I believe this is the only piece that didn't end up needing to have a variety of changes made. I was, again, really pleased with how it turned out also - in particular, the water. I really felt that the water came out reading very good and the blue against the warm colors of the ship/figures really worked well. I was also pretty happy with how the figures turned out, especially the male figure doing Capoeria. You have no idea how hard it is to draw a figure in a pose that you have almost no reference for - and it's not like I can do a quick photo shoot to get reference. But, all in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Final Pencils -

Final Colors -

I've got one more panel to show and then I'll be moving on to the Inuit comic I talked about.

Jer

First and foremost, my daughter - Beatrice Pearl Mohler - was born on July 15th at 11:44am. She was 9lbs 1oz and 22in long.

Since, she's gained several inches, several pounds, and the complete infatuation of her mother and father. I cannot count the number of diapers we've changed or the number of hours she's kept us up at night. But, what amazes me the most is how quickly she has insinuated herself into our lives - to the point where I can hardly fathom life without her now. You hear people say stuff like that and it's easy to pass it off as complete silliness - at least until you are in a similar situation.

The new quarter at the Art Institutes International Kansas City started and I've been teaching two Fundamentals of Drawing classes. So far, it's been a great deal of fun and most of the students are genuinely interested in being there and working. Plus, it's been good for me as well - I've been out of school long enough now that it seems so much of the fundamental stuff that I learned in school has sort of faded and become more intuitive. So, I've had to go back and do a variety of research and really think about how to explain things. You might think that would be easy - it's not. I've had successful moments and, as my students can probably verify, some unsuccessful moments. Either way, I'll keep pushing it and trying to do my best.

Next quarter, it looks like I might also get a Storyboarding class. I can't wait.

Among all this, I've had a pretty involved project fall into my lap which I will be managing and contributing some artwork too. I am really optimistic about this and I'm really quite excited about it. It's a very cool project and I'm looking forward to getting to talk about it at length down the line a bit.

Emily and I are also working on a project of our own - it's something we created together, she's writing and I'm doing the layouts, color, and letters. We've contracted an artist to handle the pencils/inks and so far, it's looking quite good. I'm looking forward to showing it off and talking a little more about it soon.

Then there is always Baeg Tobar and Outland Entertainment. A lot is happening behind the scenes right now with both. I will be talking more about this in the next few months.

Ah yes - and Star Craft 2: Wings of Liberty came out.

So, everything is pretty busy at the moment. I'm going to be working on posting more regularly from here on out - I've still got a bundle of artwork to put up that I'd like to share, so expect some more artwork this week.

Jer

Add to that the fact I looked up the wrong era of ships initially, and it complicates things greatly. I actually more or less finished this illustration and found out I had to redo it entirely. My mistake! I should have paid closer attention to what I was doing and I should have made more effort to make sure that I had the right material from the beginning.

First pencils -

And actually, I like the change (as is usually the case). I think the final pencils turned out much better, the composition ended up being better, and the piece over all benefited from doing it over. So, it was to the advantage that it had to be completely redone. Even if it did stink at the time...

Final pencils -

Now, I did end up pretty happy with the final colors on this piece, especially the water. I felt that the water turned out looking quite good, especially when the whole image was shrunk down. The little bit of texture laid over the whole image also helped give the piece a bit of dimension as well. One of the things I learned from doing all the Inuit based material I've done lately was how to handle water without having to actually draw in a bunch of waves/water. Water is hard as hell to illustrate - at least from what I've found. But, I think I've found a solution that works for me. The next piece is actually one of my favorite water pieces...

Final colors -

Jer

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the original illustrator for the comic eventually decided to leave the project and I was offered the full gig. I agreed with some trepidation.

You see, I love comics. I've tried unsuccessfully a number of times to do comics. What I have found is that I am just too damn slow to maintain any kind of regular pace doing the pencils/inks for a comic. It just doesn't work - I start out strong and as I progress, find myself more and more distracted and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved in actually illustrating a comic. I've found I enjoy doing illustration work much more.

But, considering I was so familiar with the material and that there wasn't an overwhelming amount of characters that I would be expected to deal with, I thought I could could probably handle the project. So, I took it on. And to date, it's the biggest comic project I've ever penciled in full - I think we ended up with around 22 pages when all was said and done. And while there are some pages/panels I'd totally do differently now, I'm still pretty proud of the project as a whole.

I was also supposed to color the project, but the deadline snuck up on me and I was forced to find a bit of help from a friend of mine, Chris Summers. Chris was a huge help and I did end up tweaking all the pages a bit, adding some textures and overlays to the pages, but Chris did the majority of it.

This project was also where I cut my teeth on lettering. I ended up lettering the project in both Inuit and English and to date, the English version has never been released, which I'll most likely post here for everybody to see since the book itself has been published.

Anyway, I'll start with the character concepts and then we'll move on to the pages. I started these concepts while I was staying down in Austin with my good friend Kennon James. The characters are Idlout (the main character), his wife, the goddess Sedna, and the creature Qallupiluk. Hope you dig it!

