Worthwhile experiment. I'm re-energized

Also took Marty's advice and gave one guy a pith helmet. That makes it hanky-head-, ball cap, and pith helmet.

Second page shows how the silhouette gets less readable. Gives me ideas about edits I might make

The ending, giant tentacle comes out of the hole and sweeps the rest of the party into the hole. My version Of Uncle Creepy wraps up the story. What you saw and what it meant. I wish he'd tell me right now. Otherwise I have to make it up.

Stabbed down a little tighter. I'll try and finish the whole thing, balloons, tone and all by tomorrow.

Love Your Portrait Paintings Marty! My Photo Portraits of Granddaughters:

I think your portraits are wonderful too Marty, and I sympathize with your problem. As a general rule, I just don't do artwork for family members by request, but  I'm willing to give them drawings that I've already done if they say, "I love that". What family members DO seem to like are portrait photos.  Less subjectivity involved I suppose. Non-artists just want the picture to look like the person. 

 

The first picture above is one I just happened to snap with a little point-and-shoot while Torey was in the backyard.  By sheer coincidence the dress she was wearing matched the bougainvillea.  Then I went into Photoshop and blurred the background.  The family went crazy for it. 

 

The second shot I took last month for Lexi's homecoming dance.  She's fourteen now and went to the dance with a young man(!)  Maria DelCasino spent a lot of time helping me get set up and get the lighting right.  And again the family loved it. (Yay!)

Family Portraits Are A Bane...

At the dawn of 2012 I painted these two portraits of my nieces. It was an Xmas request from their mom. Painted 'em in tempera on board. They're big--36"x48" (which brings along its own difficulties). But the main problem is, whenever I do something at the request of a family member, the requesting party never winds up satisfied with my efforts.

I do like the gummy build-up of paint in the flesh (see detail of nose on brunette). My attempt at Lucien Freud. Fun to do in tempera...until you overdo it, and the whole passage dislodges from the board and goes sliding to the floor.

(The top painting I did freehand from a shaky iPhone photo...that took too long, so I comped together two photos for the second painting and had Kinko's print me a 36"x48" b&w print to use as a guide. But I think the result is a little too stiff... I guess I'm not very satisfied with 'em, either!)

I got in!

I got into the ECCC Monsters and Dames book!  Thanks to all the great feedback and useful suggestions I received from all you TAG folks.  I imagine that at least some of the people who buy this book make the rounds trying to get as many artist signatures as possible, so perhaps it will drive some traffic to the table.

Looks like I'll be working on the next phase......

....that I worked on earlier this year. Just got a call for follow on work for the next phase starting in Jan 2013. Having this and the other gig will surely get me squared away by summer. fingers crossed.

Pacific Rim

Guillermo Del Toro Mecha

Little Gig I Just Did

A web comic, guest artist kind of deal. I'll re-link when they are published for real. A web strip called Dingus Ranch.

Fun little characters based on Monster Rancher video game.

And there is an Anime as well.

Edits because I didn't know Monsters can't talk.

Oops.

Improved them to get rid of my dumb dialogue.

Resin Head

Sold this thing to a company called Monarch Soap in Ca. I was wondering if they plan to dip it in the soap and get a nice even coat. It might look pretty neat. Like a Planes of The Head head made out of soap.

Hey what the... My post came out on top of the comic book update deal-ee-o. Need to edit the calendar entry if you want it to rest on top.

Did a quick guesstimate on the number of Artists currently listed for Artist Alley. Probably 270. And of course that number goes up with the shadow artist effect of shared tables. Sold out.

Comic Book Update

Hey folks... not much discussion lately on the subject of the comic book... except for Marty and I.  I had an awesome visit with Marty on the 4th and we talked quite a bit about the TAG comic book.  The general take away was that I need to do some research to see just how much it will cost.  That will inform the discussion we need to have- namely, how much does each contributor pay?  Do we do it by the page?  Will we have color in this thing, or will it be all B & W?  We will want to have a few pages in the book for an introduction and bios, as well as a page or two for signing/drawing on.

Emerald City comic con has started selling tables in Artist Alley.  Here are the details:  http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/artist-alley/  They have sold out before, and there's a lot of folks already listed for next year, so if you want to come up and sell books and other stuff, I would suggest getting on this now.  There aren't any rules about sharing tables, so 2 people can share a table.

