Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Reubens!

The National Cartoonists Society has announced their Divisional Award Nominees for 2012, and I'm proud to say that Muscles Diablo in: Where Terror Lurks is one of them!

I'm pretty overwhelmed, and obviously very flattered to be nominated. There are some great cartoonists up this year (in my category, and in all the others), and I'm really looking forward to meeting some of them at the Reubens Weekend--which, as it turns out, is being held in my hometown. Check out the great poster for the event drawn by MAD's Tom Richmond:



I don't really know what else to say other than contratulations and good luck to all the other nominees. See the complete list of 'em here.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Native American Classics

Possibly because of my participation in Trickster: Native American Tales a few years ago, I was asked to illustrate another Native American folktale in comic-book form for the highly-regarded series "Graphic Classics." This one is called "The Story of Itsikamahidish and the Wild Potato" and it's about a talking potato and a farting coyote and you kind of have to read it to understand. I really love drawing talking-animal stories, and these are some of the best. Here's a sample page:



Anyway, you can read all about it here and order a copy direct from the site or at a comic shop near you!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Storybook Public Library

A few thoughts on self-promotional pieces here. I've found that if I'm not careful, I tend to fall into the same routines when creating self-assigned pieces to add to my illustration portfolio. A lot of the stuff in my sketchbook tends to feature one (or two) characters in an outdoor environment, either standing still or walking from side to side, maybe smiling out at the viewer. That's fun and easy to draw, but it doesn't exactly show off the full range of my abilities. When I started working on this drawing, I knew I wanted to create something really good, something with as much specificity and attention to detail as if it were a published illustration assigned by an art director. My girlfriend--who's heard me complain about this problem before--challenged me to place the characters in a defined interior space and to make sure I showed them interacting with each other, displaying a range of actions and emotions. Anyway, you can see what I came up with below. I think it turned out pretty okay!