The first EP of Dr. Pants‘ current project, The Trip, is coming out June 7th (Go download the first single for free.), and I was lucky enough to be hired to do the album art. The job came with the most excellent perk of getting to listen to super-secret sneak previews of the album. It is really great stuff.

David Broyles (guitarist, vocalist, composer) explained the concept of The Trip, gave me some demos, and pretty much let me run wild. I took a long walk through the park listening to the demos, and I immediately connected with the music. The lyrics have a depth and honesty while still staying true to the nerd rock genre with plenty of sci-fi references. There were a few themes that stood out to me in the music that I wanted to communicate with my illustration. The first is the overarching theme of the project, which is “The Trip”. David had mentioned to me that the project is meant to be composed of honest slices chronicling the trip through life. As the first EP of the project, this serves as the beginning of the trip. Having recently moved from one state to another, I am familiar with the bittersweet aspect of the beginning of a journey. The image that I chose to communicate these things is the moment just before leaving, when you look back one last time at what you are leaving behind. Or perhaps he is looking back, at you, asking “Are you coming?”. Next,there is the dichotomy between the mundane, real life issues in the songs and the fantastic, amazing aspects. These are clearly represented in this image. What isn’t clear, however, is the character of the astronaut. Is he really an astronaut? Or is he just a guy in an astronaut suit with an old, beat up car? Is this trip he is on really going to lead to amazing things, or has he just turned to escapism to avoid reality? You’ll have to stay tuned to the project to find out, but I choose to believe that amazing things await our explorer.

I tried some different techniques with color and texture on this, and I think it worked well, though some of the details don’t show up at business card size (If you want a full-size signed print, let me know and we can work something out, wink wink.).

More importantly, I am very excited to be working on a project with Dr. Pants, an Oklahoma City based “Nerd Power Groove Rock” band which has been favorably compared to “awesome bacon”. I can’t reveal details of the project yet, but I think it is going to be really cool, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Once the project is released, I’ll share my work and process here. Stay tuned. Or, at the very least, be prepared to re-tune at some point in the future.

This tattoo design is a companion to this piece. They are tattoos designed for me and my wife. This one is hers. It was her Christmas gift from me this year (by request).

I really like this illustration. Not objectively, or because of technical merit. Some of the trees are really horrifically drawn, and I never finished it. But I always enjoy looking at it. It is quiet. It’s comfortable and friendly. The awkwardly shaped tables, the leaning grill, the solitary trash can, all have a serenity to them. Pieces like this remind me why I want to draw, why I want to spend all this time scribbling on pieces of paper. Because sometimes I make something that brings me joy every time I see it. And that is pretty neat.

A friend and colleague of mine who has done some acting agreed to “play the part” of the main character in the comic I am working on. This portrait of him served as practice in a number of ways. It is the first piece of comic style art that I have produced completely digitally, using the process from the book I mentioned in my last post. The process is very efficient, as you can build new layers of drawing directly on top of previous layers without any tracing paper, erasing, blue lead, or lightboxes. And I can make little “how to draw” strips like the one to the right. First, draw an oval…

It also gave me a chance to practice getting a likeness, which it succeeds at reasonably well. It was a lot of fun to draw.

I am very excited to have finally produced a comic book page. The last couple months I have been reading myriad books on various comic related subjects, books about perspective, anatomy, drawing comics, inking comics, drawing comics digitally, and so on. I have also been working on all of these things, and this is the first concrete result.

I found Freddie E. Williams II’s book, The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics, to be very helpful in creating an organized, efficient process for creating comics. Unfortunately, I didn’t start reading his book until this page was about half done, so I wasn’t particularly organized creating this page. I did all the pencils for this on paper, but inked it partially with pens and partially on the computer. Hopefully there isn’t an obvious discord between the different processes.

This page is the beginning of a story written by a friend of mine from Chicago. He has written plays before, but creating a comic is a first for both of us. We plan to release it as a web comic, but I have a lot of work to do before it is ready. It is one of two comic projects I’m working on that should be in full swing soon. Excitement!

This is another older illustration, and happens to be one of my first experiments with inking with a brush. Despite some real flaws in both the drawing and the coloring of the piece, I like the result. It has personality. I have this piece online as part of my portfolio, and a college contacted me, asking to use this in a newsletter as Keillor was going to speak at their school.

You can see from the inks that I wasn’t used to inking with a brush, and if the drawing were of a younger person, it may have ruined the piece, but in this case I think the wobbly lines add character. I really like the way his eyes turned out.

I grew up listening to Prairie Home Companion. It is a great radio show, and you can listen to highlights and episodes on the show’s website. Garrison is an excellent storyteller with a beautiful voice.

The illustration is based on a publicity photo by Brian Velenchenko.

Here’s something a little different for today. I went to a They Might Be Giants concert in Chicago last year, and I thought it would be fun to design a series of t-shirts based on the characters from their song “Withered Hope”. This is the only one I finished, and I ended up ruining the actual t-shirt with some iron-on shenanigans. It was still a fun concert.

This was my first attempt at this three tone style, inspired by the beautiful work of Michael Cho. The elegant simplification inherent in the style is challenging to accomplish. It is a visual puzzle. While it is not a style I intend to primarily work in, it was an enjoyable challenge, and maybe someday I will finish the series.

This is an older illustration (sketch) I did just for fun of The character “Ducky” from the show NCIS, played by David McCallum. It was practice getting a likeness in a portrait. After I scanned the inked drawing in, I found lots of problems with it. So I did some serious reconstructive surgery in Photoshop, moving an eye here, restructuring a jawline there, etc. It’s nice not to have to rely on whiteout to make corrections.

I did a rough digital painting to give it  some life.

This illustration is a bit of a contradiction. It is a relatively realistically rendered digital painting on top of a drawing that is clearly not very concerned with realistic perspective or accuracy.  I wanted to capture the beautiful detail of the machine, but I wanted the actual hand drawing to still have an impact on the look of the piece.

I didn’t plan a background when I drew this, and I initially completed this illustration with a very different background. The first background looked like what it was: an afterthought. It didn’t fit. So I revisited the piece, and had the idea for this background, created by scanning pieces of old patterns borrowed from my mother, and adding texture and painted elements in Photoshop. It completes the painting much better.

They certainly don’t make them like this anymore.