Jim at work, Floater art, & a tattoo design

I can't really show what I'm currently working on, but below is a pic of me from yesterday shortly after beginning the drawing for...something. Our dog Leroy, who's ever-present wherever we are, was lying on one of his beds to my left (out of the frame). (I'll have to put up a post about him real soon and the great med injections he's been getting that have been working wonders for his arthritis. Love that dog! :)

In case anyone is wondering, I'm working on a large sheet of 500 series Strathmore plate bristol board (my preferred drawing surface). This paper is SO resilient and can really hold up to an amazing amount of erasing and re-drawing without wearing out, AND it's great for watercolors, oils, whatever (if you're going to oil paint on it though, you do have to prepare the surface). Anyhow, at this stage I was lightly laying out the placement of everything in the piece with a "2H" pencil, and then I'll switch to my handy-dandy mechanical pencil with it's "B" lead once I know where everything's going.

Also, here's the whole piece I did for the band Floater a month or so ago. I'd put up a small portion of it previously, but since it's been a while, it's on their MySpace page, and they've been selling t-shirts of the design, I figured it'd be okay. This piece was actually done on Strathmore watercolor cold press paper with "Calli" jet black india ink and a dip pen/pen nib:

Lastly, a really nice guy who's been a supporter of my art ever since Laini and I published THE DROWNED with Image Comics (in 2004) hired me a couple weeks ago to re-interpret the tattoo that the John Constantine character has on both of his forearms in the movie "Constantine" (a movie that Laini and I LOVED!). The design is called the "sulfur of perfection," and the movie's based on a Vertigo Comics series titled "Hellblazer" which has been anywhere from great to awful depending on who's written it over the years. Here's Keanu sporting the tats (at one point in the movie he presses the two tattoos together and speaks a spell to summon an angel played by Tilda Swinton (awesome!)):

And here's the tattoo slightly redesigned by me:

Speaking of Hellblazer and John Constantine, I'd done some pages for Vertigo on spec (i.e.- for free. Blech! Glad to have that part of my career behind me!) about 5 years ago, but didn't get hired at the time (waaah! Actually, since I'm not sure that I could have kept up on a monthly book, it was probably for the best! :) If anyone's interested, 2 of those pages can be seen here and here.