Monster Monday

Working on a monster for the webcomic, not quite there yet, too...um...cute, I think. Oh well. Lots of time for this later. Currently finishing up colours on the Situation webcomic. Please remind me not to hand colour comics with watercolour and gouache next time. It looks good but is taking too long. Now I know...

Making A Bug

Busy painting, nearing the end of this book. People in the house are getting sick, must wear mask to avoid...OK, not really. But I hope I don't get sick.

Grist And Crow

A sketch I just did of my webcomic characters Grist and Crow. It'll be a Lovecraftian high fantasy thing about four normally villainous characters travelling across a desolate northern continent.

A Goblin For Spring

Here's a panel from Mist Harbour, a webcomic I plan on releasing in the Spring. Partly a way to stay visible while working on Maddy Kettle, partly me trying to learn to draw faster but mostly a story I really want to tell. I drew it mostly with ballpoint, limiting the detail I can add. This is very fun to draw, the pages revealing themselves quickly, I did 10 pages in about 2 days which is pretty fast for me. I'm going to colour it later.

Hobgoblin King And A Mouse

Scarskirt, Almost There

Here's part of an inked panel from the upcoming webcomic The Situation, written by Jeff Vandermeer and drawn by me. I' almost done all the initial art and can't believe it. I think it'll be a great comic and I hope it gets collected some day in book form. And boy, did I ever learn a lot while doing this book.

A Dragon, I Assume

Henry painting what I assume to be a dragon. I think my nerdiness is rubbing off. good, I need an ally.

A Crow, A Tower And A Bunch Of Heads

A sketchbook page, exploring the benefits of loosening up and being sketchier. These are are all sketches in preparation for an upcoming webcomic. I'm using tools here, like ballpoint and a sign pen, that facilitate a looser kind of drawing.

Mr. Fantastic

I've been gobbling up recent issues of the Avengers written by Brian Michael Bendis to stave off the cold and recently Reed Richards made an appearance. Great stories. I sketched Reed Richards for fun.

Sketches Between Things

Sketchbook drawings I did during the week while completing a comic for Tor.com.

Ogre King

A quick sketch I did of an ogre.

Rain Shuffle

Here's a sketchbook sketch coloured in Photoshop. Bogged down right now. I have lots of work and it's so cold out I don't really want to go anywhere anyway. I need a haircut but I'm waiting until I'm done this stretch of work before I go.

Scripting With Maps

This happened without really thinking about it and I thought it was kind of interesting. I realized that in mapping an imaginary world to accompany a story that the maps were accumulating notes and features that were guiding the story and characters themselves. To give an example, the main character was meant to meet a witch in a dungeon but in the process of drawing maps I realized that they should meet her on a small island because it just made more sense in every respect. And unexpected places pop up and start to drive the story. "Oh, there's a small ruined, haunted town there, OK, that's cool..." and so on. The story starts to unfold visually, with squiggly arrows and notes jotted in pencil. Anyway, I thought this was an interesting way to write.

Crow Drinking Beer From Thimble

More sketching and refining a style I can do fast and expressively. This crow is actually a character in a story I wrote.

The Bald Mermaids Of Mist Harbour, Colou Experiment

Playing with colour here, trying a layer of uneven washes layered in Photoshop. It's too distracting, I think. I'll try flat colours next. I'm happy with the inking here, I tried out a Pentel Sign Pen and a huge magic marker. I like how it keeps things open and loose, you can't stray too far from the heart of the drawing.The sign pen is too thick for me to use exclusively in a drawing, it's good for more graphic work but isn't well suited to drawing an detail and I'm looking for tools that allow me to have an immediate, sketchy look. So far ballpoint has been the most successful in capturing this. The colour was done by cloning uneven washes of gouache on to a less opaque layer in Photoshop. I'm not sure the unevenness adds anything. In my spare time I've outlined a new graphic novel called Mist Harbour, of which these mermaids are inhabitants. When I get time to do the comic I plan on a really sketchy approach. I'm looking at a lot of French and Belgian comics for inspiration. Many of the more expressionist artists from France and Belgium have created a natural, hand writing like style that is reminiscent of mid century American Comic strips, a style suited to working fast.

Mist Harbour Mermaid

A quick sketch, quickly coloured in Photoshop. Currently working like mad to get a project finished. Listening to lots of audiobooks.

Some Sketches From This Week

Just a few sketchbook pages from this past week. I got int the habit of having it lay open on a nearby table and I sketch something sometimes when I'd walk by. I've also started playing with some new materials, as mentioned last post.

