doodling in math class: infinity elephants (i love Vi Hart)

serious brainy doodling. (i love Vi Hart)



more and more and more here.

icy cold stuffs for Apex Magazine.

Issue 31 of Apex Magzine just went live! It's an amazing line-up of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, edited by the amazing Lynne Marie Thomas. Oh... and I got to do the cover art :)

I met Lynne at World Con this year, where she brought up doing some art for the December issue, "Something cool and atmospheric".

It was a delight to work with Lynne to create the cover, and the content inside is just delicious. So go buy a copy! You won't be sorry :)

down time, Bones, Sean Bean Death Reel, new tricks, etc.

As a way of taking some downtime between projects, I recently immersed myself into episode after episode of Bones (yah, I'm a later starter: currently in the middle of season 3.. SHHHH!! don't tell me *ANYTHING*).

Bones and body organs and body liquification... (Haven't gotten to that episode yet, but wow.) (Plus humor, drama, sexual tension, Oh yes.)

In addition, I've been reading a lot of good stories. Almost all of them written by friends and acquaintances. ( I am blessed.)

Also, indulging in just some straight up doodling in my sketchbook. For no reason what-so-ever except I want to:


Then learning a new Photoshop trick where-in I am able to 'lift' the drawing off the page, for easier coloring. (VERY helpful, as I still prefer my analog natural-hand-drawn lines to what I can sketch out on the wacom tablet) This isn't the best example of the trick, but here's what I did with that previous sketch:


Oh... and random, but have you seen this montage of the many cinematic deaths of Sean Bean?? (warning: Spoilers. And death. Violent death. Over and Over and Over.)



Anyhow, enough with the downtime. I need to get right to work on internal illustrations for the FISH anthology, finish up the cover art for Bibliotheca Fantastica, do an illustration or so for the December issue of the Lovecraft Ezine, Illustrate an essay for Sunstone magazine, gear up to do some illustrations for the Bronies anthology, and get prepped to start work on the cover art for Wendy N. Wagner's debut novel, Dark Depths. (omg... SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!)

Ready Set Go.

The Troupe (by Robert Bennett)

Bragging rights~ I read the early draft of The Troupe. It is AWESOME.

Now, you have got to go RIGHT NOW to the book's website and get a tiny taste for yourself (readings, music, easter eggs, etc).

It's hard to choose... but I think that the scene for Stanley is my favorite:


Alrighty, now, you have got to pre-order your copy of The Troupe on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Booksamillion, or google Ebook, or indiebound, or iBooks, or Mysterious Galaxy, ( etc...) You Must Have This Book!

((It was a pleasure to work with Robert Bennett, creating the illustrations for The Troupe's website. His vision and talent are astounding.))

mad photoshop painting skillz.

Seriously. Wow. (Thank you, Jacob Ruby, for showing me this )

I've been trying to Photoshop in a more painterly way. Pushing pixels around like how I used to push pigments. I have to admit, the ability to have every object on a separate layer for easily re-sizing, moving, flipping etc, is... well, is a lot easier than doing that with pigment on canvas. It's easy to feel "lazy" or that I'm "cheating" with photoshop. This especially on my mind as I look into attending the Illustration Masters Class, where there will be a lot of emphasis on traditional mediums.

Anyhooo... I try not to pay those feelings too much mind. Right now, I'm merely trying to take my photoshop skills to the next level.

Here's my latest:

Sleep Cycles. by Jaym Gates.

Remember the 24 hr comic we did a while back?

Well here is Jaym Gates' contribution, Sleep Cycles:

((Viewing online falls short of how these pages are experienced in real life: they are incredibly textural, mixed media pieces and my scanner simply has not done them justice. You'll just have to wait your turn to
actually hold them in your hands.))

Sleep Cycles. by Jaym Gates.

once upon a time, night and day were two realms.
instead of cycling around humans, humans revolved through the endless cycles....
slumber...
dream...
nightmare....
gentile, quite, refreshing.
humans liked it here.
many refused to move
staying in slumber for as long as possible.

most, however, moved on to dream.
bright things, beautiful things.
anything possible.
the dark dreams too.
sometimes we have the same dreams.
these are the wild places.
nothing comes here intentionally.
only the lost, the mad dreams.
and those things... those things hunt us all.
caught...
fighting....
fighting to go through.
sometimes they escape into the twilight.
that's where they meet the champions, from the day.
sometimes they hunt the lovely things
only found in darkness.
the darkness cares for it's own.
and for everyone passing through.
and so day comes again,
and night dreams
thank you jaym!

Orycon 2011

Oh how I love the Pacific North West.

Much appreciation goes to Wendy Wagner who opened her home to me for this convention. (And to Andrew for taking me rock climbing. Plus all the other exceptional friends and fellow creatives who helped make the trip amazing.)

