Christmas (shopping)

This is a Christmas themed drawing I did about 4 years ago. I have to admit, the excessive commercialism of Christmas gives me something of an empty feeling every year. That's not to say I don't like Christmas -- I really like the opportunity to see family and friends over the holidays, but the overwhelming emphasis on consumption and christmas shopping and all the advertisments and marketing during the holidays leaves me a bit cold.

As for the drawing, it was done in gouache and ink on water-colour paper and you can see how much I liked drawing big-headed people back then (and still do!).

Christmas time

These are a couple of illustrations I did for a marketing company a few years ago. To be honest, I don't actually remember where these were used, but since they're holiday themed, I thought it'd be nice to post them here.

The first one was a board game (obviously), and the second was the cover for an activity book (I think). They were both drawn in ink and then coloured in photoshop, and they're pretty indicative of the kind of illustration I did for children's publications a few years a go.

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 3)

Here's another of the illustrations I did recently for Swedish agency, Karnhuset. This one is a view of their offices in Stockholm. As you can imagine, this one took a long time to draw, with all the architectural details and such. And I actually drew it twice - once as a small colour rough, and once as a big final image which was to be blown up and displayed poster-sized.

Normally, I'd be wary of trying to draw a scene like this without first visiting the location and shooting some reference photos, but obviously that wasn't possible this time. Thankfully though, they provided me with some excellent photos to work from.

Still, it would have been nice to visit Stockholm...

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 2)

Here are two more illustrations of the staff at the Stockholm-based design agency, Karnhuset, that I did recently. As with the previous two, these were also drawn in coloured inks. Originally, they were all drawn in the same colour, but I decided to vary up the tone here for variety's sake.

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 1)

Recently, I did a series of illustrations for Swedish design agency, Karnhuset, for their upcoming website re-design. I was contacted by Jakob Westman, who also happens to be a pretty snazzy illustrator, and he commissioned me to do some fun portraits of himself and his fellow staff, as well as some other graphics and illustrations.

I'll post more images and graphics later, but for now, here's a couple of the staff portraits I drew up. These pretty much drew themselves, mainly because the Karnhuset gang have a lot of style anyway, and working with another illustrator as a contact made it easier, since Jakob drew up some nice concept sketches for me to see what he wanted.

For the final art, I drew these with coloured ink on paper. They were then scanned and and cleaned it up a bit in photoshop. The drawings were all painted in the same colour, but for variety's sake I decided to re-colour each individually here.

Project: Romantic

I recently got my comp copies of the fantastic new Adhouse books anthology, Project: Romantic and I was very impressed. I only have a 2 page story in it, "My Name is Eunice Jung" (which you may have already seen in my blog here), so my contribution is really really small, but its a thrill to see my work in amongst such a talented collection of artists. As I read through the book, I was awed by the sheer diversity of art styles and storytelling approaches. There are some seriously talented comic artists working today and many of them are in this book.

Among my favourite stories in the collection: "Romantic" by Doug Fraser, "Scary Thoughts" by Mike Laughead, "Lovers on a Flying Bed" by Junko Mizuno, "Sweetie 'n Me" by Joel Priddy (a real charmer), "The Romance of the Skies" by Paul Rivoche, "Imitating Life" by José Garibaldi (man, what a draftsman!), "Even Monkeys Know About Love After A Hundred Years" by Randall Christopher (hilarious and touching) and "Kingdom Animalia, Ilustrated" by Josh Cutter (just plain hilarious). Though I have to say, my favourite story here is "Trouble" by T. Edward Bak -- a four page story about teenage crushes, younger brothers, and suburban life all written and drawn in a very understated, honest style.

But don't take my word for it, pick up a copy of Project: Romantic and see for yourself!

Super-Deformed Forever!

Here's another old drawing, this one combining two of my favourite things: 1) drawing big headed people, and 2) Bruce Lee!

Seriously, there was a time when I drew almost everyone super-deformed/bigheaded/3-heads-high! I think it was because it made everyone look so friendly and cartoony. Or maybe it's just because Ihave an gi-normously large head myself. Either way, I still find myself having trouble resisting the urge to make everyone's head just a little bigger in my drawings -- as all my friends will attest!

