New Art Available

Tribal fairy - ink on smooth Bristol board. Buy the original on Etsy.

I'll be coloring it digitally and offering it as a print (and possibly phone cover, etc).

Back from the Dead

I've been creating some new art out of some pretty old material. I ran across a drawing I did when I was 10 - fully inked, on copy paper. My grandfather had it.

I decided to color it, and I'm pleased with the results:



I've made it available as a poster and iPad sleeve. I'm currently waiting for the iPhone case version to finish processing - you should see it in my store once it's done. I think it looks pretty sweet.

Art Show

Last night, I went to a pretty amazing art show.

Masha, Dustin, and Matt are friends of mine. I recently met Masha and Dustin, but Matt has been a friend for years. We were drinking coffee and repairing our lap-tops over at Big E's, which is between Ringling and New College, and Masha came up to us and told us that Mike Pukac was having a show in downtown Sarasota and we should stop by and check it out. We had to finish repairing our laptops (they were in 50 pieces) but said we'd drop by once we were done. We actually wound up having to give Masha a ride because her other friend's car broke down.

In any case, I was expecting what I tend to run into at art shows - artwork that is very interesting, and very good, but doesn't necessarily speak to me beyond "Hey, that's a good composition and this person is a great artist". That's not what happened, and I'm very glad.

Mike's paintings are gorgeous. Some paintings are powerful, others are pretty, but these were gorgeous. I love art, but I'm not normally the sort to rant and rave about it... everyone has their moments, though. The vivid colors, iridescence, and dreamlike quality of the paintings are amazing. It was difficult to keep from reaching out and seeing if my hands would enter that world, like dipping your hands in the water in a puddle; I wanted to swim in them. He is experimental with his paint, but he backs that up with a lot of skill. If you get a chance to see some of his paintings in person, seize it, because photographs and scans are never going to do it justice.

During the past few weeks, I've been discussing arrangements with a friend of mine in Palm Bay - I've been planning on going over there to do a series of paintings. The apartment here doesn't have the space, and since I'm currently crashing with my mother, who is a neat freak, I don't know if either of us could deal with the stress of the inevitable explosion of canvas and acrylic paint. The show I went to last night was certainly an inspiration, a testament to how vivid a painting can be. I'm not quite the master and can't come close, but it's enough to know that it's possible.

Busy Work

I recently (as in, today) relaunched a comic that dates back... years.

It's never been a popular comic, or even a good comic, but it's nice to have the sort of distance from a project that only age and occasional failure (and even more occasional success) can bring. I've got new comic ideas, better ones, etc., but itwould be nice to drive the nail in the coffin of this one. I don't plan on making it any more coherent than it ever was in the first place - just more readable.
You can check it out here.
The reason I've hosted it on DD is because at the moment I don't feel like messing around with the php necessary to run a comic website. I got enough of that with pobocks, and the last time the script melted down and barfed all over the internet, I'd had it. Then Drunk Duck went down for the second time that year, and that was it. They didn't have a mass-update tool for free accounts, and there were over 100 pages of the comic, and I realized the comic itself kind of sucked - and that was it for P.O. Bocks.

Once upon a time, I produced a page a day for the comic. Which may explain the iffy quality of some of the earlier pages. I plan on going back to the page-a-day, come hell or high water, because in a masochistic way, I enjoyed doing it. It was like feeding twigs to a fire, watering a plant, watching a favorite pet grow. Finished artwork always brings with it an immense sense of accomplishment, no matter how small the piece may be, which is something I am addicted to.
But life gets in the way sometimes - particularly, college coursework and the need to pay bills. I got stuck on the plot, people didn't particularly enjoy the comic, I realized the story itself was hopeless, and I stopped drawing.

I plan on revamping many of the original comic pages. They won't be entirely redrawn, but they will be redone. The story will be a little more coherent, but not too coherent, because I enjoyed the freewheeling spirit of the original comic, no matter how terrible the comic itself may have been. Ultimately, the plot was a lot like a little kid spinning around in the front yard and screaming, but I've realized that's sort of fine by me, even if the inevitable conclusion is the literary equivalent of falling over and puking.

I have realized how much I miss drawing comics. Actually, drawing in general. My degree is animation-related, since I wound up becoming interested enough in animation to change my major. The Art: animation program at UCF was in flux at that point in time, but they were starting up a Digital Media: animation program. I found that I enjoyed the environment that the Visual Language program offered, in particular the experience of working on teams with other students. The companionship, input, and spirit of collaboration made otherwise daunting tasks manageable, and things that could have been pretty horrible weren't so bad in the long run. Unfortunately, the irony of being in animation was that I didn't get to draw very much, which was pretty miserable. My coursework and schedule were also demanding, so I didn't have any time to draw on my own.

Having come to this realization, I'm re-assessing how I want to proceed in life. Everybody and their brother wants to be a concept artist, but I've realized that I'll be unhappy with most tasks that don't involve a certain amount of painting. Thankfully, I enjoy painting textures a great deal, so you may start seeing game skins and the like popping up here. Nouri in particular has asked for a set of skins that I think most people would actually enjoy.

My problem is that I get backlogged by promising too many things to too many people. Right now is a bad time to relaunch PO/Wizard Party, but it represents the ultimate project that I never finished. My goal is to finish it quickly, within a certain range of quality, so I can finally strike it off my list. But amongst other things, I currently owe Josh banner art, and Austin badge art, as well as various miscellaneous personal projects. I've dedicated time to the website in the hope that I can scrape up some extra cash with it, since times are lean and waitressing slowly drives me batty over a period of time. I enjoy the people, actually, it's just that all you have to show for yourself at the end of the night is cash. Money. Money comes and goes, and it's not enough for me - there's no lasting indication of your efforts. You pay your bills with it, and all that you have left is sore feet and the nagging, compulsive need to wipe your kitchen counter every five minutes.