This line from their announcement caught my attention:

“If these people would spend even some of the energy that they spend on these comic books, reading the Bible…”

My first thought is that they would nitpick and argue about the Bible the same way they do about comics.  Who wrote the best Gospel, which apostle could beat up which apostle in a fight… that sort of thing.  This line of thinking lead to a few of ideas for comics in this vein.   Below are the couple that I was able to get done.  Behold, the horror of the nerd brain…

I’m now sort of bummed that I’ll be missing Comic-Con this year.  I’m hoping the WBC will arrive at the convention and end up facing a counter protest made up of convention-goers.  Can anyone seriously espouse that “God Hates Comic-Con!” when confronted by a horde of people dressed as elves and Stormtroopers?

As you get older you start to pay attention to things like perspective and proportions or what not. You know some of the rules, but you’re not aware of all of them. So when trying to draw like a thirteen year old, I found it hard to forget or ignore some of the rules ad techniques that I’ve spent my whole life trying to learn and master.

It made me think of a book I read recently, Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It is coming of age story about an kid who decides he wants to go to the white school across town instead of on the reservation. The main character, Junior, is a cartoonist and throughout the book Ellen Forney did the illustrations and cartoons that Junior has ‘drawn’. She did a really good job of getting into the mind and skill level of a thirteen year old. Here’s an example:

And here’s a collage of images I did for the background of the site. I think mine look a little less convincing, but they work in the sense that you understand that someone younger and less refined has drawn them. What do you think?

Anyhow, besides doing little illustrations like this, I’ve been busy doing menial work like reformatting pages and relettering the first chapter. It’s coming along. We were going to try to have things up in a couple of weeks, but now we’re shooting for early August so it doesn’t get lost in the Comic Con media blitzkrieg.

Hopefully once we get this all done, I can post some personal illustrations or drawing [like finishing A Date in Time and Space!].

I wanted to do a quick piece this week, since I don’t want to show off anything I’ve been working on yet. However, most of my ideas have been some sort of fan art or AMATEURS-related, of which I feel I’ve been posting too much lately.  As Jonathan put it, I wanted to think “outside of the dork-box”.

So today’s image is inspired by an old photograph of a family friend.  The details in the photo aren’t very clear (one of the reasons I’m not including it in this post), so there was a lot of room for invention when drawing branches and details.  I also had a chance to play around with inking… I think the final result is a little labored-over, but I feel I got the “essence” of the image down well enough.

Bonus points if you can figure out where it’s from.

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This year’s Finder magazine the WW publishes came out this week. Jen and I hit up the release party a little too late for the free grub, but got some free beer that unfortunately made us feel weird the rest of the night. It wasn’t a bad time, though – I finally got to meet the esteemed Ben Mollica, the art director for the WW who is kind enough to send me the work he does, and I also got to see Tom Humphreys again, a former WW art director who got me started doing illustration for them.

Anyhow, it’s a great resource for anyone in Portland, whether you’ve been here six year or are just visiting for a week. It has recommendations and locations of most of the good restaurants and things to do around town. Plus it’s FREE! Go pick one up!

Here’s my spread in print:

And here’s the illustration I did for the paper this week for this article:

I’m still busy doing behind-the-scenes stuff for Save Apathea, but if all goes according to plan, we should have it up in a couple of weeks. You’ll hear about it here first!

Have a good 4th, everyone!

See you all next week.

Some big news – First Second has asked MK and I to serialize Americus online. Details are still being hashed out, but we’re hoping to have the website up and ready to go around the middle of July. I am pretty excited, though I’ll admit it’s kind of funny too. I think the standard approach is to do your webcomic and finish it up with hopes of having a publisher picking it up. We’re doing the reverse – we’ve got the book finished and have a publisher, but are doing the webcomic to help drum up interest and support for the book before it’s release date next fall.

Like I said, I’m pretty excited. I’ll give you more details as they pop up.

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I also did some spot illustrations for an entertainment piece for this week’s Willamette Week. There is a free, all ages music festival happening in the St. John’s neighborhood this weekend. If you get the chance, check it out. I haven’t been to St. Johns in years and years, but it’s a beautiful area and the third annual No. Fest seems pretty awesome.

I’ve finished the next page of A Date in Time and Space, but I’m gonna put it on hold for now while I work on getting saveapathea.com ready to get rolling.

xoxo- jonathan

But today I have some piping hot artstuffs fresh from the oven.  Join me as I put them on the counter to cool…

Inked, lettered and toned pages to follow.  Stay tuned!

Also, I should mention that Jeremy has inked and lettered the first few  pages of AMATEURS, which he has been posting on his blog.  Check ‘em out.

Sometimes I’m amazed you can be hired to draw crazy stuff like this…  Below are some process bits.

A rough sketch I sent to my editor.  Originally I had the Mayor running from the carnage at City Hall, but I was asked to focus on the background scene instead.

A scan of my inks and pencils… Usually on tight deadlines, I just fill the black areas with Photoshop to save time.

Anyhow, sorry I fell of the drawing horse for like two weeks. It’s a slippery slope. One week was helping Tyler move, so that was kind of an excuse, and the other was getting adjusted and cleaning and what not after Tyler moved.

Another part of it is that I’ve gotten back into gaming. Well, I say gaming, but it’s really only one game – Legend of the Five Rings. It’s kind of like Magic, but more awesome because A.] it takes place in a psuedo-Japanese fantasy world, so there are samurai, and B.] there’s a story that has been driving the game since day one that provides a incredibly detailed environment that makes the game wicked addicting [even though I don't think the story is as good as it was back in the beginning of the game].

So yeah, if you thought I was a dork before, now you know the truth that my dorkiness really knows no bounds… I can’t help it! As many times as I’ve lost interest or quit playing for whatever reason, I always find myself coming back to it. So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to come out of retirement and play in a couple of tournaments to scratch that itch. It felt good to be playing again and I had a lot of fun. I thought it would be a good excuse to get the rust out of my drawing arm by doing some fan art.

The image is based on the latest story arc, the Plague War:

I will color it eventually, but there’s just so much going on that it’s going to take forever. I’ll try to work on it here and there and post the final, colored version when I get done.

I also did some work for the Willamette Week this week to accompany this article. It took me awhile with all the ellipses and what not. Anyhow, here’s that:

And I haven’t forgotten about A Date in Time and Space! I just needed to warm up this week after the two week drawing hiatus. I’ll try to have new page[s] posted next week. Have a good weekend!

This week I felt like trying to knock out an illustration as quickly as possible.  I’ve been wanting to do another pin up of an AMATEURS character, so I did a few sketches and went with my favorite idea.  I decided to post progress shots since a lot of Photoshop work went into creating the final image.

I like the concept of this image, though I think I could have executed it better.  I’m not too upset though, since the point was to have something finished at the end of the day.

xoxo