it's space, baby!

happy friday night!
so, this is a cruel tease, and i know it, and for what it's worth, i am sorry.
i finally, finally finished a painting that a buddy of mine asked me to do way back in december! god! i'm the slowest sack on the face of the planet!
anyway. the painting depicts a character of his, and as such, i shouldn't show off the full image.
sorry.
but the good news is, on the left of the image is a tentacle monster of my own design, so i'll show you that side.


^ ew. so slimy. the chap who commissioned me, a stand up guy if ever there was one, desired to have a certain roughness to the finished work. so i penciled the image and then painted it, leaving the pencils cloudy. i can't tell you how tempted i was to break out the inks, or the paint markers, or something to bring those lines home! oh well. i also slapped in that blue backdrop and blotted it with paper towels to vary the tone and texture.


^here's a detail of what can jokingly be called this poor monster's face.


^and here's a detail of his thorned tentacles.

i can't describe how great it is to have this baby done and put to bed. it was hanging over me, taunting me, for so long!
ah. one artistic obligation down, what's that leave, like fifteen hundred to go?
i'm a horrible person.

pros and cons.

ah, con days are over, and the pros have packed up and gone home.
anybody sick of reading about last weekend?
i'm not sick of talking about it yet, but i'll try and restrain myself.



^ while squatting at our table i sketched this clown prince of crime. it's funny how many people in batman's rogues gallery might slap you in the face with a fish. i meant to slap some quick colors on him, but before i knew it an hour had passed! coloring sketches is a lot slower than inked drawings.



^ i finally got around to finishing up this warrior woman. she bears an uncanny resemblace to a teenage version of someone, i just can't put my finger on who, or should i say, whom?



^ and lastly i doodled this girl a bit ago, i just got around to inking her. she's humdrum and she knows it, so there's not much to say about her.

Oh, to dwell in Columbus

SPACE Con, went exceptionally well. I can't talk about all of it here but, I must say I felt at home in that communion of artists and tome fillers. I can't even think of how that could've flowed better. It has done so much for me internally I can't even explain it all in words.

I will say, I absolutely LOVE Columbus and the folk I call Columbians. Even though they use hazard light parking in the middle of the street they are absolutely some of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. Like I said I can't talk about all of it, for I have limited time, but I will post.

This little guy is what I turned into while in SPACE. Setting up the table was almost as rememorable as the rest of the trip. There was some wonderful art there and while I didn't make a whole lot of money I made some but, my goal was to find friends and friends were found. I have a lot of "Thank You's" to e-mail as a result, Oh what a great weekend.


This was the shirt I made for Nathan for SPACE. The shirts turned out better than I hoped, even though mine was quite the "reverse" it still looked like a high quality job. Made possible by Mr. High Quality himself, one, Brian Scheer. Thanks Brian, I swear I'll get a new printer soon. I'm already planning for the next trip to SPACE and after seeing the work it's a must do for me. Once again I LOVE COLUMBUS!

Before I forget, This is the print I made for myself for SPACE. I got a few compliments from those who understand, but, this shirt is special to me for many reasons, and all those reasons are mushy, which means they will remain in the vault. If any friends would like one All I will need is a shirt and please don't hesitate to ask. I plan on keeping these files for a loooooooooooong time. In July I will be making mini DC characters in a similar manner so keep your eyes peeled and mouths watering. It's officially late for the likes of me and so I'll be signing off now, Good night All. ~Seacrest OUT.

Fight or Forfeit...

The latter is not an option. Thanks to a small break from the gym, Seinfeld Seasons 8&9 & the full length versions of Lord of the Rings,(Which I plan to watch again) I am ready for SPACE.
As it happens we actually will be exhibiting on Sunday up in Columbus. I finished my book and the vinyl stickers AND a sweet banner for me and my co-myrmidon. That, I can not show here, I have no energy to shrink that file right now. I will resume my other creative worx once I return from SPACE.
For now I'll leave a simple posting to remind everyone who views this, lack of energy is no reason for poor quality work. Watching Lord of the Rings really installs fervor in the willing.
Powerful stuff,J.R.R .Tolkein and beautiful work Peter Jackson.
NONE SHALL PASS, Thus Spoke The Manga Hogosha! Had to bring the old gouache out again ....HAHAHAHAH!

get an eyefull.

well, here we are, i have this and then another post before ron and i ship off for s.p.a.c.e.



^this is how my cover image turned out, sans all the intrusive text and what have you. see? that's how you can tell i love you, i won't clutter your eyeballs. you're welcome.



^and this is the image i ended up using for my business card. my grandpa and i share a fondness for hippos. i don't know how he feels about sumo, but i know i sure love it.

i'm scrambling to get my book together. the loose ends are taking longer to gather up than i thought, but only by a few hours. it's still more than i anticipated.
by wednesday morning all will be "go."
so if you'd be interested in getting one of my little freebie books in the snailmail just shoot me an email:
comicfarm at hotmail dot com

who doesn't like free comics in the mail? i don't know anybody who doesn't.

