Today's Warmup Sketch

Quick face sketch. It's nice to go back to the roots and just do a nice face. This isn't too great of an example, but I was just warming up. This expression was of some dude taken from that book, FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. I just got it and haven't really used it yet, but I imagine it's kinda handy to have around. Enjoy.

Quick Martian Manhunter sketch

Is this even good?  I have no idea... but I really dig the ear! Besides, Martian Manhunter ruuuuuuules!!! I wonder if it's just his weird shaped head that's bugging me.  I think it may look cooler if he had a normal head. Hmmmm........ try to imagine....

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Iron Man sketch

Here's a real quick Iron Man sketch. Not really sure what's going on here; just kinda bored. Turns out that I forgot to finish the feet. Oops, kinda bored AND kinda lazy.

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Brandon's Promised Painting Teaser

Here is the pencils for a painting I REALLY need to finish. See, a few years ago I spotted a painting that my good friend Brandon Garrison did. It was a painting of a little wrestler type character that I instantly had to have. Brandon gave it to me on the guidelines that I would have to do a masked wrestler dude for him... this negotiation went down in like, August '07.   

Now, you know my M.O.:  "Things have been too busy and I just haven't gotten around to it yet."

I'll start it soon Brandon.

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Sons of Hal!

My friend and I have recently become enthralled in the world of comic books once again. It all spawned from our need to draw. Both of us are too cheap to pay for figure classes to keep fresh, so we started making trips to Xhedos in Ferndale so that we could draw in there at night. One night four of us were up there and I started doing a drawing of Colossus from the X-men. They noticed what I was working on and then we got into this discussion about Colossus and how utterly awesome he is. What a sweet character, and he's so fun to draw. Well, needless to say, everyone drew their own Colossus that night and Colossus Club was born. Our plan was to meet up and just draw a bunch of Colossus' all the time. Yeah, I know. It's nerdy and stupid, but guess what?... It was frickin' hilarious.

Needless to say, this went on for some time. Xhedos ended up closing and we moved diggs to the Borders on Woodward. They have a giant graphic novel section damn it! Well, with all of these books around us, ZERO drawing was getting done. We were just looking at the graphic novels every time we went up there. This lead to a great discovery though; by us always looking at the books, we stumbled upon a character that we all had a greater common love for than any other character... even Colossus. THE GREEN LANTERN! He's such a bad mother fucker! We are obsessed with all of them. I went as Guy Gardner for HAL-loween, although now I am telling everyone I went as Hal Jordan. We are obsessed. This whole Sinestro Corps War didn't help either. It was so cool. I may have subconsciously chosen the color palette for this blog based on the Green Lantern now that I think about it... yep, I did.

Anyways, we realized that Colossus had been eclipsed and that a new name for our drawing club was in order. We started thinking of names right away. It had to be something funny, yet so nerdy that no ordinary person would know what we were talking about. Here are just a few ideas:

The Order of Oa

Guy's Gardners

Sons of Hal

There were a few others but they have all escaped me now. Sons of Hal is my favorite. I think it is frickin' hilarious!!! I chuckle every time I think of it! I have no idea why I told you all this story...

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Here's the Deal

Unfortunately, I usually can't put up the stuff I do at work because it is through agencies, etc. so we don't own the art. It's all private. You wouldn't want to see it anyways. Think way too tight car art and storyboards. That's basically it.

However, when I do some cool editorial stuff or anything that is cool enough and I am allowed to show, I will.

I think most of the stuff that I end up posting will be sketches of things I do in my spare time here at work or otherwise. Unfortunately, I haven't done a finished piece of work in quite some time. The way things work in my field, you are never given the time to REALLY WORK on anything. The client wants it way too quickly and all it needs to do is read quickly and get the point across, which is cool, I understand. I just miss digging in and creating a really great piece.

Anyways, here are some sketches I did the other day at work. I had just finished reading 52 so I was on a major Booster Gold kick. Joe Bennet effing rules by the way! Enjoy.

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I Did It! A Brief Summary and Recap Part 2

We are engaged. I asked Erin to marry me on the 27th of January. It was very gushy and special. I think I saw snot. Not sure though.

