snikt

i'm actually surprised it took me this long to have a picture of wolverine up here. surprised, and a little ashamed. he's one of the most fun guys to draw, and this is just one of way too many that i've had in sketchbooks since i was a kid. anyway, here's some more of that mignola/sale-esque big shadows/smaller lines style i've been playing around with. good stuff, bro, good stuff.

tobey maguire in a fat suit

so another late night sketch, followed up by a late night, lazy attempt at coloring. here's the thing about that: i have no idea how to color. but you know what you do when that's the case? just use them fancy photoshop watercolor brushes, they make it look all spiffy no matter what. these types of quick exercises are fun/good for me because they show--relatively quickly--what areas i need improving on, be it new (coloring) or old/fundamentals (anatomy, poses, everything, etc). egad. anyway, practice makes perfect 'n shit, and it was still fun. ttfn, kids.

remember when we were all nerds?

so basically the comic guys i'm copying...ahem, "being inspired by" these days are mike mignola (of course), chris bachalo, stuart immomen, gabriel ba, and (to a way, way less extent than in the past) jim lee. each of these guys is badass in their own way, and has something particular about their style that's really rubbed off on me over the years. so with all that said, i'm a huge comics nerd and you guys can look forward to seeing some damn nerdy stuff on here in the future. this one was fun for a few reasons: A: it's goddamn venom, B: i used ink washes instead of your regular ol' sharpie marker, and i think it leaves a really cool, dynamic effect, and C: it's goddamn venom. so after it was all scanned in, i just slapped a few photoshop brush tricks in there, and before you know it you got yourself your very own venom pic a nerd would be proud to hang on the wall of his mom's basement. thank you, and good night.

jell-o fish

cool stuff's comin', guys. here are the layout sketches for a few pages of something i'm working on with a friend of mine (just one of a couple projects i'm working on with folks. EXCITEMENT.). who are those handsome men? who is that beautiful woman? what about those sexy jellyfish? STAY TUNED.

where spiders and knives and bourbon meet

for those of you wondering where you're gonna put those throwin' knives of yours, well, look no further, friend. this is the throwin shed, this little fallen-down mini-building in mike's backyard that's a home for the spiders and target practice for the rest of us knife-throwin', taxes-payin' humans.

ernest hemingway and steve buscemi's cousin

meet my friends kyle and mike. they enjoy bourbon, throwing knives, a nice cup of warm milk at night, and drinking Awesomes in mike's backyard while i draw them. for those not in the know, an Awesome is: honey + bourbon + soda (i prefer ginger ale). they're ok/awesome. TRY ONE YOURSELF, KIDS.

because this one time, i totally got coffee

i was at crossroads one dark and stormy night, and, eventually, this is what came out. i think a couple of the people realized i was sketching them, which is always a bit awkward. i'll be honest, i'm not looking forward to the day when i'll be sketching somebody, and then i realize that they're also sketching me. that shit? gonna be real weird.

the river wild starring kevin bacon

i spent the day at the river saturday, and this is what came out before the rain began. line weights and light/dark areas (big ones) have always been really interesting to me (thanks mike mignola), and i've been trying little experiments and playing around with them to help myself get the hang of it. remember kids: practice makes mignola.

ireland and BEYOND (but mostly ireland)

first post and all that, hey sweet oh cool. so i recently got back from an amazing trip to ireland with some good friends, and among the many dangerous things i successfully smuggled over were my pad and my pens. what ensued were a lot of breaks where i stopped, grabbed my stuff, and tried (quickly) to capture that irish magic ya'll. i wish i could've done more, because--as you can probably guess--there's a lot to see over there, and someday i'd like to go back and fill up the rest of my sketch pad. anybody down? everyone? sweet.

this was the view from my hostel in dublin every night. it's the 4 courts building, basically ireland's supreme court. every night, i'd see it lit up yellow and orange from the street lights across from the river liffey. not bad.

glendalough's upper lake. really insanely beautiful up there, like tourst-y beautiful. the lake was from glaciers and science (thanks tali), and so it was surrounded by these huge, green mountains everywhere.

we took a ferry from inis mor to get back to doolin, on the irish mainland. the entire ride there, you'd occasionally see seals in the water, and you'd see these guys kinda peppering the seaside, diving in and out of the water.

these were the cliffs of moher, in doolin, this small fishing village on the west coast. somebody said these were the biggest cliffs in europe, and i believe it. colossally massive juts of rock coming up out of the sea, with the ocean down beneath it, trying to pretend it's not intimidated. in the distance: america, and you.

fun fact: ireland is basically a tiny plateau on top of a massive, scary-ass cliff. these were the cliffs at inis mor, a 7 mile-long island off ireland's coast where you can find dun aengus, a 3,00o year-old fort built right on the very top. the cliffs were so sheer, and you could really see that the island was just one, huge rock, with a thin covering of moss/houses on it.

on that last day, we ended up at trinity college while we waited on folks to all get together. it was nice, and we all were just chilling out reading and whatnot while we waited for the sun to go down (fact: the sun never, ever goes down in ireland. ever.). so, here's my friend tali reading on the steps there.

on our last day in ireland, we all decided to split up and explore dublin on our own for the afternoon. i was pretty excited about it, because dublin's a very cool looking city, and i'd been wanting to do some drawing all week. i had this whole plan of going all over the city and drawing everything, but of course dublin packed its cool too densely, and i only made it through about 3 blocks worth of the city before we all had to meet back up for dinner.

this was at st. stephen's green, and i think i bit off a bit more than i could chew. it was a saturday and the weather was beautiful, so the park was packed with people. i kinda went crazy with the lines here, but, much like a magic eye picture, if you squint long enough, you can eventually see a picture of the park. try it!

so seagulls are absolutely everywhere in ireland. even in areas like dublin, you can't walk too far without wanting to kick one. in st. stephen's green, they reigned as kings, and i drew way too many pictures of them chilling in the ponds there.

st. ann's church in dublin. basically everywhere you go there, you're either gonna find a castle, a cool old church, or a centra (irish for "7-eleven"). now, you can't do 'em all because you'd just run out of ink/hands, but this one stood out to me because of these awesome, bright red doors it had. way to go, ann, way to go. and also, the gold-toothed gypsy i made friends with there. nice!