The Office

I've been finishing up a few of the White Wolf pieces today while listening to season 4 of The Office on Hulu.com (a legal & free collection of a bunch of TV shows online) and while I really liked the season every week this past year, I freaking LOVE it now. It's weird how the "No way! That's ridiculous!" moments when we watched them the first time made me just lose it today. Geez, so many laugh-out-loud moments. Absolute genius.

...a little bit later & still in progress...

I decided to use these White Wolf pieces to experiment a bit (I hope the A.D. doesn't mind!). Digging it so far...

White Wolf art clipping (in progress...)

Again, part of a bigger piece with a tone slapped on cuz I thought it looked kind of cool. I'll post the full finished piece when I'm done...

Tattoo design

This is a picture of one cool dude. His name is Kyle, and while we've never met, I can attest to said "cool"ness because of his kind online support and words over the past almost 4 years. When Laini and I had THE DROWNED published by Image Comics in 2004, he was quick to contact us to express his enjoyment of what we'd created and even put up some supportive message board threads on various comic book sites publicly praising the book -- like I said, cool guy!!!

We've touched base here and there over the past few years and a few months back he hired me to design this tattoo for him (as seen in the surprisingly awesome "Constantine" movie). The symbol is called "The Sulfur of Perfection" and is used with very cool results in the flick.

Anyhow, I know that others have gotten tattoos of my work, both by hiring me (awesome!!) or by swiping designs (still very cool) but to further along Kyle's "cool guy" rep, he followed through and sent me a pic of the tattoo once he got inked. LOVE IT! Thanks Kyle!

**(If others "out there" have gotten tattoos of my art and are reading this, feel free to e-mail me photos of the results! It's a cool honor indeed and I'd love to see them!)**

Werewolf art snippit

Just a quick post with a snippit from a larger piece for White Wolf. Don't worry, the paramedic being chased gets away in the end. (But, he was scratched by the werewolf, so...)

New favorite (almost) cussing rant!

Here's another small portion of a White Wolf piece that I couldn't help adding some colors to. Ultimately this'll be inked instead and printed in black & white just like the last posted piece.

As for the blog post title, yesterday I was listening to one of my top 5 favorite podcasts, Fanboy Radio, (they cover movies, comics, video games, etc. -- all things nerdy) and the host (Scott Hinze) said my favorite new cuss-rant: "What the crap, mother-crapper?!" HA! Cracked me up as I was drawing. So...use it often and pass it on! ;)

Art & ramblings

Working on a few different projects right now, but here's a clipping of some pencils for a White Wolf job I'm squeezing in (like I've said in the past, they're just too fun!). Even though the finished piece will be inked and ultimately printed in black & white, I couldn't help it, I had to toss some quick colors on part of it just for fun.

Saw "The Incredible Hulk" with a buddy of mine the other night. Hmm, about what I thought it would be (about 6.5 stars out of 10). It was better in parts than I thought it would be but it was also worse than I thought in parts. The mysterious scientist friend of Bruce Banner that's introduced about 2/3 of the way into the movie just stood out as TOO corny and badly acted (which is weird because that actor's usually good in other roles). Worth seeing on the big screen though in my opinion.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jim

7 Years! (well, actually almost 10)

That image is basically a character study I'd done for one of the stories for our upcoming illustrated novel LIPS TOUCH (with Arthur A. Levine Books), but (!) that's not what the illustrations will really look like, AND she's cut from the actual piece I did and plopped onto a digitally manipulated pic of an outdoor mountain photo. Anyhow, just thought it looked kind of cool AND didn't spoil anything from what the art in the book's going to really look like.

As for the post title, it's in reference to our 7 year wedding anniversary (but 9 years 8 months as a couple) that lands on today but was celebrated yesterday. Here's us at dinner at our still reigning champ restaurant Bombay Cricket Club:

Me staring down my favorite drink, the tasty (and deceptively dangerous!) Snake Shake:

And Laini eating onion naan. Okay, so maybe this isn't how she eats it (it really isn't), but it kind of looks like I interrupted her chowing down, huh:

We didn't go with the traditional "copper or wool" 7 year anniversary gifts. Instead, I tried to get some sculpture from the awesome local artist Ingrid Hendrix (but nothing that she had available felt anniversary appropriate--still fantastic stuff nonetheless, but they didn't quite say "I love ya!"), same goes for our amazingly talented artist friend from L.A., Ver Mar. Seriously, both of those artists produce incredible pieces but it seems like they sell everything they make as soon as they're done! Crazy. So, I went on Etsy and found a GREAT selection of very cool sculptures that I knew Laini would LOVE. Only one has arrived in time for the celebration, but the others are on their way. Here's the first to arrive, made by the Ohio artist Michelle Steele. She's just begun her sculpting career, but she's sold everything she's made too within days of putting them up for sale:

And awesome awesome wonderful Laini got us Radiohead tickets for later this summer! My FAVORITE band of all time, but I've never seen them live -- I'm told that they're about the best band ever to see live so I'm SO excited! Thank you wife o'mine! And now I'm not having to live vicariously through Lori and her hubby or Steph and her hubby! Take that you two! ;)

We left dinner and went to see a VERY well reviewed play that I won't name. Mainly because neither of us thought it warranted those stellar reviews. Sigh. Don't you hate it when you go to do something on a big day or a special occasion and it just falls short? We did get a few laughs from the play, but it was mostly just awkward and not very well written (plus one of the actors made you want to strangle him whenever he delivered -- no, YELLED! -- one of his lines. The female lead really stood out though as being better than what she was a part of).

Anyhow, it didn't spoil the evening and I suppose it DID give us something to say "Really?" to one another about for a while to come. ("Really" as in: "That's the final script for this production...really?")