from bleached bones

These are by Tomer’s brother, Asaf Hanuka. Credit the...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:41:00 -0600

These are by Tomer’s brother, Asaf Hanuka. Credit the RIGHT artist, guys.

Tomer Hanuka

There are rumblings that the New York Moon is going to pick up...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:50:00 -0600

There are rumblings that the New York Moon is going to pick up again, which I am extremely excited about. A few years ago, I got to work on some really great assignments for them with tumblr’s own Zack Sultan, who is very talented and super smart, on top of being just a really nice guy.

I did these drawings for the Moon in the winter of 2008, right after the financial crisis broke and the market was in free fall. The story was about manifesting the crisis on Wall Street in the manner of Pompeii, and creating a memorial against overconsumption and avarice.

I’m doing a bit better now, but I remember how scary it was that fall. I was living in Kansas City with my then girlfriend at the time, on the ground floor of an old house with plastic taped over the windows in a futile effort to keep in heat. Together, we had like $500 in our bank accounts, and no one had any idea what to expect for the future.

You’re never too busy, or too cool, or too whatever to...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:22:00 -0600

You’re never too busy, or too cool, or too whatever to stop what you’re doing and tell the people who give a crap about you that you love them. Especially if they are grandmas.

Quick little “mega spot” for This Land Press about...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:01:00 -0600

Quick little “mega spot” for This Land Press about the mob-related murder of a Tulsa businessman in the 80s. Art direction by Jeremy Luther.

Speaking of sheep; last year my friend and I made a bunch of...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:36:00 -0600

Speaking of sheep; last year my friend and I made a bunch of stuffed sheep as promotional mailers. They’ve been all over the world! Check it out and follow me on Facebook while you’re at it.

I have a few left, but I want to make more and keep sending them out.

I love the little characters you post. I've always been good at realism but i have trouble just sketching out a little girl or guy for a comic type idea. Any tips?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:56:00 -0600

Thanks!

So, I’ve been drawing these goofy little sheep (they look like wooly birds to some people apparently) ever since I was in like third grade or something ridiculous like that. My brother and I started drawing them when we would get bored during church after seeing a really poorly drawn sheep on the bulletin (“I can draw better than that…”) Initially, we would just recreate whatever movie we had seen recently, or video game that we’d played last, except with goofy sheep.

I kept drawing them all throughout school, and eventually they just became a default “character” that I drew when my hands were idle (I don’t know about you, but I always have to do be doing something with my hands.) During high school, I went to a Portfolio Day and hit up a bunch of big name schools for critiques. I forgot what school it was (I want to say RISD) but the reviewer was thumbing through my sketchbook and really tore me apart for my sheep doodles; she was all like “these will never go anywhere…stop drawing these,” etc. which pretty much solidified my resolve to draw them for all eternity just to put a thumb in her eye.

ANYWAY, what I mean to say is that I developed this “character” naturally over a long period of time. As a child, I never stopped to say why I was drawing them, I just drew them. As an illustrator, I’ve found that there’s actually a lot of utility to them, despite the Portfolio Day reviewer’s qualms:

A) They let me draw quickly: I’ve drawn so many of these stupid things that I can literally draw them with my eyes closed in a matter of a few seconds. If I hear something funny that I want to turn into a story later, or just want to record a dumb thought, I can quickly make a little comic about it.

B) They liberate me from certain stylistic conventions: if you brush up on your uncanny valley theory, you realize that there is more than one way to draw a “person” and have your audience respond to it. There is a wide stylistic gamut between the signifiers for a face : ) and a highly rendered, photorealistic painting of one. It’s up to you to find where along that range you’re comfortable and what fits best with the stories that you’re trying to tell. Look at what kind of work you respond to and what those artists choose to include or not include. Edit everything extraneous from your characters. I think that this is a hallmark of Chris Ware’s work. If you look at his sketchbooks, it’s obvious that he has drawing talent and ability to spare, but he CHOOSES to do his comics with a very clean, almost styleless aesthetic; in doing so, we are focused almost entirely on the narratives, and less on any affectation that the drawings might create.

C) They help me tell stories: things do not have to look realistic to convey realistic emotion. This is a big point, and one that I can’t possibly talk about in its entirety, because it’s something that artists (writers, painters, filmmakers, etc.) have been wrestling with for forever. As I draw more sheep comics, I’ll occasionally do a really sad one, or a really depressing one, simply because they are inherently a part of me and a reflection on my emotional state at the time. Treat your characters the same way you would treat your more “realistic” artwork— tackle the same ideas and issues, and approach them with the same deadly seriousness. In this way, they’ll become richer, more sincere, and more real. You shouldn’t have to look any further than Art Spiegelman’s Maus books to be convinced of the power of a few lines.