Ruh-Roh

Despicable Me...
I well I missed my post yesterday and for no good reason, wouldn't you know. SPACE Con is this weekend and I'm jazzed. I had a busy day yesterday, but, it was filled with fun...probably too much. I returned home with my head filled with ideas and things to do. Only to realize I needed a quick rest. That quick rest turned into full out, battery recharging sleep...DAMMIT!

The rest was much needed,though, I had taken a break from diet & exercise last week and regretted doing so, To add salt to the freshly opened wound I played Laser Tag with some of my family and friends. My brother took it too seriously,lol, I've never seen a person sweat so much after only 15 mins. of game play. His girlfriend cheated,with the assistance of Nick Fury(I don't know the attendants name so this one will suffice) and I had a pretty good card after it was all said & done even though one of us was invincible more often than not...SOOO BROKEN! It was a good time though.
Enough about that. Here are my posts and though they are behind schedule I'm anxious to show off.
Mud Flap Zombie:
My friend Adam Brooks had a birthday last week. I teamed up with one,Cathy Kammer on this design. The turn around had to be quick but, I spit on my hands and on Cathy's too...( No actual spit was involved in the creation of this image) and got to business. This modern Venus of Willendorf has indeed been corrupted and while there were a multitude of ways she could have been drawn I figured maintaining the icon would be best. I posted this because it really does make me laugh every time I see it.
If you have never seen "Mud Flap Girl" images, she barely has a nose in most of them. A silhouette shouldn't be so complicated but, my friends this gal was high maintenance.
Faun:
New colors to the "Faun". I need more practice with the previous style is what I realized and with that said, My goal is to focus on portraiture for the full month of June. May is beginning to look hectic and will only provided limited time for me to do much exploring. I will say this, the month of June I will take requests for portraits. If you've never had yours done, for the sake of science, let me do one for you. No charge but, donations including non-monetary ones are welcome. I plan to finish this by the second week of May. So to my word, May 16th this baby will be put to bed. For now, enjoy the progress.
Platy-π:
Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. These little creatures are great fun to crank out. Look for more of my little "Zooples" later on this blog and if you have a favorite creature maybe I'll make you, your very own "Zoople"

That is enough out of me. I may post throughout the week. I still have to complete regular Leia to finish off that "Star Wars" project. Who knows maybe she'll pop -up sooner than even I think. TTFN!

quick! my friday is fading fast!



^this is a preview of the cover image i'm working on for my freebie book. there's still some inking to be done.



^i think this is the sort of image i'm going to use on my next business card.

Dark forces

nuff said

here we are, a delightful tuesday afternoon.
way after noon.
i was up too late last night watching viral videos and generally wasting my time.
i got up late today so to speed things along i finished inking and put some polish on a sketch i did of logan from 'logan's run' back when my brother and i watched it some ago.
on the agenda for today is to finish my freebie space con book, and put some work into a business card.

15 MINUTES FAST!

Ok, so I started trying to complete the things on my mind in 15 minute increments.However, I found this ideal only really works for sketches, nearly finished pieces, and non- art related projects. I'm still going to use it and after my post you'll understand why.

This week I hung out with my nephew and had too much fun.But, thanks to my 15 minute method I still was able to maintain a nice flow of production. I rejoined the ranks of professional influencesors known as teachers. Here is my cartoon event flyer. If you know of any kids 7-10 who art starting to know more about art than you can handle look into a summer drawing course, I wish I would've been in one, that's for sure.
Now that I'm done with that plug...lol. I've been doing 15 mins. practice on several pieces and Mega Manjust happens to be one of the ones I'm practicing on. We're getting close, but,for some reason some details I can't seem to figure. This particular style is supposed to have an ambiguous lighting effect.If the light source follows natural law,the image just plain sucks...I've seen it...it's not pretty.But,this image is more complex even given the subject matter.Take a look at my progress.
I'll be finished soon, but,may take a serious look at prActicing on this one again.

Last is a painting that will be done by next Sunday.This is a fourth project but, I love using gouache like materials...lol....lol. It's a platypus.There are more of these to come btw.I at least must do a Chicken or chick, an Orca, and a Fox. Watch out for tiny animals you just might get one.

Using my Mega copy ability two posts in a row, just seemed fashionable. So every one check out "The Faun & Ivy". This is the second time I did the shadows and you know what, I may redo them. He looks to me more evil than I'd like him to look. Though I love the "Eleventh Hour" I need to not make my most current posts them. I just get sleepy. I wish I could never sleep but, alas, my mortal frame needs a recharge every now and again. So , for the sake of sleep and sparing your eyes from the rest of my mumbo jumbo, here is my Faun.Remember sports fans this is only first level shadows, more to come. If this works out well, I may have to subject the old sexy minotaur to a similar treatment.

