APE Starts today!

I hope to see everybody at APE today, booth 286 and 287 is where you can find me and Brittney. Because I'm crazy I started (and finished!) this print last night. Perfect for Halloween times!

I will be tweeting at APE, so if you want you can keep up with me there!

Countdown to APE: Tree Girl!

Here's another print I just finished for APE. I haven't done too many pieces in this vertical format, so it was interesting trying to come up with a composition. I wanted a fall piece and this seemed to fit the bill.

Brittney and I will be at Table 286 and 287...be sure to stop by and say hi!

New APE print!

Here's a new print that will be available at APE this upcoming weekend! One of my favorite spots in San Francisco is the Palace of Fine Arts. Here's my take on it...

Brittney and I will be at tables 286 and 287. Check the handy map below for details. More APE prints to be revealed this week!

D is for Dogs

It's a Chow-chow, chowing down on chow mein!

Schnauzers always look so smart to me. And like old men.

I love Boston Terriers...they look like bat-dogs to me.

These mini-prints will be coming to an APE table near you! Brittney and I are looking forward to bringing everyone a slew of awesome new stuff at this years APE con, so be sure to stop on by our tables! (These may also make an appearance at this year's Purrcasso!)

North Beach Sketchcrawl

Had a great time on this last crawl in SF. Great friends, weather, and food! Started in Portsmouth Square and made our way up Columbus into Washington Square park. Here's some sketches.

Erik Tiemens Mendocino Workshop

Last weekend, Mayka and I took a trip three hours north to Mendocino so that I could attend Erik Tiemens's gouache landscape workshop. Meanwhile she had her own adventures. The workshop was full of great demos and I feel like I learned a lot. Erik is certainly a master and it's great that he's so willing and happy to share his wealth of knowledge. Here he is doing a demo:

 

And the demo itself, which was very useful:

It was a two day workshop, and there was time in the middle of both days for us to go outside and sketch around Mendocino.On the end of the second day we worked on a more finished painting and Erik came around and gave individual help. Here are some of my warmups/sketches and a slightly more finished painting:

I got to a point with that last painting where I felt like I didn't know what else to do with it. I had Erik take a look at it (paintbrush in hand) and he just started going to town...scrubbing bits out, adding contrasting colors, foreground elements, eliminating symmetry, etc. If there's one thing I took away from the workshop, it is to be less fiddley and attached to my paintings and be more willing to take broad action with them.

As for Mendocino itself, it is a really strange town. I constantly felt like I was in a Hitchcock film. The town is very small and remote and foggy. It seems that everyone there is an artist of some sort, which gets surprisingly annoying after a while. Considering that 90% of the workshop was from San Francisco, I am hoping Erik has more workshops in the Bay Area. Here are some "Mendo" photos; eerie and charming at the same time:

 

That last one is not actually from Mendocino. On our way home we decided to take a "shortcut" from highway 1 over to 128 because we thought 1 would be too long and windy to take all the way back. BAD IDEA. We ended up on "Mountain View Road"  - winding up and down a mountain top in the middle of nowhere for an hour (an EXTRA hour than it took to get there) If the car had broken down I'm pretty sure we would have just died in the woods. We both ended up carsick from the twists and turns and constant braking...but at least I got that photo.

In other news, APE is coming soon! Will have lots of new work to post shortly.

Dr. Sketchy's Burlesque Drawing

Finally made it to my first burlesque drawing session put on by Dr. Sketchy's here in SF. Had a great time, looking forward to the next one.

Illustration Friday: Modify

 Here's a little piece I did as part of the print sets that I traded around at Comic Con. (Thanks to all the great folks that traded with me!) I've taken the classic 1950's pinup idea and modified it slightly to be with aliens on a distant planet. ;] I apologize for the lack of posts of the last month or two - things have been rather hectic lately. (I moved to a new place, made it to San Diego, and have been hard at work on the upcoming WonderHill website.) Will have more to post soon.

Comic Con '09!

I have returned from the land of stars and nerds! Comic Con was pretty wild this year. The usual crowds and and frustration was balanced nicely with meeting some idols (Eric Goldberg, Glen Keane, Shane Glines, Doug TenNapel, Ted Mathot, Chris Sanders, Damon Bard...the list goes on!)

Let's start with my loot:

There's some awesome stuff in there including sketchbooks from Chris Sanders, Cory Godbey, John Nevarez, Craig Elliot, Javier Guzman, Creaturebox, and Shane Glines. Other books include "Who is Torch Tiger?", "Monster Zoo", "Wonderland",  "Flight 6", "Cora", and "Seductive Espionage". I also got some sweet prints from Corey Godbey, Scott C, Justin and Josh Parpan, Joey Chou, and Kei Acedra. Awesome stuff!

Here is Liz Ito striking her best Yuki 7 pose:

(Liz also made that sweet little Fox plush toy you see up there!)

This picture (a rather famous one now) was shown during the Disney panel. John Lassetter, John Musker, Brad Bird...all in the same class together in college...the lovely lady in the upper right corner is Nancy Beiman, my thesis advisor from RIT. The highlight of the Disney panel was seeing Miyazaki chat onstage with Lassetter, and also the hilarious "Groovin' with Ken" clip to promote Toy Story 3.

Here are some crazy costumes spotted at the Con:

Who ya gonna call?

 

  

  

  

Man, that guy is a scary Wolverine. He was there in the same blood-drenched getup last year.

On a lighter note, here is Mayka having some quality time with Lilo and Stitch.

And now for something completely different - 3D!

Here is my one and only foray into 3D art for videogames. These were done as a test when I applied to Three Rings, over two years ago. At the time they thought they might be hiring me to work on Bang! Howdy, (now defunct) and I would have been doing lots of modeling and texturing. It was a western-themed game and I made this fun low-poly train as a set piece. It was never used for anything, and I think it was the last time I really touched Maya! Maybe I will post the character design test I did for them as well.

 

 

Terrible Yellow Eyes

Here is my contribution to Terrible Yellow Eyes, a tribute site to Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." This was a lot of fun to paint.

I've also uploaded a desktop wallpaper version of this piece to Flickr.

Here is some process on the piece:

 

 

  

As you can see I change my mind alot when painting. I'm constantly trying different colors, shapes, poses, etc. Sometimes the whole thing can get so muddled that I will open up my original sketch file just to make sure I've still got the essence of my original drawing.