Art 

At this late hour I start to appreciate the importance of a good texture. I think that in wallpaper design its pertinent to setting a certain mood while keeping things simple. I’ve never given much thought to the backgrounds of a lot of drawings I’ve done, but in just working on a background you start to find that they can stand on their own – and if they can do that, imagine what they’d do for an illustration on top.

Art

The above image links to a progression of screencaps that I put together mostly for personal use to see how I developed a piece that I lovingly call Food Chain. Some of you have probably gotten to see an earlier version of this as I’ve been working on it whenever I could find a few hours here and there over the last several months. I think that it’s good to look at since it’s one of my more fully realized images both technically and design-wise. To me, it also has a very strong element of narrative, as I get to both anticipate what will inevitably happen in the moment to follow, and I also get to ponder what kind of ecosystem these critters are a part of.

Feel free to sling your thoughts my way.

Art

In the midst of midterm misery I managed to muster the motivation to machinate a menagerie of multimedia marvels. I think that works. Alliteration totally coincidental. First on the list is one in a set of Pulp Heroes based portraits, much further along than the other two, that I’ve had quite a bit of fun working on. Eventually the trio will end up on a Pulp Heroes about site of some sort, but for now this particular image will make it’s home in the sketchbook as it’s not quite finished. I like the overall feel of it though, warm, yet very unsettling. That’s Artemis Prime for you.

Finding a card-shaped hole in my schedule around Thursday night, and having a loved-one’s birthday coming up to fill that void, I whipped up one of my custom-made greetings. A Ninja bursting out of a birthday cake? Surprise, bitches. At the very least it was a confidence booster in my much doubted skills with pencil and paper, and at best it’s pretty cool image probably including more action than most things I’ve ever drawn. I had no plan going into this little project other than to get it done in under 2 hours or so, from nothing, to concept, to finish. Things went as scheduled. I’m still trying to get a better scan of the image as my flatbed gave up the ghost, quietly in the night, sometime last week. I went to scan and she just didn’t turn on. What’s a boy to do?

Last order of business on this creative-centric post is to direct you to the home of Make magazine, the latest issue of which I picked up earlier today. I’d been eyeballing it at work for quite a while before actually picking it up and flipping through, which then led to several lunch breaks worth of reading articles until it finally hit me: I have a desperate urge to tinker. So I caved and bought this well-crafted volume full of crazy projects to wow and inspire. I fear that in a short while I’ll be puzzling out circuitry diagrams and soldering things together, my skill sets expanding into fields I’d not expected, all in the spirit of Making. I’ll be more than happy to demo my gun-operated alarm clock to all of you once it’s finished.

Editor’s note: I had this entire post, beautifully crafted and ready to roll out about an hour ago, when the unthinkable happened. A freak Opera mouse-gesture accident occurred, closing my admin window, and losing my entire post. While this post may have ended up being superior I feel that, combined with the post that will-never-be, it would have been nothing short of spectacular. -JS