A little workspace mock up I did as we look at a reconfigure.

Painting covers for a throwback IP, having a ton of fun with color and era styling.

More Random Sketchbook Stuff

 This is a camping trip we took the kids on,  super relaxing to go with just our family, no obligations whatsoever.  I sat and did this start to finish...yeah, pretty relaxing, it was great.

 Did this on a six hour plane trip.  I know what you're thinking, a little masculine, it started out as a dude but then, I have this little card I play once in a while, the artistic license.  I might take this through painting.

Brand new Copic markers to play with.  Been using them quite a bit since I started buying them. I think I've got about twenty of them now.  I think I just like having a medium to color in my sketchbook, it gets pretty sterile when all there is is pen and pencil work to look at.  

Day Job Stuff

Here's a smattering of pieces I've done at my job. You can take a look at our backyard site and our commercial site.  

To Ink or Not to Ink

This is something in my sketchbook I did with my Pentel Pocket Brush pen (I love that thing). I only finished her head in my sketchbook, the rest of the torso is done in PS, I tried this guy Frenden's brush set. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how variable it was and how much it was like my brush pen.  This doesn't necessarily push me all the way over to doing all my inking in PS but it helps. Maybe it's my tablet that just doesn't have the precision I feel when doing it by hand, not sure.

Perspective Sketches

I've been doing some perspective studies.  My work has had me doing several renderings for site proposals.  I've found my perspective skills have gotten rusty with disuse.  I did a couple of these to exercise photoshop tools I don't normally use. 

  This is a large sketch I did for the asteroid mining rig story.  Which turned into Sketchup models, below.  I did the models to speed the perspective drawing process.  

                                     



                                     

New Stuff

I started this job a month or so ago and having a blast.  I have no idea where the storyline is going to end up but it's off to a pretty strong start. I'll try to keep up with the development here.  

This is the science hero, so far I'm really enjoying myself fleshing these out.  I like the vintage eighties walkman addition there.  This also some of my first work with Copic markers,  I like them a lot...when I'm bored of the computer.  The ink and marker combo is nice and clean and gives a good comic feel in my sketchbook.  I can't seem to let go of the inking by hand, I prefer painting with PS but the inking still leaves a lot to be desired.

Product Design

Quick product render in SketchUp.  This is a reference tool used for presentations.

Some product design work I did for a commercial zip line company. This is stage 2, mixing form and function can be tricky but satisfying.

Art night at Sleadd's

Our evening consisted of some quick warm ups.  I came home with 5 or 6 rough sketches.  It really is exciting to get together with other horribly self conscious people and create work that no one else will really admire. 

                                       

I did most of the work with super soft woodless pencils, except this one. I unsheathed my laptop and whittled this little thing in the final hours of holy communion with my compatriots.

Overcast Value study

Pleasantly overcast afternoon the other day. I loved how the super dark trees popped against the yellow leaves, I never would have put these colors together in my imagination. I guess that why it's good to get outside once in a while. 

Stephanie Portrait

This was a sketch I did of my 7 year old, Stephanie. She loves her very pretty dresses. I was trying the super smooth brush look.  The more I do this color thing the more difficult it seems to get. Maybe my standards are getting higher for myself and I should back off and not care.

Value Study

Over the Thanksgiving week I got a ton of drawing and painting time in. My Wacom pen died right after this study, so I finished the week in my sketch book.  The bottom shot was a view out of one of the windows at the Gold Beach house. I've seen many value studies but never really used them. It was a very helpful step.

Adventure Club Concepts

 These are all sketches for an adventure story.  This is the boy cousin, a rash teenager. We've picked a couple shots and will develop those further.

 This is the girl cousin, very plain and more introverted and careful than the boy is.  It's interesting how these personality traits color my sketches for these characters.

Just something for the imagination.  The setting for this is New York in the 1920's.  This might be a dock or something. Their personalities are showing a bit.  I'm looking closer at haircuts and 20's fashion.

