ORANGUTAN AND BLUE-CROWNED MOTMOT

Two paintings on some scrap wood. Left is an orangutan, right is a blue-crowned motmot. They were both fast projects, though the orangutan only took an hour or two. I made a wire wrapping to suspend each painting for display.

FENGUS IN A BLUE SHIRT WITH FIRE LIGHTNING

Why is he wearing the blue shirt? I really don't know.

An aspect of Fengus we've been discussing for a long time is fire lighting. Fengus appearing through a rip in time/space, in an explosion of fire lightning. I intend to get something to this effect tattooed on my back. Fire lightning has proven to be very difficult to capture though. This is maybe my best attempt at it yet.

COFFEE LABEL 1- CRIT BLEND

I recently got a gig designing a coffee label for Rhetoric Coffee, my friend's coffee company in the bay area. I made a black and white version of an old painting. I really like the way that it came out, and that they named the blend after the picture! Very fun project, and they wanted more! So, more label art to come.

EVIL POPE

Been a bit slow here lately. Still doing a lot of art, but mostly working on comics and unfinished paintings.
This picture is an illustration from our current pen and paper RPG, taking place in France in 1400. We encountered a evil pope in a parade. The picture is based on the band Ghost, whose singer has an amazing evil pope costume.

Blassio Sabella.

My blacksmith character from a pen and paper RPG.

CRITTERS

So I was looking at Jack Kirby last night, studying one of the masters of comics, and art in general. I tried to incoperate some of his chunky, thick lined style into these two critters. Felt like I hadn't completed a picture in a while so I colored them as well.

SPERBLE ELITE PAINTING VIDEO 2

A Sperble Elite painting, music by my girlfriend and I.The painting isn't perfect, or the music, but as a whole I think it's pretty cool. These sped up painting videos are fun to make!

HEAD SHOTS

Three more light board traces

 

More Lightboard traces. I like adding the Sperble Elite into these, it's a fun way to show them in the real world.

WOLVERINE

I made this comic to attempt to explain Wolverine. He's a pretty weird character when you think about it. My first Marvel character comic I think. So Marvel, if you want to give me a job, I'm pretty much down. I could explain everything for you.

ZINE DAY 2

 

I recently attempted the second Zine Day. The idea is everyone gets together and makes a zine, with those who are unable to attend sending stuff when they can. The first one went off well, but this time I was the only person who felt like doing the project. I tried to do a whole zine solo in an afternoon but wasn't able to get enough content. I'll figure out something to do with it though.

The zine will be black and white, but this is the best place for me to show the color originals.  I do some stuff for zines in color, to get a bunch of shades of grey quick and easy.

Cool Stuff.

MAYAN SLOTH CARD

I did another Mayan inspired playing card, this time of the Thunder Sloth. This was a gift to my friend Billy, the real life Thunder Sloth. Hopefully soon I'll have a whole deck of these.

Here's a link to a previous one of these cards:

http://walrusart.blogspot.com/2014/03/mayan-fengus-other-recent-work.html

A WITCH, A HALFLING, A HALF ELF, AN ORC, A GHOST AND TWO HUMANS WALK INTO A BAR...

These are the party from our Pathfinder pen and paper R.P.G. game. We're playing through the well loved module Rise of the Rune Lords. I play Usel, a Hedge Witch. I forgot my owl familiar in both pictures, will have to do another to represent him. On the right is a portrait of our whole party, Usel the Witch, Derp the Half Orc, Corweird the Ghost, Thrillmavriel the Halfling Bard, Vlathmire the White Necromancer,  Lorilith the Cavliler and Dinny the City Guard.

I've never had the knack for fantasy art. My style is kind of stiff and lacks the serious intensity of the greats of the genre, the hyper realism of a Frazetta or the many other masters. In doing these RPG sketches though I've come to appreciate how fun it is to draw a kind of awkward looking wizard or barbarian. Good times.

WHAT A HAT!

My most recent painting. It's a lady with a zany hat.

SPERBLE ELITE LINEUP 1

A picture I started years ago, and have just started finishing up. It will end up being three or four pages that will connect up. Some of the character models are pretty off, but whatever. Better finished and imperfect then collecting dust half drawn.

