From The Vault - Boulder Buffalos 1998

I did this piece of art for an old boss of mine back in 1998. He was part of a ping pong team and was looking for a t-shirt design for his team.

So, I made the biggest, baddest, buffalo-ist ping pong player I could think of.

This piece, like all the pieces I did in the nineties, was all done by hand. It was first penciled and inked by hand, then used computer lettering printed out for the logos. I then cut those out and actually pasted them right on the original art work. Finally I'd have the art shot on a photostat machine so the image was transferred to a slick, photo-like, paper and I painted the whole thing with my trusty old airbrush.

It is good to know, if all the computers fail, I can still do work like this. Of course, I don't think anyone makes photostats anymore. But, I'm sure I'd figure something out.

Exit 6 Back Cover

The front cover for the Exit 6 collected book is all but done and colored. All it needs now is the type and copy laid over it and it should all be done. Of course, I have to figure out what I want to write on the front cover but I might let that sit in my head for a few days.

So, I am jumping over to coloring the image for the back cover of the book. You can see here I've laid out some little color swatches that I pulled from the front cover so everything would remain consistent. We'll see how it works out.

I spent most of the weekend doing client work and just feeling lousy.

I never sleep too well at night so Monika got me some herbal remedy sleep aid. It's a natural sleep aid that is drug free so I felt pretty safe taking it. It worked. It worked too well. After a week of being on these things not only did I sleep well at night but, after a while, sleeping was all I wanted to do. I would wake up and wander through the day, trying to get stuff done, but really wanting to do nothing more than go back to bed. I even felt whatever creative spark I have inside me fade away. So, I stopped taking them and am trying to get back to my normal self. I'll trade a few sleepless nights for have more creative thoughts and sparks in my head.

But, for now, I'm still feeling kind of sluggish. I hope I can get these things out of my system soon and get things back to normal around here. Too much needs to be done.

OK, back to coloring. Have a great day and I'll talk to you soon.

A Little Bit More

So the Bone illustration has been put to the side and I've jumped back onto painting the cover for the Exit 6 collected book.

The shading and modeling of the characters is coming along and I'm getting a better idea of how I want the tones of the characters to vary from the foreground to the background. I just need to do some shading on a few more of the figures and then tackle the background image of Penangal. I know I want him to fade into the night sky but I haven't figured out exactly how I want to look yet.

But, it's getting there. And I think, so far, it's coming along great.

Have a great Saturday and I'll talk to you soon.

From The Vault - Sniper and Rook Pin-Up B 2000

As promised in last week's From the Vault Friday post, here is the companion piece to the civilian Sniper and Rook I did back in 2000.

I wanted one piece to show the secret agent aspect of the book, with the characters in tuxedos and evening gowns doing their thing. And, in this one, the second piece, I wanted to show the same characters all geared up in their outfits and ready to go to work.

Both pieces were a lot of fun to do and it's always good to take a break from your own stuff once in a while and play in someone else's sand box.

Like I said last week, if you'd like to see more of the adventures of Sniper and Rook you can check them out HERE.

Have a great weekend!

Bone 20th Anniversary Inks

So I inked up the Bone piece I penciled yesterday. I don't know. I think I might chalk this one up to a good effort but poor execution. I'm just not happy with it so I think I might just let it lie here and go back to doing some of my own stuff.

Like I said yesterday, if Jeff Smith himself isn't drawing these characters they just don't look right. So, maybe that is what's bugging me about this piece.

But good try, Sean, good try. Now go back into your own sandbox and play with your own toys.

Bone 20th Anniversary

Over on Boneville, Jeff Smith's website featuring all things Bone, there was post put up that the San Diego ComicCon's Souvenir Book is now taking art submissions to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bone.

Being a huge fan of the Bone comic book (and seeing as how I just reread through the entire series in the last week) I decided to put pencil to paper and see what I could come up with.

The weird thing about Bone is that, unlike say a Spider-Man or a Bat-Man, unless Jeff Smith himself draws the characters they just don't look quite right. So I found myself struggling a bit with simply aping Jeff's style and trying to put my own style onto it a bit. But, the problem is that, the more I put my own spin on things, the more the characters just look wrong.

Plus, I'm not sure if I am just spinning my wheels doing this piece either. I doubt I'd be selected to be in the book at the end of the day. It seems anytime I put my stuff out there into the comic book world I get a polite, "thanks but no thanks" kind of vibe. Maybe I should just stick to my own stuff.

Ah well, we'll have to see how it looks when I ink it.

OK, have a good one. Talk to you soon.

Up in the Air

The last few days have sped right on by and things have been so up in the air that I haven't had a lot of time to sit at the drawing board and get anything done. But hopefully I can remedy that this week and have some new stuff to show you.

But, even through it all, I did get a little bit of time to work on the color for the front and back covers of the Exit 6 collected book.

It's not much, but it's getting there.

Talk to you soon!