why the long face?

self portrait of the artist with a miniature horse's back half emerging from the forehead.



yep. i'm having one of those weeks.
you know the ones, lots of work, lots of stress, less time then you need.
it's the sort of week that makes you feel like you have the back half of a horse sticking out of your fore head, am i right?
...
no.
maybe it's just me then.

sub note!
that's the first horse anus i've ever drawn.
i'll try not to make it a habit.

going rogue.

i read online recently about some of the story arcs in progress in the current x-men books, and it occurred to me that i was desperately out of touch with the characters that i had so loved in my teens.
so i went on wikipedia and caught up with a few of my old favorites.

reading about your beloved comic characters on wikipedia is like stumbling across an ex-girlfriend on facebook and learning that she's married with a few kids and she's either super religious or a sloppy drunk now.
it can be a little jarring.



it inspired me to doodle this rogue, one of my long time favorites. i drew her in the fashion of the 90's, back when i knew her and loved her... even though she was involved with that swarthy jerk gambit, whom i loathe!
hands off the southern belle, cajun!

a cyber-punk pledge.

ahoy crew.
so, it's been a bit of a slow week art wise.

to kick it up a notch for myself i shall post here the first few doodles i did in mind for a painting.
ronald always names his color palette or his coloring styles, for instance, one coloring style is called 'spicy curry.' it's a practice i've long enjoyed, and much coveted. so in honor of that i will dub my intended color scheme 'taffy acid.'
for a subject i was thinking of a cyberish punker sort of warrior girl.


sometimes when i try to draw warrior women they look like beautiful men...
my brother had a girlfriend who thought i drew the hottest guys, but they were all supposed to be women.
oh well. a compliment is a compliment, i takes 'em however i gets 'em.



by posting this i am honor bound to continue my work on it.

love and bacon

for starters, i need to make a public retraction. and something of an apology.
you see ron, you know ron, the other guy who updates on this site, and i were talking 'shop' one day. and i bashed his use of a .9 mechanical pencil with blue lead.
then i accidently bought one so i tried it with blue lead, and i have to say, it rocks.
no really, it does!
i have a lead holder loaded with blue lead, i started the drawing below with that, just ghosting in shapes. then i switched to the .9 and refined the drawing. if i had needed an extra step for clarity i could have penciled it again with graphite, but on a lumpy cartoon head like this i just went at it with ink.

i still don't know how well the blue will erase, which was one of my complaints with blue lead prior to this outing. which baffles some people like it's a logical paradox or something. why would you ever need to erase non-repro blue?
because i make a lot of mistakes and revisions, and the hint of an old drawing can mess me up. it's a weakness of mine, i have several.
i've also had trouble in the past with the non-repro being repro because i laid it on too heavy.
meh.
for now it's all fun. i had a blast drawing lumpy head here.
i think i sketched him on saturday, and i've been dying to ink him for days.
he combines all the things i love to draw, giant noses, droop faces, and soft serve hair. with a moustache thrown in for good measure even!



i wanted him to be saying something a bit profound, and yet dumb.
so i retooled this francis bacon quote:
"For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."

thanks francis!

Gunslinger

Better Late than never, I suppose. I had too much to do this weekend and ended up sleep before I knew it. Star Wars set 2 begins with this Fully Loaded Little Leia. She didn't take long after the lines were ready but, I can't allow my vectors to look like just anything. One thing about vector art, Quality breeds Quality. That is a fancy way of saying that I'm still dealing with the perfectionist within. But, as we all know "The Perfectionist" is a dreamer and procrastinator which in the case of perfection is simply a Time Waster.

I haven't written down the next four S.Wars characters to create but I believe they will be.
Chewbacca, Imperial Guard(Red), The Count Dooku & Mace Windu. In fact I think this is a good place to start.

monkeys aren't donkeys.

oh deep sigh!
my delightful vacation into the urban wilds of new york city has at last come to a close. i find myself back on the mean streets of the queen city, my midwestern gem of a town.



to bid my sojourn a fond farewell i did this last NYC icon.
a little kong action for you.
as hard as it was to leave, it was good to get back home. it's nice to be around all my familiar trappings again. new york squeezed me just right, and brought some much needed artistic enthusiasm to the surface. but! i was separated from all my glorious art goodies except, as you saw, a handful of pens and the tiniest sketchbook i own.
i won't make that mistake again.
so even though this drawing may not look like a million bucks, i had a lot of fun drawing it.

EDIT!
just so you know, i've taken the liberty of uploading proper scans of the three previous bits of art. look for them below the original, lousy digital photograph version.

Mega Detail

Wish I had more to say.

i ain't afraid of no ghost!

this will be my last update on the road under the roof of my most hospitable girlfriend, whom i kicked off or her own laptop so i could make this post just under the wire! she's a sweetie, and it's her birthday, so if you see her, give her the best, would you?