Dreamworks Fan Art Entry

 The thumbnail concept I started with. The fireplace is in one of the previews of the film Rise of the Guardians, but still took some license.

 Roughed the background in with Sketchup.  Even though I had a pretty clear picture of what I wanted, I still messed around with character placement throughout, especially Sandman.

 Flipped it but left my light source references on the left so when I flipped it again a bunch of my shading was wrong. UHGGG.

Flip back.  Starting to clean up nicely.  Still hate Sandy in front, What do I do with him?

The final rendition. Overall happy with how it turned out.   Ended up with three lights sources, two overhead and the fire behind. Had a lot of fun.

The Good Doctor

This is the first of a series of concepts I've been working on. I do a lot of sketches and have high hopes for the finished paintings but don't always have time to whip them out immediately.  This one will be fun to paint.

Latest Caricature

A couple weeks ago I met Clayton. He's a fun personality. He wanted some caricatures of himself for his website. He and I worked through some ideas and came up with the green one here. This was a fun project. I'm really discovering humor and...even fun with these playful characters I've been doing lately. 

Fast SubGun

This is something I sketched out on a white board at work. I liked so painted it.

The look out

I've been challenged by nature. The fam and I went to the Oregon coast over new year and had some really good observation time. No tablet time, just really good sit, relax, play with the kids and look at stuff time. I loved now so different light effects could happen in one spot. I did this without the luxury of looking at it. 

She Nemisis

More characters inbound. This loose cartoony stuff is doing wonders on my psyche, not to mention it's so much faster. I'll have to decide though, whether we use a little more loose stylized design for this next story or something more mature and realistic. 

Dick Durge Concept

This is some character and prop work for a comic pitch. The cover was an alternate. I had a lot of fun with this, the creator gave us a bunch of latitude.

The melancholy sheriff

Starting to do my artwork digitally start to finish, it's so much easier painting under the sketches.

This was fun. I haven't done many cartoon looking characters so I was excited this came out the way 

it did.  

Sunset Study

My goal here was just getting the color in place. It's festinating what colors are here. The blue in the sand and blazing yellow in the windows.

Landscape Study

This is a landscape exercise I took from a photo. I found I really don't have a very good handle on how outdoor scenes light. Obviously this needs some work to get it to a finished state. This is me doing something that doesn't particularly interest me.   

Character Concept

This is some concept work for a project I'm working on.

This is our heroin. Something of a Tomb Raider feel.  We have 

several cool characters planned. These are my efforts at a ten year

old girl.  The tool is Painter 11. I made the mistake of only making it 

100 dpi so there is not much opportunity for detail. 

BattleChick

 

I have story ideas for this one.The girl that finds her mother instinct and can get downright mean. This also was a recent exercise with color pencils. 

Man and Machine

I finished the guys then couldn't 

decide on a background. It was either 

this or a pile of destroyed enemies.

Ink over color pencils

I wanted to see how well ink applied to color pencils

Wicker Chair in Pencil

Kerrie & I went to Bend for our anniversary and there was this chair in our room. I thought wow, that would be pretty hard to draw with all the wicker stuff on it. It took me way too long to do it but turned out pretty good. 

The Asteroid by me

This will be all for tonight. I put this together for the asteroid short Jen and I started. I have not settled on a title yet but we have some fun ideas for it. This is the piece I will submit to zudacomics. I'm about 60% finished with the whole thing. I'm shooting for a little playful on the character style but realistic on the mechinery. Here's the site.

Artiface Inks

This is the first page of a story that my sister Jen Mortimore wrote a year or so ago. She let me use it to see if we could adapt it for comic use. So far it has turned out well. As I finish up the following pages I'll post them. I have only penciled three and she has only written eight, so for now it'll be short.

Cockpit

I thought I'd throw this cockpit shot in. I used a couple pretty small sizes of Microns in this. I'm amazed at how fine some of the lines are. It's probably not something you typically find in comics. I am, however not altogether happy with how the guys head is...sized. I'm threathening to reink it to my satisfaction.