And it really does make everyone look friendlier! As another example, here's a drawing of everyone's favourite bad-ass mutant, Wolverine, done in my big-headed style. See and judge for yourself...

Hulk Says...

I often leave the TV running in the background when I'm working or doodling. Its a bad habit, and more than a few times I've found myself annoyed by whatever's on (especially daytime TV -- a total wasteland), while at the same time being unwilling to change channels 'cause I'm so immersed in what I'm working on. Then my drawing gets all aggressive and frustrated.

I think I drew this while an episode of "Dr. Phil" was playing in the background, so go figure.

The Third Eye Knows

Here's a really, really old piece -- I drew this one way back in 2000, for an ESP Home-Testing-Kit that I designed with my wife as a fun art project. This illustration served as part of the back cover artwork for it. Someday, I'll have to post to the rest of the art from that, but for now you can see for yourself at how much or how little my work has changed in 6 years.

Sketchbook Heroes

I'm trying to post a little more often to this blog, so here's a few quick super-hero sketches I drew up recently. I've been trying to loosen up by doing more of my drawing in ink and not pencilling as much, so these were actually drawn completely in markers with no pencil drawing at all. I first sketched out the figure in a coloured marker, and then inked over it on a light-box to arrive at the final. All in all, each sketch took about 10-20 minutes of time --a quick doodle break in the middle of the day!

Incidentally, all three heroes (the Black Panther, Captain Victory and Iron-Man) were created by Jack "King" Kirby -- I just find doodling Kirby-designed heroes to be so much fun.

And the Winner Is...

Well, folks, it took a while, and the result was very close, but we finally have a winner for our Write a Caption Contest !

After a lengthy and highly subjective judging process, the three person panel of me, myself and I have chosen Jason Chalker and his witty entry as the winner! I think it was the Planet of the Apes reference that sealed it for me. You can read his genius above and see for yourself.

Jason will be receiving the semi-awesome prize-pack of my recent Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook children's comic as well as a selection of ultra-rare mini-comics by me.

Congratulations, Jason! And my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to enter. Clearly, there are some very funny writers among you. This was so much fun -- I think I'll run another contest soon.

Bad Inking Day

The "write a caption" contest is still going on (see previous entry), but I thought I'd share a gag I doodled after I had a bad inking day recently. It was one of those days where every line I set down was shaky and no amount of warming up would get rid of it. I don't usually get like that, and most often I just work through it and it goes away, but this time it stayed with me the whole day! It was especially frustrating because the day before, I felt like I was on a real roll and every line came off my brush with a "zing!"

Anyway, I drew this up after I finished up the day's work, to try and cheer myself up. And what do you know -- in the course of drawing and lettering it, my shaky line went away!

What is this monkey doing?

Sometimes, I'll doodle while watching TV. This is one I did while watching a recent press conference from the White House.

I hereby apologize in advance to anyone offended by sketches of apes giving the finger.

Wowie Special Contest!
Ok, here's an idea -- I've decided to run a contest to see who could write the best caption for this picture. So, if you're the creative copy-writing type and/or the compulsive contest-entering type, take your best shot in the comments section and I'll pick the winner at the end of October (or thereabouts).

And what does the winner recieve for his or her efforts? Howsabout a free copy of my recent Max Finder Mystery book and a rare stash of my mini-comics (so rare that I have to go deep into my closet to find them!). Is that enough to entice your creative juices? If your answer's no, well...that's all I got. But you answered yes or even "ehh..maybe, whatever", then enter today!*

*offer void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Some contestants may be asked to answer a skill testing question relating to the Jack Kirby era Fantastic Four. Well, maybe not.

See No Evil

Here's a spot illustration I did recently for Canadian Business Magazine (Tim Davin, art director). It was to accompany an article on stock regulators. It might sound pretty dry but really, how could I ever turn down an opportunity to draw monkeys?

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Who is Max Finder, you ask? Well, he's the 7th Grade detective who, together with his friend Alison Santos, solves mysteries and crimes around his neighbourhood in Whispering Meadows. He's also the star of the popular Max Finder Mystery comic feature that ran each month in Owl Magazine for the past 3 years. Now those you-solve-it stories are being collected up into a trade paperback series with the first volume hitting the shelves this month.

I'm thrilled to see it collected up in a paperback, as Max Finder Mystery was the first ongoing comic feature I ever drew, and I enjoyed working on it so much that it made me want to write and draw comics full time. I learned a lot about drawing comics in the 3 years I worked on it, and I had a great time illustrating the scripts by writer Liam O'Donnell.

For more information about Max Finder Mystery:Collected Casebook, you can check out the links below:

Visit the Owl magazine webpage for Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Read a sample Max Finder Mystery online at Owlkids.com

Read an interview with me on Silverbulletcomicbooks.com discussing Max Finder and other upcoming projects

Check out the website of Max Finder creator and writer, Liam O'Donnell

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook is available at your local bookstore, but you can also order it online directly from the publisher, Owlkids books, or through retailers like Chapters.ca and Amazon.com.

Finally, here's a promotional Max Finder poster I drew for the launch and Owl Magazine's 30th Anniversary Kids Day event at the CN Tower, here in Toronto:

Toronto Back Alleys Pt. 11

For those who asked, here are two more ink drawings of the alleys near my home in Toronto. The first was drawn earlier, at the start of the summer, while the second was drawn a week or so ago. As you might be able to tell, I was bit rusty when I drew the more recent one, and my markers were a little more worn down.

Fear Agent Part 2

This is a pin-up I did recently for Rick Remender's Fear Agent comic. Actually, it's the 2nd pin-up I've done for FA (you can see the first one here.) and it took way longer to draw than I originally thought. I drew the rough sketch for it fairly quickly, like under a half-hour, so I thought I'd probably knock out the final in markers over a couple of hours. Of course, sometimes things don't go as easily as planned, and after deciding to change up the lighting for more accuracy and added drama, I spent a full day learning how to draw double-lit figures in two colours. I still see a lot of problems/mistakes in this piece, but I thought I share it anyway.

Commissioned Heroes

This is a recent commissioned piece I drew up for a nice fellow who asked for Green Lantern or Doctor Fate. I threw in Superman and the Flash for the extra "Superfriends" feel, but being the geek I am, I decided to draw the old "earth-2" Superman (fellow geeks will get it). I think I just like the idea of drawing Superman with grey hair.

Anyway, the drawing was done is markers and then scanned and cleaned-up in photoshop. The original colour was green (surprise), but I changed it up for variety's sake. Below is the original small pencil rough.

The Grasshopper Part 3

Sorry about the delay between posts -- I had some snafus with blogger and my mac, which kept crashing. Anyway, here are a couple more pages from the Grasshopper. These were part of the preview/sample book I brought to the San Diego Comiccon. Thanks to everyone who's commented on this project -- I appreciate the kind words!

San Diego ComicCon Wrap-up!

I'll post more Grasshopper pages in a bit, but first, since I'm now sufficiently recovered from the experience, I thought I'd post some pics of my first visit to the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had no idea what to expect, and went down to sunny california with a great crew of fellow canadian artists including Ramon Perez, Rob Coughler, Andy Belanger, Cameron Stewart and my hotel-mate and fellow Kirby-obsessive, Steve Manale. These are actually Steve's photos that I'm posting, since I didn't snap a single picture while I was there! Thanks, Steve!


Sometimes you just gotta read the instructions...


Never mock the power of the Yellow Stripe!


Stylin' and Profilin' at the beach...


...ah, the beach!


Frank Cammuso and his lovely wife, Ngoc, demonstrate their musical-theatre background with an impromptu display of jazz-hands. Ramon Perez is mildly amused.


Our fellow Canadians miss their flight. Ramon feels a migrane coming on as Andy B. prepares to optic-blast Cameron Stewart from across the cramped hotel room.