^i close my trip with the ghost busters! some of the greatest characters to ever come out of new york.
remember when i said last post that i didn't have any blue media?
i lied. but i didn't mean to! i just didn't see the blue design marker in my bag.
a few things i think are obvious from this picture, the two i notice right off the bat myself are:
1- i don't know how to draw slimer.
2- i don't know what proton packs look like.

oh well.
you can tell who they are, right?

EDIT!
proper scanned image here.

huge difference, right?

Fever Dreams

I had so many plans this weekend & was brought down by a serious health condition. I still don't know if it was strep throat or an evil ear infection. Whatever it was it landed me in bed nearly all weekend. I would've been more productive but, found it more than a little difficult to consciously control my dizziness by full force of will. Luckily for me it is subsiding in time for work tomorrow... LU-C-KEEY Me.

It did not keep me from updating and here are tonight's postings:
I thought of finishing her off today, but, most of the day was governed by the waxing & waning of my illness. Whatever, she's nearly done and when she is I'll be posting the next 4 for Star Wars Set 2. I thought of posting the portraits I've been working on, but, rules are rules and I need to clear at least two previous ones before I start posting even one more new one. Which brings me to...


Mega Man & Rush. OK, I haven't made a ton of progress on this one, but, I've refined it to a point that is more appealing to the eye. This style is fun to work with but, if you don't pay attention it will begin to look flat. Though the subject matter is pretty simple, the deceptive nature of color makes this a challenging piece, and though it is purely for practice I won't be cutting corners to finish it. This is the first night I've been able to sit for any length of time and I'm so grateful, hopefully tomorrow will go easy and most of all fast, Mondays are long days for me normally but, maybe tomorrow will be an exception.

turtle power!

in honor of my continuing new york trip i droodled this here ninja turtle. now, casual fans of the cartoon might ask, "why does raphael have swords? i thought his weapons were those daggers."
first of all, those 'daggers' are called 'sai.'
and secondly i was following a more comic approach, in which all the turtles wore red bandannas.
and thirdly, i didn't have any blue media on me, so why don't you just back off?



man, i can't tell you how many times i drew the ninja turtles back in the day. that's where i cut my teeth drawing stuff. they were perfect intro to drawing subject matter too. the chest plate let you off easy on the torso anatomy, the shell saved you from have to draw anything but an oval when they were turned around, the cartoon had them with knee and elbow pads, making it easy to break the limbs down, and some little things around the wrists just for good measure. plus only two toes and three fingers?! easy!
thank you ninja turtles for being so simple to draw!

that will have to do for me this time out.
i'm sort of running out of iconic new york heroes to draw. i swear i thought of one a day ago and then it slipped my mind. 's what i get for not writing it down.
any thoughts?

EDIT!
proper scanned image here. v

not too big a difference in this one.

Life after S.P.A.C.E.

Well, I'm finally posting after missing three times in a row. Truth is I got a bit too accustomed to my time off. That time was sooo relaxing and SPACE was such a nice experience my head was still in the clouds when I returned. But, now I've, both feet on sturdy ground and while this is a meager post it is still a post.
Unfortunately this was all I could muster in 30 mins. I had a long chat with a friend of mine and fed the BEAST that is FACEBOOK. This little Leia is special to me though. It commemorates the End of Series 1 & the beginning of series 2. That's right I'm not finished shrinking the Star Wars Universe. This Leia is the First of the new set. Though this is just for fun, I'd like to finish all the ones I've written down. And because this is just for fun after the third series I am done. The Buck doesn't stop there,though, stop by and see some of the future creations and make a request if you dare, I love deforming hit characters and am always up for a challenge. Now that I'm back on track who knows what I'll post on Sunday.

on the road again.

good day bloggies and blogettes!
i'm in bustling new york city right now, crashing in a tiny apartment while the girl i'm here to visit works on her masters stuff.
cut off as i am from my scanners and photoshop and the like i don't have too much to share today, but i didn't want today to slip by with nothing!


^it's a tiny horribly proportioned spider-man! in honor of the big NYC!
i doodled him on the back of a postcard for an nyu music event. then took a picture with my digital camera.
so what have we learned?
digital cameras < scanner (when it comes to art)
bristol board > postcard (when it comes to drawing)
live and learn.
also pictured is 'the invisible man.' by h.g. wells, the book i'm reading right now. it's vastly better than i expected it to be! never underestimate a classic i guess, after all, it's a classic for a reason, right?

now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go spend every cent i've ever made on toys, books, imports, and delicious food.
capitalism + the big apple = me broke and happy.
end math lesson!

EDIT!
proper scan here. v

i'm surprised that i held onto that little postcard...