Trying Some New Tools

Trying out some new tools, like a huge fat marker and thick Pentel Sign Pens. I'm looking for ways to draw faster. I'll probably talk more about this in other posts. I'll also probably post a proper scan of this eventually.

Tingrist Beach

Here's another map of the northern continent. It's actually a detail of this map here, that I had posted earlier. At night I've been writing this story, when I've completed a few pages for other projects. Tingist Cave is the ancestral cave of a family of goblins, the Tingrists, who guard the beach.

Heellsa The Witch

This is poor Heelsa the witch, who served a town for years but was forced to leave when her magic made her sprout bat wings and fangs.

I'm looking for a natural, fast style for comics. I'm worried if I keep doing things as rendered as I do now I'll never be able to make a living. Also, drawing so slowly hinders the stories the I want to tell. Trying out ballpoint.

A Map Of Mist Harbour

There's nothing more satisfying to a nerd than making a place up and then drawing maps of it. Here's a map I drew. This map actually goes back to a short story I had published in Startling Adventures called Atha Brew And The Green Tower which was a sort of dark arctic fantasy. And when I've done fantasy drawings since I usually consider it to be the same world. The idea behind the world is that it's an arctic continent where the bad guys live. A dark brooding place. So I thought it'd be interesting to tease out all the little interesting places and people that might live in a place like this. Mist Harbour is actually a really small region and I've sketched out the whole sprawling continent and even thought about its history, magic, culture etc. Mist Harbour is where this goblin lives. I wanted to sketch out a small area and think about the rich ness that might be skulking there. When I was younger, junior high and high school, I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons and made up different worlds for people to play in. World building is extremely satisfying and I've never really stopped thinking in those terms.

Green And Orange

Another quick pastel sketch. I love how thick my sketchbook gets when I use heavy media like this.

Big Cheap Pastel Drawing

Sometimes it's fun to just grab whatever's at hand and make a drawing. In this case I laid my hands on what are either cheap pastels or face paints and sketched this out to inaugurate my new studio.

Nearing The End

Working away on the Situation. I can finally see the end. I think it'll be a great webcomic.

Redpoll On A Branch

A sketch I did of a redpoll, common in Nova Scotia according to the internet although I've never seen one.

Bald Dwarf

Listened to The Hobbit audiobook on the way to Halifax over the Holidays and it struck me how much I prefer drawing bald dwarfs than hairy ones. I think they look more like rocks this way.

Sketchy Harbour 2

The second sketch of Halifax Harbour.

Sketchy Harbour 1

Bear with me while I post some more playful drawings I did in Nova Scotia, exploring simple shapes and sketchy line work.Trying to lock the composition in like puzzle pieces.

Another Hill, Another House

Another train drawing of a house on a hill. I could fill a thick volume with these drawings. These drawings were strongly influenced by a bunch of things a couple of which I can point to: The abstracted landscapes of the Group of Seven and Van Gogh and the drawings of Tom Gauld.

Currently locked in studio working on The Situation for Tor.com and listening to lots of audiobooks. I finished Anthony Trollope's The Warden yesterday and was totally, totally charmed. I just loved it. A great book to compare to Dickens; Victorian England, which Trollope actually does through the character Mr. Popular Sentiment in the Warden. Today I've gone back to Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. Good so far, but long. It's in the tradition of Victor Hugo but not quite reaching those story telling heights. I'm mostly enjoying it but it's a bit long.

Another new interest of mine is www.quora.com . It's a sort of social network built directly around knowledge and discussion. Highly recommended.

A Typical Sight In Nova Scotia

This is the favorite of my train sketches. It's an ubiquitous site in Nova Scotia, a single house high up on a wooded hill. Probably a smart place to live considering all the property lost to the sea, an awful lot of people build right on the coast and their houses are flooded and their properties sink into the water . But you see these hill houses all over the province, safe high up on one of many hills.

What I like about this drawing is the combination of simple shapes verging on pattern and the richness of the drawing itself. Something I'm always trying to achieve in my drawing is a balance of simplicity and complexity. To me, this is the meaning of composition and a formal quality I'm always chasing. I think being exposed to Charley Harper and other mid-century illustrators has given me some insight into how this balance might work.

Happy Birthday Hayao Miyazaki!

Happy birthday to Hayao Miyazaki! Inspiring artist and story teller. Why not celebrate with a Studio Ghibli movie?

A Swashbuckling Holiday

I never know what will happen on a Holiday. Those times when you unmoor your mind from work and your imagination from the usual. I had planned to travel through the darkest Canadian woods reading mysteries stories late into the night and sketching monsters. I did both of these things but I also toyed with new approaches to drawing and rediscovered the joy of the swashbuckling tale. I guess it makes sense, being back on the east coast with all that ocean and those tall ships.....

