CHOCOLATE DONUTS & GRAPE SODA

Pen & Ink on 11x15 Warm Press

Original Creation Date: June 18, 2014

G.I.Joe. The 80's. Like most men my age, there was a natural transition through the Reagan years from Star Wars to G.I.Joe to the Transformers, and then finally onto girls and junior high and all of that mess.

But man, I was a Joe kid. At this very moment, somewhere in my parents' attic sits boxes and boxes of vehicles and figures, presumably their rubber-ringed pelvis suspensions all rotted and broken. Where I differed from so many other guys from my generation was my opinion of the cartoon.  The G.I.Joe show was always second-rate to me; it was like a serviceable dilution that promised to be so much but never quite delivered.

It always fell short in comparision to the comic.

Marvel's G.I.Joe was a fantastic series. Sure, it was too much of a promotional tool to sell toys, and there were too many characters to really develop stronger personalities... but what'd I care? I was the one buying those toys, and even when I reluctantly gave them up I still followed the stories. Larry Hama. Herb Trimpe. Great stuff. For a long time, if I recall correctly, it was Marvel's best selling title. I think there was a perception back then that this was only a result of its crossover success from the brand itself... but I disagree. This was a great comic book with cool characters and compelling adventures.

I thought I'd pay homage to one of my favorites... the infamous master of disguise, Zartan. Zartan and his men were so much cooler in the comics (I think in the TV show they were just buffoonish comic relief), and they were written more as the unruly thugs and gang members they were intended to be. They caused trouble. They broke the rules. They partied.

However, it was also a comic book being read by a lot of kids. So, presumably, Jim Shooter or someone in those circles instructed Larry Hama, the legendary mind behind G.I.Joe (he's the guy that wrote all those file cards you cut out and saved in your rubber-band encased stack), that they shouldn't be having TOO MUCH fun. No drugs, and no booze.

So instead, Zartan and his boys had a thing for grape soda, and chocolate-covered donuts. Works for me.  I've depicted Zartan here returning home from a trip to his local grocer, complete with his famed bow, some healthier necessities, and some treats for the lads.

I LOVED drawing this, if only for the nostalgic value. I might get around to color at some point.

ALIEN LEGION #60 COVER, aka HARKILON HELL FINISHED

Pen & Ink on 11x15 Warm Press

Original Creation Date: May 20, 2014

Color Completion Date: Jun 3, 2014

No, there is no actual 'Alien Legion #60' being published by Epic Comics this month.
Heck, there's not even an Epic Comics anymore.

This is the final 'Harkilon Hell' cover design piece, in all its colored and cover mock-up glory. As fun of a pencil and ink exercise this was for me, I may have very well learned more about the digital coloring process on this one, just because there was so much layered detail. I originally planned on using some blurs to push the background away from the figure and action, but in the end I think the contrast of value and color was enough to define things in their proper environments.

A glimpse of the final piece without the branding and title treatments:

I'm happy with this, and certainly happy calling this a portfolio piece. I probably took more time than I would have liked to color the completed inked version, but I was doing it part-time at night, and without a Wacom tablet. Either way, this is certainly a display of what I can do and how I can do it.

A glimpse of its evolution from pencils to production color:

Finally, for the record, why #60? Well, in a perfect world, Alien Legion would have ran endlessly from its original series if not the second, and there would be just hundreds and hundreds of adventures featuring the famed footsloggers of the Tophan Galactic Union. I just chose 60 because it's a number that hits very close to home for me, both in sports and design. For many seasons I wore '60' as a hockey player (I've since shortened it back to '6') and I have freelanced as a branding and design consultant as 'Six Zero Branding.' So it just seemed like a logical choice.

Finally, if you haven't ever had the opportunity, take some time to check out Carl Potts' ALIEN LEGION. There's a new series breaking this summer from Titan Comics, but the originals are still out there and in recent Omnibus collections from Dark Horse. It's some great sci-fi comic book storytelling.

"TOUGH AS TUNGSTEN, AND LOYAL TO THE DIRTY END."

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored
Original Completion Date: June 8, 2014

Not much to say about this little character study, really. I tried to limit the time involved for color, just to test the overall process duration.

30 years since this movie. Wow.