Jer

This ended up being a pretty tough assignment (which I'll explain), but overall I was really quite pleased with how it all turned out. I think having just come off the Alexander project I was on top of my game drawing wise and I just really love how the colors all turned out.  I miss those days!  It's been a little while since I really drew anything - at least a month or two.  I've been focused on coloring, working on layouts for an upcoming project, and doing odds-and-ends to be ready for my daughter to arrive next month.

Where does the time go?

First, it was a fun exercise because I really didn't have to come up with the layout - these were given to me by the client. So I was free to just dive right into the artwork itself - which is something I don't normally have the pleasure of doing.  So that was a fun change of pace for me.  To the left is the thumbnail for the first panel.

That being said, when I began the project I didn't have a very clear idea in my head of what kind of ships would most likely be used and I had to do a bit of research.  I love ocean going ships - I think it is absolutely amazing that people sailed the oceans before present day technology. But for some reason I got stuck on a Portuguese ship from an earlier period than what we needed. I actually went through all the art, got basic approvals, and nearly completed all the drawing when I found out I had to go back and change the ship entirely.

That was not a happy day!

Below was my first run at pencils -

And here are my final pencils with the edited ships -

But, I got it worked out and I still am quite proud of how these images turned out. Below you can see how the final colors turned out!

Hope you dig it!

Jer

Once again, Kennon blew me away with his gorgeous and distinctive linework. I'm a big fan of how he inks his work and spots blacks - even a minimal amount of spotted black can really make an image. I was also rather pleased with how the colors turned out. Again, I wanted to have the focus sort of glowing, which worked out perfectly with the lighting and the placement of the dagger. I am also quite pleased with the slightly purple color that worked it's way into the leather - I think that made for a very pleasing color scheme.

All in all, I felt that all these pieces turned out really great. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find some other work that Kennon and I did together - I think I have a few odds-and-ends. Though I would really love to work on something more involved at some point - especially something comic related. But, who knows when or if that'll ever happen. Maybe I can get him to do some Baeg Tobar stuff!

We'll see, anyway.

So far this week has been consumed with work on my Baeg Tobar project. We've been in a bit of stasis lately, it seems like. But, there has been a number of things going on in the background and I'm hoping to have a few new things to post up for everybody to see soon.

One of the things I've been doing with it is compiling all the art and reference material into one place. I have to say - it's almost stunning to see all the material we have. What is available on the public side is just a very, very small bit of the whole. I'm hoping to start getting some of this stuff out for everybody to see soon!

I've also been working a bit on a new project that Emily and I are developing. But, I don't want to give away too much about that particular project just yet. It's going to be really great, though. I'm looking forward to getting that out for everybody to see...soon!

Jer

This was a fun one to do with the glowing pile of gold at the bottom providing a bit of secondary lighting - which is something I don't do a lot with but I really enjoy adding in when I have the opportunity. And again, Kennon's lines were just a LOT of fun to color.

Ugh, what a week. The past month (and longer for Emily because she is more sensitive to these things than I am), there has been a sort of noxious odor in our house. It has sort of smelt like gas and so we had the furnace guy out to look at our furnace and came to find out our furnace is pretty much shot. Three cracked heat exchanges which cannot be replaced since they don't make them anymore.

But, since we just bought the house we have a home warranty for this sort of stuff, right?

WRONG! Apparently, it doesn't matter to the home warranty people whether or not the unit is busted or spewing out noxious gas. If the unit is still functioning and the gas levels aren't high enough to hurt us, they won't replace anything. Nevermind that the unit is actually busted and making our house next to unlivable. Nevermind that even if the damn thing isn't spewing out toxic emissions at the moment, it could do it at any time which could in turn affect my daughter due in the next few months. Idiocy.

Ugh.

Guess we'll be replacing it on our own. Don't bother with purchasing a home warranty.

Jer

I really liked how this particular image turned out - I think the slight glow of the rose really made this image pop. Of course, working over Kennon's really clean and gorgeous linework made these images fun. I wish that my own ink work looked as clean and smooth as his!

I think I'm going to have to talk him into working on something together. Hmm.

And where the heck did April go? It seems like the month of April just flew by. Before I knew it, it was over. Of course, a lot of great things happened in April which might be partly due to it seeming to fly by so fast, but still...

Jer

By and large, I think that art in general is a solitary profession. The client gives you a job, you retire to your studio/workspace/cave, where ever that may be, generate the art, and hand it in. In recent years, however, with the internet making access to other artists so much easier, I think it has really made it easier for creatives to work together.

So, when my buddy Kennon James IMed me about doing some color work for him, I was definitely interested. The project was for a company called Slugfest Games. I believe it is for a board game and these were a series of cards that went with the game. I've had the pleasure of coloring a number of images for Kennon, but these are the only ones that we've actually done together professionally. They are also my favorite of all the material we've done together.

Anyway, I'll post these up one at a time. This is the first one I did - the warrior.

Jer