Its been so long.

Sorry for the long ass interlude. Been busy as hell, and haven't been drawing as I should. Here's a little character sketch I'm working on for the Chapel Blog. I did it in kind of a Jeph Jacques style, since I'm such a fan of Questionable Content. Only, in my variant, we fuck up all the hands and blow the linework. I'm painting it in Corel Painter Essentials, which I'm finding out is actually a fairly powerful program, just a bit limited in brushes and layer options.

-E

(PS Edit) Damnit. It looks like he's grabbing his dick with his deformed baby hand, doesn't it? Shucks.

Chapel, A Webcomic Universe

The new blog for the webcomic is up, with a couple of rough brushpen thumbnails up. I've moved away from actually doing the plus1 comic, but its a similar theme. Still hammering out the characters and trying not to make the plot too hackneyed. Chapel is HERE. The current logo is just placeholder art until I can really get down and make some good art for you people.
-E

Webcomic Inbound

I'm going to start a webcomic. Its been decided. I don't know if I can promise an update schedule, but I'll make it happen. I'm on a trip next week, but the week after, I'll go pick up my scanner and my good machine. I'll make it happen. Within the next two weeks, I'll put up chapter one. I think I'm going to go with the PlusOne(+1) concept I came up with (see early posts). It'll be a group of strangers on a spaceship, pondering life (maybe). We'll see what happens. I'm going to do the art the same way I plan on doing the big (hopefully publishable) book, so it'll be fun to work on that process, and get feedback from you all. Please Twitter PM plot suggestions, or post to comments here. I'll shoot for a weekly for a few weeks, but those of you that know me understand that there will be a couple month hiatus. Its ok, this is just for play. I'll start an independent blog for the comic, but it won't have its own domain name or anything, it'll just be a practice strip, but hopefully it'll be good. In the mean time, for a dose of amazing (betterthani'lleverbe) check out Dresden Codak. Read from the beginning, or at least the "Hob" storyline. Its amazing to see the progression of Aaron Diaz's art through the course of it, even within the Hob storyline. Hope to see y'all tomorrow with a couple of character sketches. I can't wait. Also, I can't wait to start developing the character sketches for the book. Hope to see you soon.
mystery, Mr.E, E, E M.D.

Ink On Paper

Real quick sketch tonight. Fast, loose, random. Whatevah.

*I just published this post, and now I'm noticing that that is a motherfucking EPIC chin. Drats!

-Mr.E

So You've Hijacked the President's Motorcade. Now What?

You've rerouted the President's limo to a controlled area. How do you make yourself non-threatening enough to get close enough to talk to him without getting lit up by secret service agents with itchy trigger fingers?

A) Walk up out of an alley in gym shorts. This is a proof of concept sketch for the first scene in the book I mentioned last post. The character is dead center focus of the scene. The actual panel will have a much more cinematic shot. Also, it will only be a 1/4 page panel. I like that I've gotten to the point where I can draw exactly what I want to draw. Not necisarily with any good style or skill, but I can draw it. When I start the art for the book, I'm going to do all the ink digitally, I think. Also, kind of a departure from other artists' usual process, I'm going to do all the color before I ink. I think that will help me nail the effect I'm looking for pretty well. The color style will be watercolours in Corel Painter. I'd be practicing that now, but that machine is in storage, along with my scanner. I'll keep the colors loose, blotchy and rough. This sketch right here is yet another example of me trying desparatly to manage the brush pen, to disasterous effect. Oh, well. That's why it's in the sketchbook and not on bristol or 8.5x11 paper. I'm getting the urge to do a daily/2x weekly webcomic instead of these sketchbook doodles to get my practice, so I can also practice doing the sequential art and scripting. Feedback, please. Later.

mystery

Intermission

Had to find a stopping point on this guy for the night. I can only pencil for so long before I start to not care about throwing slop on the page. I hit that point an passed it on this tonight. For all of its simplicity, This is a very labor-intensive sketch. For starters, getting the pose on the character was pretty difficult, trying to convey a sense of action and purpose and all. Then came the scenery. I love love LOVE the look of brick buildings in pencil drawings, but criminy there's a lot of parallel lines to be drawn. Throw in vanishing point perspective, and you've got a good twenty minutes of boring ruler work ahead of you. The payoff is 100% worth it, though. There's still quite a bit of pencil work left to be done here. I can't tell if I want to finish it with heavy pencils and learn some hard lessons that way, or bite the bullet and go in with the copic and brush pens. Probably the latter, now that I think of it. But that can wait for tomorrow.

Lessons learned: Don't slack off in the np blue planning stage and tell yourself you can just do the work with the hb later. That leads to slop (see doorframes). All the perspective lines and straight lines you're going to want need to be in there from the start. You'll just miss them later and have to break up your flow going back to put them in later. Also, try not to put the vanishing point directly behind your character's crotch. A) it looks like there's a blue sunburst coming from his balls, and B) it has the unintended effect of making that the center of the piece and all the lines will draw the eye to it. Good to know.

As for the subject matter here: beyond just loving a good picture of a ripped dude in sofee's (and let's be honest, who doesn't) this is actually a test sketch for the opening scene of the comic I'm taking my sweet ass time writing. At present I still only have the same ten pages scripted that I had two months ago. But at least I am learning that the book I'm writing is within my ability to draw. It won't be Eisner-bait or anything, but I think it will be something I'd like and be proud of. Whenever the hell I get around to making it. Shalom.

Mr.E

'Twas Boredom That Killed The Beast

Did another big perspective sketch. I felt like doing a "big", fun character-centric doodle. I used all three mediums that I'm familiar with. I did the initial rough in np blue, then hashed everything out in hb pencil and finally rendered all of the lines in Pitt Artist pen. The linework is somewhat inconsistent and there are maybe a couple of scale issues and possibly some perspective errors on the central building. Also once again, I kinda let the details slide on the background. I just kinda feel like there's a difference between the appropriate level of effort for a sketchbook drawing and a full page piece. As it stands, this is one of my favorite drawings I've done lately, if not ever. Oddly enough, the clouds are one of my favorite parts of this sketch. Hope y'all like it.

Mr.E

Arduous

Someone upstairs is about to get their day FUCKED up. After several hours of very slow, very boring pencil and ruler work, I got to play with my old friend, the PITT artist pen. I forgot how reliable my old buddy was. There's no guess work, as there is only one line thickness (unless of course you change the attitude of the pen or mash the hell out of it) and great stroke control. Without having to worry about errant ink or finessing line variance or wiping the tip every ten seconds because its full of paper scratch, I was able to have a lot of fun and just use the pen in a very skechy manner. I think I'm taking the brush pen out of my toolbox, as I haven't gotten a good feel for it yet, and its yet to prove its effectiveness to me. All I know is that if you use it on a picture, you have to keep using it on the WHOLE thing. The only fun I had on the base pencils for this sketch was the inset panel , because it had no straight lines. I wish I had a creative sense of vision like Skottie Young or somebody else that can imagine a loose, sketchy world without straight likes that still looks amazing, but I'm more like a cad program, which I'll take. I found my camera, so I made a higher resolution photo of this guy. I also dodge and burned one in photoshop, just cause I can. Enjoy.

Mr. E

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Had a couple of days of bad and incredibly uninspired drawing, including one painting in Corel Painter Elements, since I can't install the actual program on this computer, due to losing the serial#. I'm tossing them all in here, so as to get all the garbage out in one fell swoop. Bleh.

Mr. E

Do We Sleep?

Another shitty webcam photo. Sleeping/dead guy. I'm pretty satisfied with this sketch as a final product. The style and level of detail feel like they're right about where I want them. I was able to achieve almost all of the effects I was looking for without it being too labor intensive. My one big regret here is desparately trying to work in the gray pen again (smoke on the ruins outside). It never works right and I need to start leaving well enough alone. I've noticed I like to draw scenes looking in through doors a lot. I think it adds a little mystery to a scene, maybe makes it more interesting, and also kind of defines the demensions of the space we're looking at a little bit (for me, at least). Peace and chicken grease.

-Mr. E

I Wanna Be In Pictures

Just a quickie self portrait I knocked out while grooving to some music I nabbed on lala after reading Jeph Jacques Top 10 list for the year. I hadn't heard of anyone on the list other than Royksopp, so I checked a couple bands out. I really dig the Fuck Buttons album, and I think Fever Ray might change my life. I know the double post in one day is kind of odd when I haven't been drinking, but I like to put the sketches up as soon as I finish. Also, tomorrow is a fairly busy (relatively speaking) day, so I wanted to make sure I got it posted. G'night.

-Mr.E

Jump!

I sketched in a fairly blank figure and a couple of lines for the buildings he's jumping from and to with the np blue pencil. After that, I just played with all of my various pens, adding in details. Whenever I go back in and add a scene to a sketch, I always get a little overwhelmed (see squiggly-line buildings in background). Still fun to practice and doodle. Toodles.

-Mr.E

The Wrong Perspective

Another daily doodle. Still mostly just goofing around with perspective, and also trying to lock down a consistant style that I can draw anyone doing anything in. Also, I'm trying to get more movement or "action" into my drawings, so they're not just people standing on a white page. I think I'd like to go back in and put in a background with this one. Lots of interesting perspective to play with there.

-Mr.E

The Very Last Time

At some point, there was probably a hint that this fellow should have gotten. As it stands, probably not the worst way to go.

First off, I'm sorry about the blurry shitty picture. Its the laptop's webcam, what do you want? I wanted to play with creating a scene with more than one character and some odd perspectives. While not mind-blowing, this accomplished what I was looking to practice today. I originally intended to add some more detail and texture to everything before shading in pencil gradient and smudging the shit out of everything, using the desk lamp as the lightsource for the scene. Instead, I forwent detail to practice trying to add a little depth with the brush pen. Kinda worked, kinda didn't. I like what's going on with our femme fatale but, well, I mean I obviously fucked the desk all up. Also, its curiously difficult to generate a really pleasing "brush effect" with the brush pen. I definitly wouldn't call this finished, i just kind of hit a stopping point on my practice for today. From here, I can see some more work I want to do on her skirt. Anywho. Be safe.

-Mr.E

Daily Doodle

Started sketching again. This guy probably would have been just as happy to continue living life as a pencil sketch, but it was kind of fun going back in and drawing the settings without worrying about smudging the pencils.

-Mystery

Moleskine Book and Brush Pen

Hadn't drawn anything but a doodle on a napkin or in the margins for a couple weeks and was feeling somewhat adrift in life, so I dropped into Columbia Art Supply and snagged a moleskine book (cause they're all the rage) and a Pigma Brush Pen, along with a couple more non-photo blue pencils (can't have too many). I always enjoy getting a new sketchbook, mostly because its just neat to start new books. Kinda fuels the creativity in a way. I've seen people swearing by those moleskine notebooks, as well as people making fun of folks for hopping on the moleskine bandwagon, as though having a notebook that's more art-y and authentic will make someone a better artist or writer. I'm here to tell you it did not, in fact, make me a better artist. The paper inside is nothing all that special, although it does have a nice smoothness to it (but not so nice you cant find it in a cheaper sketch pad) and it holds up suprisingly well under lots of ink for being so thin. No bleeding onto the next page at all. What I find wonderful about this book, though, is the fact that its soft. That kind of maleability is a nice change of pace from hard-bound sketch books. You can roll it up, stick it in a pocket, and its also easier to keep the preceding pages out of the way if you can roll them away and tuck them under the book. Ring-bound sketchbooks have that trait as well, but I never liked the feel of those, and there's a durability concern there as well. As for the brush pen, I like it. A bunch of my webcomic heroes have been fiddle-fucking around with them lately, so I figured I'd give it a try. It paints thin to fat lines like my croquils, but is a little more forgiving in that there's no risk of errant ink drops. It does show any waivering of the had, though as it only takes the lightest touch to lay down ink. You have to be authoritative and gentle with it, as opposed to my other lover, the Pitt Artists' pens, which are much easier to use with a sketching motion. Different tools, all. Tonight's drawings really helped to remind me that having new tools doesn't improve the carpenter. The man in the trees is a musing on a scene for when I finally get down to working on an actual comic, and the beard-o guy is inspired by Opie from Sons of Anarchy (great show). I look forward to getting down in this book. The built-in cloth bookmark is a nice touch, as is the pouch in the back (nice place to throw a pencil and a pen). On a sour note, I also bought a little two dollar pencil sharpener with a shaving collector, and it doesn't work one fucking whit. it breaks off the tip every time i try to sharpen a pencil. I've lost .25 of a pencil in there so far, and gotten no sharp tips out. Fucking bullshit. Also, I'm changing my blog sign-off from E to Mystery (Mr. E, get it?!). Don't get confused. Mahallo.

-mystery

Sketchbook Pages

Did some doodling whilst watching Mad Men the other day. I turned a couple of people I know into drawings. Very comic-y. The girl in reality bears no resemblance to Harry Potter. I just kind of suck at drawing glasses and the hoodie thing kind of worked against me too. Also, I added the freckles. Because I can. See the kind of power I wield? The book has been living in my backpack for the last week, and it appears the heat and pressure caused the ink to rub off on the opposing pages maybe just a little bit. Anywho, enjoy. And no, there's no deeper meaning behind the subjects. Or is there? Dun Dun Duuuun! No, no there isn't.

-E

Sasquatch Gettin' Busy

I've been wanting to draw a picture of a sasquatch kitted out for a long time. Today I sat down and did a couple quick sketches with the 7B pencil, and then traced a quick pen sketch out of it. This is nothing like a well-rendered, finished product, but it scratched the itch pretty well. Now I just have to figure out what kind of dakka sasquatch would carry. I gave him 8 mags of 5.56, but I can always go back and change that. What kind of fucktardedly big gun do you think sasquatch would carry?

Beach Bum in progress

This is a sketch I did a week/week and a half ago. I busted out the croquil and ink and moved him to a piece of tracing paper and scanned him in. I like doing the ink on tracing paper. If its a sketch that I happen to be fond of, like this one was, this way I don't ruin it. I think I'll color him, as well. I can't figure out if his head looks lopsided because of the scanner, or because I drew him that way...

-E

runner

Here's a little sketch I been playing around with in Sketchbook Pro. I only have 4 more uses left on my free trial. Must. Purchase. Program. Must. Find. $100. Later.

-E

Kid's Kickin' Ass

I sketched a little farther through Sean's kid beating me up. Sorry, I won't be coloring this one.

Shazzam, Kid.

-E

The danger of children

Sean's kid was fully willing to fight me tonight. I think she figured she could take me 'cause I was slightly inebreated. That little girl is a ninja badass. She had a counter ready for every kick I threw at her. I promised her I would do a picture just for her, so to show I intend to keep my promise, here's the sticks for the pic. Who's gonna win? I dunno.

-E

Pocket Horror

Based on that stupid/addictive Pocket God game on BO's iPhone. I got tired of working on it, so it shall remail forever rough. Also based on this. Keep on rockin'.

-E

Chino Retirement Picture

A little india ink doodle I knocked out for Chino's retirement. Not perfect, but I hate it less than I do most other finished products of mine. Never doing trees with a brush again. Ever. Way, WAY too much work. Hope you all had a good May.

-E

Yet another looong break

Huh, just about a month since my last post. Don't worry, y'all, its not cause I don't care, its just because I haven't been drawing. Simple enough. Today I fooled around and actually painted in painter. And, to be 100% cliche'd clicheed cliche'ed cleeshayed fuckit, whatever, I painted a still life. A flower of some unidentifiable sort. Pointsettia/rose combo.

Holla, E.

Sabbatical

So, school's over (for quite a while this time, it seems), and I finally started a new picture. I think this little guy could have had a better life as a pencil drawing, since I did such a hack job when it came to the pen work but whatevah. He started life as several rough sketches and then materialized out of non-photo blue and then was rendered with my neato new Pitt artist pen. I didn't have the heart to try the india ink on him and run the risk of fucking him up with a stray gob of ink. I still managed to completly ruin his left eye, though. I'm going to try to fix that in digital, and also he's gonna get painted. Stay tuned.

-E

E Strips!

As in, I made a new strip. I threw this together today. Just more practice with perspective and interior spaces. Of course, I had the Hogarth book out, so I had to make a big shredded motherfucker to be the center piece. I think next week I'll show what happens when he opens the door and why the people in the camera should heed his advice. Or I won't. Its really either/or at this point. And I plan to paint this one. Shalom.

-E

Need More

I need stuff to draw. I think I may be able to draw marginally well now, but I have nothing to draw, so I wind up making ugly little people like this. Also, I busted out the Hogarth for a couple hours today, and that always makes me attempt pictures that far outstrip my talent. Also, I want a new computer and some other new toys.

-E

Concept to Disaster in 1.5 Hrs

Start with your roughs. Then tighten them down as you go. Then make a flat color layer so you can easily select different regions to work on. Then click the little "x" in the corner without saving the .riff for the project, guaranteeing that you will never finish this drawing. Its a great way to make sure you never get to see if you could have saved the god-awful shitty linework with a good color job. I'm glad I didn't have much time or energy in this one, because, hoo-me, I'd be pretty pissed off right now. Instead, I'm just glad I don't have to work on it anymore. gfys

-E

Dude, you're all sticky

This man, has been sweating.

-E

Video... heh heh

After seeing countless videos of artists whose work I really enjoy on youtube and shit, I downloaded a recorder and decided to try my hand at making a drawing video. A word of advice: you're going to need more than a gig of ram. The recorder ate up so much system resources that I could barely get painter to paint. Hence, you get a truly horrific drawing. Its only fair to say that I was drawing pretty much that bad all day, though. Enjoy.
-E

Malaise

Malaise sounds like the name of a condiment.

A little strip action

Enjoy.

-E

New Poster!

This one's mostly an in-joke between my roommate and me. Apparently there's a fucking retarded song by David Banner called "Stunting is a Habit." The lyrics are fucking ridiculous, and borderline hilarious, until you realize the guy's rich as hell, and then you become sad for the world. Anyway, over and over in the song, he says: "stunting is a habit," and also "get like me." Well, since neither of us knows exactly what the fuck stunting is, and have no desire to "get like" David Banner, we've stolen his catch phrases and put them to our own uses. We've been compiling lists of things that one WOULD "want to get like" and another that one WOULDN'T "want to get like". We've also started a list of various things that have become a habit, in addition to "stunting." This cartoon is about various things we decided you're not gonna want to get like. Note my swollen glands. It was very much like that, but possibly larger. I had to have it MRI'd, man. It looked like fucking cancer. It was crazy. The doc was afraid i'd form an abcess and die. I ain't shitting you. Ah, such fond memories. Fuck Texas.

-E