Some real general tips and places to look for more:

- Never abandon your basic drawing principles. Focus on large shapes, good composition and design.

- Scott McCloud’s oft-cited, oft-maligned treatise Understanding Comics has an excellent section on the uncanny valley, and why we respond to certain characters the way that we do.

- Look everywhere for inspiration…: Valve has some of the best ideas about character design that I’ve ever read. Look at how the ideas for Pixar films get started on a few napkin doodles.

- …but don’t forget the classics: my personal favorites growing up were Tove Jansson’s Moomins, Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, and Tintin.

- Never adopt a style for style’s sake— don’t ever say “I like how that person draws, so I’m going to draw like them.” Doing master copies, getting into people’s heads is one thing, but wearing someone’s style like a skin leads to affectation at best, and plagiarism at worst. Don’t do it— let style develop naturally on its own, over the course of a body of work.

- Be yourself, draw what you’re interested in. Care about your work or no one else will care about it either.

YEAH. SO UH, I’M GOING TO STOP WRITING BOOKS ON TUMBLR AND GET BACK TO WORK!

Hope this helps.

Not a question, but I wanted to tell you that as much as I love seeing illustration it's been like... 3 years(!) since I've picked up a pen/pencil to draw (unless you count parabolas). Art has always been something I've been on the outside of looking in. I started following your blog awhile ago though and it made me really just want to get out there and draw. I signed up for an art class recently. Thanks for the inspiration.

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:54:00 -0600

Thanks—this seriously made my day. Always create, all the time, and never let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t. Draw til you die, homies.

I started this blog off with this Tolstoy quote. Make good work, make true work:

” If I were told that I could write a novel in which I should set forth the apparently correct attitudes toward all social questions, I would devote not even two hours of work to it— but if I were told that what I shall write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they will weep and smile over it and fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strengths to it.”

Doing a little lecture on Ilya Repin today, specifically...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:29:00 -0600

Doing a little lecture on Ilya Repin today, specifically contrasting him with John Singer Sargent, who I talked about earlier this week. I held Sargent up as a paragon of painting technique— in particular what can be accomplished with a limited palette, as well as how far your observational abilities can be pushed. With Repin, I’m more interested in his storytelling instincts, choosing the right moments within narratives, and making them feel real emotionally.

Also, check out his house in Finland. Digging those skylights.

Literally my entire day today. Gong hei fat choi y’all.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:59:55 -0600

Literally my entire day today. Gong hei fat choi y’all.

I'm not starting my Illustration courses until next semester, but I really hope my professor is as thorough and comprehensible as you. If you don't mind me asking, what school do you teach at? I'm currently attending Watkins College (very small school) in Nashville.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:42:00 -0600

Thanks! I’m actually pretty scatterbrained. I am currently down the road in Memphis, teaching at the Memphis College of Art.

If you, or anyone else, have any illustration-y questions, I’ll try my best to answer them. Or at the very least hopefully point you in the right direction.

In class last Tuesday, I was talking real generally about goals...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:06:00 -0600

In class last Tuesday, I was talking real generally about goals for the class and what my students should be focusing on in order to improve. It’s a sophomore level illustration class about color theory and builds upon the previous level class, which was primarily centered on composition and drawing. One of the things I harped on was defining “skill” and how skill isn’t necessarily about encyclopedic knowledge (“if I knew everything about illustration, then I would be a great illustrator”) nor is it about tricks (“if I just knew how this illustrator did this certain technique, then I would be a great illustrator like them”). I defined skill as the solid execution of fundamentals, and then proceeded to tell them to build on all the basics that they learned in Illustration 1 for this upcoming class (perspective, composition, value, good craft and professional habits).

I’m a big proponent of backing up words with deeds, so I wanted to put up this process post for this goofy Adventure Time drawing, as well as upload a low-res version of my Photoshop work file to demonstrate my point about skill not being “trick” based. This is a process that I use fairly often, with a few variations. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best draftsman by a long shot, but I do fundamentally believe that for the most part, the illustrative process starts with a good drawing before anything else. If your drawing sucks, then no amount of photoshopping, expensive oil paint, cat hair clippings, etc. will save it. This is as true for guys who work exclusively in Photoshop on their Cintiqs as it was for Rockwell, Pyle, and Wyeth.