Orycon was fabulous and I was especially pleased to have my work win the Directors Choice award for Best Horror in the Art Show. (Undead Evening Gown, nabbed me the ribbon.)


A bit overwhelmed with all the things I could (and should) say about the event, I will instead just share a few a few snapshots of what I sketched during panels and readings:



and



and



Okay, that's all. That's all for now.

World Fantasy Con. Doodles and Drawings.

There is so much I could say about the events and proceedings of World Fantasy Con... but instead, Here: a few doodles I did and a table full of collaborative drawings done with others during the convention.

heading to WORLD FANTASY CON

Here's programing for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Here's the schedule of various Inkpunk events and appearances (we're all over the place, wow.) I'm nervous and delighted to be on a panel myself: Beautiful Monstrosities with Sue Dawe, Nancy Hightower, and April Lee! (*in awe*)

And also, just because it's SO COOL.... here is Chef Morticia's Super Rad Hotel Room Cooking Challenge (for people who do con's on a budget: how to make healthy yummy food in your hotel room using a rice cooker and a clothes iron :P) (ROLLERDERBY ftw.)

Undead Love Song (by John Anealio)

With a heads up, the song is a bit... "salty" ;)



John Anealio's tribute to Rigor Amortis, with a special nod to Steven Scearce's story, Second Sunday in September. It was a pleasure to create the art work for this, Thank you John.

Ode to Erika and Jaym (Rigor Amortis Re-Released!)

In case you haven't heard yet. Rigor Amortis is being re-released! Go, right now, and read Paul Goat Allen's review for Barnes and Noble. Here's an excerpt:

"...this anthology will amass a cult following almost instantly – I’ll guarantee it. Anyone who is into “dark erotica” should seek out and read this deeply disturbing and relentlessly sexy anthology immediately..."

To commemorate the re-release, John Anealio wrote up a dirty undead ditty then he and fellow Functional Nerd Patrick Hester invited several of the Rigor Amortis contributors (Steven Scearce, Andrew Penn-Romine, John Nakamura Remy, and I) to join them for a podcast.

That was a tremendous amount of fun. As is usually the case, when all is said and done and the recorders are turned off, then you remember all of the things you wanted to say but forgot to.

Therefore, a few tender thoughts about it all and the beginning that Rigor Amortis represented for me. It was my first time working with editors Erika Holt and Jaym Gates, as well as being one of my first real gigs as an illustrator. Erika and Jaym cheered, coached, encouraged, supported and gave incredible feedback as I grew into the process.

Then, after Rigor Amortis, Erika and Jaym put their brilliant heads together again and created Broken Time Blues. When it came time to get cover art for the book, they took a chance on me. Specifically, they went to the publishers and asked THEM to take a chance on me. Then they cheered, coached, encouraged, supported and gave incredible feedback as I grew into that particular process.

It has been an auspicious beginning that has led to many many other wonderful beginnings.

Thank you, Erika and Jaym. For being so full of awesome.

Broken Time Blues, (internal illustrations by Evan Jensen and I):






The Rigor Amortis trailer featuring illustrations by Miranda Jean and I (cover by Robert “Nix” Nixon)

24 hr comic day wrap-up.

This year's 24 hr comic day was a success with much awesomeness created by all.

Specifically, I direct you to John Nakamura Remy’s amazing multimedia interactive creation “All Paths Cross in Time” (live-blogged here)
Jacob Ruby’s live-blogging of his own venture:
Jaym Gates dreamy mixed media assemblage comic:

My own creation: a 10 pg comic based on Jaym's story "Song In My Bones" (on flickr , +Google, and live blogged)


In addition, here is the Comic Alliance write up w/ links to many many other artists and groups that participated in 24 hr comic day: Quite pleased that Jacob, Jaym and I were included in the write up!

mish-mashed sort-of 24 hr comic day thingy

My 24 hr comic starts a day early and will probably end up being more like 12 hours spread out over two days. We'll see. (Update: It ended up being 25 hrs spread out over 3 days!) Also, I am breaking the official rules by using a piece of flash fiction, "Song In My Bones", written by Jaym Gates as my script. Pretty dang excited to do that too, so there.

(For a bit more about the project I direct you to my Functional Nerds post and John Remy's Mind on Fire post.)

Alright, let's do this.

*******

Day 1:
6am. I had set the alarm for 4:30am... but...... Anyhow. Doing some initial panel layouts before spawn gets up and I get him off to school. So, assembling my tools. I will be this digitally, getting inspiration from a few comic technique books and the comic adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower. (Big thank you's to Carrie Cuinn & mfranti for the books!)
6:46 am. got the basic template laid out in Ps. and started character studies. (realizing how much time I spend doing characters studies... I'll have to be careful about that). Okay, stopping here, will start again after spawn is off to school
8:45 am. Spawn at school, next 8 hrs: DRAWING!

