Character Sketch: Summertime Lady

So it's been a while since I last posted. That's the thing about work--it takes up all your free time! But seriously, it is good to be busy working and earning money in the current state of the economy.

This is another in my series of character sketches. I used a $1 brush from Porter's in Idaho Falls and sumi ink from Udrecht's in Tempe, AZ. It's based on a photo of an ice sculptress that I'm creating an animation for. I was going thru files on my computer looking to delete anything old and unnecessary, and I found this photo. I thought the pose was really nice and would work as an art deco-styled illustration, so I added the fancy dress and large hat. (She was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts in the photo.) I'm going to add color and a cool background, but I thought I'd let you see the linework, because it did turn out really nice. Check back in a day or two for the full color version!

Where have all the Short Stories gone?

Normally I post artwork and discuss it on this site, but this post is about something that has been bothering me for a long time. The picture has nothing to do with the post other than it is from a comic I published on the Kindle called Euphony in E.

I bought a Kindle a year ago, and one of the many things I loved best about it was the selection of short stories I could download for $.59, $.79, or $1.50; stories that were printed in a magazine years ago and haven't been seen since. Stories that I wouldn't even have known about let alone read otherwise. Stories by Charles Sheffield, Kevin J. Anderson, and L. Sprague De Camp that are as good as it gets. And download I did.

The other day I was browsing the Kindle store to see if any new gems had been added, and to my shock and horror, all these great stories that I read and loved were gone! How can an eBook go out of print? Ok, I know they didn't go out of print, but Fictionwise's contract with Amazon must have expired. Still, I was upset.

I love digital content, but this is an excellent example of the biggest problem with it: licensing and availability. The rights-holder decides to yank it, and the story is gone. This happens with music and movies as well. A physical book isn't so easy to yank, and they can and do show up on eBay and used bookstores. Digital content with DRM makes reselling and redistributing very difficult. (I'm familiar with pirate sites, but those don't help build a market, so I avoid them.)

It's a shame that in a world where we now have the ability for a store to carry EVERY title every written at a near zero cost and never have to worry about going out of print, stories and books aren't more available and more plentiful than they were and are under the current system.

Character Sketch: Cowboy

A month ago I mentioned wanting to do a series of Character Sketches to help me develop a style. If you read the four posts after that you'll notice I didn't post anymore after the fireman. I was going to, but I had been commissioned to create a set of icons, then I finished my short story The Hook (a Wandering Koala tale) and needed to illustrate it. Well, the story is illustrated and published (go buy a copy on Smashwords.com or Amazon.com) and the icons are almost finished. So here is another character sketch.

The fireman sketch was inspired by a magazine sized comic book called Heroes by Marvel Comics. It focused on 9-11 and showed a lot of firemen. This one is a cowboy inspired by the graphic album Tintin in America.

I had never heard about Tintin until recently when a comic book blog talked about the new movie Spielberg and some other famous director are making. It was the writer's favorite comic. Then a month later I made some comments on another artist's work, and he emailed me back saying "thanks" and mentioned Tintin as one of his major influences. Well, I said to myself, "Self, you should check into this Tintin character." So I Wikipediaed him. I discovered there were two dozen graphic albums of adventures, the first two being black & white.

So I went to Amazon.com and ordered the first three, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin in America. Then I emailed the fellow artist back and asked for a recommendation.

I finished Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and really enjoyed it, and am a little over halfway thru Tintin in America. Part of the story involves Tintin dressing up like a cowboy and getting captured by indians. I kind of like cowboys & indians, so I decided to do my next sketch of a cowboy.

This one is different than the first, because it was done completely in Painter. (The fireman I drew with a pencil and inked with a Brush Pen.) I've been wanting to get more into digital art for a while, and Corel Painter plus and Intuos2 tablet work well. I'm happy with how it turned out, and how quickly I was able to finish it. The background is a photograph of the Australian outback, which I thought looked western enough.

So, what do you think?

Illustrated Stories

I've always loved the format of children's storybooks, where they have a picture on one page and the words on the adjoining page telling the story. I've never understood why nobody creates books like that for adults. Comic books and graphic novels are close, but I think something that was written so you only needed the words or only need the pictures for the story would be stronger. (Greg Rucka did create a miniseries released thru comic book stores called Elektra & Wolverine: The Redeemer in this format, and I thought it was brilliant. I used it as a model as well as a book by Jim David called Garfield: Babes & Bullets.)

So I decided to create that. My first story is called The Hook (a Wandering Koala tale). It's about 23 pages of story (small type) and 24 new illustrations with a full color cover. I'm really proud of it. It's a story I've been working on for a long time, and I even have an almost finished comic book version of it. A few panels of the comic made it into the story. Can you guess which ones they were?

Right now I've only published it electronically thru the Amazon Kindle Store and SmashWords (which supplies Barnes & Nobel and the Sony eReader store) so you can find it in any format, including a text file or web page. It's only $1.29, which is a steal. I'm hoping to write a whole slew of short stories. Once I have a dozen or so (or maybe a half dozen) I'll collect them into a paperback.

Digital Art

I've always been a traditionalist, mainly because digital art rarely turns out as well as the traditional stuff. I offer two reasons for this.

First, the technology takes a long time to catch up. Digital is pretty new. The computational power to actually create art has only existed for about 20 years. Traditional art has had thousands of years.

Second, the people that do digital art are usually technology enthusiasts or fairly unskilled artists; the skilled ones are too busy learning the traditional method to do the digital stuff. Just look at all the junk that's been thrown up (pun intended) on the Internet with Flash.

These two factors are why I am a critic of digital art and an opponent of 3D computer generated stuff like Pixar or Dreamworks. I've always said that if you got a great sculptor to create art with a 3D program you would come up with something pretty amazing.

I recently purchased a program called Brushes for the iPhone that is a pretty cool painting program. The artwork you can create with it is really nice--it has a certain Jack Vettriano feel to it. Programs like it and Corel Painter make me feel a lot more favorably towards digital art.

Here is a video of me creating my first painting with Brushes. Enjoy!

Black & White vs. Color

I post a lot of work on a site called ArtWanted.com. People can look at my work, rate it, comment on it, or buy it. Most of my work is black and white linework that I scan and digitally color. Sometimes I'll post both the black and white version and the colored version. I always find it interesting how much more popular the colored version is. I always get more views and more comments.

I personally love black and white. When I was little I had a Richie Rich book that was black and white, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it; they were some of my favorite comics. When I was in college, I picked up my first black & white Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic: Michaelangelo's Chrismas. It was black and white and I couldn't put it down. I immediately started doing everything in black and white and loved it. I started collecting as many back issues as I could. When I got to the colored series, I was very disappointed in the color and felt it detracted. I was glad when they went back to black and white.

But it seems we live in a world where people expect everything to be full color, HD, 5.1 surround sound, on a 72" screen. Is it because all of that adds to the content, or are people just spoiled. If it adds, I'm all for it. But if people are just spoiled, then there is a problem. Sometimes I feel that art is like over seasoned food--there is so much pizzazz that it hides the real beauty or essence. Black & White, I feel, really allows the essence of a work to come out. Also, it's more flexible in reproduction: black and white illustrations work in many more book formats and ebooks, something I'm currently pursuing.

I'm posting two versions of a Christmas card I sent out years ago. When I finished with the black and white linework, I was truly taken back in amazement: it was the greatest thing I had ever created. Then I added color and was again taken aback. Years later I was going thru some old artwork, and I stumbled on the black & white version and was again impressed beyond words. I'm posting them both for you to see and judge for yourself.

Do you like Black & White Art, or does everything have to be in color?

Illustrated Stories

When I was young, I loved illustrated storybooks. I think most people did. You could just read it without the pictures, or just follow the pictures to get the story. Or you could read it with both and have the story fuller, because they compliment each other.

As I got older, I noticed books had fewer and fewer pictures. I always wondered why no one created illustrated novels for adults. Graphic novels are close, but I think we can do better. I love great stories and great art--why not combine them? We do in movies. I have found one example, the three part mini-series Elektra/Wolverine: The Redeemer by Greg Rucka, and it was excellent. Unfortunately, it never caught on.

I also planned on creating an illustrated novel/story someday. Well, that day has arrive. I've written the story, and now I am preparing the illustrations. Here is the first one as a sneak peek for you all. Let me know what you think. I'm planning on black & white interiors, because 1) I love black & white art and 2) they reproduce well on paper and as an ebook.

I'm planning on publishing this story as an ebook at first. Once I have several illustrated short stories (I'm trying to come up with a good name for it--let me know if you have any ideas) I'll publish them as a paperback like I have my novel, The Scientific Method (a Wandering Koala tale). This short story is part of that series.

Character Sketch: Fireman

I think the hardest thing for an artist to do is create a unique style that they like and that their audience likes. I've been struggling with this for years. So as a step forward, I decided to do a series of character sketches. The first one is a Fireman. I was going to call it a fire fighter and actually show a boxer made of fire with boxing gloves and shorts, and I drew a version like that, but it was too silly, even for me. So I went with this version instead. I used a Pigma Brush Pen to do the black and white drawing, then colored it in Corel Painter X. I wasn't crazy about the black and white brush penned version, but I was ecstatic with the finished painting.

I don't think I've found my style yet, but this series should help me take one step closer. Or not.

What do you thing?

Christmas Cards

Every year I make a Christmas card and send it to friends, family, and co-workers. I always create an original illustration and an original poem. I usually pic a Christmas Carol as the them.

This year I was listening to David Archuleta's version of Pat-a-Pan and really liked the "So be merry as you play" line. I used that as the theme.

I drew the card with a Stadler Pencil, inked it with my croquil pen and sumi ink, then colored it in Painter X. I was really happy with the results.

Something I find interesting is how few people say thank you for a Christmas card. I emailed out over four dozen cards and only heard back from 7 people. Is it because I emailed the card people don't value it and don't feel the need to say thank you, or has the world just lost their manners. Or maybe people just didn't like the card and don't want to say anything about it. They all make sense.

Cowboys and Indians

So a friend of mine asked me to create an illustration of him as a Navajo Warrior (he is Navajo so it's fitting). And this is the result. I was really happy with how it turned out.

The figure itself is done with a croquil pen & ink. The background was added digitally. I'm planning to digitally paint it, so be looking for that.