Every illustration begins as a little scribble to rough out the general idea and placement of elements within the composition. This thumbnailing process is crucial to editing out your ideas, as well as solving basic compositional problems (“what is the most important information in this piece and how can I show that?”). For this Marceline drawing, I did a super rough doodle in Photoshop (CS4) and then printed it out to do my lines. I light boxed it onto a scrap of whatever I had laying around (I think Rives BFK) and then penciled out the basic shapes— I don’t like to start with a super tight pencil drawing, because my inks tend to get static and it begins to feel more like tracing to me. Then I went to town on it with a Pentel Brush Pen.

After scanning the resulting drawing and cleaning it up a bit (changing it to greyscale, adjusting the contrast), I flatted it out with the polygon lasso tool underneath my lines. This is a real basic way of coloring linework in Photoshop, and simply ensures that everything stays neat. Using my flat selections, I laid in my basic color in a separate layer, throwing in a new layer here and there for highlights and darks. I think about general schemes in terms of warm and cool, and use contrasting colors to focus on certain areas (for example in this one, Marceline’s shoes and axe-bass) but for the most part, I tend to take the Herge approach to color (“For a child, for example, the Tintin sweater is blue, completely blue. Why would it be light blue on one side and dark blue on the other?”) If it starts getting too clean (as is the case with a lot of digital drawings), I’ll add in a little texture layer over everything. This is usually just a scrap of whatever is closest to me at the time. I don’t use a whole lot of layers, as you can see if you pull down my .psd. I find that it’s better that way for my sanity and for the sake of my computer’s hard drive.

Towards the end, I’ll throw a quick color balance adjustment layer to harmonize everything and get it closer to my original intentions. Sometimes, I’ll flatten everything and start a new work file to do this separately.

The whole process took me maybe 6-7 hours. The major point to take away is that the base drawing was the foundation for everything else to build upon; in a way, the illustration was “finished” by the time I set my brush pen down.

Again, you can pull down a low-res version of my work file here. Please ask away if you have any questions or comments!

"The measure of the illustrator is his ability to take a subject in which he may have neither..."

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:02:00 -0600

““The measure of the illustrator is his ability to take a subject in which he may have neither interest nor information, tackle it with everything that he’s got, and make the finished picture look like the consummation of his life’s one ambition.””

- Dean Cornwell. From Forty Illustrators and How They Work, by Ernest Watson, 1946.

Got myself a new bag as an early birthday present. It’s...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:00 -0600

Got myself a new bag as an early birthday present. It’s been tricky trying to find a good bag that fits all of my crap for sketching, laptop, books, etc. I got a Filson 257 and I think that I’ll probably die before this thing does.

Anyway, I’m done with bags. Forever.

zsultan: Tell your representatives to vote no on SOPA and...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:07:51 -0600

zsultan:

Tell your representatives to vote no on SOPA and PIPA.

Anna at the Cove.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:34:31 -0600

Anna at the Cove.

I kind of want to get into fashion illustration because it has...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:23:00 -0600

I kind of want to get into fashion illustration because it has such a rich history— at one time, illustrators defined “the look” that everyone wanted through characters like Leyendecker’s Arrow Collar men, and Gibson’s girls.

Anyway, I was doodling around and drew Princess Mononoke instead, whose costume would be pretty funny to see trailing blood all over a Prada runway or something.

Hey guys! One more little post about Project Sketchbook, put on...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:34:00 -0600

Hey guys! One more little post about Project Sketchbook, put on by my friends at the Rozelle Artists’ Guild here in Memphis, TN. If you would like to be a part of the show, please follow Project Sketchbook for more information.

Additionally, there are only 11 more days before the funding deadline on IndieGoGo— so if you would like to be a backer, please check it out here. They are almost there! I donated a few of my hard earned dollars, which would ordinarily be turned into burritos, and posted the proof here so you all know that I put my money where my mouth is (again, mostly in the form of burritos).

I’ll sweeten the deal as well— donate and then shoot me a message with a screen grab as proof, and I’ll mail you a little 5” x 5” ink drawing! First eight get theirs.

projectsketchbook2011: John helping sew sketchbooks for...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:16:00 -0600

projectsketchbook2011:

John helping sew sketchbooks for #projectsketchbook2012 (Taken with instagram)

Not too late to get a book, homies. The ones I made have approximately twice the love and care put into them, compared with the leading brands.

Get ‘em while they’re hot at projectsketchbook2012.com.

More people on laptops. I’m just waiting for that one...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:06:03 -0600

More people on laptops. I’m just waiting for that one illustration assignment: “We need a drawing of a person on their laptop.”

I absolutely love Field Notes. The current...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:25:54 -0600

I absolutely love Field Notes. The current “Northerly” ones with the glossy coated covers are a lot nicer than the normal ones. I guess anything will get beat up if it stays in your coat/back pocket 24/7, though.