Happy New Year!

I need to catch up on posting some of the art I've said I would put here sometime soon, but for now I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Wow, 2007 is just about here. Sheesh!!

A new project coming up on the "maybe/maybe not" pile, one on the "probably" pile, and one on the "yes" pile. Man o MAN I'm excited to be working on all of these (and I'm hoping they ALL come through!). For now, here's an inked and almost done colored panel from an ongoing personal project of mine that my brain won't let me drop for too long. Sigh, where's that "Time-Stoppage Superpower" that Laini and I are always pining for? :)

Be safe & see you in the new year!

Jim

Insomania art weekend = AWESOME!

With the holiday prep and my wonderful (!!) mom visiting I don't have much time to put up a post (which is an EASY trade-off), but I couldn't let TOO much time go before posting SOMEthing about my weekend in San Francisco and the inspiration I found by attending the "Insomania" artist workshop/conference put on by the amazing guys and gals at Massive Black Studios and the Concept Art message boards.

The painting above is a piece I did during one of the life model sessions (this took about 45 mins). There were countless models all weekend but I mainly went to the digital workshops. I'll post more next week, but for now, here's a link to some AMAZING photography by Phil Holland.

Late Night experiments

About to turn in for the night, but I've been messing with these new practice ink pieces I did an hour ago. A bit of paint, a bit of digital texture, a bunch of messing about. Both're a bit creepy, but I dig them nonetheless. Will I feel different about them after a nights sleep ... or will I make one of them my new signature/profile pic? Hmmm. Maybe neither. Maybe both?

Comic Books?

I have the good fortune to know a number of creative people who create any number of things. From books, to collage art, to fine art oil paintings, to recycled sweater purses, to bottle cap jewelry, to any number of things, including comic books. Of the latter, I'm friends with people at all steps of the creation of any comic: writers, pencillers, inkers, flatters, colorists, editors, and publishers. And while I bowed out (on VERY good terms) of the artistic duties on one of my favorite comic books of ALL time (the recently Johnny Depp optioned REX MUNDI), I know that I want to return, at times, for varying lengths of time, to the world of comic books. And after lunch with a friend of mine the other day who's in the comics world, I might possibly be returning briefly to making comics. The possibility of this has inspired me these past couple of days to draw a couple of pages from a story I've been writing off and on for the past year. I've been doing these mostly as a mental warm up to what I might be working on briefly sometime soon and I've got to admit it to myself: I really enjoy drawing action sequences! (it's the nerdy boy in me no doubt!). Okay, so these pages will hopefully SOMEday be more than a warm up as I really think there's a great story to be told, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So, here's one of the pages I drew over the past couple days (still incomplete as I'll be adding some more background characters tonight):


And here are a couple of details from that page:



I'll post the other page soon. I'll also post more definitive information as/if things are confirmed.

This all comes at a time when I'm getting a strong creative hankering to work on some art for a story I just finished reading. Maybe it'll be something that'll be published somewhere, who knows. Anyhow, my creative interest is piqued in several different directions (a recurring theme for me), so I should be getting back to the ol' drafting table.

Cheers! And happy creating to all those talented people out there who might be reading this!

P.S. - Heck, as long as I'm geeking about comics & such, here're a few sketches I did a while ago for Captain America and Madman: