Haven't posted in forever. Here is a little bit of what I've been working on.









and some other things. The comic is a first draft of a much longer comic that I'm drawing for a friend. There is another idea that involves a Zanex dealing tree. It might be the best thing ever. I think I've gotten a lot better but I still need to work on a bunch of things. But it is nice to know for yourself that you're moving even if only by a little bit.

Also have you heard about Inkstuds.com?! It is amazing!


They have a bunch of hour long interviews with some really great talent. They have M. Kupperman and Jeff Lemire and Sammy Harkham! My style is essentially trying to ripping off Harkham and Huizenga. They also have a interview with Brandon Graham who I think is one of the great comic artist of all time. They way he talks about his love for making comics is enough to make me wanna sit in front of some paper for eight hours.

I'm trying out some colors on these new ones. I was looking at some Sammy Harkham pages and he has this slight tint of color to his whole page. His stuff is just so fucking amazing, he's become one of my heros in comics. He does his stuff which is paint-the-wall-with-your-brain good then he edits one of the coolest comic collections out (Kramers Ergot). That's how he makes his living?! I must make this my lifes mission.

Anyway heres my stuff



I went pretty strong on the color for this one. I dunno, I don't HATE it. It does leave something to be desired though...



I tried being a little more subtle with the colors and keep the texture of the paper. Not bad, not bad. Messing around with the color levels was fun. Just messing around is fun.



This is the dream I talked about earlier. Man this dream messed me up for a couple of days. It was so creepy/crazy I saw someone melt and Demons where talking to me. crazy. I don't believe that dreams mean anything to you but that doesn't mean that they can't freak you a little. Abraham Lincoln had a dream that he died, he had it three days before his assassination.
I wanted this one to be normal but I couldn't get the texture out without ruining the ink.

I read about this in National Geographic and thought it was a great story. Two guys live in ice cooler for nearly a month surviving on rain water and regurgitated fish! Amazing! I did learn after lettering this that you should never break a sentence halfway through and move the other half on the other side of the page.



And so it begins.... again! This is the beginning of the style that I'm currently drawing in. A few change will be made, mainly my eyes, but for the most part this is it. No pencil, no preconception also no more interesting stories. Sorry about that. It mostly involves my day summed up into three panels. I know that this isn't really the most original idea but this isn't something "Grand" or "Amazing" it's just a project to make my drawing's better.
I found out much later that she was talking about the band Japan, not the country. Apparently the band wanted to call themselves "Japan" so that when David Bowie went to Japan (The country) people would say "David Bowie is in Japan" making it sound like he was in the band. I don't really like Japan the band, I don't know why she told me this story.



We were listen to My Morning Jacket's Heartbreakn'man when he uttered the Coldplay joke. Then we started talking about judging people based on ONE thing they liked. I said that you needed to get to know them a lot better before you make a conclusive judgement. He said that he'd stop hanging out with people if they didn't like the same movies as him, to which I replied that I hated Wes Anderson's first movie "Bottle Rocket" (which he loves). Then it got a little heated and he told me to chill out. I hate this guy.

Wow, I have this great stack of panels next to me on my desk. What a feeling of accomplishment! Not only that but the work shows a great improvement. I'm not saying that it's great in terms of art in general but in the context of my world it's becoming my greatest project to date. The only other project I remember being this proud of was a cover for a faux comic I called "Max Firepower" which was heavily infulenced by the third "Die Hard" movie and "Terminator". It involved a heavily built rouge cop that played by his own book, then threw the book out the window. I did it like three or four years ago. I still have the cover around here somewhere (still not inked).



This is to make up up for the crappy and hastily drawn American Elf comic I did last time. On this one I did a lot more planning for and took my time with it. Unfortunately the new ink I was using kept bleeding, it's not very good for nibs I've discovered.



This is just a comic complaining about the crappy paper I was forced to use and to complain about the ink. It was speedball superblack (which I stole from a big art chain, karma?) I wanted it because Craig Thompson said he uses it. Craig Thompson is part of the reason I even draw. I look at his pages and I can't believe my eyes. He's going to become one of the all time greats, mark my words. You can just see that he's got this love for the picture he drawing. And have you seen his pages for his new book HABBI. The detail, the DETAIL! He has a blog check it out.



The new paper and ink are amazing. They have been great to me. Death is probably the thing that I think about to most, if there was a pie chart that showed time consumption you could bet that DEATH would be a hell of a slice. But I don't think about it in some lame, worshippy goth way, it's more like a terrified self-aware cow at the slaughterhouse kind of way. The fact that I'll be dead someday it so scary that it keeps me awake for hours. Anyone that says that they are O.K. with dieing are either religious (and I don't mean that in a bad way) or really don't get it, they understand that death is coming but it doesn't really sink in that THEY WILL DIE AND NO LONGER LIVE!

I'm loving this new style of writing. It's so clean, but my post are waaaaaay behind on my drawings so you won't be seeing them for a little while longer.