Some great books I read are:
The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne
Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson
Conan by R.E. Howard
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
and
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

I think what might have instigated this was discovered my J.C. Coll art book in my mom's basement. Perhaps my favorite swashbuckling artist...

Jaime Henrnandez

I don't think I've "borrowed" more from any other artist than Jaime Hernandez. One of my first comics and my first published one was called the Jet-Pack and it was published in the Strange Adventures anthology Halifax Pop Explosion. From the clean line drawing to the combination of mundane life with science fiction tropes it had Jaime Hernandez' influence all over it. There's an unbelievable charm to his characters and an intoxicating rhythm to his panels. They are some of the best, most enjoyable comics to come out in the last thirty years. The Love And Rockets comics have always been in print in some form ( including the other Hernandez brothers Gilberto and Mario ) Fantagraphics has been releasing collections dedicated to Jaime's work that are the best way to read them, I think. Start with Maggie The Mechanic and then the Girls From Hoppers.

New Brunswick Wilds

Here's a train drawing I did while traveling through New Brunswick, which has a lot of woods. A lot. Especially in the north, which is the French part. I started doing these drawings for no reason I'm sure of, these stripped down drawings with lots of repetitive pattern. It seems to suit Canada well. Especially in winter. I actually went on to explore this for quite a while. Much of Canadian fine art landscapes relies heavily on patterns that you see in the woods. I think that buying and absorbing the Charley Harper book has a real impact on my drawing.

Back In Isolation, But Quite Happy About It

As in experiment, working in the middle of the rushing river called family life was interesting but a failure. So I've returned to my old studio to work in isolation again. Far from T.V., Internet and windows to the street. I was here before but for the past year it has been Henry's bedroom. Henry has moved to another room and I slipped back in. The light over my table is a gift from my father in law. It's a very cool vintage lamp, brass maybe. It weighs a ton.

Train Books

It's always interesting to see what people are reading on trains. I think it's a mode of travel well suited to mysteries or fantasy adventure. I noticed that ereaders disappeared as we got further from urban centers, at least that's how I perceived it. Like the deeper we were in the woods the more technology regressed.

Happy New Year And Some Stuff I Learned About Cartooning And Illustration

The caveat of any advice oriented post being of course~always take the advice of another artist with a heaping grain of salt. We all found entry to publishing by different routes, part of the creative process is finding the door in and that door will likely be gone by the time you arrive so you should try and find, or make, your own door. I got into professional publishing by doing picture books with a smaller local publisher and I got into comics through the front door, by sending work to my favorite publisher. This won't work for everyone. Not because you're not amazing but there is a great element of chance in catching the eye of a publisher. In retrospect I would have used the contacts I had fostered through social media like Twiter and especially Facebook. I'm also only five years into professional publishing so I'm sure this list could be revised annually. So, first piece of advice:

Find Your Own Door  Keep your eyes open for the route into publishing. It might be a webcomic, an art rep, an art editor at a convention, a friend of a friend, friends of your parents, anyone. Really. So keep aware and keep business cards on you at all times.

Invent Your Own Worlds  Sometimes the speed of publishing is that of a bullet train but mostly it's the speed of cold molasses. This was a big shock for me and it came almost right away in an early childrens book for the education market. There will often be very long editorial pauses while you work on a project for someone else. Editors are very busy people and are usually working on several projects at once and it often takes time for them to answer your questions or give you the go ahead. This isn't true across the board but it's happened often enough that I've found myself not working and with no income more than I'd have liked. My solution to this is to continually create my own work, always having something on the go. Self generated work is incredibly satisfying and it will come in handy some day. My top Shelf comic Maddy Kettle got its start about four years ago during a very long pause during a picture book. I generate ideas through my sketchbook and writing down ideas on my iPod Touch. Just make sure your personal work doesn't cause you to miss deadlines.

Learn To Be Comfortable With Huge Echoey Silence   There is no better time to develop horrible, creeping, existential self-doubt than when you are working alone on a drawing. Illustration and cartooning often involve long periods of isolation, struggling with something that belongs only to you. These are the times when I find myself questioning everything. This has become so familiar to me that I almost consider it an essential element,  a part of the process. Just be prepared to keep working even though you feel deep down that you are the worst artist in the world. This might not be the case if you work in a studio with others or work in a team environment like at Pixar but it is my case which is all I can relate to. Twitter and Facebook can give you a momentary sense of a huge studio with other artists it doesn't really help. Only drawing helps.


Hit your Deadlines with Precision Sometimes, done is perfect.


"Throw your heart into the picture and then jump in after it " Howard Pyle