Ok, this space is not getting used. Time to change that. I’m going to start posting something every Tuesday. This is hopefully keeping in line with trying to add a little more structure to my art life and keeping myself in front of the drawing board more.
Shane
Wow! Haven’t posted anything here in nearly 4 months. I’m not much of a blogger, nor have I ever really been.
You’d think with the new girlfriend and life in general I’d have something to say, I can’t say as though I do.
Still on the job hunt
Still living where I have been
Still drawing
Still broke all the time
Still and insomniac
Still typing instead of sleeping
Guess that’s one thing I can fix right now.
Good night, hope you are all doing well.
I will be attending the C2E2 convention in Chicago this weekend. It has turned into a big convention for a lot of reasons. First, it sounds like the biggest Con I’ve ever attended with a ton of great artists and guests. Second, it will be the most money I’ve ever taken to spend at a convention. Third, and most important, I will be putting myself into the DC Comics talent search. 9 completed pages got run through the copier last night to get submitted to the talent search.
So if I get through the initial look by DC staff I will get to talk with someone from DC editorial. I’ve hardly slept for the last 2 weeks some of it I assume is the stress and the other part of it being the preparation.
Good or bad, this is going to be big.
Just back from lunch at Panera where I was enjoying a Tuna salad sandwich, one of the few places I will eat tuna salad, and a woman sitting on my right, where my tattoos are most prevalent, abruptly asked “why would you do that?”
I responded, “Eat tuna salad?”
“No get all those tattoos”
“Well there are a myriad of reasons.” I think my use of the word myriad threw her a bit. “Some have a meaning, others are for fun. But most of all they are for me.”
“Well they are disgusting and are upsetting my appetite.” she threw back in a shrill tone.
“And I care about that why?” is where I left the conversation.
It’s always interesting the little moments life chooses to throw our way as this conversation falls a mere few hours after reading this article.
Trying out wordpress blogging from my iPhone. Don’t know how much I’ll use this since I don’t think I can add pretty pictures but it might be good for posting random thoughts.
Ok after I figure it out I might be able to post pictures too
So it’s been about a month now, honestly we talked about it and neither of us could remember. But I’m in a relationship now with a wonderful girl by the name of Courtney.
After a dozen years we reconnected via Facebook, where I spend too much time, and after talking, flirting, and starting to reconnect I went up to La Crosse with my puppy in tow and met, again, my now girlfriend.
So it’s a long distance thing and I can say leaving after the weekend is getting harder and harder. It’s a good thing, I think this is what healthy relationships are supposed to be like.
I won’t divulge too much information on here but needless to say; I’m happy.
For those reading this that know me you know I’m not exactly a “happy guy” but things can always change.
So there it is Internet I’m back in the saddle again.
The first illustration is for my friend Clark’s going away party.
I did a few concepts for this event but this was by far the best and the one that Clark went for in the end.
It started as they all do with a tight pencil piece and then I inked it with tech pen and marker. I took it into Photoshop and did the coloring with my wacom tablet and finally placed it into InDesign and did the lettering there.
This next piece was done for an article for a webzine. I’ll post the link when I eventually find out what it is.
It was a fun, quick project, and went through the a similar work flow as the illustration for the going away party.
I used a free comic book font called Evil Genius and built the balloon myself in Illustrator however instead of InDesign.
I like little projects like this, they’re fun and give me a little break from comic book art.
Developing my style a little more these days and trying to speed things up from the initial pencils to finished inks. Starting to consider eliminating the tight pencil stage and going to brush inking to give things more energy. However at this moment my ability with a brush is kind of rubbish and that will be the biggest hurdle to leap if I decide to go forward with that approach.
Brush ink does however look far better than tech pen and marker…
I’ve been away from here for some time, and thought about calling this thing quits altogether.
But things have changed, as life often does, and I am finding that I might have something to say here again.
I’m throwing around a few ideas of what to do here and will surely not post something new every day. It may be more of a collection of ideas, images, videos, etc thrown down over the course of the week making one big post instead of a spattering of small ones. Kind of as the title “braingasm” suggests.
So, at least for now, I’ll be back to throwing crap against this wall.
So it has been some time since I posted here and the reasons are legion.
Firstly the sketch 365 went away as my scanner died it’s last death. It had started acting up and giving me the occasional problem but now everything it scans is green. “He’s dead Jim.”
Next is that I have been spending time working on the first issue of Tex and by the time I’m done drawing I have almost enough brain power left to check Facebook and then go to sleep.
The third and newest reason is my new puppy “Soap”. Yes, I named my dog Soap.
Possibly the final reason is that I’ve been feeling at a crossroads with my art these past few weeks and I need to figure out what makes me happy when I’m making it. I’ve worked in several different styles and might start playing around with some new media but first I need to pick a road to travel down before I start thinking about how I’m getting down that road and who’s coming with me.
Honestly I’ve been feeling like ending this little dance for a while now and I think after checking the stats on this thing I will.
I still have plenty to say but it’s personal and doesn’t belong on the internet for all to read.
Maybe I’ll start another one of these up in the future but I’ll cross that bridge when the road leads me there.
So I’m turning off the lights, not locking the doors, and leaving the place a shambles for the landlord to clean up. Lord knows I wasn’t getting my security deposit back on this place anyway.
Best wishes, now Jog On.
Shane
Hatchlegs
So I took a little time away from here, almost 2 weeks I think.
It was in a way an unintended addition to my vacation.
I spent my time away from work drawing 8 more pages of the comic. I had hoped for 10, one for each day away from my job, but lost a day to sickness and a day to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Actually they were consecutive days.
I meant to keep up with the daily sketches in the beginning but after my usual 10 hours spent at the drawing board I didn’t much want to draw after that. I also thought about using the time for a “warm up sketch” but I’ve never been a warm up person, I just get into the art with a few quick thumbnails and then the panel layout.
The sketch above kind of represents a turning point with my art, a point I didn’t think I wanted to go to and actually told myself I wouldn’t. It represents a more detail oriented style, form over function in a way. I actually drew the sketch Saturday night in a minor bout with insomnia, insomnia won as it usually does. I had been looking at a lot of art blogs, stuff I have recently found, trying to find that thing that would push my art up a notch. I’m tihnking that thing is detail.
For the most part I deal more with making things seem “right” or “accurate” than I do with details but really the two go hand in hand at times. If you want to really demonstrate perspective it’s a great way to make it work. Sometimes the reader needs to be uncomfortably close to something to really make something else feel far away.
I took time and concentrated on the hatching of the far leg as I’ve never really taken the time to get good at it what better time is there than 3 am on Sunday morning normally I’m far too drunk or tired for that sort of shit.
Of course the drawing manifested in a pair of dirty pants and cowboy boots as I’m currently living in that little illustration world.
Inspiration comes from weird places at strange times and for odd reasons with me and some days it’s just 3am Sunday morning and I have to hatch out a pair of legs.
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