This was the start of the "Feeling Shitty" week. I don't know why but I couldn't sleep for two days. I tried but to no avail. I was kinda running on sugar at one point. At work we bought these really nice truffles and at home I had a Hershey's Bar. I don't know what it is about chocolate but I love it.



I keep waiting until I'm about to go to bed to do these things and it really shows sometimes, like this time. I just reproduced a James Kochalka comic. I choose this one because it was the simplest to draw. I'm Sorry American Elf. I'm still quitting smoking and it hasn't been as tough as I thought it would be. The hardest part is when I see other people smoke I think to myself "Yes, Yes that would be a great idea right about now" But I don't. Trying times though.

I don't know what it is but I keep getting sick, but only at night. I've started drawing in a slightly new style. I'm no longer penciling it out if the story is just me writing about myself. If the story does involve something outside of myself I will pencil it out. But you won't see it for awhile cause my drawing a way ahead of my postings. Sorry.



This is the start of me writing about my day. When I started doing this I didn't really want to do this but I was running out of stories that I wanted to condense into three panels. I made a rule to myself that I will never actively search for stories, they must just come to me via the interactions of everyday.



I have a book about his life and I just want to say that Fred Rogers is an amazing guy. I wish I could have met him.



I couldn't think of anything to draw. My day was very boring and I had not heard any stories. I saw a poster for "Flight of the Conchords" and it had that cool roundabout pattern so I wanted to imitate it.

I've haven't put up anything in a couple of days because I've just been so tired after work that I just wanna sit and veg out. But make no mistake I have been drawing a comic every day. I've always been a few days ahead of my posts anyway so you'd never know if I did or didn't.



A friend of mine that knows about my project told me about this one. I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever heard about vikings. If ever there was a time for male posturing it would be after you sliced a dude in half with a big fucking axe. Unfortunately when I went to confirm this I couldn't find anything about it. I even found a web page by some woman that calls herself the "Viking Answer Lady" who can apparently read Old Norse text, kinda neat, but even she couldn't help me. This friend of mine though says he definitely read about it and he's not the kinda guy that would lie about this. So I'll post this as the truth as far as I know it to be.



I need to explain. I started looking this one up and tried to think how I was gonna take all this information and condense it. I couldn't. Instead I thought I will just explain this to people. This guy is shit eater crazy. He killed his family then cut out their hearts and put them in his pocket. After that he went home and put them in a zip lock bag to throw them away. Following this he stabs himself in the chest, then goes and turns himself into the police. While he is waiting his first trial he rips out his right eye (that's why he has only one eye in the first panel). The judge thinks he's pulling this as a stunt to get the insanity plea and gives him the chair. As he's waiting on death row he decides to eat his only eye. Shit. Eating. Crazy. Other people have told me different variations of the story so I have no clue if mine it the truest of the true. Still interesting.



I haven't heard any cool stories lately so all these next few posts will be more or less autobiographical. I'm not good enough of a story teller to make these interesting so I'm sorry. Anyway, I'm trying to quit smoking so to help me with my oral fixation I'm chewing gum and mints like crazy. More specifically JILA gum and mints. They're from Australia or Indonesia and they have the coolest packaging. It's a well constructed box with green and white pin stripes that ACTUALLY CLOSES AND STAYS CLOSED. Also the Mammoths. The problem is that sugar-free gum and mints are sweetened with Phenylanine and it can cause a laxative effect if you chew a lot of them. I'm trying to replace cigarettes with this gum. Crap.

I didn't post anything yesterday so I'm going to post two things today. First is a comic about nothing. It was late at night and I needed to go to bed so I drew the fist things that came to my head.



Next is a short bit about Syd Barrett.



This needs a little explaining. Syd Barrett was the head of Pink Floyd in the early years. He was completely insane and there are many more stories then the ones I have written. His insanity has been blamed on the copious amounts of acid he would take but most likely it was genetic. The last panel is a picture of him, years after leaving the band, at the recording for "Wish You Were Here" which oddly enough was an album about him. I don't like Pink Floyd at anytime but this is a pretty interesting story. Also in the first panel I made him look like a cross between Paul Pope and that one bad guy from Tenchu.

After the last comic about Garcia Moreno I kinda went on a interesting death hunt and found a few. This isn't really one of them. He had mental issues and substance abuse problems, so I guess those have to be put into consideration. Also I think it's still in debate if he even committed suicide because his girlfriend was there when it happened and other things.

I know you can live for around two minutes without your heart pumping blood to your brain without giving you brain damage but for how long you can go while still conscience? I don't know. But he DID have at least some time to contemplate his actions. Weird to think about, Right?

I came across this on the internet one day and thought that writing "God Does Not Die" on the ground with your own stump of a hand while being assassinated was pretty manly. I sure he did other things that lead to his brutal death but I only read that it was mainly involving religion. I also read that Black Beard was stabbed something like twenty times and shot a few before he went down.

I Think I'm just gonna stick with dip pens for this stuff now. They've been working the cleanest so far and the look they give you is what I'm looking for.