Happy Holidays!

Sketchtravel Museum Project

The Sketchtravel Exhibit is on it's way to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, but to make it happen some funds need to be raised. I've contributed a couple of my Bookplate Betties books with original drawings in them. If you're interested you can find the Ebay auction here and here.

Check out the rest of the auction too, there's a lot of cool stuff.

Banana Girl Signing

It might be a bit late for a Banana Girl launch party, but we're having one anyway.
At the TR!CKSTER store: 2631 Ashby Ave, Berkeley, CA. 94705
NOVEMBER 30th, 2012 – 6:30p

I'll be there signing statues, books, cards or whatever you want.
Stop in and say hello.

Termite Bianca Process

For this Termite Bianca piece, I tried something pretty different. I did a greyscale underpainting with acrylic on watercolor paper similar to how I would normally do it, but instead of painting the color layer with concentrated watercolor I did it digitally in photoshop.

Below you can see the underpainting, then the color layer, then the final composite.

Termite Bianca

This is another pin up I did a couple years ago that is also seeing the light of day. The character is Termite Bianca from an Italian sci-fi comic of the same name created by Marco Bianchini, Marco Santucci and Patrizio Evangelisti.

My piece is for Fantasia Termite Bianca, an international tribute book which will also feature the very intercontinental assortment of Katsuhiro Otomo, Katsuya Terada, Akemi Takada, Yoshitoshi Abe, Foo Midori, THORES Shibamoto, Maya Miyazaki, Sho Murase, Bob Eggleton, Bryan Talbot, Oscar Martin, Daniela Uhlig, Otto Schmidt, Lokman Lam, Paolo Barbieri, Maurizio Manzieri and Mario Alberti.

The book will be available next week at the Lucca Comics and Games festival in Lucca Italy. And online shortly thereafter here.

Monster Roll

Monster Roll is a short film directed by my friend Dan Blank. You might remember him from the Whatever Lola Wants short I posted here a couple years ago.

I feel very close to this project as I've been watching it develop over the past few years. That and I absolutely love it, it's about sushi chefs who fight sea monsters. How is that not awesome? The final goal is to make a live action feature, so show your support and watch the short at www.Monsterroll.com you'll be glad you did.

UPDATED! with a direct link to the short itself.
You should still check out the website though, there's some cool behind the scenes stuff. Oh, and be sure to watch it full screen. And crank up the volume. I'd say make some popcorn too but it's only six minutes.

‘Trick’ and Mortar

Tr!ckster, the pop up store and home to all things creator owned, now has a permanent brick and mortar location in Berkeley CA.

2631A Ashby Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94702
510-665-8900

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 11am-7pm

Tr!ckster carries everything I have available here on the blog including Banana Girl statues. So if you're in the area and want to save yourself some shipping costs, stop on by.

APE Commish

A couple Copic marker commissions I did at APE this past weekend.

APE 2012

I'm going to be at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco this weekend. You can find me at one of the Red Window tables 526, 527 or 528.

I'll also have a fresh supply of Banana Girls on hand!

Skadi

I jumped at the chance to do this pin up a couple of years ago for the very awesome Katie Rice because I'm a big fan of her work. She and Luke Cormican do this hilarious/ridiculous web comic called Skadi. She's a barbarian girl on a quest to eat of every meat.
This pin up has finally seen the light of day in their new book compiling the first two years of Skadi web comics. It's premiering at APE this weekend in San Francisco. Look for it!

Gone Fishin' Part 3

I like using acrylic wash because it has the look of watercolor but it doesn't reactivate when it gets wet. This way I can do all my values and modeling first in a way that can't get messed up, then I apply the brighter but much more delicate concentrated watercolor as the final step to add all the chroma.

As you can see below I start adding the concentrated watercolor to her skin, then bathing suit next. I do the light colors first because if I did it the other way around there's the danger of the dark color bleeding into the lighter. At this stage I don't attempt any modeling, I only lay in the concentrated watercolor as flat tones. Modeling will only mess it up. The Lumas are completely translucent so the acrylic washes underneath show through perfectly. Next I move on to the orange of her hair and the blues for the fish and the ocean and sky.

I always paint a test subject simultaneously. I try my colors on the test first and if it looks a little off I can fix it for the real piece.

And here's a scan of the final art.

Gone Fishin' Part 2

The first thing I do after finishing the drawing is transfer it via light box onto the watercolor paper. Then I "ink" it with acrylic paint to make the line work as you can see on the left. In the right image you can see I started to lay in the shadows on the girl. This is all acrylic wash.

It's hard to tell, but on the left I strengthened the core shadows in the same areas. On the right I added the shadows to the fish and the ocean.

On the left here you can see a printout where I drew some test clouds in before painting them in on the right.

And here is a scan of the underpainting. This is as far as I take it with acrylic washes. Next post I'll bring it to final with concentrated watercolor.

Gone Fishin'

Recently I finished a pin up painting for a friend, who as you can see, is into fishing. I have a tendency to post my finished pieces before the early stages, but this time I think I'll go in order.

These are my rough concepts for the piece.

We went with that last one, then I tied it down as you can see here.

Bananas by Anders

Banana girl sculptor Anders Ehrenborg made this really cool image with his 3D model of the statue.

Banana Girls Are Back!

Banana Girl Statues are now available for order.

Designed by Bill Presing and Sculpted by Anders Ehrenborg in association with Digital Banana Studio, Banana girl is a fully painted urethane resin statue. She stands 6 1/2" tall (Including the base) and is individually numbered and limited to an edition of 225 copies. A certificate of authenticity signed by the creators will be included in every box.

The base price for the statue is $150 US plus $25 for 10 day shipping anywhere in the world.

choose statue shipping method

statue + 10 day shipping + tracking $175.00 USD

Also available is this nude variant. Identical in every way, save for the severe lack of hula skirt. This edition also contains the same certificate of authenticity and is individually numbered and limited to a mere 25 copies. However as of this writing there are only 6 copies of the variant left.

The base price for the statue is $300 US plus $25 for 10 day shipping anywhere in the world.

choose statue shipping method

nude statue + 10 day shipping + tracking $325.00 USD

All statues ship directly from the manufacturer in China. Estimate 1 to 10 days for them to ship it. For US customers the tracking numbers will activate once the package enters the United States.

Interstella

I did another collaboration piece with my friend Robert Smith aka "Sir Iguana". I drew/inked, he painted.
He's selling it here on ebay if anyone is interested.

Tr!ckster 2012

I had a great time at Tr!ckster this year! Thanks to everyone who pulled themselves away from the con to come and visit.

I'm happy to say I even managed to squeeze in a few commissions while I was there.
Thanks for the scans guys!

Banana Girls at Tr!ckster

Banana Girl Statues have arrived just in time for Tr!ckster 2012. Tr!ckster is the creator owned pop-up event near the San Diego convention center during comic con. These Banana Girl statues will be available for purchase there.

But first, my favorite part. The unboxing.

Also available at Tr!ckster will be my usual books and cards as well as these new signed art prints featuring the original Banana Girl piece.

I'll be attending Tr!ckster much of Friday and Saturday, but the statues will be available from day one. See you there!