Square Pupils

This Doctor won ( only bid ) this painting of mine on Ebay. She was fairly easy to find from her name and email. Her ID page at the hospital she works with has a fairly high rez photo of her. In close this is what her pupils look like. Trick of lighting? Or is the Lizard race taking an interest in art?

No stopping me now!

Finally got this baby in the mail.

THE NEW HOTNESS!!!!

Finally OUT of the box and set up. The rest of the pics are on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4959883436147.2199084.1270888228&type=1&l=44b338ea05

I saw Jeff at CTN.

He gave me the awesome Disney anthology comic book, WHERE IS DEAD ZERO?

And Jeff wants you comic book guys to know, he now knows everything you need to know about such publishing. And that it is a pain in the ass.

Their PUB isn't POD. It's a super nice, slick print run. Smells like a nice, fresh application of printers ink.

Scans-Letting-Go

From old notebooks. The headline is what I called the folder. Wanted to throw away a lot of old notebooks but had to scan before I could release parts of them.

This is a first impression notion about The Robot Arena Of Death. A project that Ron Thompson and I were hashing out at the old Leland Corp. I was completely clueless we were probably just being kept busy.

Arcade Games. There was an industry.

It ARRIVED!!!!

YEA!!!! More to come.

Need Ellis' info

Hey, anyone.  I need Ellis' phone number and correct e-mail address.  You send to me, me likey you.

Spacehawk!

In response to Ellis: I ordered Basil Wolverton's "Spacehawk" book on Amazon after picking up a free Spacehawk mini-comic at the local comic store a few weeks ago.  The stories and art seem every bit as weird and wonderful as Fletcher Hanks' stuff.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Spacehawk-Basil-Wolverton/dp/1606995502/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353077933&sr=1-1&keywords=spacehawk#_

Fletcher Hanks

Omnipotent smiter-downer of evil.

This would look good on the Tom Moon mantle.

San Diego -1986-Just Hit Town-Hand full of query letters

Sporting a Joe Bob Briggs T Shirt

Ordered Today!!!

It's DONE. Ordered today.

4 to 8

Ellis The Elephant

Wish someone would pay me to do this kind of crap.

This was random and kind of neat. Checked an auction and it had two seconds left.

Another Sample

Here's another sample from my story.

THIS WILL SOON BE MINE!!!!!! WACOM Cintiq 22HD

My EBay sales were COLOSSAL over the last few months. I'll just say I cleared well over 3k and cleared out much of my stagnate Action Figure collection. A full time frigging JOB to be sure and I'm still NOT done.

Anyway once a few more payments come in I'll be putting the order in for this and my upgrade to Adobe Master Collection. Thank god for the Global Economy. That's where MOST of my sales came from. Especially Brazil and Australia. :)

UPDATE: He's a picture of the back of my cintiq at work, so you can see how it is set up. My only complaint with this arm is that it doesn't quite hold up the weight of the citiq. I've seen arms that do hold it up, so I think you just need to check the weight standards of the arm before you buy one.
Even with the weight issue, this works great for me... the screen angle (pitch and yaw) are all adjustable.

 

Made the Hand bigger-Dabbed a bit more-Additions

Nothing much different.

Beata sent an email attachment with a larger version of this photo. I cropped it down to its essentials to have a ballot. Scott suggests I be cropped out. I suggest he be cropped out. You decide. Vote.

Is this worth anything. I don't even know who it's supposed to be. BRANDO FAN Marty. Interview during One Eyed Jacks

Another sample

Not quite done with this panel, but it's moving along.

A panel

A panel from my comic contribution to the TAG comic.  I was going to do this with traditional media, but with the new Cintiq set up, I couldn't resist using Photoshop to get the job done.  I think it's going to go much faster this way.

And now that I'm looking at this I've just realized that my main character isn't holding her notepad and pen anymore... I'll need to fix that.

Lots of Really Good Stuff-Blog

The Blog

Tarzan no have love handles!

Free 3D Models (a Kickstarter Project)

Doing my part to get the word out.  Ideally, a film or game company will hear about this and fund it in one fell swoop.

Bette Davis, 30 years apart

My favorite part of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" was the early scene in the studio boss's screening room, (after the chilling Baby Jane Hudson vaudeville prologue): the men are watching scenes from a movie the fictional studio is currently producing--but they're projecting real footage of an early Bette Davis pic from the 30's. The director (Aldrich?) let's the old scene roll, and then let's the studio men eviscerate it. It's great! Shows how hammy young Bette was...and that in her old age, she wasn't above a little criticism.

I'm in California now. Third move in less than a year.

Phew.