I’m working on a tee design for an internet acquaintance of mine, and skilled photographer, Naughty James.

I want to give it a movie poster/book cover sort of feel. This is the sort of rough I pass on to a client for an initial design vetting. Once a couple of revisions get made, I start to work on a final image.

In this instance, I passed it along without the requisite camera in place (I need some reference from Mr. Naughty - I want to drop in a camera he uses and likes). Normally, I’d get that first, but this was a pretty laid back brief and I was eager to get his eyes on it.

Getting better with hand lettering is a high priority. This was fun to try.

I’ve a piece in the newly released Oddica magazine (six issues big, yay!).

It’s a detailof my Metalman Volume 2 image, though not the same detail shot shown above. I’m pretty proud of that one, so I tend to offer it quickly when these calls for existing pieces show up.

While you’re at Oddica, check out their offerings. There’s a bunch of new stuff since last I looked. I particularly dig Moops Vs. Wolf by Simon Noynay:

Fray magazine, who, in their own words “…is about true, personal stories and original art…” is back. They went away a while ago as you might recall. I’d actually been a fan of the mag in the past.

When my friend, and art collective compatriot, Chris Bishop exercised his capacity as illustration wrangler there and asked me to contribute an illustration for their (then) forthcoming relaunch, I was pretty excited.

The final image is seen above, the full article it accompanies can be read here, and the (extensive) process work behind creating the image can be found below.

Initially, I doodled a quick sketch in Alias Sketchbook Pro. I like the program’s simple tools. They force me to not spend a ton of time on this step, which is good. As you’ll see, the image changes a lot from this color rough as we go on.

After figuring out the colors, or so I thought, I started inking the piece. I knew that the bank robber in the tale needed to look smug and satisfied. He thinks he got away with his heist. I planned on putting a helicopter in the side window, but time would later dictate otherwise.

Herein lies the point of derailment. I had just reinstalled Painter 6.1. Yes, you read that right, Metacreation’s Painter 6. Not Corel’s subsequent releases. What can I say? I’m a purist! I wanted to try and lay some painterly colors under the inks as a sort of cathartic experimentation. No one wants to stagnate, right? Trying new things is integral to getting better.

Note the pathetic, laughable, placeholder helicopter!

I wasn’t feeling the color scheme any longer, so I jumped into a total repaint under the inks. Since this method isn’t my typical one, I was really feeling around blindly and hoping for something to just click.

While not bad, my lack of experience with this style ultimately slowed me down.

As I should’ve done from the start, I opted for my normal style. Things immediately started to feel right with the piece.

Some further tweaking with the colors, and I was pretty confident I could wrap it up quickly (which was necessary - I had wasted much of my own time with the painterly experimentation).

Ultimately, I opted for a strong red and blue lightsource to indicate the presence of the police and, while not as fun or engaging as a helicopter, it suffices. Lesson learned: experiment on work that doesn’t have a deadline!

In a shameless attempt to ingratiate myself to the Threadless community at large, I started a blog post over there where I offered to draw as many members as zombies as humanly possible. I thought I was going to have more time than I ended up with on Saturday, but I still managed to get a few done and will continue to poke away at the ever expanding list whenever I feel like practicing likenesses.

One such likeness was of, I assume, a member’s kid. I took a video of the ~15 minute process and am posting it as a screencast. Unlike my previous efforts, I’m actually yammering on like a total asshat throughout the ordeal in real time. It was pretty distracting to talk and draw. Drawing is usually a very solitary experience for me. Let me know if it’s quasi-informative, annoying, helpful, or any combination of the above.

I would rather have posted part two to my Zombie Hand tutorial, but my PC ate the recording when its hard drive took a crap a few weeks back. Le sigh. To make up for it, in addition to this more put-together video, I have a few new ones, sans sound or anything fancy, on my YouTube account.

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