What have I been up to?

For the past two weeks I've been slammed with storyboard work and an illustration gig, so I haven't made any Xiola progress. I plan on getting a move on tomorrow night.

By the way, I made it into the Alternative Press Expo here in San Francisco. I signed up for the waiting list, as I was late to apply, but I got in. I am very excited to be able to participate in APE. It's my favorite convention. Small enough that you can get through it in about a day, with time to talk to artists and creators. I don't know my booth yet. We'll see.

I just finished a poster illustration for Steven LaFontaine. He's a hopeful new filmmaker who is planning on making a monster film set in his hometown of Niles. He wants to create it in the vein of old monster movies and wanted the poster to be a throwback to the cool old monster movie posters of the 50s. Here's what the final piece looks like.

Most old monster posters were painted in oils or gouache and I'm comfortable with neither, so I painted this on the computer. I drew the piece out on paper, but painted it using Photoshop.

Page 1 sketch

Here are a few of the sketches I drew for page 1. I looked at a bunch of images of different deserts. My story takes place in a desert region of Xiola called Sidia, which was originally inspired by Cappadoccia, Turkey due to the cool cave dwellings in the rock formations. But I used imagery from lots of different places to help me come up with the final design of the canyon and look of the land.

I want the landscape to be just a little beyond what you might see. Not alien, but amplified. And my first page here must get across the feeling of a strange place, to marry with the words of Eleya at the top.

This is the sketch I went with.

It's supposed to look like I'm standing on a cliff looking over a valley. I preferred having a bit of an arch in the foreground right, and kind of a flying buttress of stone on the foreground left. Then I've got a bit of the crackled spires connecting to a midground left cliff and in the back left a full on arch. I'm going to put a Sidian vulture in the sky and I may have a few light clouds. I'd like to have fun with my skies in this book and not just have plain blue skies. I'll decorate them with clouds, haze, atmosphere, colors and birds and what-not. I've also got what will look like the remains of a stream which runs along the valley floor. Low lying shrubs will be scattered all over the landscape collecting near the stream and along crevices.

I'll be redrawing this on watercolor paper hopefully this weekend or early next week at the latest. I've got a couple of unrelated art gigs that I need to knock out first.

All done with the cover.

Now on to page 1.

I had a couple of storyboard gigs last week so I didn't get a chance to finish my cover until now. I think it turned out pretty well. I darkened a bit of the background with cerulean blue and burnt sienna which combines as a sort of grey which is perfect to keep the background a bit washed out. Then I darkened Eleya's face, hair and the beast's face. I finished the beast's eyes and darkened up Eleya's legs, skirt and skin to pop her off the background a little. I use ultramarine blue for the foreground shadows. I never use black as it dulls the colors too much. I am not going to cut it out off the board just yet. It's too late at night to make a final decision. I think once I've got the next page finished I'll look at this again and see if there's anything I want to change/fix, but I'm going to start on my pencils for page 1 regardless.

I never did a full design for page 1, just a little sketch. It's basically one large panel of a desert scene. I want to paint a beautiful desert landscape complete with rock formations low shrubs and a vast blue sky. I'd like to make the scene look just within the realm of believability. The rock formations will be a little exaggerated, but not so much that you wouldn't believe they couldn't exist. And I'll play up the colors a little more than reality. Otherwise what's the point of watercolors?

I signed up for next year's San Diego Con and this year's Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco, but there's already a waiting list for APE so I may not make it in. We'll see. I'll be attending regardless, but I'd love to get myself a booth.

I'll post again once I've got a pass on the page 1 sketch.

Comic Con Wrap-Up

I wasn't able to get to a computer Sunday night and last night I had computer problems, so finally I get to write up my review of how the con was for me.

It was great! I had a real positive experience this year. I was able to speak with artists and fans about my work, their work, and comics in general. I found it both fun and challenging to paint during the con, and the attendees seemed to dig it as well. I have always enjoyed watching others' process and it seemed to be interesting for others to watch mine. And I had many people return to my table multiple days to check in on my progress.

I spoke with my old teacher Barron Storey at the Allen Spiegel Fine Arts booth. http://tinyurl.com/csfwn He has a new book out called Life After Black. He was out of copies when I saw him so I'll have to pick one up at the next con. He is an amazing artist.

I was not able to check out any of the panels, James Cameron's Avatar, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and whatever Twilight stuff the teenage girls were screaming about, but there was a huge Hollywood presence, and videogames and toy companies were a close second.

I talked with a ton of cool people who gave me lots of good advice on what I could do with my book either with publishing, or marketing, or just getting it done. I feel I need to get a little past my first image before I can start talking seriously about distribution. Speaking of which, I mostly finished the cover, but got pretty busy chatting with people during the con, so it's now sitting on my drafting table calling my name. Tonight is a little late to start, and tomorrow I've got some boards I've got to knock out, so I'll try and wrap it up on Thursday, then start on page 1. Only 174 more pages to go. What the hell am I thinking?

One thing I did learn about Comic Conventions is that I've only ever thought about them as an avenue to get your name out there. I never thought about a Comic Convention as someplace you can make money. But everyone around me was making money hand over foot, and they were confused as to why I wasn't doing the same. All I had for sale was Wanderings, and that only for $1 each, almost covering the print cost. Next convention I'm going to see if I can get some prints made of some of my paintings, or something like that. It'd be nice to make some money off my art to help pay off the cost of the booth. We'll see.

Thanks to everyone who came out and visited my booth. You made my first Con in 15 years a wonderful experience. I promise to keep hard at work on Xiola so I'll have more than just a cover to show you at the next convention.

Saturday

Yet another good day at the Con. I wasn't able to work as much on my painting today as I had a ton of foot traffic. I was yapping most of the day with passers by and talking comics. Pierre Barnard from the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien stopped by and got one of my books. He's a big comic book fan, and a real nice guy.

I met with Christina Strain, an amazing colorist. http://justaddninjas.com/ I picked up a sketchbook from her with some fantastic artwork.

Gonna get some sleep tonight. I could barely stand by the end of the day.

Friday recap

Too late to write. Too tired. Had another really great day. Again, barely made it away from my table. Got a lot of repeat visitors checking in on my progress. Still painting. Here's what my painting looks like so far. Still have one last pass across the whole thing to pull all the parts together. Dark darks and all that goodness.

Looking forward to chilling out a bit more tomorrow, and cruising through Sunday.

We went out to dinner with Joel and Wendy tonight and had too good a time. We stayed up talking and laughing past my bedtime. I need to catch up on sleep one of these days.

Thursday at the Con

First full day at the con went great. I painted pretty much all day on the Xiola cover while talking to anyone who stopped by. I did a full pass on the beast, and started Eleya. I think I may pretty much wrap up by the end of the day tomorrow, or Saturday at least. I still need to go back over the beast once I finish Eleya to help pop him off the background, but it's looking pretty good.

I've been getting really good feedback too. People seem to like my art, and my story. I got a compliment from Dave Dorman www.davedorman.com yesterday on my Xiola Cover. And today Glen Keane stopped by, bought a Wanderings, and told me he liked my painting too.

I'm having a great time, and look forward to the rest of the weekend. As I've been welded to my chair for the past two days, I am going to try and check out some of the other booths tomorrow while Analia watches over my table. But I'm not sure I can trust her. She keeps touching up my painting whenever I step out to use the bathroom. Then again, maybe she could just finish up the whole thing if I take off long enough.

See you tomorrow.