Art, son of Adam!

Harryhausen Monsters!

2012-09-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Oh! Also here are some watercolor pieces I did for a show at my friend Scott Faulkner's studio a couple weeks ago. I love those old stop-motion monsters.

Monsters!

2012-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

Time to play catch-up. Over on themightyadam.tumblr.com I've posted a few character designs for monsters in a hypothetical dungeon-type game. I've been starting with a bunch of quick thumbnails in my sketchbook, pushing myself firstly to vary their silhouettes. Then it's off to Photoshop with constant reminders not to be too fussy about anything.

I've also tried to avoid rehashing the worn out designs for monsters, but rest assured that goblins, orcs and other staples of your basic dungeon will show up as I go along!

OHOTMU Redux: Sentinels

2012-09-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

My first contribution to Jon's OHOTMU Redux project appeared today.

The Batgirl Mysteries

2012-08-30T10:35:00.003-07:00

Here’s an idea I’ve been fiddling with for little while. I have more in my sketchbook but I figured I really needed to let it run free in the wild and move on to the next project.

I am smitten with the idea of a cartoon featuring Batgirl as a modern Gotham-based Nancy Drew. It feels like a really good, cheerful fit. We all know the tune:

Barbara Gordon, plucky teenage daughter of the Police Commissioner, solves mysteries and chases criminals in a home-made Bat-costume, and equipped with a detective kit of her own devising.
I think it’d be nice to see what kind of rad adventures a brainy, kinda nosy, science-minded detective girl could have.

(Edited to add a couple more which I posted on my tumblr.)

Sugared Bees

2012-06-26T11:44:00.001-07:00

Sugared Bees a video by themightyadam on Flickr.

Part of bee husbandry is management of parasites. Rolling the bees in powdered sugar and then shaking them makes any clingy Varroa mites drop off to be counted.

Amber shot this quick video while I scooped up more bees in a tupperware.

I counted zero mites, so yay!

Scribbles

2012-06-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

In an effort to keep my drawings simple, I drew these really quickly and really tiny. Added color this afternoon while feeling a bit under the weather.

Little lunch bags

2012-06-20T12:25:00.002-07:00

Above is the cover of the minicomic I had available at ECCC earlier this year. This was the story that appeared in Vol. 1 of the B.O.D. Quarterly Anthology I mentioned before. I wanted to make the print edition a little different from the version that appeared in the anthology, so I inclulded some development art, like the sketch on the back cover. (Sharp eyes will catch a pokeball, which will not appear in the story at all.)

Every night, after the boys go to bed, I draw something on their lunch bags for the next school day. The last week I decided to tease them with story moments from upcoming chapters of "Little." These are those.

An Etsy Store

2012-06-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

I've opened an Etsy store! Click the bees to be taken away on a magical journey of puppet eyes and, like, one other thing for now. I'll add more stuff to the catalogue later, but I know a few of you want eyeballs, so the store is open!

Big News!

2012-06-19T17:58:00.001-07:00

I've been busy lately, and it's kept me away from the drawing table for a bit. But I am happy and very proud to announce (now that we have recovered from the party) that on June 2nd, I married my best friend and love of my life, Amber.

Extra special bonus, I officially became the step-dad of those two ladykillers in the three-piece suits.

It was a perfect day.

(photo by the amazing Jenny Jimenez)

Bees!

2012-04-16T12:17:00.001-07:00

I haven't updated since Emerald City! Jon and I had a blast, and thanks to everyone who stopped by the table. More than a few people walked away with eyeballs, prints, and portraits of themselves as muppets, and I was happy to provide.

I wanted to hop online with a bit of a non-art-related update. In addition to frantically trying to plan our wedding, Amber and I have also been preparing for this last weekend, when we adopted 20,000 new bees. We had had bees before, but had taken a year (or two?) off after they froze to death.(!) In fact, if we were livejournal friends, this whole post is going to look familiar. Anyhow, this time, we're determined to do it right, and build up enough bees and honey to last them through the winter.

As soon as we had a nice weekend, we started building and painting a couple of hives.

The boys are trying to light stuff on fire with magnifying glasses.

Sunny days in Seattle do not go to waste.

Amber did the yellow one, I did the blue one.

I spent a little time every free evening putting together frames, and this weekend we got the email saying "Your bees are here, come get 'em!" So we drove off Saturday morning to put six pounds of bees in the trunk. I keep the hives at my mom's house, about half an hour outside of Seattle. I'm just gonna dump a bunch of photos on you. Click on any one of them to see the whole set on flickr.

Me, pickin' up the bees and puzzling out how to fit them both in the green thing. (Answer: You can't!)

3 pounds o' bees! Before opening the thing up, spray liberally with simple syrup. Delicious.

Here's the Queen in her cage. She's from another hive than these workers, so they need some time to get used to her. The end is stopped up with a stale marshmallow, and by the time they chew through it, her pheromones will have been circulated through the colony. This is like when they introduce a new raptor to the enclosure in Jurassic Park, only nobody died.

The hive, ready for a package. The sugar-water (which I spilled a bit) will keep them fed until they can go out and forage. I also stuck a frame of honey in each hive.

Next, literally pour thousands of animals into a box! That can on the top is more sugar water, which kept them alive while they were shipped from wherever.

I ruined Amber's shot by sticking a frame in the way, but there's a huge pile of sugar-covered bees in the bottom, and I'm putting the frames back in before closing up.

The "Honey Pot" yellow one, all closed up.

So now we let the hives accept their new queens, and we check on them in 5 or 6 days. Hopefully they'll turn a bunch of sugar into wax, and she can start laying eggs!

Prints at ECCC!

2012-03-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

These are the prints I'll have available at Emerald City. (Table F-13) Look how our carpet makes it look like I used a Hipstamatic filter!

Tell your friends!

2012-03-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend is Emerald City! Jon and I will be sitting behind table F-13 selling prints, comics, and original art! Look for this lovely poster that Jon made!

...more about eyeballs.

2012-03-15T11:46:00.001-07:00

Just for fun, here's the label I made for the eyeballs.

Front

Back

I don't know such stuff. I just do eyes.

2012-03-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

Exclusively at Emerald City Comicon: Instant Puppet Eyes! Come by our table and pick up a pair for yourself!

"WTF?" I hear you ask. Well, here's a picture (from a couple years ago) of my kids demonstrating how they work.

These crazy things allow you to turn just about anything anything into a friendly puppet-like fellow in the blink of an eye! F'r instance, see this ordinary hat that my grandma made for me in the 80's? Watch closely as Magnetic Instapuppet Technology transforms it into a bug-eyed buddy!

Soooooo cute!

I'll have a bunch of these at Emerald City, (Me and Jon at Table F-13) and it would be a hoot to see people wearing them around the show floor. I will be hard at work making as many of these as I can. Here is what I imagine it will look like:

Bonus shots!

Bureau of Drawers, Quarterly!

2012-03-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

My drawing club just released our first quarterly anthology yesterday! Head over to the B.o.D. blog and download it for free. It's available in .PDF and .CBR formats. Grab it, give it a read, and if you have a minute, leave a comment on the blog to let us know what you think! This is our first digital comic project, so we'd love to hear what you think worked and what could be improved upon.

Here's the first page of my piece. Clicking it takes you to the B.o.D.

Edit: Jon just added an .EPUB format here.

Emerald City 2012!

2012-03-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

Surprising absolutely nobody, I have not posted anything since October. I am happy to say, though, that it's because I've been busy, not lazy. (Maybe a little lazy.)

I'm excited to announce that, at the end of this month, I'll be at Emerald City Comicon sharing a table with my good pal Calamity Jon Morris! We'll be at table F-13 in Artist's Alley. If you're at the show, come say hello!

I'm going to spend the next few posts showing off some of the stuff that I'll be selling. I'm very excited, and the months leading up to it have made me more productive than I've been in a long time.

Here's a picture that I'm darn proud of. I wrestled with it for a while and nearly lost the whole file at one point when PS crashed. (ALWAYS SAVE!) I figure this is some amnesiac frost giant who fell in with some fishermen. I already have prints of this which will be available at the table. They came out brilliantly! I'll have photos in an upcoming post.

Stay tuned all month!

