Holiday Portraits

Here are two portraits I was working on in a last minute Christmas rush. The first one is of my 3 year old nephew Owen. He loves my "Robot and Bird" image and is big into Thomas the Tank Engine. I decided to put him in a fantasy world where the robots make the trains and play by his side. Owen's reaction to the portrait was the best. He was so confused. He would stare at it, then walk away, then walk back to stare some more. Too much to take in at once I guess. Then he pointed out that Toby (boxcar in the middle) isn't real because I forgot to paint the number 7 on his side. Oops! Guess when playing with trains is your entire life these little details matter. I promised to bring my paints along the next time I visit and fix it for him.

The other portrait is of Rosie, my brother's girlfriend's dog. She commissioned me to paint it as a gift for my brother since he's totally in love with the friendly lab mix. I tried to amp up the colour in the piece to make it more interesting and allude to her lively, happy personality.

Part of an anthology...

I'm doing some pro bono work for a comic anthology by The Max and Beatrice Wolfe Centre for Children’s Grief and Palliative Care.

Winged cat

This is the image I painted for the giveaway on my facebook group. It's a 6 x 6 " acrylic on canvas with 1.5" stretchers.

I was struggling over what to paint. I wanted it to be something that would appeal to everyone, since I had no idea who would win. Then after getting frustrated, I thought: "Hey, they're getting a free painting.. they should be grateful no matter what the image."
.. and then I painted a cat with wings.

Kid's party gone wrong

This is a new image I cooked up for a calendar promotion that my rep, Three In a Box will be releasing in the new year.

Life Drawing - Dec 06/07

Ten minutes...




15 minutes...

AWOL'd REDRAWN!

A month ago, I finished inking issue 2 of the AWOL'd series. The day after, I had a Skype chat with comic icon Larry Hama about my work on issue 1. To sum things up, he listed all the faults in my technique in storytelling and art and left me devastated. Then I looked at the freshly-inked work from the day before and I felt sick of it. Hama was right. So the next day after our chat, I took all of his advice and applied it while redrawing issue 2.
Now that I've finished redrawing issue 2, I'm going back to redrawing issue 1, and by then ... the third chapter should kick ass.

The majority of chapter 2 takes place in a train station where Karli, Norton, and Leeves talk about their game plan after escaping their covert-ops unit. Lots of talking for 15+ pages, and I had a habit of drawing too many close-up shots and less shots of the characters 'acting'. The second draft fixes that.

Here are sample pages displaying the before(left) and after(right).

page 5


page 14 - Notice the first two panels in the first draft of page 14 is similar to the last panel in page 5 (first draft). Some pazazz is added to the second draft.


page 15 - When I add the ziptone, it'll help show Karli, Norton, and Leeves being followed by an agent then split up.


Bye!

-J