Saturday, July 19, 2014

SAIL Magazine

My first illustration for the magazine just came out. It's for the monthly article "Voice Of Experience". Had a lot of fun doing this one (except for the all nighter and a half I had to pull to get it finished on time). I love the water, boats - everything that would make this a dream assignment. It's photoshop, start to finish.
Anywho, here's some process shots, ending with the published piece.


















posted from Bloggeroid

Sunday, June 08, 2014

The Trusty UH-60

Can't really share much of what I'm working on at the moment, but i figure a few ambiguous panels with no real context should be okay.



I wanted to share this one because of how much i love drawing UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Nostalgia to be sure. I spent an awful lot of time in these when i was in the army. I've jumped out of them at least 900 times or so (and other aircraft another couple hundred times), conducted sling load operations with them (where a buddy of mine damn near got crushed between a Hemmit - truck - and a Chinook - helicopter - ok, not a black hawk, but still), and been a part of massive air assault operations.

I've seen them do some amazing things - things you wouldn't think them capable of doing. I've been on board them for several of these. I've actually experienced zero gravity in them. Truth! They can perform parabolic curves just like the vomit comet (the plane NASA uses to train astronauts on zero gravity effects). The Black Hawk's curves aren't as big, so the zero gravity effect lasts for a shorter time period, but i feel comfortable saying we could get twenty to thirty seconds worth. Enough time to tumble around in the back, doing flips, or watching a pal's coffee come out of his cup and float across the cabin in a giant blob (Dave Keres, I'm looking at you, buddy)!

Even though zero g sounds like the coolest thing ever, i think the most amazing thing I've ever seen with Black Hawks is Air Assault operations. Being crammed in the back with two squads worth of infantry buddies and all our gear, looking out the windows and seeing twenty or thirty other Black Hawks flying in close proximity, with more infantry guys crammed in the backs, is a truly amazing sight. They're all bobbing up and down a little as they try to maintain their flight positions, heading en masse to a drop zone where they will all land, dump their cargo (us), and be off again inside of a minute, is awesome. It doesn't look as glamorous as seeing paratroopers jumping out the back of C-130s, but believe me, it's just as awesome.

It takes a lot of skill for these pilots to fly in such closer proximity to each other - in the back, our lives are literally in their steady hands.

The third coolest thing I've ever seen with Black Hawks (last one, I promise) is when they come in to land at night during combat (or simulated combat) conditions. They come in with no lights. I mean nothing. With the naked eye they might as well be invisible. What's so cool, however, is when you're wearing your night vision goggles. They suddenly look like something out of TRON. They've usually got one or two infrared strobes going and the rotor blades, which generate an incredible amount of static electricity, create a glowing ring around themselves. It's so science fiction looking.

Maybe I'll have to recreate some of these as illustrations at some point. Sounds like fun. :-)

posted from Bloggeroid

Saturday, April 26, 2014

MERMAIDS!

Got hired to do the line art for a beer logo - the Coronado Brewing Company. Great job; loved doing it. Luckily they liked the results and I got to do a second one. Hopefully more will follow. Here's the first one, isolated from the rest of the beer label:



In the process of working up potential poses on the first one i decided it would be fun to do a series of them in more of an Alphonse Mucha type design. These are a few of the works in progress. I snapped pictures with my phone of the inks, pre-scanning, then added silly effects to them so they wouldn't be just black and white for posting on Facebook and Twitter.







I'll share the second beer logo once I know it's out on the shelves for everyone to see.

posted from Bloggeroid

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Graphic Novel frames

Here's a few panels (pencils and/or inks) from a creator-owned graphic novel I'm pecking away at in between paying jobs. Written by my good friend and writing partner Dean, adapted and illustrated by me.






Much more on this to come in the future.

posted from Bloggeroid

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Something new!

It's been too long since i updated the ol' blog, but I've moved into the 21st century (smartphone) so I'm trying something new. If this works then I'll be able to update things with much more ease, and not have it cut into work time.

So one of the things I'm trying to do this year (and moving forward - however long it takes) is to finish all the unfinished pieces I've got lying around. There are a LOT of them. I was making some decent progress until i started getting busy, but no complaints - i like being busy.

Anyway, these are a few shots i took with the camera on my phone. They're inks, pre scanning, that are a part of one of those unfinished projects.











By the way, if i posted these on the blog before, i apologize. It gets hard to remember, what with all the different social media outlets. This is the only set of images that might be a repeat though, so if it IS a repeat, this should be the only one. Happy drawing!

posted from Bloggeroid