THE TREE

Pencil on Standard Stock, Digitally Painted
Original Completion Date: May 3, 2014

Earlier this year I was commissioned to develop a cover illustration for author Chip Rice's first novel. "The Tree" is a story about transformation, a young man's struggle to break away from an image he'd allowed his past to shape, and into the type of man he truly desires to become. This is also a story about the unique relationships formed between men: between sons and fathers, mentors and friends, both good and bad. Mr. Rice has a gift for weaving, through the simplicity of one man's life, a stronger narrative about the things and people we allow to influence the men we become.

As for the cover, the story is really about the relationship between two characters, and the symbolic nature of the giant white oak for which the book is titled. I wanted something painterly and rich, and decided very early on that the entire thing would be painted exclusively in Photoshop. And it was-- the only traditional work performed at all was a fairly simple pencil sketch in 3H, HB, and 5B:

This was completed over a month ago, but I'd been holding off on the release of the imagery until the book itself was published. Chip Rice is proud to officially unveil his first novel, which is available for purchase in eBook format from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and more! To buy the book now, or to learn more about this compelling story, please visit the author's web site today at:

http://chiprice.net/tree.html

KITTY & LOCKHEED

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Original Completion Date: June 1, 2014

Another round at Shadowcat and her beloved dragon. Actually this was another exercise in inking restraint, where I withheld the option of putting down any sort of hatching whatsoever.

Since I've been tinkering with this drastic change in inking style, I have found that the secret to restraint in inking is actually... restraint in drawing. I have spoken before about the compulsion to fill the page with detail (see the Alien Legion piece for reference if necessary), and how it all seems to come from an inexplicable aversion to untouched, white space on the paper. That part of my process is certainly at its highest point during inking... but I am learning that those decisions start when a pencil is in my hand. Occasionally it even rears its head during the initial blue pencil phase.

Forcing myself to resist such urges, such as in this piece, helps me consider the "how" and "why" behind all of it. I think that heavy detail I love so much is, in many ways, a partially subconscious behavior that probably started a long, long time ago in the evolution of my style. Hatching adds complexity, and visual interest... but it also serves to hide things as well.

My lines aren't as graceful as I'd like. Sure, the vector process mangled those above a bit more than I liked, but even without that step, my lines just don't seem to possess an inherent elegance like those in the works of Josh Middleton or even Paul Smith. Perhaps deep down I'm not happy about it, and I'm subconsciously hiding something that I don't like in my own work?? We can dig as deep as we'd like here about the psychological foundations of an artist's drawing style... but I do think I've arrived to the conclusion that less detail will come much easier if I focus on the quality and grace of my lines.

So in other words, I'm switching to a much softer graphite tomorrow, haha!!

THE SCARECROW

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Original Completion Date: May 23, 2014

The Scarecrow. Not much back story behind this one... I just have a list I made up a long time ago of things I wanted to draw when I started back on the horse, so to speak, and one of the entries simply said

"A Scary Scarecrow. The Batman one."

This was fast, fast, fast... and that's including doing all of the black with pen.

BESPIN

Pen & Ink on 11x15 Warm Press
Original Completion Date: May 24, 2014

I spent about two and a half years of my adolescence essentially under the delusion that I lived in the reality of the worlds depicted in The Empire Strikes Back. Small town Pennsylvania has a real propensity for being mistaken as Hoth, Dagobah or Cloud City when sprinkled with the right amount of youthful imagination. It might sound silly, but to this day, when I need to re-connect or re-charge my creativity, Episode V will always be True North.

Added to this is a lifelong affinity and loyalty to Boba Fett. Fett's always been the greatest lesson to me about the detail of non-detail; his greatest trait as a character is how very little character has ever been assigned to him. Sure, there's mountains of backstory in the EU and even in the monstrosity called Attack of the Clones... but for me, the very fact that so little was revealed about him made him only richer. Mysterious and alluring.

Not enough people appreciate the fact that the actual character design of the galaxy's most fearsome bounty hunter was not a product of George Lucas, but then-designer and current Hollywood director Joe Johnston (Captain America, the Wolfman, Hidalgo, etc). I won't attempt to be an authority on the subject, but from what I recall Johnston was a concept artist on Star Wars, and was lured into working on Empire with the promise that Lucas would pay for his tuition to attend art school. Or was it film school? Either way, I remember the day I learned that so many of the things I loved so much about George Lucas's second installment (Fett, the AT-ATs, the Snow Speeders) was not Lucas at all, but another highly creative individual. And above them all, the Boba Fett character design was his most prized accomplishment.

