My good friend Jacob Mercy has a journal comic.

Similar to how this blog started out back in the day, only more coherent. I colored today's episode, seen below, but he's also done several others on his own. Check them out at http://jacobmercy.com/nausea2/.



Jacob challenged me to color the strip in under an hour, which is what he tries for when drawing it. It took me more like two hours this time, but I'm hoping for another shot -- stay tuned.

Vanilla Ocean

I was trying to come up with something to draw last night and somebody happened to say "vanilla ocean". I think they were describing some ice-cream.



Later I drew these dudes:

Mom's cat

I only finished her head before she moved.

24-hour comic attempt #2, post #2

For once, I actually care whether the navigation bar overlaps my work. Please scroll down to view it:
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Back from vacation

I never got to re-finish my 24-hour comics project during the trip -- the only chances I got were on the road, which turned out to be too bumpy, and before bed, which didn't work out either due to some weird random driver conflicts that I didn't manage to fix until I was on my way home. Computers!

What I WAS able to do on the road is to touch up and upload all my vacation photos -- enjoy!


click to open the gallery.

24-hour comic attempt #2

I just spent 24 consecutive hours digitally painting the first 7 pages of a comic I've been waiting to make since maybe 2005. Photoshop ate about a half-hour's work, but I'm too tired to redo it right now. I'll have to fix it on the way to San Francisco, but then I'll upload it via cellular modem and you can see it right here. This is basically the prologue, and the rest may never come, but I think what there is came out rather pretty.

Man am I tired!

Wedding Invitation

Hey I guess I never got around to posting this. It was the invitation for my friends' wedding and I think it turned out pretty well.

drew these like a month ago after a few beers

Just got around to coloring them

Butterfly

Trying to get back into drawing weird stuff right after waking up in the morning. I colored this one in my car after driving home from work.

karaoke always makes me want to draw

Corey competed in a Guitar Hero tournament

He won.

You draw a line or two...

...then you hand the sketchbook to Marissa and she adds a couple more and passes the pad to Jacob and he does some and then he passes it back to you...



...and so on.

Squatty, the largest gnome.

When someone comes up and gives me an interesting thing to draw I tend not to ask them about whatever inside joke it's for -- not knowing why you're drawing a gnome farting on a flower just makes it that much more entertaining.

T-Shirt Brainstorms

I've been fooling around trying to come up with a t-shirt design with which to christen my new silkscreen press. I can do up to three colors, but I'd probably do well to keep it to one or two for the first run. Anybody want any of these on a shirt?

"Ninja Turtle"


"Haystack Rock" adapted from a photograph by my sister, Molly Soloway


"A pear and its arch-nemesis"


"Stuffed Monkey"

Well the new drink-and-draw group is going great, although there's still lots of room for new members. I've been asking Steven Wilber what to draw, and he's been coming up with all these great comic strips right off the top of his head.











Also I did this goofy dude using a dry brushpen and I like how he came out.

Drink & Draw

I'm organizing this little evening of drinking and drawing, which I hope will be repeated regularly. I made a little ad for it so I could post it on people's MySpace pages and whatever, and I suppose it belongs here as much as anywhere. If you're in Portland or plan to be, feel free to click through and sign up!


Dude and falcon both traced from a photo.

Another doodle using Microsoft OneNote

This time I was on a conference call, so it was even easier to be sneaky!

More drawing in bed

Saturday mornings allow for more thorough drawing before getting up.

helmet.png

Another drawing done in bed, this time immediately after waking up -- before even putting my glasses on. I spent half my lunch break coloring it.



I like this little experiment -- my subconscious mind has good ideas for drawings. If I ever actually remember a dream, I'm gonna try and capture it.

First Thursday Link-O-Rama

The first Thursday of every month, the galleries of Portland's Pearl District open their doors to the public; as a result, most of the good art shows open on that day. Two of the guys I used to drink and draw with on a weekly basis were revealing their new Public Access show and accompanying comic book at the Sequential Art Gallery so I decided to show up. Their project is crazy and cool, and not totally my style but I bought the comic part of it anyway because it's well done and those guys are awesome. On my way out I started chatting with the gallery curator Kaebel, and ended up showing him my 24-hour comic attempt just to see his reaction. Another guy, who turned out to be one of the gallery's previous exhibitors, flagged my attention with a mention of pub trivia (one of my favorite pastimes) and when he passed me at the bus stop a few minutes later we struck up a conversation about Bill Watterson, creative ideals, lesser-known Greek myths, and the concept of absurdity. Check out his webcomic -- he reminds me of a cross between Randall Munroe and Brad Neely.

Aanywho... It's just another doodle but you can't accuse me of not posting any artwork.



P.S. I forgot to mention that the Sequential Art Gallery is located in an artist's loft space which was planned and developed years ago by my dad's old company. Kaebel lives upstairs from the actual gallery space, says it's a fantastic situation and, Dad, he specifically asked me to thank you!

MS Office OneNote: Margin Doodling for the 21st Century

I had a meeting today about the massive stock options my company is giving out to all its employees. Those who know me well understand that I think better if I'm drawing or doing something else with my hands. Not only does OneNote give you a nice, clean, wide-ruled sheet of virtual notebook paper which can convert your handwritten notes into text on command -- it's also a semi-usable drawing program.



This Engineer, Russ, is very smart and nerdy and accordingly asks many clever questions. I think because of that I got away with glancing at him and scribbling a lot without anyone catching on.

Sorry no posts lately...

I've had a busy week and picked up a new project which I hope won't take more than a month to complete. Hush hush until then.

I drew this in bed last night, just before drifting off. It's a wonder I get any rest at all:

Rose City Rollers Comic

The comic book I worked on as a colorist and designer can now be purchased online! In addition to its intrinsic educational and entertainment value, buying the comic helps support the fantastic sport of Roller Derby, Portland's Rose City Rollers league in particular, and improves my chances of getting to come back to work on a second issue — possibly as an artist this time.

Now, the RCR merchandise website is brand new, and looks like it needs a tweak or two. To stop it from blocking you based on your HTTP referrer, you may need to manually copy the following address and paste it into your browser's address bar:





For those who want to know exactly what I contributed to the book: it's broken into four parts, and I was the colorist for the 5-page story entitled "High Rollers: High Stakes on Fly Skates". I designed the credits page and the one-page article at the end, and prepped the entire book for the printer in terms of getting each page in the same resolution and format, placing the ads, adjusting the bleeds, and correcting (and making) a few last-minute errors. I also came up with a pretty clever idea to let us print the book with an alternate cover without need for a second print run -- we had them print all of the signatures the same, then flip half of them over right before binding. If you order online, you'll get one of two front covers chosen at random, with the other cover included as the inside of the back cover. It'll make sense when you see it.

Flash CS3 + Tablet PC

Flash is the best thing in the world for creating content really really fast and with a lot of flexibility. It's designed to work with a keyboard, and there were some initial bugs with screen rotation — but once I got my workspace customized and learned to lay the computer flat with the screen on my left knee and the keyboard on my right, shit worked very nicely. Doing this reminded me that the one thing I always wished for in working with Flash was more vertical real-estate. We'll see if I find the time, but I may just bring this blog back to its roots a bit.

Click for more:

Tablet Doodles

Coloring on this thing is a bit awkward... it seems to change unpredictably with the ambient light. I drew some girls from the roller derby league last week over beers, then colored them later on:




Then last night in Tacoma I did some sketches of Charlie Bullock as he tore around the house:



There was a crude drawing on the bathroom mirror of a pineapple shaking its fist at the heavens and saying this. I'm sure it was an inside joke with a long story behind it, and it inspired me to do a re-imagining: