A Little OCD

Hello all! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend filled with friends, family, and plenty of shopping and savings on Black Friday.

I celebrated my Black Friday by posting the last page (the back cover) of the second book of OilCan Drive. It took me a lot longer to finish that second book than I had originally intended but, seeing as this is the first time I've ever actually finished a second OilCan Drive book, I'm pretty proud of myself.

Over the years I've done a number of OilCan Drive books. Some of them were one shot, short story, types of endeavors while others were meant to be continuous stories. The problem was that something always came up, a new job, a bad review, something, and I would always stop the second chapter somewhere in the middle and leave it unfinished.

So, even though it felt like a struggle to get it done, I am glad that I've finally broken the habit of not finishing a second issue of my story.

And, now that the second book is done and ready to be printed, I realized I needed to create a few other pieces of artwork to add to the book. I needed art for the chapter pages, introduction pages, and my biography page. So I sketched out a few illustrations of Lily and Mr. Mucho that I plan to use in other parts of the print book.

I'll start inking them soon enough and, more likely than not, I'll be using one of these pieces for the new blog header in December.

And, after I wrap up the majority of the art and layout for the second book, I'll start working on the third chapter in my little sci-fi rock and roll epic. I am hoping to have it all done and printed by the next Denver Comic Con in late May so keep your fingers crossed. I figure if I can finally finish a second book, doing the third should be a piece of cake.

Have a great one, everybody! I'll see you in December!

Sports Illustrated Kids - November

As I sit here tonight penciling away on the newest round of Sports Illustrated Kids sketches I thought it would be a great time to show off the illustrations I did for the November issue.

November's "What's The Call" article featured stories about baseball, football, and golf. I was obviously in a purple and yellow/orange phase on the top two illustrations and I am almost disappointed that I didn't carry the color scheme over into the golf piece. I especially like the way the silhouetted group of players came out in the football piece. The purple of those players really helps to pop out the kicker and ball holder in the foreground. I might need to try out that trick more often.

This issue is out in stores now so hurry to your nearest magazine rack and pick a copy up!

Okay, I am heading back to the drawing board. Have a good one and I'll talk to you all soon!

Reel to Reel

 On Friday I finally had my ceiling fixed, patched, and repainted. A little over a year ago, the 2013 flood that brought Boulder to a standstill also showed me that the roof above my head wasn't as watertight as I was led to believe. For three days straight I was draining water from buckets I placed under the holes I had poked in my ceiling with a pocket knife. The good news is that, because I poked the holes in the ceiling to drain the water, my ceiling was pretty much left unharmed and intact. The bad news is that, because my ceiling was sound, I was put on a low priority list by my HOA to have the holes patched and the water stains taken care of.

But, finally, on Friday, I had a guy come by and take care of the problem.

Because I had to be awake so early to let him in and because I had to hang out all day with someone in my house I knew I'd have to do something to occupy my time. The problem is that it's hard to be creative and ink and get into your art groove when a stranger is in your house hanging up sheets of plastic and spraying your ceiling with odorless kilz.

So, I created an OilCan Drive reel to reel tape machine in Photoshop.

It's been something I've had on my mind for a while. I wanted to create a header that I could use when I put OilCan Drive music on YouTube and I didn't want it to be a static image. I wanted it to move. So, I thought, what better thing to make move than a cartoon tape machine that spins as the music plays.

I created the tape reels first and made sure I built them in a way that they could spin. Then I built the tape recorder to put the reels on. I didn't need to go all out on it because I knew that it would be cropped in such a way that the play, rewind, and stop buttons wouldn't be seen. And, I made sure the reels spun correctly on the tape machine. Finally, I created the header itself, complete with logos and a bit of design work to make everything look fun.

Finally, I put it all together with the OilCan Drive version of "Season of the Witch" I did last week and put it all on YouTube.



I think this will work well. It will give me a nice visual as the music is playing on future singles. Now, of course, I just need to record some new music.

Oh OilCan Drive, there is always something to do with you. You definitely never leave me time to be bored.

And, the ceiling is looking good. Just one more round of the guy coming out on Tuesday and we should be all set. Of course, now I have to figure out something to occupy my time on Tuesday. We'll have to see what I can come up with.

For now, enjoy the art, the spinning reels, and the music. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon!

Sports Illustrated Kids October

Once again I forgot to post the images I did for October's Sports Illustrated Kids "What's The Call" article. It seems like going on vacation for a few weeks in September really messed up my internal clock and it's only now that I feel like I'm getting things back on track.

But, better late than never.

I was really happy with the way both the track piece and the hockey piece came out this month. One of the things that doing these Sports Illustrated pieces has let me do is really get comfortable drawing full figures interacting with each other. Usually, in both comics and advertising storyboards, it's almost too easy to always draw people in mid-shots from the waist up where you never have to worry what's going on below the belt.

But, with Sports Illustrated it's a very rare occasion that I don't draw a full figure doing something athletic or interacting with another person. And, I can see after doing this for years and years that I am getting better at it.

So, hooray for feeling like I am getting better at this art thing. It's always a good feeling and doing art for the "What's The Call" article month in and month out has definitely made me a better artist.

And, even if they never read this, thank you to all the great people I work for up at Sports Illustrated. They're the best people and I am really privelaged to work with them every month on this wonderful project.

Have a great day, everyone. I'll talk to you soon!

Happy November!

Happy November everyone! I hope you're all enjoying the autumn weather and getting ready for the winter to come.

This month I am using the art I created for the OilCan Drive cover song "Season of the Witch" as the blog's header. I hope you enjoyed the cover song as much as I enjoyed creating it. It definitely taught me a lot and it's already given me some new ideas for new songs and projects. We'll see what kind of trouble I can get into in the next few months.

What I realized is that I never posted any of the progress shots of this piece leading up to the finished colored art so I figured I'd make up for that today. Here are a few photos I took with my phone as I was working and just never seemed to find the time to put here on the blog. Sorry about that.

Okay, back to it for me. I am planning out how to wrap up the last few pages of the second issue of OilCan Drive this week. I've been away from it for much too long and I think it's finally time I did something about it.

Have a great month everyone and I'll talk to you soon!