I was super proud of this thing, like, four days ago. Now I can't really stand it. I want to learn to sketch with water colors, but everyone said I should learn to sketch with an ink brush first. Well, I suck at that. Shakiest hand ever. I want to learn to use oil paints, but I thought I should try to master acrylics first. Well. I don't know anymore.

I've got several canvas's sitting around the house. Not to mention canvas paper and watercolor paper, but I never really paint anything. I go through these spells where I really want to be some kind of a painter or traditional illustrator, I feel like I should know how to do this stuff. But it only lasts a few weeks, and then I'm perfectly content to go back to dicking around on the computer. I do secretly wish I had quality stuff to hang in galleries somewhere.

This is up right now in our gallery, with copies of my digital prints, but that doesn't really count. I mean. I own the building. It's cheating right?


These are for the mural I'm going to attempt to paint on the walls in the nursery for Jack. He'll be here in September, so I really have to get started ASAP. I've nailed down these character illustrations though, so now I just need to project them on the wall, trace, and then paint. I'm going to keep them as flat colors (to better match the original reference pieces) primarily, so I shouldn't muck it up too much with the painting.



These are some background characters for the latest episode of "Colonel Deese" I finished about a month ago. It's still not up on the internet, but I hope it will be soon.


Don't forget about my prints for sale.

I'll have a couple copies of these (and two different versions of the old Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein thing I did months [years?] ago.) for sale at the bookstore next month, on display with some original sketches / photographs / painting, and accompanied by a lot of art from some rockin' local artist.

You however, can buy them online now, get it printed on canvas, framed, whatever.

Even if you aren't buying (and hey, I know, economy) please let your friends list know about them.

Before the move back East Laura and I spent a weekend in San Diego seeing the sites. Major point of interest: The San Diego Zoo, and the hippo enclosure therein.

Unlike the (highly underrated) Los Angeles Zoo, and it's good hippo enclosure...
( LA Zoo Pics )

the San Diego Zoo (about as good as they come) sports the best underwater hippo viewing area I have ever seen:
( SD Zoo Pics )

And so I took the time to do some sketches from that trip. These are all actually referenced from the 20 or so minutes of dvd footage I have, and not the stills. Hopefully I'll get to editing a lot of that footage into VBF updates soon.


You guys watched this yet? I'll be plugging it all the way to Christmas.
( That darn Christmas Card! )

I had a spare 45 minutes today, so I drew this:

This is kind of from a thing I want to be working on, but also not really from it at all. It is good that I'm getting in the habit of working on my own thing more and more, but I have to up the game. I have to figure out a way to break through that quality wall that's been in front of me for so long. It's hard turning 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there into a really good project though. It takes a while to get warmed up. Meh.