inked in walnuts

note: originally posted on my MySpace blog.

2 Years ago on Christmas, when my brothers Noah and Isaiah, and I, went to visit our Dad, Step mother Deela, and 3 siblings- Deela bought us all sweaters at salvation army and had us go to Wal Mart for a family picture:



This picture has been a favorite of mine ever since. It's a great depiciton of us, and the kind of joy we experience the rare times we get to all be together. It also shows how often we practice odd facial expressions in front of mirrors.

With my computer dead I was at a stand still with work. I had a couple days before we were to head off to Moses Lake to visit the family, and I decided at the last minute to try to do some walnut ink renderings as Christmas gifts to my family.
For Dad and Deela, I did this walnut ink rendition of the above photo:


I tried for some more traditional portrait style paintings for each of my young siblings- the first here is Megan. I actually drew two small sketches, a small inked draft, 2 large detailed pencil drafts, one fully finished ink draft, and then a total redo of the final pencil and ink drafts- which is the piece I finallty settled on with Megan. She is really hard to capture, but I'm at least happy with this one.



I had a photo of my little brother Malachai which I loved, so I tried to capture it in this painting. He's playing with this toy monkey that I got him last year for Christmas. I feel I didn't capture his likeness very well, but it wasn't so bad I redid it (though I may have if I'd had the time).



This is Kaitlyn- I didn't have a good photo to go straight off of with her, so I had to use a few photos and sort of create a pose. Of the three I feel this one bares the closest resemblance to the real person, and I did the least amount of drafts on it.


I was glad to be able to give gifts like these, though as the guy who made them I already see the flaws in them- one of the main reasons I wanted to make these was because my family had some older portraits I had done when I was about 20 or so up on the wall, and they were hideous. This will at least hold me over for a little while.
-eef

Reverend Mofo

I went to the PDX drink n' draw a few weeks ago. We did these posters, where you draw your character in the center, then everyone else does their rendition of that character around it. I picked Reverend Mofo, the foul mouthed preacher monkey from Chumble Spuzz. I really love what these guys came up with. I am still pretty shy among these artists, some of them are really good- and the interesting thing is, I have been around other serious artists very little in my life. I think, especially, the fact that I never went to art school makes me really nervous around more seasoned artists.

It's pretty much how it is anytime you try to join into a group of people you don't know, you wonder at first if you really are going to fit in. Whatever comes of it, I love the fact that I can go to a bar downtown and meet up with about 15 artists, many by trade, and others published comic creators, and draw together. Growing up in Coos Bay, any time I went out to a bar to draw, people just looked at me funny.

Artists who contributed: Ron Chan, Ryan Hill, Erika Moen, Jon Siruno, Amy Mebberson, Rich Ellis, Randall Kirby, James Ratcliffe, Steve Sylvain, Cat Ellis, and Matt something... and the rest who's names I don't know. I copied these names from Ron Chan's email, admittedly.

A few new drawings

These are few of the digital ink drawings I did for a client recently for eskimo mythology. I drew these and inked them fully on my computer with a Wacom tablet.

The first one is a shapeshifting demon that takes on the image of a child. The second is a tickling demon. The third is called Amarok, and is a HUGE wolf, which I based off of a bear's body.

I used three different techniques on each drawing, that's why I think they each have their own look to them. The Shapeshifter, I wanted to look more human than I was capable of drawing freehand, so I used a 3D modeling program and posed a figure, and added lighting. I used that as reference for the drawing.

On the tickling demon, I did just freehand, and went a little bit more cartoony then any of the other characters. I figured he's a tickler, so cartoony works for him.

On Amarok, I had a photo of a bear which I sketched lightly over the top of to get the shapes of the bear's body, then I referenced some wolf photos to make my bear/wolf hybrid. The client had me add some ravens to show the scale of how big this creature is. I have to say, I think this is one of the most frightening beats I have have ever drawn.

Unlettered Pages

So here's the last 4 pages, no lettering. I'll just kind of give the run down here since you get no insanely tiny dialog to try to read.

Suddenly, two thugged out homeboy crack dealers see their car is being stolen. They are the rightful owners of this junky car, and it is very valuable to them, because the seats are stuffed full of crack. (which is what has exploded all over Kyle). Kyle, of course, tries to threaten them with his fake squirt gun, and as usual they aren't convinced and they start shooting.


Moon is sort of the guy who is all gung ho about the crime fighting. He is a goof ball for the camera, until it's time to pull out his gun ("sweet cheeks") and serve up justice on the streets. As you can see, he tries to bail Kyle out, but he gets shot at too. It's at this point he realizes he is out of bullets again. A common theme for Moon in the comic would have been him rooting around his wallet and pockets and change jars for spare bullets. In this scene he hides behind the garbage cans (bullet proof of course), and rummages through his wallet trying to find a bullet.

So, the one thug is firing at An thony, while the loud mouth one with dreadlocks jumps on Kyle, pimp slapping the hell out of him, as he has crack in his eyes and is rolling down a hill in a crappy car. He begins wailing on the thug with the severed E-brake he recently snapped loose. What you don't see is that after this, Kyle takes out the thug with his trusty brick, which becomes his best friend through out the comic.

Meanwhile, I'm chasing the crack-head, who punched me, down a dirty alley way. I'm not doing so well with the whole running thing (I added that for character, in real life I run marathons while lifting weights and eating vegetables). Suddenly, the crack head opens a junky storage shed and a bunch of mangy street dogs start chasing me back down the alley way to the street.

How would it have ended? This scene? Well... the dogs run out and start to attack the thug with the gun. Kyle abandons the rolling vehicle and begins freaking out because he's all cracked out. He curls up on the floor of the Juggernaut holding the brick close to him. We kick at the dogs as we speed away... and the rolling car hits something explosive or messy. In the script it was the Red Cross bloodmobile, which rams into a gas station and blows up- then it rains blood. Maybe too much. We'll never know. That's that!
-eef

The Rest...

Here's the last 6 pages from Code of the Juggernaut. I think I actually have some more, but they are not lettered. I'll try to post those next time.

I love how some of the art on this turned out. After Chumble Spuzz I became more free with my style and at the same time, tighter. I was more conscious of page composition, black areas, and expression. I had feared going back to an all-human book, because humans are the hardest thing there is to draw- but I feel like what I came up with for this project far exceeded any previous human characterizations I'd come up with.

I really wanted it to almost feel like a dark comedy film- in my mind it was sort of like Kevin Smith's slacker buddy dialog, comedically in the style of something like SuperBad, but with the sort of chaotic vigilanteism from Boondock Saints.

I wanted to base each character as much on his real character as much as I could. I wanted us to joke like we really do behind closed doors. I wanted all of our shortcomings to be laid out to laugh at, and our good qualities to be what wins the fight in the end. Ultimately the story was going to be more of a road-trip buddy movie. No success story, no big battle with evil. I still hope to tell it someday, but when I do I'll restart from the ground up.
-eef

More pages from COJ

Here's the next 5 pages from Lunaractive: Code of the Juggernaut.

Code of the Juggernaut

I started a graphic novel based on my band, Lunaractive, this summer. The plan was to release it as a web comic, 3 pages a week, until it ended- then after that make a collected book to be released by SLG. My plan was to get these pages going and then keep up with it while on tour. My only problem was I hadn't actually finished writing it, and I was getting stuck. Then, to make matters even worse, my computer died while I was on tour and was useless for a month and a half. When I finally got it fixed my deadline to finish Chumble Spuzz was upon me, so I had to ditch it. This ended up being a good thing, because the band broke up anyway, and in all honesty- the story I truly want to tell probably wouldn't work with the band together. Too many eyes on it for me to tell the story I really wanted to tell. I realized this while on tour- the story of the band I have in me is not this one, and it made me hope to find a way out of being stuck with it.

But, not to let the art completley go to waste, I am going to put the pages here in my blog. I'll release them 5 at a time. Here's the first five. The book was to be titled "Lunaractive: Code of the Juggernaut". I apologize that the lettering is too small to read easily, but I don't have to time to fix it. I also want to warn you that this does not resolve, it cuts off mid-action at about page 18 or so. If you can't handle that, don't read it, because you will never know the end. This is it. Enjoy...
-eef

A few sketches...

I felt like dumping a few sketches onto the blog to spruce things up a bit. These are from my current sketch book. It's a 10" x10" square pad, hard cover with ring binding. I have been doing a lot of ink sketching in it, and generally trying to use bits of color here and there to keep it interesting. I hope to publish a sketch book with a lot of the art from it, but I wanted to share a few samples just for fun. These were all done using Faber Castle brush pens.

This first one is a couple a "squiggle creatures." I had my little sister Megan draw a couple squiggly lines in my sketch book and then I turned them into these creatures. I have a lot of these in my book, I am almost thinking about doing a whole book of them, because some of them have turned out really cool.

This next one I did at the Portland Drink n' Draw about two months ago. I was really intimidated by all the good artists there and was drawing really bad... then I loosened up and made this zombie guy. I really like him.

This last one is this lizard creature I made up. It may be showing up in a future book I'm developing. I have a series of these little guys in my sketch book, but this one is my favorite.

Ramalamadingdong

I thought of a really dumb cartoon and decided to just draw it and post it and be done with it, so bam. Here it is.

First comic submission letter of my ife...

I was digging through my shoe box of memorable pieces of paper the other day. I just finished putting the entire Chumble Spuzz book together and I did a little thing in it where I talked about getting my first ever rejection letter from Dan Vado, SLG president- who ended up becoming the first publisher to pick up my work 10 years later.

Here's the letter. It's rather embarrassing. I was 17 and so ready to become a big, rich, famous comic artist... (click for larger version)


I guess it's typical of a person at that age to think like this. I was living in a small town and I had no idea how big the world, and the industry actually were. I just figured because my high school thought my comics were funny I would be an overnight hit.

It's funny looking back to those days. If I was to go back in time and tell myself where I am at right now, my old self would be way more excited about it then I am right now. Not that I'm not excited, but my 17 year old self would still have the mystery that's lost when you actually experience a thing.

-eef

It Begins

Word up fools. This is my art blog. This is where I will talk more about art and not so much about my poop or my personal problems or other people's poop or anything besides art. Like poop. So stay tuned, when I'm no busy as hell I'll post some shiz-wizzle here that should be pretty nifty.
-eef