Sketches, etc.

No official news to report in regards to my fencing/noir story, but I did have a really productive and busy week. In addition to drawing thumbnails/layouts for chapter three, I finished inks on a page that was giving me some trouble, and even found some time to fill up a few pages in my new sketchbook. Here are some sketches:




Also, the week ended on a high note, as I discovered two cool websites that feature links to my blog.

The first is Tim Miner’s excellent and irreverent Marvel Smartass! site, where he single-handedly (well, okay, sometimes he has help) Mercilessly Mocks Marvel… coMics. (sorry, couldn’t find a synonym for “comics” that started with the letter “M”) Tim has a great fondness for (and vast knowledge of) Marvel comics and it shows. Go check it out!

The second is writer Chris Roberson's site. Chris is the talented author of several novels, including End of the Century and Iron Jaw & Hummingbird, as well as the Vertigo comics I, Zombie and Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love. More information can be found on his blog.

Thanks to both Tim and Chris for supporting my work & adding links to my blog, and I encourage alla youse to stop by and take a look at theirs!

Happy New Year

I'd like to take a minute to say thanks to everyone out there who stops by the blog. I hope you all had a safe & happy holiday season, and that 2010 is off to a good start.

Despite the apparent lack of activity around here, I’ve actually been really busy. In addition to working on my fencing project, in early December I finished several illustrations for a soon-to-be-released martial arts book by Hero Games, and will post some of the art as soon as the book hits stores.

My big fencing/noir book hasn’t found a publisher yet, but I've been hard at work on the project and am aiming to finish it by the end of the year. I have several more projects on deck, including a series of one-shots in the Paranormal universe, that pulp story I started a little over a year ago, and some other stories I’m hoping to collaborate on with some really talented creators IF I can manage to squeeze any more projects into my schedule. There should be some good things going on around here in the months to come, so please feel free to stop by.

The Green Ghost

Here is one of the commissions I mentioned in my last post, a gift from Bill Murphy (co-creator of The MidnightMen comic book) for talented cartoonist and fellow Arizonan Scott Godlewski. This is my take on his pulp character The Green Ghost, from preliminary sketch to finished, two-tone color illustration.



For those of you out there who dig excellent, pulp-influenced comics and are interested in reading The Green Ghost’s adventures, you can order his first book, The Vodyanoy, online from IndyPlanet. Scott has also worked on the very cool Mysterious Adventure Magazine and The MidnightMen (we both drew two-page stories for the project) comics, so gowan and check out Scott's work there as well. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, thanks to Bill for the chance to work on this. GG was a lot of fun to draw.

Inking and waiting

Lately I’ve been having trouble concentrating on my own comic book pages (like I mentioned before, I'm not very patient, and waiting for publishers’ responses is killing me), so I thought I’d take a quick break and take a shot at inking someone else’s work. Like comic book superstar Mike Hawthorne’s pencils of 2000 A.D.’s Judge Dredd. The original pencils can be found HERE.

I’ve also recently had the opportunity of drawing a couple commissions of comic book characters I really like, but since both drawings are gifts, I can’t show them here… yet. Be patient (like me, *cough cough*) , I’ll post them in a week or so. And hopefully I’ll have some news on my fencing story, too. Stay tuned !

Patience is a virtue (that I don't have)

Well, I just got back from the post office, and I’m happy to finally be able to say that my fencing/noir story is officially on its way to a handful of French comic book publishers. Now comes the fun part… waiting, worrying ("Did the package make it there okay ?" "What if they don’t like the art?" etc. etc.) and waiting some more. I submitted the book to five of my favorite publishers over here and I hope at least one of them will be interested in the story I have to tell.

Here are a couple of the sample pages I sent(some of you folks out there may recognize them, as I posted the b&w versions here a few months ago), my first attempt at coloring in the two-tone style made famous by Seth, Mike Cho and Darwyn Cooke, all artists whose work I really admire.

The Ogre (by Jon Morris)

Had to share this great drawing my pal and cartoonist extraordinaire Calamity Jon Morris sent me this afternoon. For those of you out there who don't recognize this little guy, it's The Ogre, the main character from my Paranormal comic book trilogy.

Thanks to Jon for sending this along, it totally made my day. It's always fun to see how other artists draw your characters.

To see more of Jon's work, you can go check out his website right here.

Interview

An interview I did last week with the excellent French comic book website Klare Lijn International just went online today.

Feel free to check it out right here.