Daily Records

Ahhh, I feel like I'm falling a bit behind schedule this week and it's only Thursday.

I started recording the music for the OilCan Drive album this week which took up a whole day (I will have the cover song contest later, probably next week), I had client work come in, a few meetings to go to, and a birthday to celebrate. I'm in the middle of drawing the new page and the first issue's cover today and I'm hoping if I can get those done I can get back on track.

I also need to show off the trading card art I did for Ryan last week. It's okay and it was my second attempt at getting his card looking right but there's something about it that still isn't working for me. If I can find the time tonight I may try and rework his card again. Hopefully the third time will be the charm.

If not I'll show off what I've done. I'm just not ready to show off any more of my failed attempts quite yet.

I did get this old 45 record piece done last night and I'll be using it for the new cover. It's not much but I think it will add a nice element to the cover and I'm looking forward to making up some cool labels for each record.

But, for now, since I am celebrating my birthday, I am off to see my annual birthday movie! Die Hard 5, here I come!

Have a great day!

Week Four Begins...

 Here are the silhouette pieces I did of both Ryan Burke and Vincent Spicer for the OilCan Drive project. Once again I left little pieces of them visible and I really like the look. These will definitely be used somewhere down the road.

I started week four of the OilCan Drive project today. For the past few weeks I've done a lot of sketching of pages and trading cards on Tuesdays. But, today I started in on the music side of the project. I wasn't sure how long tracking a song would take so I was hoping I could get most of the music done for the first song by dinner time. But, dinner rolled around and I had only just begun.

I finally finished getting everything done around ten pm and took the rest of the night off. I still have to go back through what I recorded today and figure out what I have but, from what I've heard so far, it's going to be good. I think of music like a jigsaw puzzle. The only difference is that you have to actually make the pieces yourself before you put the puzzle together. Today I made a bunch of puzzle pieces and I'm looking forward to putting them together into something special.

Tomorrow I'll jump back over to the art side and get the next page started and hopefully start to tackle the cover. I'm still on schedule but there always seems like something else to do so I never really stop worrying. But it's fun and there is no boss or client in this scenario but me. I don't even think anyone would notice or care if I never finished any of this stuff. But I know, for me, it matters and I'd hate myself if I didn't get these things done in my life.

So, I keep rolling forward and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

The Silhouettes

 Here are a few more silhouettes I worked on last week. I still have no idea where they will show up in the finished OilCan Drive project once May rolls around but I'm loving these too much not to use them somewhere. So, look out for them on something OilCan Drive related in the near future.

I wasn't sure it would work when I first came up with the idea but I really liked keeping a few iconic pieces of each character visible. On Nicole I left her skull-head barrettes and top jacket button visible and on Henry we can still see his checkerboard suspenders. On all the characters I left little dot eyes. I figured if the little pieces didn't work I could always fill them in later but I think they'll stick around.

OK, it's been a long day and week four officially begins tomorrow. So I am off to bed to rest up before the roller coaster begins again. Three weeks down, thirteen more to go. So far so good.

Have a great day!

In The Dark

Along with my weekly OilCan Drive story page and the newest trading card art (this week I tackled Ryan...more on that in a later blog) I also did some silhouette pieces of the entire band.

I'm not really sure what I'll use these for but I was inspired to do them when Monika and I went and saw a flamenco show last week on Valentine's Day night. Between songs the lights were dimmed and performers were backlit by a very low colored light. So, when you looked at the stage, all you saw was the colored light and a silhouette of the performers. I really liked the look and wanted to apply it to my band.

The other good thing about doing these kind of pieces is that it was a good exercise to see how different each character is and how you can definitely tell who is who based solely on their silhouette. I think when you can do that you're on your way towards designing some pretty good characters.

I'll show off the rest of the pieces tomorrow and show you how I made them a little more stylized than this group piece. I think they came out pretty cool and I'm looking forward to showing them off.

And, after that, we'll talk a bit more about the Ryan Burke trading card art.

But, for now, have a great day!

Colorful Melody

 The painted piece for Vince's trading card came out looking like a recruitment poster for rock and roll in the desert wasteland of OilCan Drive. I really love it. So far, it may be one of my favorite pieces I did for the trading cards. So, all that's left now is to do a piece for Ryan, OilCan Drive's lead singer and other guitar player.

Maybe I'll give that a shot tomorrow and see what I can come up with. For now, enjoy the piece I did of Vince. He, along with the rest of the band, will be printed as trading cards and given out at the Denver Comic Con in May. Hopefully I'll see you there.

Have a great day!

Blacks and Whites

I got the inking on Vincent's trading card art done today.

The story pages are also coming along really well but you'll have to wait until you either buy the printed book or when the pages launch on the OilCan Drive website. But I am a little bit ahead of schedule on the book so that's always a good feeling.

OK, off to bed for me. Color on Vincent begins tomorrow!

Have a great day!

Week Three Begins!

I was hoping my third week of working on the OilCan Drive project would have started out with a bang but, for some reason, I felt like I never quite woke up today at all. I've been tired all day so many things I had planned to do were pushed back until tomorrow.

But, I did get some stuff done and, from what I can tell, I'm still in a pretty good position with my schedule.

The good news is that the recording of the band's first EP album will begin next week and I asked over on the OilCan Drive Facebook page today if I should include a cover song on the album or not. From the responses I got everyone seemed to want a cover song and no one gave me a good reason not to do one. So, I'm making a list of possible songs that the band can cover and I'll be putting it to a vote later this week. So make sure you check back and see if there's a song on the list you'd like to hear OilCan Drive play.

And things keep rolling on the art front as well. Here is the pencil sketch I did for Vince's trading card. He just needs a bit of ink and color and he'll be ready to go.

But, I'll leave that for tomorrow. Right now, Sean needs some sleep. Goodnight everyone! Have a great day!