pete draws.

Newt Gingrich illustration

2012-02-03T20:52:00.000-08:00

My latest drawing is featured in Newt Gingrich's new blog post, The Newt Gingrich Lunar Plan for American Prosperity, on jacobmercy.com. I offered Mr. Gingrich the below version, but he decided to go with an earlier, partially-colored draft. His reasons are his own.

Face-In-Hole

2011-12-02T11:44:00.001-08:00

Earlier this week I got a last-minute commission from the Portland office of Yelp.com to paint them a portable face-in-hole board (no, there doesn't seem to be a better term for that) that they could carry around Portland's Holiday Ale Fest. They're posting all the results on Facebook, and here's one of my favorites so far:

I'll be at the fest myself this evening, so come get your picture taken with me! Just make sure you put your whole face through the hole, or won't come out very good.

(acrylic on foam core, 37.5"x28")

Birthday Card for Maria Montoya

2011-03-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Our friend Maria has a very strong and specific pet peeve... so Kari had the idea of an interactive present to bring her the kind of satisfaction she'd otherwise never get. She handed me the concept and let me handle the execution, so here's what we got:

Front cover:

Pull on the tab at top:

(you can pull on the bottom tab to reset)

Open the card:

Open the small envelope tucked into the left flap, to find closed-mouth stickers:

Position the stickers over the corresponding faces:

Here's Maria working on the stickers:

Here's the finished card:

...and, I'm back.

2011-03-26T01:56:00.000-07:00

Wordpress is real great and all, except nobody told me about the security holes by which someone can apparently hijack your admin account and pump your whole site full of malware. I managed to export all the posts and comments that went on there, so the archive you see here is an unbroken run.

Here are a few chalk drawings I did on construction paper at other people's houses, while I could have been wasting my time being social:

SIX: finished

2010-04-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

Did this months ago, but my blog was down so I never posted it here. Inking was very rushed, but at least you can almost tell what's going on now.

Full disclosure: I stole all the dialog for the above comic directly from NBC (it is the first few minutes of the first episode of Friends) and combined it with characters which I stole from Marvel Comics (the original Sinister Six from The Amazing Spider-Man.) I believe this is fair use of both properties, but let me know if you feel otherwise.

SIX: a work in progress.

2010-04-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

I went to the third annual 24-hour drawocalypse at Cosmic Monkey Comics this past weekend, and I didn't draw 24 pages in 24 hours per Scott McCloud's challenge but I did draw and start to ink the first 12 pages of a new comic starring the original Sinister Six -- which is a super-villain team from Spider-Man comics.

I scanned it and threw in some very temporary lettering so you can read what I've done so far — but it's still a work in progress, so I've left the blues in to let you know that the art's exactly as I left it at the end of the 24-hour time limit.

Cover design for a rain-themed comics zine

2009-11-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

I submitted this design as a proposed cover for this month's issue of Stumptown Underground, but they declined to print it. Oh well -- I'm pretty happy with it myself, but the cover they chose is pretty nice too, and Katy Ellis O'Brien is a very cool person, so no hard feelings I guess. I should mention that I didn't know what the name of the zine would turn out to be, so I just put "Pouring" in as a placeholder to suggest a lettering style.

It's pretty dark, so you might need to adjust your monitor to see the good parts.

Superman vs. OK Cupid

2009-11-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

I drew this for a Portland comics anthology called Stumptown Underground. The theme for last month's issue was "Flight". The excellent dialog is by Jacob Mercy. Thanks, Jackie!

Oh and here's the alternate ending, which is funnier by most accounts but didn't win editorial approval.

Superman is Copyright/TM DC Comics & Time-Warner Entertainment 2009, and is used here without permission or legal justification.

Of Nightmares and Morticians: a nonfiction 24-hour comic in two parts

2009-10-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

The first 6 pages recount a recurring nightmare that my friend Liz Spavento really had, and it serves as the first chapter of a semi-biographical book that we hope to eventually complete. If we pull it off, it'll have romance, deceit, premonitions, and more -- so, you know, fingers crossed!

The next 13 pages are based on three guys that actually used to frequent my friend Amy's tea shop in NYC. She insists not only that the events shown here more or less happen on a regular basis, but these these are the morticians' actual names. Squengl, if you're reading this, please let me know if we got the spelling right on yours.

Vacation Comix #2

2009-07-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I was at a party at Jason Van Glass' house, chilling in his hottub and chatting him up about assorted nerdy shit. After a few drinks I pulled out my tablet PC and asked for something to draw. Apparently he'd had this script in his head for a two-page silent comic, and I could have it for free.

Jason Van Glass is a member of the burgeoning "aspiring screenwriter" industry, and I'm looking forward to reading these spec scripts he wrote for It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

P.S. I used Manga Studio since I've been meaning to make myself comfortable with its interface. Long way to go there, but it does do a relatively nice Speedball impression with no effort and I even managed to make it do my panels for me.

Did a guest strip for Jacob Mercy's "Nausea"

2009-06-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

Jacob keeps a regular journal in webcomic form over at jacobmercy.com. Last Friday he experienced an unusual lapse in his memory and, since I was present during the missing span of time, he asked me to fill in as the temporary chronicler of his exploits.

Another sort of caricature

2009-06-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

I spent my weekend partying at some friends' beach house. Spent all of Saturday evening doing these, and also a 9-panel comic recounting Friday evening which I'm still planning to color.

Popeye

2009-06-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

My sketchbook has been busy lately, but rather secret since I'm doing a bunch of studies for VS Comics.

Here's what happens to your body after years of constantly abusing performance-enhancing vegetables:

Walked down to the creek near my office.

2009-05-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

Wild blueberries.

Raccoon tracks!

Too soft to be poison oak.

Irises probably came from a nearby garden.

Rather large freshwater clams in small piles here and there along the bank. Eaten by raccoon or otter?

Frog. Bullfrog?

Roses. Maybe native, but probably brought to this location via gardens.

Not the way I came in but it'll do.

We're gonna make some promotional buttons!

2009-05-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Drink & Draw, where in a few weeks we'll be drawing and pressing our own buttons! I roughed out a few ideas which I plan to clean up and mass-produce.

So hey, if you're in Portland join our mailing list and come to a drink & draw night! drinkdraw.com!

More caricatures

2009-05-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons with some very cool and accommodating guys that I know through work. They let me draw these rather-unflattering caricatures, and even posed in imitation of my weak likenesses so the drawings would look better than they really are. Thanks, guys!

Meanwhile I also did a caricature of a cousin of mine -- my mom's drawing her wedding invitation and needs some help with the previsualization. Mom: please apply your own judgment; the eyebrows are too high, which makes her look dumb, and there are other issues as well.

Also here's a business card that I drew a long time ago and never posted. It's the last one that I haven't given away (I'm holding it for Clifton) and I'd have drawn more already except that I ran out of blanks and haven't had a minute to do more cutting. Soon!

Kitty Pryde in: THE BEST X-MAN

2009-05-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be in an art show at Floating World Comics, for the benefit of the hemophilia department at OHSU. It's called Full of Pryde, and a lot of people much more talented than myself are making fan art about the X-Men character Kitty Pryde.

(click for large)

More info:

Event listing on Floating World's site

Blog where early submissions are posted in advance of the show

How I first found out that the show was going to happen

Meager attempts at caricatures

2009-05-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

At a Drink & Draw last Sunday I met the recently re-crowned fastest caricaturist in the world -- Mr. Steve Dorris. To my great honor he seemed to be a fan of my work, and paid me real money to draw a quick sketch of a superhero pooping -- which he added to his sizeable collection thereof. He even threw in a free caricature of ME pooping, which is bizarrely accurate to my actual pooping technique. See for yourself.

Anyway, he's amazing, and when he turned out last night at the Drink & Draw that I organize, I was inspired to try my hand at capturing some of the more distinctive faces at our table (and at the mic, once the Gypsy's karaoke crowd night started winding up.) Here's what I've got so far -- I'm excited to get better.

Preview Comic!

2009-04-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

I spent the whole weekend at Stumptown Comics Fest, just soaking up the scene and reinforcing relationships. Lots of cool people this year with lots of cool stuff, and although I didn't register in time to get a table I actually got to bring along two comics -- the 24-hour Dracula comic which you can read here in my previous post, and also a preview version of the comic I'm working on with Jacob Mercy and Steve Wilber. This is basically just a snapshot of our current draft, and all three stories will change significantly before we go to press. And of course, we expect the finished comic to be somewhere between double and triple the length.

The project has its own website, so rather than clutter up my blog homepage even more I'll take this opportunity to link you there!

http://www.versuscomics.com

24-hour comic attempt #3

2009-04-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

Well third try's a charm... sort of. I did complete 24 pages this time, after invoking the so-called "Eastman Variant" and taking more than 24 hours to finish. I think I actually had an advantage on my first attempt since I hadn't been working on anything polished for a long time beforehand so I wasn't in the habit of making everything look good. Nonetheless, it's a thrill to have finished a full-length story, this being the longest single comic I've ever produced and only the second that I've done on my own and actually seen through to print. I did a run of 30, gave 3 to my parents, and plan to lose another 7 to my coworkers today. The other 20 will be available for $2.00 per copy at tomorrow's Stumptown Comics Fest -- assuming you can find me walking around, since I procrastinated too long to get a table.

Optimus Christ

2009-03-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

I drew the following sketch to help my good buddy Jeremy Kraemer in planning a velvet painting:

Tried to give it sort of a vintage-propaganda feel. The final version will have a robe and an immaculate matrix of leadership.

More colorized sketchbook entries.

2009-03-09T15:23:00.000-07:00

Steve's cat Easy:

My Dungeons & Dragons character, Lewi:

(he's a lightning-breathing dragonboy who was raised by hobbits; that's his dad in the top picture there.)

Finished off another sketchbook

2009-03-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

It reminded me that I've been remiss in scanning any of the stuff I draw, so I covered more or less the whole backlog. There's more to come, but some of them I'd like to color before I post them.

business cards, part 2

2009-02-07T00:56:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been making more of these but giving them away before I get a chance to scan them. I did these ones last night and Thursday at Drink&Draw.

Front:

Back:

Front:

Back:

Front:

Back:

Front:

Back:

HUGE UPDATE

2009-01-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

MY BLOG IS DEAD!

LONG LIVE MY BLOG!

I've switched from Blogger to WordPress, which offers a more customizable viewing interface and a more robust posting interface. Same URL as before: http://doesstuff.com/blog