Marvel Too: Hellcat

2011-10-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Just posted a little bit ago, my contribution to DCfifty-too's Marvel Too project.

I chose Hellcat, who is a favorite of mine, and I really had a ton of fun with this, from the Wally Wood space walls to the rubber-hose cuffs on the costume. Drawing is super fun! Go do it!

All of the contributions to the blog are fantastic! Check them all out here.

I will press this button!

2011-09-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty slow in posting this, as it was announced a week and a half ago, but what can you do? The Bureau of Drawers has released their long-awaited anthology collection of Bloor comics! I remember when I first met Bloor, Dictator of Uranus. It was over here, at Pappy's Golden Age Comics, and I have to say, that first impression will never fade with time. All being blue-green and pressing buttons.

While I'm not in this B.o.D. project, I'm absolutely thrilled with the way it turned out. If you want a bag o' good comics for damned cheap, head to our Etsy store and pick up a copy. Or else I will press this button!

boop.

DC Fifty-Too: The DEMON!

2011-08-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

If you've been following DCFifty-Too like you oughtta be, you'll see my contribution was posted today!

Sketches

2011-08-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

In the interest of maintaining my blog-momentum (blo-mentum), here are a couple of pages from my sketchbook.

DC Fifty-Too

2011-08-12T09:49:00.000-07:00

Beginning August 15th, you can enjoy the latest project by my chum, Calamity Jon Morris. In response to DC comics' (most recent) re-launch of all their titles, DC Fifty-Too invites 52* artists to pick a DC title, and create a comic book cover for it. It's a really cool way to see what artists could do with a title if DC said, "Take your pick, and go nuts!"

I'm happy to be one of the artists, and I'm really excited to show you my contribution. But until then, follow that blog! http://dcfifty-too.blogspot.com

*and more!

I've been drawing comics!

2011-08-11T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hi internet!

It's been really quiet over here in my corner, but I'm hoping to get better at self-promotion becaaaaaaaause I've got several pretty exciting projects in the works! And you best believe I'm going to promote 'em!

OK so! Here's a thing!
For the past several weeks, I've been drawing a comic strip for Smosh.com A new one posts every Tuesday, and there are now ten of them up. You can see them all here:

Enjoy! And don't touch that dial!

...and it was probably called Racing Rabbits. That's just a stab in the dark.

2011-05-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

Got some stuff I'm workin' on that has motivated me to brush up on my tablet-drawing skills.

Here's a rabbit in a car.

This guy was actually a game-piece from a floor-mat game I had as a (very little) kid, and which I only vaguely remember. (1983?) I'm pretty sure it was a racing game, or a counting game disguised as a race. It had four porcelain rabbits in cars, each a different color, and a racetrack that rolled up when you were done. My google fu has failed me, though, so if anyone knows WTF I'm on about here, let me know!

Kindly please follow the gentleman to the bar.

2011-03-07T22:55:00.001-08:00

That's a wrap! The ECCC-flavored Drink n' Draw was a blast. Hop on over to the DnD blog and take a look at the pictures! Oh, and if anyone in attendance that night wants to send me more art, please do! My email's right over there!

Here's one of my faves on accounta the adorable mickey on the bottom, courtesy of Dave Roman.

Emerald City Drink n' Draw!

2011-03-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

This weekend is the Emerald City Comicon! I'll probably be wandering the floor, and I'll definitely be at the Seattle Drink n Draw on Friday night.

From our other blog:

"It's short notice but - join us at Von's Roasthouse this Friday starting at 8:30 for a special SEATTLE DRINK-N-DRAW (hosted by the Bureau of Drawers) to welcome all our special friends in attendance for the Emerald City Comic Con!

Sponsored by The Bureau of Drawers, just mention "Seattle Drink 'n' Draw" at the door!

Don't miss the fun - we'll have a well-lit banquet room all to ourselves and some paper and pens floating around, plus access to one of the best-stocked bars in the city! Spread the word, and hope to see you there!"

Where: Von's RoastHouse

619 Pine Street
Seattle, WA
(RSVP at the Facebook Event Page)

When: Friday, March 4 · 8:30pm - 11:30pm
Who: Your hosts, The Bureau of Drawers! Plus a whole room of like-minded artists.