Soccer can’t be a real sport cause there are dots on the ball!

I love a good challenge, always have….most likely always will.  So when I get the unexpected curve ball in a job (more frequent than not these days) i like to think that i can naturally do whatever is required of me.  Well, friends…as you know…and if you had any doubts I am telling you now….I am not an animator….never have been, never will be.  This last little rush job affirmed that fact for me…The job wasn’t that complex…develop a character and 15 key frames to be animated into a what would probably be a one second ad. The key frames were of a soccer player kicking a ball rotoscoping into a logo. here are the sketches of the character evolution…i didn’t have a tone of time so i just modeled him after myself.

they wanted it edgy and really dark so they liked the direction the only change is that he had to be aged by like 15 years….the next illustration they wanted was to be a motion shot of him kicking the ball….it was supposed to have stylized and exaggerated muscle structure…so this is what i came up with…

I really tried to go for the whole anime thing that they were stressing but it ended up falling short of the mark…so i fell back and submitted this as a still.

still too young so this was what i came up with for the last attempt.

that one seemed to hit the mark… after this series was completed i started in on the actual key frames…it ended up being something like 22 illustrations, all just for a kick.  I cant imagine what the guys at pixar go through to make a cinematic epic like Rattitoui or Wall-e…never mind all the masters that came before them illustrating individual watercolor cells for masterpieces like Sleeping Beauty, The Seven Dwarfs, or Lilo and Stich……just checking to see if you were paying attention…no the last one does not count.

anyways its been a lot of straight drawing and straight whiskey lately for me…heres a sketchbook page i like…just the dinosaur really…..until next time.

On Wolverine and Such

GET OUTA’ MY WAY BUB

Why? Why is a character who is the antithesis to all values preached to good boys and girls pedestalized as one of the greatest (anti) Heroes of the last fifty plus years? On one side of the sea saw we have the obvious. He’s a killer, a murderous psychopath, a government spook, a criminal, and even once was a horseman of the Apocalypse. He smokes cigars, drinks shit tones of cheap booze, rides a motor cycle, and rebukes any and all authority……and and and HE”S CANADIAN. Now- to offset all the blood and grissel and hair and oil and smoke of Wolverine at the opposite end of this proverbial sea saw are these facts; he is a romantic and a sympathetic. That’s it, that’s all that stands between this character and a mountain of bodies. I suppose stranger character devices have been used to justify the actions of a protagonist.. all the same, i love this guy!

Just over the horizon

I need a break…bad. in four days, i will officially take a week off from everything “work oriented.” two of my fellow compatriots Ryan and Vincent will be whisking me away to the majestic land of Seattle. Gonna just sit, read, draw, and drink til my hearts content.
So here is some of the stuff i have been up to in the last week….I finished another book cover…this one is for my Trevor Calvert’s collection of poetry entitled ” Rarer and More Wonderful” published by Scrambler Press.

Black birds wings are a lot harder to draw than they look…lots of overlap and transparencies…not the easiest to do with FW Ink. all be it, lots of fun to finally nail….this is also the fist wraparound cover I have gotten to design…I dig. This book will be available from Scrambler by the end of the month…if you live in the bay area, the author will be giving readings in various book stores to support its release…..i know, vague… I will post more detailed info on its release when I get it. And ofcourse I would encourage all of you to get out there and support Trevor because it really is an amazing bit of writing.

Bout two weeks ago I got asked to go and talk at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz CA, about the wonderful world of illustration and how to stay afloat in it….it was kind of odd to sit with my feet in cement talking to a bunch of 18 year olds about my artwork…i think it went well though. After words, I got to sit in on a model drawing session which was a lot of fun….god, i think it had been a year. here was one of the 20’s.

thats all for now gang….see you after the Vacay.

Dead Alive..or catching up after the sickness has got me.

Well as per usual I have failed to keep any sort of online posting regular…..I really am horrible at this stuff….For the last few days, instead of frolicking in the sunshine or catching strays…I have instead been updating all things interweb oriented.  That means that now I have new stuff on the website as well as a newly formed gallery at www.fecalface.com and and and, i have reup’d my I spot profile. Oy vey.  Its been a fast and furious couple of months….I moved…again. I think i compensate for not leaving oakland by changing my residence every year.  It works for now, but is starting to get really old…hell the bedroom is one thing but cramming a whole studio into a new residence is kind of a bitch.  Oakland is Oakland…wonderful in so many ways….just a little small for me at the present.  Its crazy, i have lived here for 8 years now and it feels like i know just about everyone in the town…its not a bad thing, it just makes me feel beyond my age….bah. at least music has been good lately! dont know if its the weather changing or just me. but it seems that lately all i want to do whith what little spare time i have is sit in a well lit spot with a good glass of rye and listen to Sera Cahoon, Lucero, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, or Son House.

well thats the up to the minute with my day to day…here’s the work.  I have had more and more requests to post works in progress. so here are two newer pieces that i had preliminaries done for.