This drawing was a bit of an homage to something that speaks so naturally to me on an almost primal level. I did try to leave things much cleaner, not only because of the texture and surface qualities on Bespin, but also in an exercise of restraint. Conversely, I went for as much detail as possible on Boba's uniform, as there's just so much complexity going on, in a good way.

WOLVERAMPAGE, finished

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored
Final Color Completion Date: May 27, 2014

The Wolverine piece in color. Did some different things in the coloring process that I think worked out fairly well. I'm still on the fence with the lens flares, but decided to leave them in there, at least for now.

THE SLAIN KING

Pen & Ink  on 11x15 Bristol
Original Creation Date: Feb 23, 2005

A few years ago I attended a nearby comic convention, a bit of an outsider but with a small portfolio of stapled handout sheets ready to be distributed. Early into the day I was offered an unpaid gig as a contributor to  an anthology book from Angry Dog Press, and later that week I took it, mostly just to prove to myself that I could do it, to earn a published credit to my name, and to see what I could learn from the experience.

The final result was "THE SLAIN KING," a 10-page story about Viking lore. I learned a good deal about myself, my technique, and my speed while knocking out ten pages of original script, pencil, inking, and digital lettering and packaging.

I won't waste the bandwidth involved to display all ten pages, but along with Page 1 I've chosen to display these three sequential pages. I'm pretty surprised to see how well the compositions and pacing hold up after all these years, if not the font-crazed lettering.

And I'll finish with this final page. I'm pretty happy with the inking in here, especially in the giant's furry tunic and the girl's cloak.

WEREWOLF

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Original Creation Date: May 21, 2014

I have a concept for a graphic novel... It's somewhere between the final plotting and scripting phases of completion. To be completely honest, the sheer idea of a graphic novel is one of the most intimidating things I can think of; the scope, the massive scale of work, and most importantly, the huge sacrifices necessary to make it happen. And to do it right.

So, for the time being, I'm inching closer to the day where I have to decide: do I shelve the whole book, or do I sit down and start drawing?

At any rate, this book would indeed be a werewolf story... but one that never has been told like this.

The above was an ink test for what would most likely be the title character.

THE PUNISHER

Pencil on Standard Stock
Original Creation Date: May 20, 2014

The Punisher, in all his vigilante glory.

TRUE STORY: Those are actually Charlie Manson's eyes. And why shouldn't they be? Somewhere in the 90's Frank became some sort of blue collar good-guy hero, but lest we forget the lessons taught us by Amazing Spider-Man #129... The Punisher is a villain, and probably a deranged one at that.

Dude is nuts, and should be. Look for this to get inked at some point as well.

HARKILON HELL

Pen & Ink on 11x15 Warm Press
Original Creation Date: May 20, 2014

I treated this piece as if it were a full blown cover commission, done on 11x15 warm press and conceived, penciled, and inked over the course of about 48 hours. I purposely wanted the entire scene to be overwhelmingly filled with the alien attackers, but tried to use tangential eye lines and other compositional elements to push the focal point continuously back to our beleaguered hero.

The hero, of course, is the amazing Jugger Grimrod.

For those not readily familiar with him, Jugger was the sociopathic anti-hero of ALIEN LEGION, Carl Potts's epic space serial comic, originally released under Marvel's Epic Comics creator-owned line.

(Original Pencils)

I LOVED Alien Legion, and still keep the completed run of both series in a relatively accessible location. And yet I haven't read a page for a good ten years. Hmmm... I think I'm gonna go do something about that right now!

ATTUMA!

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Original Creation Date: May 17, 2014

Don't know why, but I've really had a desire to draw Namor's brutal brother-- I'm smack dab in the middle of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," so perhaps that's why.It's almost shocking that I haven't colored this-- my favorite thing about Attuma is his color scheme.

I thought the lower camera angle worked out pretty well here-- and who doesn't love drawing evil octopii?

BEACH CLOSED BY ORDER AMITY P.D.

Pencil on Standard Stock
Creation Date: May 12, 2014

I once was in a band named Chief Brody. So whatever expression of reverence for the character and performance I can possibly muster here will obviously fall short of that.

This will go in the "work up to a higher level of pencil and/or ink" pile.

UNCANNY

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock

Inked on Date: May 15, 2014

The Uncanny X-Men, say, circa 1983.

