Characters!

So it's been a while but i promise I will start updating more regularly. I have a 7 page comic project that i will be posting soon but for now I am posting some character sketches that I've done over the past few months.




This is my take on Batman and his alter ego (in that order) Bruce Wayne. I have been trying to do more mainstream characters for a while and am pretty happy with this. I'm not sure if I would keep doing all of the folds in the suit in the future but some realistic details do work in many modern interpretations including Paul Pope and Lee Bermejo's takes on the Dark Knight.


This is Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman without her mask. Adam Hughes has done a ton of amazing covers for that book and he's a great inspiration to many artists. His new Audrey Hepburn inspired look for her really influenced this sketch. I am also happy with the near-dead brush pens that allowed for the drybrush effect.
This is a character design for a story that I have been working on for a long time. It was a pretty small drawing (maybe 3x3") that I colored in Photoshop. I really like that nubby headgear design.
This is another color test from the same SciFi story as the guy above. Another very small sketch I really rendered the hell out of it and came up with this.


Hard to believe but this and the girl above were drawn in the same style originally. After doing the more rendered one above (and taking way too long for such a small sketch) I decided to do a much faster animated-style color test. This one only took a half hour or so to color and would be more suitable for using in an actual comic.

New Work

So I haven't updated in a while due to some major computer issues and with work and the holidays. The good news is that I've been working pretty steady drawing, writing, and coloring. Below are my first cover colors (and process) for 10th Muse, a book from Bluewater Productions (bluewaterprod.com) that should be out in the next few months. I am also uploading some personal work as well. I hope you like them!

This is the final for the 10th Muse cover. I'm not sure who did the actual drawing, I did the coloring. You can see some of my process below.



This is some of my process in creating the colors for the cover. Zoom in to read my description of each step.



This is a teaser for my upcoming book , "Bout" that I writing and illustrating. It will be a 5 issue, 125 page story about a boxer here in Chicago. This was done entirely in Photoshop with a tablet, about 3 hours total.

This is a quick sketch I did in Photoshop while having coffee and talking with several people about books and storytelling while at my favorite coffeeshop, the Grind, near my home here in Lincoln Square. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, especially compared to my earlier digital painting attempts from just a few months ago (trust me, they were NOT good!). Eventually I would like to do some comics and more illustrations entirely on the computer.




This is an older drawing an a teaser image form the sequel to "Bout" (I know I'm a little ahead of myself with a sequel since Bout isn't even drawn yet!) I'll upload the full finished piece when it's done.

Blast From The Past

These are the pages form my first published work from my school days at SCAD. I wrote the story as well but haven't included he word balloons since Top Shelf might sue me. The story was okay, but then again it was only 4 pages long. You can check the book out at
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog.php?type=3&title=531 . My story, "No Good Deed" is on page 252.

ATLAS Pages

These are the first 5 pages of ATLAS, a miniseries that I'm coloring for Bluewater Productions (link) I believe it will be a 4 issue series and will come out in March of '09. I'm very happy with the pages since it's a complete 180 from the color I do for my own work and matches the animated style. I might be doing another book for them as well but it's all very top secret right now. Stay tuned!

Godless Pages

So I have been pretty busy lately, first I had a great trip to Phoenix to see my family for my grandma's 80th birthday which was a lot of fun. I also started a new day job and have been using all of my free time for drawing. I'm posting here some inked pages from Godless and the final colors for page 6. This page marked a big leap as I started painting the backgrounds directly in the computer with no hand drawing to go from, specifically in panels 4 and 5 (the top 2 of the triple stack). I'm, pretty happy with how it worked and I think works well to separate the foreground and background elements.



These are pages 9 and 10, the big finale before the big fight scene plays out. These were intended to be the last pages for submitting to companies but I'm actually already working on page 20.

Godless Page 5 Color

So here are the final colors for page 5 of Godless. I'm pretty happy with it, I opened it up the other day and thought I had more work to do but decided that it was done. The file was so large (over a gig) that I had to do the last panel on it's own so that my laptop could handle it! I've been working on keeping layers to a minimum but that big panel was a beast. I will also have some more inked pages up soon and colors for page 6 should be done this week as well.

Godless Page 4 Color

So I finished this up the other day, I might make some small changes but I'm pretty happy overall. I've been really branching out, trying to push the work past any preconceived rules or regulations. After all, I think an original style is an artist's main selling point. I hope you like it.

Sneak Peek

This is a peek at the colors from Page 4. I should have the color for pages 4 and 5 both done within a few days. I'm pretty happy with how it's going, I've been learning a few new tricks and it doesn't take that long either, if it was published I could do a full page drawn and colored every 2 days I'm sure.

Crazy Character

I did this really quick last night to demo how I work for a friend. This is one of the main characters from a graphic novel that I'm currently writing. He's pretty insane due to a gunshot wound to the head (the scar is on the other side of his head) but he's actually my favorite character to write due to his imperfections. He was also and aspiring artist like myself before the "incident".

300 Print

So I finished the colors for this 300 drawing that I did last year so I could sell the print at Wizard World Chicago. Unfortunately, my buddy wasn't able to share his table so I couldn't sell anything, but I actually had a great time and met tons of cool people. I'm pretty proud of it, especially the fact that I buckled down and redesigned my website and colored this in the week before the con.