When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for acne cream
and peach fuzz goatees
I’d spend all my days
at the TV screen
When I was seventeen…

AMATEURS, which you may have heard me mention on this blog in the past, is now up and running.  For those of you who haven’t read my past ramblings on the project, it is a comic series by Jeremy Massie and myself, and we’ll be posting new pages to our web site every Tuesday and Thursday.

AMATEURS is the story of a group of teenagers who become disgusted with the world of superheroes that surrounds them, and decide to rebel by starting their own crime-fighting team.  You can read it online at http://www.amateursthecomic.com/.

A quick something something for your Wednesday afternoon.  Everyone gabs about the sexy vampires dominating the pop culture landscape, but surely there are some dorky ones scrambling out there as well.  I’m sure there are some out there I’m missing, but it can’t hurt to have a few more to clash with all the cool bloodsuckers out there.

However, a few nights ago I was catching up on some TV watching (Can I call it TV if I download shows from the internet? Anyway…) and got the urge to open up the old sketchbook and do a bit of drawing.  At the time I was watching SHERLOCK, a new BBC series that sets the world of Sherlock Holmes in modern times.  It was created by DOCTOR WHO writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and it’s pretty darn entertaining.

Anyway, here are some ink sketches I did of Sherlock and Watson along with another character on the show.  This first one was drawn more loosely, while in the second drawing I tried to better capture the likenesses of the actors.

SHERLOCK is currently available to watch on the PBS website.  It should also be out on DVD soon if you’d rather not watch your TV on a computer.

Also, this is the second cameo appearance of Punk Rock John, one of the characters from my old comic, One of the Johns, this week. He’s over on my post for today at SaveApathea too! Check it out!

Hopefully I’ll have something to share later on this week, too. I’m feeling productive!

I really should have been working on the cover for Americus instead of drawing this, but you know… Sometimes a man’s gotta’ do what a man’s gotta’ do!

I plan on coloring it, but it might be awhile. Maybe when things clear up a bit work-wise for me.

Moving along:

[This post is semi-cross-posted from SaveApathea.com.]

So a year ago I wrote a post talkin’ about them shelf-talkers I make at my day job at Powell’s City of Books. They’re basically little signage that stick out in front of books to try to get people to buy them. They’re a fun little exercise for me because I get to draw at work, and since I don’t have a computer to fix my mistakes, I get to be a little more loose with the drawing and lettering and not stress out about getting things perfect.

Anyhow, here’s a batch from the last six months or so. If you look at the previous post, I think you can see a very clear progression in the drawing, design, & execution of these shelf-talkers. I’ve also settled into a standard design style too, which is pretty interesting to see.

Ha! Notice how there’s a book on fire in the last one. Probably not the best choice from a guy who illustrated a graphic novel in which the central theme is book banning! Oops!

Here’s the illustration I busted out:

Shorty after I finished the illustration, I got a call from the art director, who had just got word from the news editor that the article had changed and that Kitzhaber had just received a large donation from the labor unions. The news changed in the time that I had gotten the job and finished the article!

Now we had to think of a way to salvage the illustration with a pretty quick turnaround and the least amount of reworking on my part. Luckily, with the way I had drawn the illustration [and the anal retentive way I tend to save a different file for each major step of my work] I was able to do so without much of a hassle.

Here was the fixed illustration that ran in the paper:

Not to shabby, given the turnaround time and what not, if I may say so myself. Also, I got to draw a politician eating bananas with a gorilla.

—

In other news: I’m soooooo close to finishing Americus. I have two pages left to tone and we’re brainstorming the cover design now. I also started writing and thumbnailing out the first couple of pages on my next project. I CAN’T WAIT!

‘Till next week, fair readers!

You know what else is awesome? THE MAP IS FUNCTIONAL! If you’ve been to Powell’s in the last five years or so, you’ve noticed that the old, accordion-style maps looked really cool, but they were completely useless helping you get where you needed to go.

Anyhow, here’s some process images of me drawing it up, and then the finished image as a .jpeg since it’s hard to see in the photo above. [Note: I made the image pretty big in case you wanted to look at it in detail.]

It was pretty crazy to draw because I drew it to size – 18 x 24. Coloring it was even more of a task [I think it took me almost two whole days]. It was worth it, though. I’m super happy with it and I hope that people visiting the store have fun looking for all the little jokes and characters that I threw in there.It’s also pretty awesome that it’s a FREE giant 18 x 24 poster of my art!

If you’re in Portland and visiting Powell’s – Get you one!

GOODBYE CHAINS has been on a summer hiatus, but it start updating again this coming Friday (in other words, a great time for interested readers to go through the comic’s archives). I’m excited.