Aka my childhood. I knew these characters better than most friends and family growing up, and sitting down to draw them was certainly a great trip down memory lane.  The X-Men franchise today is an empire, an army of mutants and students and villains and villains that become headmasters and such.

But back then, they were just... family.

THE SORCERER SUPREME

Pencil on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored
Original Creation Date: Completed May 11, 2014

Doctor Strange. I think I read one of his comics once when I was a kid, but otherwise I know very little about him. In fact, I think I even made fun of him a few times in my Michigan Comic Strip in the past. But he was never one of my favorites.

Which, of course, is exactly why I sought him out. I wanted to draw a character I was unfamiliar with, and even prepare another piece in the more elaborate vector painting style I've experimented in the past, first with the Joker Madness and later the Nemesis pieces. Without giving away any of my secrets, or boring anyone in the process, pencil artwork is treated in very specific ways in Adobe Illustrator and then later embellished with additional raster treatments in Photoshop. I like to call it my "GrayPaint" technique.

As you can see here, the piece starts as a very loose, and free-form pencil drawing. It's almost as if the pencil doesn't leave the page at all during its creation.

And additional treatments are made for shadows, contrast, color, and in the final image, mystical magic bolts.

This drawing tested the technique in ways I'd never pushed it before... as well as the active memory of my MacPro. But as it always is, a solution is found, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

COMPULSIVE DETAIL vs. RESTRAINT, or INKING ANGELS AND DEVILS

Yes, that's a picture of me inking, with a devil of sorts on one shoulder, and an angel on the other. If you look closer, however, you might realize that one side of the drawing is inked in an entirely different manner than the other. The devil, or my inking devil, as it were, is Arthur Adams, probably the single biggest influence on my entire pursuit of comic book illustration and just a huge influence in general since his big-league debut in Longshot #1.

Arthur Adams's Man-Thing

Arthur Adams is a beast for detail, to the extent that he's developed it into its own medium-- he seems to use ludicrous detail the way other artists wield acrylics or oils. He's taken it to an entirely different plane over the years. And, not surprisingly, he's had a reputation of sorts for not getting his books in on time.

Now I'm not going to go so far to presume that I draw, ink, or even wield detail to the extent that Mr. Adams does. But his work, and my longtime fascination with it, has inspired me to develop a style that really puts down a lot of ink, usually in small, and not always clean lines in hatching.

My Own Daredevil, with plenty of hatching

In the Daredevil piece above, you can see me sort of getting carried away with the inks, almost not knowing when to stop. The hatching is intended to develop form and promote the illusion of mass in his body, but very often I'm only flattening things out. In other words, I ink to the point of excess.

And I've recently acknowledged it, and am trying to stop.

--

The inking angel depicted above is, sadly, a real angel. The super-talented and super-nice guy Mike Wieringo tragically passed away in 2007 in the midst of a celebrated career as a comic book artist, and left a multitude of loyal fans to wonder what might have been. I met Mike in Baltimore a few years before his death, and I found him to be friendly, accommodating, and honest.

Mike Wieringo's Fantastic Four

Mike's own style certainly had its share of detractors, but he was also on my short list of artists to watch and be inspired by. And unlike Arthur Adams, Mike's style was greatly reserved and simplistic. There's no hatching, no heavy and laborious working, and seemingly no effort. Quite simply, he's the day to Arthur Adams' blackest india ink night.

Since I've gotten back into this style of artwork just a few short months ago, I've really struggled to find my own voice or signature style as an inker. I love the Adams look but certainly don't want to just mimic it-- plus I worry about becoming an artist who just can't work quickly enough because of all the detail. On the other end of the spectrum is Wieringo, who draws so differently than I do that I'm not sure how good such a simplistic style would look over my pencils. Either way, I think there's a fine balance between the two to be found, and I've spent some time recently exploring that balance.

My Own Flash, with no hatching whatsoever

In the Flash piece above, I laid down the law to myself:  NO HATCHING. NONE. And I think I still tried to cheat in a few places. But, as a professor, one of the greatest things I've learned in art projects is that by withholding certain practices or techniques, a student can learn to appreciate, execute, and better identify the need for other techniques. So I turned the tables on myself here, and learned quite a bit from my temporary ban on hatching. Mostly I learned how natural it was for me to just overwork things, and HATCH FOR THE SAKE OF HATCHING. Not good, and certainly not necessary.

I anticipate this to be an ongoing battle as I settle in to a more comfortable style. But I thought it might be worth sharing the struggle between the angels and devils.

