more sketchin'

been sketching for ideas for a short comic. there was an idea i was tossing around for a period about a kind-hearted dominican friar, based on a haiku i once had to do a school assignment for back in the day. the creepy alien baby thing is explained below.


while working the other day, i was listening to various alien conspiracies online, largely surrounding the ones involving globe-spanning illusions set up by freemasons. it just made me want to draw aliens!


got tony fucile's 'let's do nothing!' book, and was sketching my version of one of the main characters. he's a pixar concept illustrator, and i suspect he designed violet from the incredibles. i hope he doesn't mind!

portrait studies

went figure drawing with a friend last saturday, and got some portrait studies in. first time i've gotten to draw a beard in a formal figure session! finally. makes me want to go read some more tolstoy.

octopus's garden w.i.p.

the octopus's garden art from work, about 95% done. having a lot of fun with this!

apparently, the possessive of 'octopus' is with an extra 's'. you'd think i'd learn possessives of words ending with 's', given my last name, but, when you'd been going strong for 24 years, why stop now?

the garden background

as i was working on the various layers that are going to make up the octopus's garden dimensional installation, i thought it'd be fun to post the background piece at it currently stands, complete with the rough, messy parts that are outside the cutlines but are ok to leave in my work painting.

octopus's garden

doing some sketches a garden of an octopus, for a hospital display case. thought i'd show some! sure, there's only one expression a bunch of animals can make for kids in a hospital, but it's good drawing and painting practice just the same.

new stuff from the sketchbook

drawing to keep myself focused during a particularly wonderful but dense sermon at church, i apparently considered such imagery as tropical islands, a redesigned madeleine, hampton pig and that nerdy girl from the cartoon 'recess', one of my younger cousins (ghosted in with ink from the previous page) and kind-hearted warriors with rooster feathers on their helmets.


breathing out all the frustration, regeret and generalized angst from previous relationships (and finally finding in grace the strength to move on!). speaking of frustration, pen nibs are horrible to a person who uses a stylus all day at work, but they're horrible in a very, very good way.


a sketch from one of the first assignments i got at work, when i was asked to design a series of interesting, stylized dolls that reflected an overview of florida history. this one was after the project already moved on, but i was still interested enough in the possibilities to keep sketching, presumably during a break. heh - i think, looking back on it, that i was still trying to shrug off the intense influences that the illustrious sarah mensinga had on my work while still in school. i must say she tought me a lot about cute/articulate mixtures in character design!

i've been reading marvel illustrator scotty young's comic of 'the wonderful wizard of oz' (based excusively on the under-appreciated century-old book by l. frank baum. this watercolor and pencil sketch is from me taking on my interpretation of the guard at the gate of the emerald city. it was mentioned later to me that 'how the grinch stole christmas' has a who or two that might look a lot like this. i looked it up and am relieved to say that the resemblance is not as much as i was led to assume. i'm continually reminded of just how hard it is to sketch something original within my own personal catalog of imagery, much less something original within the greater sphere of contemporary imagination today!

forest fantasmagoria

in the middle of designing a series of panels that act as a dimensional mural for a pennsylvania private school's 'story time' library nook. the the back panels act as a single image inset within five frames of the back wall, and, on the other side of the story time nook and set between a chest-high bookshelf and the ceiling, the foreground elements that you see in front of the white bars. they'll be acting as something of a scenic frame for the background mural, which you see, on framed within the other, as you walk into this section of the library. we might make the foreground frame out of a series of cutouts, to put the dimension further.

the client is asking for a fresh take on beatrix potter, with their campus scenery - including the native wildlife and that bridge in the background. obviously there's tons of tonal and value-related issues to still be balanced out - especially given the fact that it's approx. 12' wide! - but i wanted to share a work in progress, and show the new directions the company's allowing me to take.