SAUCER STATE #3 Cover Process

Saucer State #3 on is on sale right here

And here are the art stages for the cover art, including colors by Adam Guzowski.

SAUCER COUNTRY #4 Cover

And cover sketch:

This Is Not A Love Song

I haven't Bloggered in a while. I've been busy and/or tired; and/or not feeling well; and/or just not "into it". THE NEW YORK FIVE is done. Phew. The last issue will be out in a few weeks. Those suckers are 32 pages. Brian did a tremendous job on the last book. It's JOHN HUGHESESQUE (I hope that analogy doesn't get me beat up.)...but better...A great ending! Lucky for me, Jim Rugg helped out with inks on a bunch of pages. He's such a great artist. Here are some of my pencils. See, I can draw in pencil too, I bet you didn't know that. Click on the image. Blogger sizes everything down so small and I can't take it anymore:





My layouts are always better than my final pages. Sigh. :



There is a sick amount of unused process sketches and pencils from the project. I might post them all if they don't go in the collected book. Here's an early pencil sketch. :



Raw inks and tones:



I tried to have some "downtime" after The NY5. My sons and I have daily drawing jam sessions where we just draw Batman and Green Lantern guys:



This is my Sinestro Corp Scarecrow:



And Sinestro Corp Scarecrow by my son, Jax (You can even see he drew a little Despotellis on the lower right) :



And his Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle:



A random Bleez I drew for no reason whatsoever:



I've been hard at work scripting and drawing the next issue Of Funrama, FUNRAMA PRESENTS #2: RACCOON. I'll have an 8-page preview ashcan book for sale at MN SPRINGCON, and then the full 32-page book will be available by mail-order online and from me personally at conventions, just like I did with theMUTANT PUNKS book. Here are updated character designs. More updates to come!:



I've also been swamped with long overdue odd-jobs and commissions. Like this:



And this:



And this Death:



I need to start charging a lot more for drawings. They're a lot of work. I'm not joking:



I like signage in my town that hangs around and never gets contemporized:



A custom Red Robin and Spoiler I made when i had some "free time".



I was sad that we didn't get to use this Olive sketch for a cover design:



Besides FUNRAMA, I'm beginning to start on some "Big" "projects". So, so far I have some work. At least I think, I'm pretty sure. Yay. This now concludes your call. Thank you for your patience. You may hang up now.

Ren Pencil Sketch The NY5

Currently

A drawing of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Still uncolored. Soon.



Lona. Penciled page from the New York Four 2.1, Vertigo/DC.



My web/POD comic. It's...um...difficult to describe. Still hush hush about this until I get more work done. Soon.

The New York Four Sketchbook

I loaded up some sketches for The New York Four on my photo site. Here's a few. I just got the script for The New York Four #1 from Brian. Isn't that exciting? How excited are you?

Northlanders: The Making Of

Some of you are probably looking at Northlanders and ask , "how does he do that?!". Well, this illuminates my painstakingly meticulous process for drawing the Vikings. Step one: I do this. Step 2: I do that. And DONE! Bada-Bing. Vikings--They're the wise guys of the 10th Century.

Anyway, I've been hit with a monsoon of busy lately. A lot of people are waiting for drawings and Commissions and I'll get to all those in about a month. sorry, it always takes awhile to get to everything.

Next week I'll be at New York Comic Con! My first one. I couldn't score an artist table but I'll be signing at the DC Comics area.
Here are my signing times:

SATURDAY
3-4pm: SIGNING - DC/Vertigo booth

SUNDAY
2-3pm: SIGNING - DC/Vertigo booth

I'm listed on the roster for Oni Press to appear at their booth but I don't have times for that. Maybe next week. Please come by. If you catch me at the booth I'll do a free sketch. Otherwise, it's Five buckaroos for lunch money.

Scratchboard!

Like me, you probably wake up every morning and say to yourself, "Why Not Scratchboard?".

As the manufacturer states - Paint on it. Draw on it. Scratch on it. Piss on it. Call it rude names - Scratchboard, or "Clayboard", provides a greatness of ease not found in any other working surface since God himself carved the Ten Commandments upon stone tablets on Mount Sinai with lightning bolts and lasers.

In fact, it is said, that after Moses broke the tablets in anger, God offered him two Scratchboard plates from the art store to "try again".



I had to do a quick Scratchboard demo for my class so I took these old clayboards that were sitting around collecting dust and I made these. As you can see, I lost patience with the "scratching" part of Scratchboard. And, I'll never be as good as Mark Summers. I have some scratchboard nibs, but Mark Summers only uses a #11 XActo blade and he's a MACHINE so I mostly used the Xacto. But I encourage everyone to give scratchboard a try. Here, I started with a fully inked plate and scratched out the Snoop Dogg type. With the buildings and explosions, I drew them with a tech pen and scratched out lines for windows and highlights and used steel wool for a softer drybrush effect.



On the Snoop Dogg figure, I stated with a plain white clay surface and I drew it with tech pen, brush and a Hunt 102 crowquill. Making corrections, highlights, and speed lines is super easy as long as you have a sharp Xacto blade. I ran out of time, but I'll put it away and work on it later.

