TEUTON: Volume Three

Happenings!

A couple months ago I attended a sketch event for the release of Batman #0 at Stadium Comics. You can read all about that here.

One of the sketch covers I did was for the store itself to raffle away on their web series, Unboxing Wednesdays. I never learned what happened to that book--until now...



I was in fucking tears watching this.

I love everything about it: the parading of the comic, the concealed identity, the epic music in the background.

Thank you, Mystery Prize-Winner, for making me feel like a somebody!

Speaking of Unboxing Wednesdays, do you watch it? You totally should! Here's their latest episode, where things get super classy in anticipation of their first ever Art Exhibition and Sale event. I fucking love Ricky and Kevin as a duo. I want to see them solve mysteries...

New Prints

A change in my daily routine prevented me from posting a This Week In Drawing... (only 2 installments in!), but this week I'll be posting two weeks worth of art and it promises to be a whopper.

Anyhow, prints of my Joker and Punisher illustrations are now available!

I'll be selling them tomorrow at Stadium Comics' All-New X-Men Event where a $1 from every sale of All-New X-Men will go towards the Movember cause.

So come see me tomorrow at Stadium Comics from 11-4 for a sketch and a print!

This Week In Drawing... 002

It's Friday, which means it's time for my second installment of This Week In Drawing...

DEEP SEA

Last Saturday Stadium Comics hosted the first ever Halloween Comic Fest at Shopper's World, Brampton, which I attended along with many of my comic pals. It was a hoot. As always, I had an excellent time and was sorry I couldn't enjoy the company of pals like Ty Templeton, Shane Heron, Brian Evinou, Phil McClorey, Agnes Garbowska and Vince Sunico for a longer stretch of time. You can check out all the photos here at Stadium's Facebook page.

The very seriously cool thing about Halloween Comic Fest was the debut of Deep Sea, a self-published indie book by two very rad dudes, Ricky Lima (writer) and David Bishop (artist). I've known Ricky a while as a super funny chum but had never read anything he wrote. For shame! What Dave and Ricky serve up in their 8-page tale is seriously eerie and cool. David Bishop's been on my radar for a little while now as a self-made storyteller who is truly practicing the medium for the love of it. From his first issue of Stranger--his own twisted take on a zombie uprising--to the stylistic pages of Deep Sea, he's a promising artist who shows every sign of growth in the craft. The book is not without it's flaws--little things that hamper almost any indie book--but the strong, simple plot and clear storytelling show that both writer and artist have a firm grasp on spinning a yarn. For me, it's exciting to see two cool people make good music together. I'm super happy Rick and Dave's first effort came out so well, and I'm excited for what both these two creators will do in the future.

Be sure to hit up either Ricky or Dave to see how you can get your mitts on a copy!

THE JOKER

While at the event I sketched several things for nice folks, but my goal for the afternoon was to ink my portrait of the Joker in his New 52 incarnation. I boasted earlier on here that it was to be my Halloween card. Boy was it. Have a look at the process...

THE SHINING

This week at Spitballin' Comics we celebrated some of our favourite horror movie icons from the 1980's. I chose The Shining because it still gives me the creeps and I, like many other creators working from home I'm sure, can relate to the state of cabin fever Jack Torrance is eventually driven mad by. Well, the ghosts played a part too, but I as of yet have no experience with the super natural. Anyway, I had two different finals for my Spitballin' piece, but I chose one over the other because I felt the character needed to show strongly. Although I've come to like the second version better...

HALLOWEEN

I didn't dress up this year, but fellow illustrator Becka Kinzie paid me the great compliment of dressing as my pin-up character from Horror In The West. What's more, her make-up job is pretty fucking good...

TEUTON Vol.3

I've been working on the next long chapter of Teuton, starting with page layouts and thumbnails. Here's a smattering of what this week yielded...

DRAWINGS & UPCOMING

Here's a quick look at things to come from me in the coming weeks, including a peek at next week's entry to Spitballin' Comics...

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Card 2012

TOMORROW I'll be attending the Halloween Comic Fest at Stadium Comics in Shopper's World, Brampton! I'll be joined by many wonderful talents, including my #1 collaborator, Fred Kennedy!

Come see me draw my very special halloween card, as seen above, tomorrow morning and afternoon and join in the festivities.

This Week In Drawing...

Beginning here and now is a new weekly segment where I will showcase all the art I've done in the past seven days, aptly titled This Week In Drawing.

While tidying my work space it occurred to me that I'm now drawing more than ever. I don't just mean work on Teuton or other sequential projects, but I'm also doing more commissions and practice sketching than ever before.

This increased output of art is no accident. I'm trying very hard to hone my craft and become speedier. While there aren't always a series of finished pages and pieces I can show off in a week, there are lots of little sketches, unfinished drawings and lost thoughts on paper that accumulate. It's here in this segment those will be shared.

Powie.

This week I worked on two Marvel sketch variants commissioned by a regular patron of Stadium Comics. The dude is a huge fan of The Punisher and challenged me draw Big Pun dispatching the variant covers' titular characters as harshly as I could imagine.

First was The Death of Spider-Man variant for Ultimate Spider-Man #160. Although I didn't read that storyline, I was aware the Punisher was partly responsible for Ultimate Spidey's downfall. So I chose a composition that reflected that particular plot, but also recalled The Punisher's first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #129. (FYI; my favourite Spidey/Punisher comic is Amazing #577)

The second cover, Wolverine #310, I began loosely without much forethought into the composition. Whenever I think of Wolverine scrapping with the Punisher, I think of that issue by Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson that saw Logan getting his face blown off and being steamrolled. What I recall most is the reaction of Frank Tieri, who was writing Wolverine at the time, and was so very pissed at how Ennis handled Wolverine that Tieri responded in kind with Wolverine #186. Though I think Ennis got the better of them both. Frank Castle proved to be the far nastier fighter in both comics, and Tieri suggesting the Punisher is a closet homosexual at the end of his respective book felt like juvenile name-calling. 

Anyway, this is all to say I couldn't get the image of a shotgun blast to the face out of my mind. I was really pleased with what came out. I put more work into the pencils than I normally do and got cold feet about inking it...

Another commission that came my way was for a young boy's birthday. The lad wanted a Mega Man, and that's exactly what homie got. Here's the sketch and the final...

And of course there was this weeks entry to Spitballin' Comics: Sailor Moon. As I say in that blog post, she's a character I'm largely unfamiliar with and I had low expectations for this particular sketch. My first draft looked like she was doing something indecent with her wand. Then the water colours caused the ink to bleed. When I thought it was pooched I left it for a time, and when I returned I was able to make it work.

Then there is always my regular comic work. This week I turned in the final page for the Teuton: Volume One reprint. You can see all the new pages for the reprint here and here.

While working on Teuton: Volume Three, I'll also be doing interiors for a story called The Forgetting in the third issue of Undertow, which is written by Luke Donkersloot and impeccably illustrated by Gibson-Fucking-Quarter. Learn more about Undertow @ The 7th Wave, and hear Gib talk about Undertow with the wonderful Alice Quinn from TdotComics here.

Here's some early page roughs and character designs for the book:

Lastly, here's some character roughs for a story I'll be writing as well as drawing. I won't say any more about it just yet:

New Sub-Standard Sequential Art!