MEANWHILE, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN...

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock

Inked on Date: May 7, 2014

Really enjoyed throwing this thing together. Like so many other kids from the 80's who watched and loved the SuperFriends but ultimately became a Marvel reader... I've always had a thing for Black Manta. But I don't know much about him at all.

This will definitely be inked.

WOLVERAMPAGE!! Inked

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Inked on Date: May 7, 2014

So much for exercising restraint during the inking process, right? I guess I just saw exactly in my mind how I wanted this inked, and I executed it faithfully to that vision. I did manage to resist the urge to keep adding detail in an effort to separate the figure from the ground-- I'll admit the inks sort of blend into each other a bit here, and it lacks a proper focal point-- but I've learned that this is best left to the discretion of the colorist, and attempting to overwork the inks to compensate is typically excessive and tends to only hurt the final result.

Color will come. It's too late to turn back now.

NEMESIS

Pencil on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: May 6, 2014

Thought I'd have a go at Mark Millar's contest over at MillarWorld. To be honest, outside of Kick-Ass I'm not very well versed at Millar's characters... but this guy Nemesis seemed like a fun little draw. He was once described as "what if the Batman was really the Joker." Which explains the bloody head.

Experimented pretty heavily with the vector technique applied in the Joker Madness piece posted not long ago, with some more traditional coloring thrown in over top for good measure. Lots of Illustrator, and lots of Photoshop at play here.

Also worth noting is that to achieve some of the textures and random lines throughout this piece, I actually took the original sketch and, well, crumpled it up a bit. Heresy, right?!

DARRELL

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: Ink Completed Mar 26, 2014

Color Completed May 2, 2014

It's fair to say that in the past, I have had a problem with detail. Things just weren't finished until I added in extraneous details and obliterated large areas of white space. Sometimes I would throw in the occasional Easter egg for a watchful eye, or an inside joke for my friends, but mostly I would just add in this excessive detail into my pieces. As if the blank page was just a hapless village just waiting to be razed and pillaged. I just couldn't help myself.

Let's call it "Compulsive Detail."

Of course, this is not a good thing. During the creation of this commissioned piece the issue really emerged as a problem. I couldn't stop adding detail in the inking, which only served to flatten the piece out, and hindered the magnitude of the focal point. For the colorist, also myself, it became harder to work with, and also stretched out the entire process. As I've said many times before, every drawing is a lesson to be learned, but this one really taught me much about what I do, why I do it, and the consequences my decisions make on other steps of the process.

I let the compulsion issues play themselves out here, and as you can see in the final ink above, the drawing lacks clarity. It's flat. Once into the coloring process, I was able to create distance between foreground and background with color temperature contrast, but the final result was still too bright, too splotchy (see bottom left). So I brought down the saturation in the background areas, which not only helped push the hero further towards the viewer but also added a nice gloomy feel which suited the Walking Dead nicely. I even considered doing some selective color (see bottom right), but thought the whole thing just kind of reeked of bad wedding photography; It might have looked nicer had I originally colored those areas as grayscale, but post-converting the original color job just didn't work out. In the end I employed a healthy dose of my old friend Gaussian Blur to the background areas, and the piece finally announced that it was complete.


Lots of good lessons learned on this one. As I said, this was done over the course of the past few weeks, and many of the conclusions I'd come to on this piece benefitted other drawings already posted.
Yes, I've certainly been diagnosed with Compulsive Detail, and the prescription is Restraint Inking.

Also, who doesn't love Darrell? I'll probably do another one of him again, most likely more of a character study and less of an environment.

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU

Pencil on Standard Stock

Original Creation Date: May 4, 2014

Happy May the 4th aka Star Wars Day! I was a kid during the heyday of the original trilogy, and like so many men my age today, it had a profound influence on the development of my imagination and creativity.

Technically speaking, I'm really looking forward to inking this one. This was also my first official reintroduction of the Blue Prismacolor Non-Repro pencil into my process-- And I don't know what I was thinking not grabbing it before! As wonderful as advertised, and I plan on using them heavily moving forward.

WOLVERINE RAMPAGE

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: May 2 2014

What started out as a quick pose sketch of Wolverine quickly evolved into a full-blown partial background, with the intent of providing a full environment to continue my inking experiments on top of. Lots of fun to draw him all ripped up like that.

