Rock Poster

Got a call yesterday that I can do anything I want for the poster as long as it's for a rock show and has the information they need on it and gets done ASAP. So I scribbled up this girl and got to try out some new brushes in the inking and play around with lettering and adding color. Really quite happy with it, and super fun too! These are getting printed as posters and put all over Santa Cruz this week.

Here's another piece I did recently as well, based on some vintage cartoons my client liked. I think the end result was very whimsical, and I like how my hand-lettering turned out too.

Kitty Sketches

I'm thinking about doing a children's project with kitties, so I've been doing lots of sketches of the ones I have around here. Enjoy!

Persona 3 Girls

I've been geeking out over the video game "Persona 3" lately. It's a Japanese fighting game/role playing dating sim where you get engaged in going to school, building up your friendships, developing your traits, and hitting on girls, then you go into the Dark Hour at midnight and fight monsters. Everything about it is so well designed. So the other day while sketching, I drew a bunch of the characaters, and then I had to ink them. Enjoy!

Covers!

I finished the cover for Weird Fishes! It took me several weeks to get to this image, after several attempts and lots of planning and sketching. I had to consider how to convey the story in the book with one image, along with the style of art that you'd see inside, along with using color in a compelling way along with an image that would draw in the reader. I think this one does all of that pretty well...






Here are two earlier attempts at the cover. The first one became too labored and not interesting enough, while the second one not well-enough planned to be the cover of the book. I like the second one quite a bit and hope to do some small postcards or something!

Also, I did a portfolio over at Krop that I really like!

Cocktail Lounge Illustrations

I've been working on some menu illustrations for Red and 515, two fabulous cocktail lounge/restaurants in Santa Cruz. Just yesterday they made their way into the advertising in the SC Metro newspaper! Here they are:


For this illustration for 515, I was asked to do something gothic and whimsical like a lot of the sketches they've seen me do at the bar (I can be found there sometimes, yes). This one was extremely fun and I used some stock textures to bring out the time period.


For the Red Cocktail Lounge, they asked for something just like a particular illustration in my portfolio, but with drinks. So I tried to stick to a similar composition and finishing texture but I customized it with the couches and decor you'll find at Red. Inkwashes, paper textures and photoshop coloring brought it to completion.

Here's the sketch for this piece:



Also, separate from this commission but connected to Red nonetheless, I did this postcard for the event my boyfriend and our friend Addison put on each monday, this was a quick ink drawing I did on the spot one evening, and now it's on postcards floating around our town:



I'm happy that I got to contribute work to local establishments that I'm close to, and I'll be sure to take pictures of the menus once they're printed!

Painting Comics for Ages

So what have I been doing for the past few weeks? Painting my comic. It's been a rapid change from 1-page a week to doing about 15 a week to finish for my book's deadline. I had a couple weeks off to concentrate on the finish of the storyline and planning some new stuff. I've even done a double-page spread! All of this is stuff I can't really share with you until they go up on the site, but I did get a bunch of great making-of shots of one of the pages, and got some help on it, take a look!





Attack of the killer kitties!

Yes, I know, they are hilarious!

*grumble*

Your Music Magazine Interview

Here's a spread I got in Your Music Magazine #65 about Weird Fishes. It turned out nicely, and copies of the book are floating around the Bay Area. Not bad!