively get older. You notice the opposite sex more, your definition of "fun" seems to change, you become more independent, etc. There is one major event that always seems to stick in my head when I realized that I wasn't a kid anymore. About 4 years back I was pouring myself a bowl of cereal (again with the breakfast foods!) and the toy prize that they hide at the bottom of the box fell into my bowl. My reaction to this was one of minor annoyance because I was more concerned with the food. I was hungry and a toy wasn't going to help me with that.

Upon further thought, it dawned on me that there was once a time where, in that exact situation, I would've been more excited to get the prize rather than the cereal. It's kind of an interesting revelation to realize that you're not a kid anymore. I'm sure many, many other people has had this realization at some point and what I'm typing is nothing new, but it's still an interesting and kind of a scary thought. Personally, I don't think I will ever fully loose my inner child. I still love cartoons, comics, toys, video games etc. and I work every day so that I can make them professionally... but there's still a part of my "inner child" that is definitely gone. Kind of scary.

Rampant Unpredictable Insomnia

It's always fun when you are extra tired to finally hit the sheets. Of course the fun is doubled.... maybe even tripled when despite the fact that you are that tired, you are unable to fall asleep. Tossing and turning trying to get comfortable enough to doze away into dreamland, yet you are simply unable to. It's a frustrating feeling. For me, when I close my eyes to fall asleep and inspiration suddenly hits to draw something cool is the worst. When I'm that tired, there's really nothing I can do when it comes to drawing. That's why I'm in bed in the first place! However these exciting thoughts of new monsters, characters, and even story-lines won't leave my head. So that leave me to toss and turn and not fall asleep. I wish I could put them "on hold 'till morning" or something. That would be wonderful, but for the most part it doesn't work that way. This morning I only have a faint idea about the creature that was in my head last night. A real shame really; it was kind of cool.

Insomnia sucks.

St. Smithwicks day

Let me tell you a tale of the origins of St. Smithwicks Day (Pronounced smi-TT-iks). St. Smithwicks day is a holiday as old as time itself, but in reality invented just the other day. This holiday occurs around the time of St. Patrick's day to combat the service sector not being able to participate in the St. Patrick's day festivities due to "work". St. Smithwicks day seems to roll around when one decides that they want to polish off a case of Smithwicks. The holiday is very simple: On St. Smithwicks day, you drink nothing but Smithwicks. You play drinking games with Smithwicks. And when you run out of Smithwicks, You go and get MORE Smithwicks!

Dinner Discord

What makes the perfect dinner? I suppose that's all a matter of opinion. One could say that the ultimate dinner would be cookies and ice cream. I've done that before. Truthfully, it wasn't very satisfying.

...It seems that I've been talking a lot about food. There 5 posts previous to this and I think 2 of them are about food or thoughts revolving while eating food. I wonder if I think about food too much. I hear the typical male thinks about sex every 7 seconds. Maybe I think about food......................... never mind.

Anyway, back to the topic of "The perfect Dinner". Tonight I had a strange combination of sugar free pudding, sloppy Joes, and the rest of my Honey Bunches of Oats cereal. Oddly filling, somewhat satisfying, yet completely unrefined and thrown together. Hardly the perfect dinner, but it did the job. Honestly the "Perfect Dinner" for me would have a little more harmony. There are countless variables and preferences to take into account as to what it is I'm eating and why. That's too algebraic for me to figure out. I might need some sort of scientist to figure that out. Any takers? All I know is that I need some sort of balance and maybe a bit of visual culinary prowess.

Well, I guess I will never know exactly what the "perfect dinner" will be. Depends on what I'm looking to eat on that given day. Wow... what a ramble. You know, upon retrospect this post was pretty worthless. We'll try again tomorrow. Sorry.

Me vs. DST

Daylight savings time is upon us once again. Rather, it was upon us at 2am last night. Nevertheless it has thoroughly beaten me down despite my attempt to compensate for the lost hour of sleep. After going to bed at a timely manner (for once) I laid awake all night only managing to get about half an hour of sleep. It's been an interesting caffeine filled day complete with the shakes and a bit of dizziness. An interesting experience to say the least. Also I think it's time I took a nap or something.

Oh, and for no reason here's a sketch of the Maxx.

Breakfast thoughts 2: Extreme crunch remix

I love honey Bunches of Oats. It's like my favorite cereal. But there is one problem... it comes in a really tiny box. I can power through 95% of a box in a single sitting! This is counter productive. You see, with 5% of the box remaining, I 'll tend to avoid it for more "fuller" boxes of other cereals. Cereals like Cheerios or Oat Squares or corn flakes. All are good in their own right, but it's simply not the Honey Bunches of Oats goodness that I crave. *sigh. I wish that I could just power through the entire box so I wouldn't run into this predicament... but I just can't eat that much!

I wonder if Sam's Club or BJ's or Costco has bigger boxes so I can get a longer Honey Bunches of Oats experience. Probably should look into that.

Breakfast thoughts

You know, when I eat breakfast I like to stand and think whilst holding my bowl of cereal in my hand. During that time, I've managed to come up with about 5 strange and interesting potential blog post posts of my inner thoughts... but it seems that I've forgotten them all. Poof! Gone. Like they were never there to begin with. It's a shame too, because they were kind of cooky and offered my own obtuse outlook of fairly insignificant things. Shame really; maybe next time I'll write them down... that is if I deem it important enough to put down my bowl of cereal.

Strange Phenomenons

I am wicked tired. I think I might have been up too late last night........ again. I've always found it funny that on the days where I totally plan on going to bed at a timely hour seems to be when I end up staying up until 5am for no particular reason. Come to think of it, a similar phenomenon happens when I drink. If I have absolutely no intention of getting of drinking heavily, there's probably a better chance that by the end of the night I'll be drunk. However, if I fully intend to get wasted, I usually remain the sober one. Weird. Oh well. On the bright side, I managed to get some stuff done during my unintentional late night awake. Hooray for positivity! Anyway, here's a picture I'm working on. Still has some lighting issues that I'm fixing, but here's my progress thus far.

....and then for some reason a blog happened!

Okay, so this is my newish type blog. I suppose this is where I will share my various type thoughts and artwork. Oh, by the way I'm an artist. I suppose I should mention that. It's kind of important. Ummmm... yeah. I've officially fumbled my way into the wonderful world of blogging!