10:00 am. have Jaym's characters sketched out. now on to paneling out the storyline.
12:30 pm. Over two hours later, and I've only roughed (REALLY rough) out three pages.
1:30 pm. A dialogue-heavy page made my head spin a bit (writers, always using WORDS)... but I think i got it nailed (er, as in, really roughly sketched out...) Lunch now, then moving on.

4:00pm. Six pages, *almost* roughed out: word bubbles placed, rough sketch of panel content.... I think there will only be 8 pages total in this comic~ I didn't script it all out page by page before hand, just doing it as I go. My bad. But I think it will work regardless.

5pm. Rushed to finish pg 7 (which included the mouth-full-of-bloody-splatter panel that I have been looking forward to drawing this whole time). Now time to get my spawn, do the dinner/evening routine. Be back to drawing later this evening.

7:30. Dinner made, ate, cleaned up. Spawn entertaining himself with legos. Time to draw again.

10pm. Spawn is in bed and Jaym's story has now been completely quick-sketched into 10 pgs. Now I'll find out how much steam I have left to bring it all together.


12midnight. Just ran out of steam. But polished up pg1 and part of pg 2. Family coming into town tomorrow, may not get to the rest of the page until Sunday. We'll see.
DAY 2:
7:30 am. Not sure how much I'll get done to day. Little bits here and there between family stuffs. But right now, getting a few minutes in, while we all sit around the table involved in our own projects.
Also, a glimpse at pg 2. One of the reasons I chose this story: Jaym wrote some pretty amazing body-and-bone imagery.
11:30 am, Day2. Have spent the morning doing laundry, cleaning the toilet, helping spawn w/ homework... and also drawing. Three pages are now "finished" (tho I want to go back and add grey-scale values, not just b&w.) Now heading out to a family gathering that will probably last the rest of the day. Hope to get back and finish this before tomorrow ends.

12Midnight, Day2. Home from family gathering, my body has informed me that I, in fact, do NOT have the energy to work on this anymore today.

Day3
6am, Day3. Getting a few more hours of drawing in before going back for more family gathering action.

9am, Day3. Final drawing done on 5 out of the 10 pages now. Will come back to it after spending a few final hours w/ out-of-town family.

2pm. Day3. Family has been kissed, hugged, and sent home to their various distant destinations. Settled in now to finish this thing.

11pm. Day3. DONE. Well... except I want to go and add grey scale and do some clean up. But that will come later. I just tallied up my hours: 25 hrs (approx) spread out over 3 days. /Whew!

here's the Flickr Set and slideshow, as well as my +google album.

24 hr Comic Day

(cross posted from Functional Nerds)

An invitation to the 8th annual 24 Hour Comic Day: This Saturday, October 1.

The dare: To complete a 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours.

Back in 1990 comic artist Scott McCloud thought of a creative exercise to improve his drawing speed. He decided to challenge himself (and fellow comic artist Steve Bissette) to draw a complete 24 page comic book in 24 hours.

McCloud recalls that first venture:

"Feeling increasingly alone and silly, I called Steve to see how he was coming along on his comic to discover he couldn't do it that day after all because of family obligations. This made me feel even more alone and silly of course, but I kept going anyway."

Since that first solitary experiment (which you can view here) the challenge has taken off to become a bit of a phenomena with many notable artists and writers participating. Also, it is not longer a solitary event:

"On April 24, 2004, the first annual "24 Hour Comics Day" (more comics, fewer hyphens!) took place at comics stores all over the country, producing thousands of pages of comics in a single weekend. By 2007, the celebration had grown to events in 18 countries, involving over 1,200 artists and an estimated 20,000+ pages of comics."

For more information about participating in the "official event" check out this interview with ComicsPRO executive director Amanda Emmert, and see here for the rules and requirements (and various noble failure options). This Saturday it's gonna be happening all over the place, maybe near you? (And if not, you could get one going.:))

A few years ago, John Nakamura Remy invited me to do this with him and a few friends. Our version was a scaled down 18hr deal which we shared with each other via twitter, blogs, and flickr. See the invitations here and here; Final products here and here.

Now we're gonna do it again. My personal variation this time around: I'm going to start Friday and will be breaking a rule by using a short story written by Jaym Gates. I plan to have it turned into a 12 (ish) page comic by sometime early Saturday (before family arrives from out of town). Feel free to join in using whatever parameters best fit your life and your creative goals.

John and I will be sharing the process via twitter (@johnremy, @galendara and hashtag #24HCD) and google+ ( @John Dewey Nakamura Remy, and @Galen Dara).

So there you go! Collect your art supplies, your ideas, a stock pile of microwavable food & caffeine, and join us for a 24 Hour Comic Day!