However, I also went against my own usual method and put some heavy, soft graphite into the pencil drawing itself, and ultimately decided to try and flesh it out enough to attempt a direct digital ink job. I've already done some digital inking on my Michigan comic strip in the past, but with mixed emotions on the results. In some ways, penciling for direct ink seems to be more work, since I always seem to spend more time trying to recreate the graphic quality that inking lines naturally possess. It just seems less spontaneous, less authentic.

Digital Inking Attempt 1

Digital Inking Attempt 2

Digital Inking Attempt 3

As seen above, I took several passes at this, both in Photoshop and Illustrator, to achieve the final look I have in my mind.  Unfortunately, all of these are too loose, too muddy, or too sparse to satisfy my aesthetic sensibilities. I just see it differently, and probably won't be happy with this until I get it there.

In this particular piece, the lesson learned is that if I am going to do direct pencil work, I'm going to have to spend more time refining the background lines, drawn in a tight 3H as opposed to the figure's  bold 5B marks. As a result, several elements in the background-- the tree, some of the ninja fodder, even the pagoda-- just aren't tight enough.

I think I may sit down and ink this guy after all. Although it's sure to be a great big mess now with all that graphite all over the place. Still, some great lessons learned, and it's still likely to be my best take on a very popular character.

GREETINGS FROM THANAGAR

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: Apr 26 2014

This thing, very small, was part of the inking experiments last week. It borders on cartoonish, mostly because I was trying to limit myself to a certain pen size.  Not the best ink job, but I enjoyed the coloring.

Also, Hawkman is really weird. I never truly appreciated how unique his color scheme is, however.

A FANTASTIC WAY TO RELAX

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Digitally Colored

Original Creation Date: Apr 29 2014

Just a quick character study, really, but one that focused on implementing some new inking ideologies and techniques I've been engrossed in lately. Hatching, I've found, is like black pepper; it does wonders to some meals but can quickly ruin them if used too abundantly.

In the days to come I may attempt a more elaborate post describing exactly how I've gotten here. Quite simply, I've pretty much torn down my entire inking style and started over from scratch, focusing on restraint and a more selective approach at decision-making. I make too many marks, too many lines, and at times it seems to radiate a sense of being just short of authentic. Moving forward my inks will likely have a different feel, or at the very least fall somewhere between how they were, and well, what you see above.  I just feel this has been long overdue, and while I'm still deciding how and where this will lead, I think this drawing really showcases a sea change in my inking approach.

88 MILES AN HOUR

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock

Original Creation Date: Apr 27 2014

Lots of experimentation with new things in this homage to Doc Brown and Marty McFly. New pens (which I did NOT care for), new vector ideas (notice the blue outline around the black details on the right leg), and some new coloring tricks on top of the vector elements. I certainly learned some things about the process along the way, and all in all had a lot of fun with this piece.

PORTRAIT OF THE YOUNG MUSICIAN

Pen & Ink on 50lb Stock

Original Creation Date: Feb 22 2005

This was to be the cover image for my first manuscript, a work of historical fiction centered on a rock & roll band in the 60's. This central character, singer Tim Quinn, received a seemingly supernatural inspiration for his music in a series of bizarre, lucid dreams... and he was forced to live with the consequences of having no pride in or control over his seemingly genius creativity.

Of course, to develop a story's premise is one thing, and to craft it into a worthwhile novel is something entirely different. "The Evergreen Dream" was in fact finished but wasn't really all that good, and the whole thing pretty much fizzled out from there. However, this sketch, fittingly unfinished, has always seemed to have a more permanent legacy in my creative catalog than the book itself.

ROCKET, COLOR

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock, Colored Digitally
Original Creation Date: Apr 15 2014, Final Completion Date: Apr 21 2014

The Rocket Raccoon piece, in all its digitally-painted glory. Ever since I drew this one, deep down I knew I just
wouldn't be satisfied until I took it to full color. Over the past few days I've been grabbing snippets of spare time
to attack this, one multiply-blended layer at a time. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the results, but after
playing the colorist on the job, I can certainly admit there's a few things I would have gone back and
changed during the inking phase.

But, I guess as a wise artist once said, each finished painting is its own lesson.

A production screenshot, somewhere around the completion of the figure.

A LATE SNACK FOR LOCKHEED

Pen & Ink on Standard Stock
Original Creation Date: Apr 16 2014

Kitty Pryde. Man, those were the days...