The Singular Adventures Of My Sketchbook

I love teaching but after eight years of it, I'm getting burnt out and I want to take a little break this year and focus on my comics and craft. I've been teaching an Inking class and in the beginning of the semester we focused exclusively on line and stroke...ONLY. All the while, referring to the classic pen and ink masters- Howard Pyle, Thomas Nast, Daniel Vierge, Edwin Austin Abbey, Joseph Clement Coll, Charles Dana Gibson, etc. Reexamining these artists has greatly influenced my own work. Proceeding on, we explored other rendering techniques.

Here's some quick stuff I ripped from my "sketchbook" that I used to try out new materials and papers and inks. These aren't that great. These samples look exactly like the art I made as an undergrad at MCAD!


Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran
tech pen, brush,Wash with China Ink, old marker


I popped open an old Koh-I-Noor technical pen with year-old ink and it still worked. I did all the outlining in thin techpen to contrast the heavy blacks. I used the palm of my hand to spot some of the blacks.



Lilly Allen
Ink, collage



I've been doing all the one-layer-washes in Non-waterproof ink lately but I tried to do the lines in grayed-out Higgins Drawing Ink. I actually collaged the dress pattern on instead of Photoshop which I think looks better. I miss real collage. I'm getting more impatient with art-making which is not good. I used to spend 2 weeks doing a piece, now I only want to spend 2 hours.




Tricky
Tech pen, India Ink, Non waterproof, China Ink, chalk, acrylic, collage



This is a really unfinished demo. I used it just to experiment different layered media. This is why I like handmade over digital even though digital gets all the love these days. I bought my Adobe CS3 with my teacher discount but I'm going to wait a few months to install it so I can make friends with Photoshop 7 for just little bit longer. I'm scared of progress.

Local Update

Local #11 is delayed at the printer, so the new Street Date is April 30. (Note to the Mean People: No, It doesn't take me 8 months to draw a comic book, #11 has been finished for 4 months, it's just been held back for a smoother finale). But now, it's delayed for a little longer. I ripped this off of Brian Wood's website:

Apr 30 - Local #11
May 28 - Local #12
Jul 23 - Local (hardcover edition)

In the meantime, here's a gray version of Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow...

Annabella Lwin Sketch

Annabella Lwin Sketch, originally uploaded by funrama.

American Virgin #19

BECKY CLOONAN!
...just kidding...It's still just me.



AMERICAN VIRGIN #19
Written by Steven Seagle; Pencils by Ryan Kelly; Inks by Jim Rugg; Cover by Celia Calle

Concluding the 5-part "Around the World." Paris: the city of lights…the city of love…the city of sex. And Adam Chamberlain has not one, not two, but three shocking revelations for the new woman in his life. One involves a question, one involves his future, and one involves changing the title of the book from American Virgin to something else.
On Sale September 26, 2007

Don't worry, this is still Becky's book. I'm just, y'know, loitering. I penciled the final chapter of this fabulous story arc. If you're a loyal American Virgin reader, you're in for some major surprises in this one. I tried to keep the energy and characters close to Becky's work but, y'know, it still kinda looks like my work. Jim Rugg inks, so sometimes it looks like his work. Crazy! I know I'm doing my job when reviews of the issues say "Becky's work is still going strong!" Uhh, look at the credits, people. She's back on issue #20, and I'm going to take a nap.
Really, I drew it, see , visual proof!....

September Is "The New York Four" Month

The bulk of the art you will see in The New York Four next year has to be produced in the next 6 weeks. I don't enjoy the fact that I have to pencil, ink and tone 70 pages in one month, but there it is. I've had to change my way of thinking to a daily cartoonist or a true manga artist. No longer is it feasible to dwell on the kick-ass quality of that panel I just kicked-ass on for 6 hours. It's all about volume, volume, volume. Pages, pages, pages. I'll sleep next year, thanks.


The Minx art boards I was originally sent featured 2 small blueline pages per 11X17 sheet. At first, I laughed heartily and mocked its very existence . But no one's laughing now. I've been reduced to working small, maybe 110% of print size in some feeble attempt to regain some sense of daily accomplishment. The results have not pleased me. The lines are too bulky and my hand has been seriously cramping up and stinging with pain. i've been putting my hand on an icepack every night. technically speaking, It sucks. It's hard to say, under these conditions, that I'm doing my "best work". My ceiling is still very high, and better quality is down the road. But this book will atleast be as good as Local and that has to count for SOMETHING.


My art pages aren't pretty to look at , and I've always considered my art pretty disposable. i don't throw the stuff away, but I practically give it away. Some artists think of their work as priceless jewels , and that's cool. But my art is full of patches , white-out and correction tape. I have to redraw and make corrections on translucent vellum. I agonize over lines too.


The New York Four layout sketch. This is what i send to editor Shelly Bond.


Inks and tones. This page is still in process and needs to be cleaned up. The art's still messy. All the girls can be seen here eating sushi. In the booth, from left to right: Lona, Merissa, Ren and Riley.