Perfect Practice makes perfect

Practiced a style I'm all too familiar with but, I was seriously in need of taking some creative licence. This piece is really just a practice to warm up. I can't always just jump in to painting digitally yet. So, for 30 mins I practice a new style. I am hoping to finish this one soon. These cartoons are always a pleasure to work on,but, between me and you they are simply beautiful fodder.Mega Man & Rush, I figured was good fun before working on one of the glossiest pics I've ever worked on. I'll be posting the sketch after I finish this pic.

rookie.

well, it's been about twelve hours since my last post.
what have i been up to you ask?
flashin'.
and after that i put on some pants and tried to make a flash cartoon.
it was clearly a mixed success. but i'll take it.
the file is a giant. the cartoon is only about five seconds long and it's 15MB, too large to email to my brother even!
i used gif files to animate since the art program of flash and i don't get along. the gifs were grainy too. so i'm going to try again, this time using vector chunks colored in illustrator. which really boils my kettle since i spent the time to color it once already.
oh well, live and learn, eh?



^here's the canadian brawler put together and on his background. the background i slopped together using photoshop and some fancy filters. it only took, like, ten minutes. if only everything were so easy.



^here wolvie is cut apart.
it's like sawing a lady in half on stage and then trying to put her back together while you assemble a jigsaw puzzle.
i need to take a class is this stuff.

i'll try and get a video up here some other time. i'm too eroded to handle that right now.

let's go, bub.

there is a scant half an hour left in tuesday.
but half an hour is all i need. hell, it's more than i need!

i just got back from a delightful outing with my partner in crime, ronald, whose faun can be seen in the post below. we both ate more spoon bread than we should have, and it was clear that our waitress was flirting with one of us. but which one? ronald was clearly her early favorite, and who can blame her?

i had a photoshop snafu earlier today, but that's fixed now, thanks to ron. i should have paid for his dinner, but i didn't, because i'm a sorry sack of... well, spoon bread at this point.

i have another wolverine for you.
he may not look like anything special, just an inked version of the sketch i posted last time around. but make no mistake my friends, he's very much a cut above. by drawing on tracing paper i broke him into tiny chunks. the point of which was to help him go past two dimensions. 3d, you ask? why no, 3d is for suckers and million dollar blockbusters. i say skip the 3d and move straight into 4d.
since i'm a rookie at this whole animating business i don't know if i can upload an animated file on here, but at the very least i'll set you up with a colored image and a link to where it can be viewed.
but i'm getting ahead of myself, he isn't anywhere near done yet.
so i'm off to work.



how do i know the waitress was flirting with us?
she didn't say "come back and see us again." at the end of our meal.
she said, "come back and see me again."
dirty little minx.
truth be told, it's the steak fajitas that i'll be back for.
i'm addicted.

Posting time again and I've got a lot to say. This weekend I was preparing for SPACE Con. I was over thinking it unmercifully. I realized I didn't really have the time to over think or do as much as I wanted. After much thought and hours of planning I realized what I want to actually do.
Though, I'm not going to post every idea and project I do, I am going to post the progress of a few. Here is "The Faun & Ivy" redrawn, this had to be redrawn in order to do what I want in PS.
It's not much of a post but it is progress.

I got pretty far on some things today and while tomorrow is a long day,It's imperative that I stayed focused on my highest priority tasks. I'm dreadfully tired now so, I'm signing off. Stay tuned for more Thursday.

the wolvering says "snikt!"

friday means update day!
man, i was really hoping to have this baby further along, but the base sketch will have to suffice... for now!
i have plans for this drawing, oh the plans i have!



being the my formative years in comics were in the 90's it should come as no surprise that i love wolvie.

Small Town Jedi

I got back from the gym and fell to exhaustion. I was worried about my post and while I made some progress on "The Faun & Ivy" piece, I felt I would do better posting our familiar green sage (which is also green) Yoda. I rediscovered the magic of IM thanks to a good friend and new fan of the site( YAY!) and her electronic presence was awesome to have while this little guy was being finished. Anyone visiting please check her blog www.smalltownsentiments.com, she has some interesting new pets and I wouldn't say it if it weren't true.

Set 3 has taken a bit longer than I planned. I'm also afraid after completing set 4 I am going to take a hiatus of the SW Decals only to resume after SPACE Con. I have illustrations to do and only 24 days to do them. Stay Tuned ladies and gents this ride is far from over.

This also must be said, Nate, I formally congratulate and welcome you to the digital world, I know you're already coming up with something to blow our minds. I said it once and I'm saying it again "We are a Force!"