THE DARK WALRUS RISES

A homage to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns cover. It's funny, I've always found this cover to be kind of a bad one. Mostly because in the original, all the critical details to identifying Batman are obscured in shadow. That, along with the huge amount of unused space, made it seem like a bit of a lazy pic. In doing this homage however, I realized that the obscured details are probably intentional, to create a bit of mystery. A good trick for a cover, leave the reader wondering 'who is this?'. And the matte colored background of the original probably popped like crazy on the comic shelf.

It's always interesting what you learn from mimicking an artist's style. It's hard to come away without a great apprectiation of their work.

This picture was inspired by a Sperble Elite spin off my friend John just wrote. I will be illustrating it at the same time I'm making my fourth issue. I've never made a full length comic from a script, it seems like a fun prospect.

NAUTILUS

A nautilus, paint and ink.

THE GREATEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED

This was a flyer I got years ago from a passing Jehovah's Witness. I corrected this faulty document, because they'd missed some vital details of the greatest man who ever lived, FENGUS.

A few weeks later, there was a knock at the door. More Jehovah's Witnesses! I greeted them, finding one of them nudging a broken bong on the ground with his foot. They offered me the same flyer.

"WAIT!" I yelled. "I have something to give to YOU!"

I ran inside and picked up the picture shown above. I ran out to show them but they were already speeding away. Though I feel bad they didn't get to see the corrections I made to their flyer, I'm glad I still have it.

THE ORIGIN OF FENGUS!!!!!

The long awaited origin of FENGUS. I tried to incorporate the many different origins Fengus has had. It's fun to have a nebulous character, who has no set details to him. His story is ever changing

SELF PORTRAIT

A self portrait.

CLINT DRINKING IN BUSHES

Another comic about Clint and I. This focuses on some of my favorite type of low responsibility nonsense from our homeless days together

SPERBLE ELITE GRAPHIC NOVEL SAMPLE

Here is a sampling of some pages from the Sperble Elite. Just to get a view of some of the sequential art.

This is all art from the Sperble Elite graphic novel. As you can see, there's a pretty big transition in art here. I started the first pages when i was 17. Now, more then a decade later I'm still continuing the story.

R.I.P. CLINT HAMMOND

This is a comic in memory of my friend Clint, who passed away recently. The rizz razz was a weapon he made, a fist pack with a chain attached to it. Clint, our friend Zach and I spent a long stretch homeless together, though Clint and I had fallen out of touch in recent years. But, when you're homeless with someone, you spend ungodly amounts of time together. The only people you maybe spend more condensed time with are probably romantic partners and children. I got a lot of time with Clint when I knew him, is what I'm saying. This comic showcases the silly violence we were prone to getting up to together.

Oh, another thing: this comic came off super sexual. I didn't even realize it until I was halfway done with it but it really does. I think Clint would've thought it was funny

KICK ROCKS!

My friend Ian gave me the components of a lightboard yesterday. This brought up an interesting question: where does tracing fall in the 'art' spectrum. It's a low creativity activity, almost ending up closer to crafting then creating. At the same time, all of your style comes through, and you still have to make choices about what to draw and how.  Drawing from life still qualifies as art to me, so why not tracing? Also I altered the people in this picture to like The Dark Walrus and the Thunder Sloth. Does that small alteration make it qualify more so as art?

I don't have answers for any of this. Really, in the long run, it only matters if it comes across looking insincere, unreal or bad. Many light board tracing artists end up in that real (Greg Land), where they scrape the uncanny valley and become limited by bad composition and stiff figures. As long as you don't go there, use whatever tools you want I say.

A COLLAGE, A PICTURE AND FOUR LITTLE PAINTINGS

 Dr. Badweird, my old character from my zine THIRST.

 Four little canvases making one painting. Unfinished, very in my brother's art style.

A collage I made at work.

tons of work, largely unfinished

 Friend's on the beach

 The breakfast Octopus

 The party from my first session of the RPG I made, Carbon City

Group picture my friend Billy and I did

 My friend's D&D character (I've become so damn nerdy)

Derp, a schizophrenic D&D character.