You know its time to leave when you get this jaded. Kill your idols, Steve!

More Grasshopper!

More pages from the Grasshopper. For those who asked, these were drawn in marker and cleaned up digitally. The final book will be drawn completely in the same manner. I'll post more info and pages soon. Thanks for looking!

The Grasshopper!

Its been a few weeks witthout a blog post, so I'll apologize again for the delays. I've had quite a hectic month, including my first ever trip to the San Diego ComicCon. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the event, but I had a great time nonetheless. My thanks to all my fellow Toronto cartoonists who went down to the US with me, including Ramon Perez, Steve Manale, Rob Coughler, Andy Belanger and Cameron Stewart and to all the very nice artists and comic-people I finally had a chance to meet in person! Special thanks to also Frank Cammuso, who was gracious enough to let me and Steve use his booth as a homebase. I owe my gratidude to you all for making my first visit such a fun and exciting one.

One of the things I brought to show at the con was a 7 page sample I wrote and drew up for an action-adventure comic book I'm working on called the Grasshopper! I've been wanting to write and draw a straight-ahead, full-throttle action and kung-fu story for a little while now, and I've finally gotten the opportunity to do so with this one. Below is the artwork for the first 2 pages. Of course, the REAL action begins on page 3...and doesn't stop for another 45 pages! And if you like these pages, fear not, I'll post more Grasshopper artwork soon.

el Capitan!

Here's yet another Captain America drawing I did recently. I think I doodle Captain America these days almost as much as Iron Man -- and whenever I do, I can't resist "going all Kirby" on it! I've always loved the way Jack Kirby drew Captain America with the boxer shorts and the meaty hands. And, getting all geek-history here, I gotta say that the definitive Kirby inker on Captain America was Frank Giacoia. Those two made one heck of a team-up.

work work work

Well, I'm still very busy drawing some new comic pages, so I'm posting another image from my files. This one's a spot illustration I did last year for Canadian Business Magazine, and I thought I'd share it because its a good example of the kind of editorial work I do. Unlike many of my recent pieces, this one was painted old-school style in gouache.

BTW, I think I've drawn several variations on the "multi-armed, multi-tasking worker" in my career and I don't think I'm the only illustrator who has done so -- it seems to be a visual concept that comes up again and again. For further proof, check out the example by my friend and fellow artist, Ramon Perez, on his blog.

House of Fran

I've been very busy drawing up some new comic pages, so my apologies for not updating this blog more frequently. I'll try and post more stuff soon. In the meantime, here's a quick marker cartoon I did of my wife, Claudia (aka Fran), who also has her own sketchblog called the Fran Pages. Its filled with her excellent drawings and illustrations -- needless to say, I'm a fan!

Toronto back alleys pt 10

Another drawing in ink-markers, done a few weeks ago.

My Name is Eunice Jung

This is actually a story I wrote years ago, which I recently revisited and re-drew. Like "Night Time", the other story posted on my blog, it was originally published in the local magazine, Taddle Creek as their "illustrated fiction" feature. Recently, the very excellent Korean comic publisher, Sai Comics, contacted me with an offer to reprint this and some of my other comics for Korean audiences (and translated into Hangul!) in their anthology series. Well, after seeing some of the other comics going in the same book, and after taking a look at how badly I drew and lettered this years ago, I decided to re-do most of the artwork before allowing it to be published again.

Now normally I wouldn't redraw old artwork, since its like going backwards, but this time I thought might be fun. Especially since the story was only 2 pages long and really simple. I was fairly happy with the results, and it was actually a nice break to work on from the longer stuff I'm drawing now.

The Black Coat

This is a recent pin-up drawing I did for fellow artist Francesco Francavilla and his very nice comic book, the Black Coat. Its a historical adventure, set around the time of the American revolution and features a mysterious hero in, what else, a black coat.

Since the comic has such an interesting historical setup for the stories, I tried to keep some of that period background and mood in my drawing. As with everything else recently, I drew this one in 2 colours with Pitt pens and then cleaned it up digitally. You can compare the final against my original mini-sized, quickie pencil rough below: