Hand-printed custom gunslinger trading cards. Collect all 3!

With this series, I decided to combine screen printing with other media in order to produce a number of unique peices that used the same image in different ways. To make them, I essentially just screened a bunch of images of the lone ranger and various animals pulled from an old coloring book. I then went back in with marker, ink, watercolor and gouache to put our hero in silly situations. Overall I think this was one of the most satisfying projects and I’m glad to add screenprints to my arsenal. More prints on the way!

Finally here are some more finished images of the super hero illustrations I was promising in previous posts.

My superhero drawing from a while back has been getting a bunch of hits lately, so here’s another update from the mock superhero illustrations I started last semester. These two characters are sort of a spoof of Hellboy, a comic I’m a big fan of. The idea is that they’re a team-up of the “green fairy” often associated with Absinthe and a personification of the Red Bull of energy drink fame.  These are still just photos of unfinished versions, so keep checking back for more updates.

If you’re like me, you can’t live without a decent sketchbook. I use mine all the time and can’t help but save every single drawing or scrap of paper I have ever used. Who knows? That random doodle could inspire a masterpiece someday. Or at least make a good photoshop brush or texture.

Because of this, I decided to start a new weekly segment in which I unlock the sketchbook vault and post a particularly weird/cool/funny page of an old sketchbook. Enjoy!

Just added a painting gallery as one of my pages. It also has an artist’s statement to give a better sense of how I make my work and what my goals are. All of the paintings shown are from 2007-2008

Best all-nighter ever, or greatest all-nighter ever?

Just stayed up all night finishing this illustration of Wyatt Earp.

For some reason, gun fighters in the old west have been cool since they existed. They were legends in their own time, feared and revered. Some of the stories about them are true, while others become tall tales. In any case, their legend has been passed on for over a century and we see the old west come back time and time again.

Wild west shows were popular around the turn of the century, then soon made the move to radio, cinema, and television. Westerns as a genre, telling and retelling these truely American stories, will always exist.

Alright, I’m done being romantic. Especially seeing as all the “cowboys” and “western heroes” spent most of their time stealing land, killing off entire peoples, and spreading disease. But, in my opinion, they make great artistic subject matter.

This particular image, began as an ink drawing. I tried to make is sepia tone and really grungy, dirty an aged. I tried to go all out with the caricature factor, making Wyatt more of a legend than a real portrait.

In photoshop I added some soft color, and a paisley texture from a scanned necktie. Be on the look out for more cowboy illustrations like this…I need sleep.

The Mega Dude Squad blog is up and running! MDS is a comic strip I created this past year along with co-author Stephen Guzzetta. We had a year-long run in the Daily Cardinal, one of two daily student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin. I’m going to post one at a time, re-tooled and streamlined versions of each of our comics starting from the very beginning.

It’s going to be sort of like a Special Edition as I have gone back and streamlined a lot of the lettering which I’ve gotten much better at as the series went on. I’ve also changed some of the layouts and frames to make them much more cohesive and visually interesting as well as readable.

Mega Dude Squad is the story of a fledgling super hero squad of misfits as they gather their forces, hang out in their secret Antarctic base, attempt to pick up girls and (try to) save the world. The humor is intended for mature audiences so be forewarned as a lot of the comics are NSFW.

The illustrations began as a grab-bag of comic books from a used book store. We went through and frankenstiened different bits and pieces of the goofiest cliche heroes to create the characters. They were then scanned an traced in illustrator to create the final look of the comic. The fonts and balloons were downloaded free from BlamBot.

All in all, this has been a really fun project that I’m glad is finally going online. Hope you all join the Squad.

I posted a new page today: The Drawing Gallery. I’m trying to take advantage of WordPress’s new gallery utility. All of ‘em are from 2007-2008. The one above is one of my favs.