This first one is a piece i did for the Seattle Metropolitan back in december.

The first image is the ink drawing that i did on arches watercolor paper…and the second is the finish…this particular assignment was totaly fubar.  So much miscommunication went on between me and the art director that i ended up doing two complete finishes…I did the color for this almost exclusively in the computer…usualy a painting tool that is absolutely foreign to me…but i think the desperation and crunch( a one day turnaround) to get the piece done really shined.

This next one was for a collection of short stories by a lovely lady named Kathleen Wakefield.

I was really please with how this turned out..My friend Morgan modeled for me and I think using her as the subject really made the piece.  I also got to play around with this new line of golden liquid acrylics that was a lot of fun…..I’m trying harder to push the painting and not rely on my ink work…quite the challange indeed.

I am in the middle of working on my friend Trevor’s Book cover for his collection of poems…which is absolutely gorgeous by the way. and i am doing a drawing for an australian magazine called DeathMook.  I’m not making any promises…but i will try to get it all posted within the first week of next month….oh and incase your wondering what happened to the band of horses piece.  It is now 3rd in the firing line…every time i buy myself time to do some personal work, life gets in the way…so we’ll see how it turns out after sitting in my to do folder for what, four months. ugh.

Band of Horses in Progress 2

 

Soooo it took a little longer than expected bu here are my preliminary inks for the BoH piece… so far so good. The brush work is pretty conservative right now. Once I get most of the water color laid in, I’ll go back and start to pull things out with some bolder strokes. It took me a while to post this because I started another piece which I have yet to ink. The thing started as a warm up sketch before I dove into the inks on BoH… Before long, it seemed abundantly clear that I should make this little exercise a real painting…..basically- I’m into it.. I would have put up what I have, but surprise surprise, my scanner has an agenda of its own and it doesn’t seem to include scanning any of my new work. Its one of these fancy pants HP Tiling scanners that is essentially a movable glass frame that you place on the scan target….worked great for about the first 3 months…oh well what do you expect for 35 bucks.

I am going to be taking part in the CCA Winter Holiday Sale. So my pal Melissa an me are gonna share a table and try to sell some stuff… I am almost certain to have:

A line of Christmas Cards.
Various prints of my more recent stuff
Jars of blood and toe nail clippings (dated and labeled)
And most likely a bunch of old paintings that will be sold at bargain prices!

 

That all will be going down on Saturday Dec. 1st at around 9 am til’ 5pm at The California College of Arts in Oakland CA 94609 at the corner of Clifton ave. and Broadway.

see you in the funnies.

 

Band of Horses in progress.

So this dude i know named chuck is the one who planted the idea in my head that i should start to post in progress work on a blog.  Well, here for the very first time is my in-progress rough pencils for a piece i am workin on right now.  its only a small bit of it, but its all that would fit in my scanner…and well, i just dont feel to photoshop stichy right now.

Its a portrait of Ben Bridswell who is…for the most part anyway, Band of Horses.  This guys tunes have been responsible for getting me through the high times, the low times, and all the other time in between. I am pretty amped on the pencils so far…but goddamn! horses are such a pan in the ass to draw in profile…they look like these weird archaic skulls with little bits of fabric streched over them.  I will post the inks as soon as i finish them.

The new piece I finished.

I has an idea for this thing a grip (unspecified quantity of time) back and finally finished it a couple of weeks ago. I think its the last big piece I’m gonna touch for a while. Its painted on a whole sheet of 300lb watercolor paper and took a solid 2 months to finish. The thing is…usually it only takes me like 2 weeks to complete something like this. I took my sweetass time and decided to start with a very finished drawing and let it support all the color work i was gonna do. Man it was hard…usually i am used to relying on my black ink work to pull a piece to the finish line, but pushing the paint was a good test for me…. I’m sick of lookin at it so you be the judge.

 

The Beginning

Hi ya…just gettin a grip on this blog thing. millions of people around the world have figured it out cept me. oh well, at least i can still do the electric slide.