Anyways, she said yes and now I am currently in the moving process. Almost everything is in her place but there are still a few loose ends I need to tie up. Being someone who went to art school and works in the field, let me tell you: I have a ton of art shit. It has been such a pain in the ass to move! Luckily I am almost done. Pretty much everything is gone from Brian's except for some paintings and a few miscellaneous artifacts.

The next step is to get everything organized. Between the two of us, we have a great deal of household items. I can't wait until we are all settled in.

Now that a wedding is in our future, things have gone from hectic to astronomical frenzy around here. This is such a happy time for the both of us but also an extremely stressful one. Poor Erin is loosing her mind trying to find a venue. I've never bore witness to anything like this before.

I am such a lucky person to have her in my life. I'll let ya know if she survives the wedding planning!

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A Brief Summary and Recap Part 1

As some of you know, I have been building a giant built-in cabinet in the basement of the condo. It's about 98% done. I only need to put up the trim that will cover the small gap between the studs and the cabinet. I've already got the shelf loaded up. It's okay.

This all came about because I became infatuated with home repair and woodworking sometime around November of 2007. I have no explanation for where this obsession came from, but when it arrived it hit hard. I soon set my sights on obtaining every piece of obscure toolery I could find; whether I needed it or not. Since then, I have obtained a stud finder, a shop vac, saw horses, a router with 1'2" shank (not the paltry 1/4" shank), a complete 18 piece router bit set, a circular saw, a new 18v drill, a saber saw, a reciprocating saw, a really nice Dremel tool with a huge set of accessories, a compressor complete with blower and brad nailer, tons of clamps, a pry bar, and the mother of them all; an awesome 12' compound mitre saw! Now all I need is a table saw. No wonder I am broke.

Now that I had all of the tools, I needed to build something. That's where the idea for the cabinet came into play. The previous owner had built a nasty piece of wooden architecture that was in the spot where my new creation would be. It had to be done. It was all perfect in my head, however; things quickly changed.

I realized that in order to start building something of this magnitude, one has to actually have a game plan and a certain skill set. Well, I had neither and I quickly realized that making building plans sucks, so I figured I wouldn't do it... HUGE mistake. I set about the task like I would a painting. I just kind of started it and let the progress and the process dictate where I would go next. When it was finished it was a piece of shit. It took waaaay too long and was way to expensive. I thought I would be saving us money by building rather than going out and buying. Not the case. Due to my lack of preparation, I made countless trips back and forth to Home Depot. The idea of the cabinet was so simple, however, it was way more complicated and costly than I had ever anticipated.



Keep in mind, all of this construction was going on during weekend intervals. I had to return back to Oak Park during the week so that I could work. Anyways, being the perfectionist that I am, during my five days away from the cabinet I obsessed over what I had done wrong and what I could do to fix it. Erin told me not to mess with it because it was taking way too much time and effort. I said okay. I lied.

The next saturday I woke up super early and went to town in the basement without her knowing. I tore the entire thing apart and rebuilt it all from the ground up using proper techniques and planning. I also remembered to use wood glue this time! Needless to say, the effort was worth it. The final product was so much better than what it would have been if I hadn't have redone it. I think there might be a lesson on here somewhere. Not sure.

Like I said before, the cabinet is okay. It could have been done way better, but I feel that it's pretty damn good for my first project ever! I hate to say it, but I'm actually kinda proud of it. it was a great learning experience. The next project I do is going to turn out so much nicer and now I actually have a game plan for how to do it.

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Dude, I made it!

Whew!  It has been a struggle just to put up a simple blog, but it's on now. 

Hopefully with this blog I can challenge myself to keep producing and to let people in on what I am up to. I'm gonna write about ridiculous things and probably rant a bit, if you can put up with it.  I hope so. Life is going at 1,000 MPH right now for me, so don't judge me if I'm a bit lax on the postings. I am also hoping to meet some more kick-ass artists out there. ( I hate it when people say "kick-ass artist") There's nothing like a healthy dose of inspiration! This is the beginning...

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