HexComix and Hex11

So it's not far from a year since my last update? Well time flies when you're making comic books! I started a production company last year with my partners in creativity Lynly Forrest and Kelly Sue Milano, culminating in the October 2014 release of our new comic book, HEX11. It's a story about a future world where magic is a new technology being fought over by modern day witches, evil corporations, and arrogant demons. The creation of it has been a dream come true and the reception has been overwhelming.

Since it's debut, we've done a few West Coast conventions (Comikaze, Phoenix FanFest, Long Beach Comic Expo) with more to come (WonderCon, Wizard World Las Vegas,  Phoenix Comicon, and the big one: San Diego Comic-Con in July).

We've met some amazing people along the way, been nominated for the first ever Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in comics, and released Issue #2 last weekend at LBCE! I'm now hard at work on Issue #3 and as such, won't be updating very much on this blog for the time being. So if you're interested in new artwork, please visit HexComix.com, or follow us on our social medias: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. All news and art is regularly updated!

Thank you!

Mr. Sizzlewinks

Dragon Cats: These guys popped into being through a bit of randomness while sketching and now I want to put them in everything.

The Verge

A prequel to the previous post.

Smoke & Ink

Just drawing out some characters and scenes of a comic I'm perpetually dreaming up... More on this track in a bit.

Holy ghosts! That's a lot of ghosts!

"What is this noise," you ask?  I just finished drawing up a bunch of ghosts for a combination flip-book, called 10,000 Ghost Stories, to be published shortly.  I had pretty much free reign to think up 23 iterations of demons and dead things to connect at the neck and waist, which was a real pleasure to spend time on.  In the end, you can make about as many as, you guessed it: 10,000 unique ghosts!  The above is just one example.  Below are the 3 in their un-spliced forms.

Character-Building

Been working up a storm of character designs lately, some professionally, and some for personal projects.  Here are a few.  Above is the line-up of a kind of cowboy version of the Labours of Hercules.

 A spritely punk from a personal project.

A moto-girl for a racing game proposal.

And, finally, a (semi-personal?) character design for another game proposal:  It started with the game-play modeled after Snake, and I built the story on top of it.  The furry thing's name is Dash, and he's an alien pilot who steals fuel orbs for his spaceship from these dust mites that work in the mines of his planet. The story was deemed a little too complex by the PTB, which I get, but I made the artist's mistake of falling in love with this guy, so it gave me a little sad when he got rejected.

Bubbles and Wormholes

I've seen enough science fiction to know that time travel energy is always blue.  More like science FACT.  A couple recent examples, for Scholastic's Storyworks: A time traveler meets the inventor of his time machine.

And for Oxford University Press, a dotty professor builds a time machine out of something only slightly less cool than a DeLorean.

Sketch Dump: Howl, The Clearing, Heartworms

Other than the incision, there's no pain.

The title of this post is based on a snippet of overheard conversation on the street.  I think the speaker was talking about taking his dog to the vet for some operation.  I thought it was such an oddly beautiful statement, that I had to give it a picture.

Hirsute I, painted.

Been awhile! Here's the first of a few things I've been working on lately.

the beastess

The Spirit of Vengeance and Hirsute I & II, sketches

A seed that had been planted earlier in the year finally came to fruition and I moved on down to LA a few weeks ago.  It's probably the newness of the thing, but I'm pretty well inspired here so far, so I've been taking a few hours here and there to sketch at various coffee shops.  I tend to come up with better ideas when out of the house.  Maybe it's the lack of distraction (apart from when making side eyes at minor celebrities), and the inability to escape what I'm working on; it forces me to commit to putting something I'm happy with on a page instead of getting exasperated and throwing my sketchbook to the side the first time I draw an errant line.

ANYWAYS, my first week here, a friend took me to the Klimt exhibit at the Getty, which may be where the symbolism of the top piece comes from, to say nothing of the dramatic naked ladies.

ceremony

This was featured at a pop-up gallery in LA as part of promotion for Universal's Snow White & The Huntsman movie.  It's sort of a stream of consciousness piece.  You know, SYMBOLISM.

oracle

vampire dreams

A couple weeks ago, I had a dream about vampires employed as corporate assassins.  It was pretty neat.  In it, I met this little girl and we had a deep conversation about the fragility of life and stuff.  I drew her!

a new year in monster drawing

I spent the holiday break thinking of ways to incorporate more monsters into artwork for 2012.  This is one!

Delicacy

Boom.  Another week, another challenge met.

Eva Ibbotson covers

Three soon-to-be reprinted covers for Penguin/Dutton Children's Books:

drawing monsters, part I

I've been rather enjoying myself recently, as I've been asked to draw a lot of total jerks.

Here is one recent example:
 

Dorian Gray for Scope (a teen-focused magazine).  Detail:

Good times.

The Darkside Zodiac 2011 Wall Calendar

Now that the holiday season is officially upon us, it is time to start thinking about buying you and yours a wall calendar for next year.

The gist of the book this calendar was based on is that most astrological guides are far too kind to their subjects.  The Darkside is all about calling out the bad behaviors of the Zodiac, in a humorous (and, might I add, BEAUTIFULLY illustrated) way.  I had a blast working on this, and ever since the publisher sent me my copies, it has tended to come out at parties where we all have a good laugh (and occasional uncomfortable silence) about how close to home some of the descriptions hit.  A gift that keeps on giving, so...

Purchase here!