Cho-stuff for sale!

Thanks to the fine folks at glarkware.com, I've set up an online shop where you can now purchase clothing like hoodies and t-shirts featuring artwork by me! I've been wanting to do this for a while now and was looking for a way to deliver a really high-quality product. I thought about doing it through sites like cafepress, but wasn't blown away by the quality of the final items. However when Glarkware wanted to join forces with me, I was thrilled -- their items are really first rate. All the shirts are from American Apparel and feature silk-screened artwork for maximum durability and quality. There's 5 items online currently, with more items hopefully on the way.

Check it out for yourself if you're looking for a way to spend all the loot you got from granny this christmas!

Transmission-X: Papercut - "Trinity" Part 2

My new Papercut webcomic for Transmission-x is now complete and online. It's the 2nd part of "Trinity", a historical comic story about the creation and testing of the first atomic bomb. This one ended up a bit longer than I originally planned -- it was set to be about 7 pages, but ended up coming in at 9. Usually, I like to keep my Transmission-x stories self contained and about 4-6 pages in length, but there was so much interesting information I found out during research that the story ended up being a 2 parter and running at 14 pages total. Still, it was definitely fun to write and draw, and I enjoyed the opportunity to visit a subject that I've been obsessed with since I was a teenager. You can see 2 pages of it above, minus the captions and balloons -- to read it, you'll just have to visit the site and check it out for yourself.

And, of course, since this is my sketchblog, I thought I'd share some of the process I went about in creating the comic. So you can check out the complete thumbnail artwork I did for the story below.

Now Magazine Cover

Here's a cover I did for this week's Now Magazine. Now is a venerable free weekly Toronto paper, one which I've picked up since college. Back then, I read it to see the art-show and concert listings, now I read it for the news articles. For this issue, they wanted to do a cover story on the 60th anniversary of the Horseshoe Tavern (a fantastic local concert venue) and they asked me for an image featuring the facade and some of the great acts that have played there over the years. At the top of their list of musicians was the legendary Stompin' Tom Connors. They gave me some latitude to pick the rest of the acts from a list, so of course I jumped at the opportunity to add the Ramones -- one of my all time fav bands!

Anyway, it all came together fairly quickly, due to the tight deadlines, and I was happy with how it turned out. I've never been too comfortable at drawing likenesses, but any chance to draw the Ramones is one I gotta jump at! For the record, the famous figures are (l to r) Loretta Lynn, Mick Jagger, Stompin' Tom and Johnny and Joey Ramone (rest in peace, guys).

You can see for yourself below the various steps I took to arrive at the final image.

Various Portrait sketches

These are a bunch of portraits and headshots I drew a while ago, while I was goofing around. The ones with the ziptone were done as an homage to the double-lighting thing that Wally Wood used to do so well in pen and ink. I used to look at his stuff for hours, trying to figure out how he did that! In an extra geeky note, I actually made the ziptone myself, with my computer and some transparent sticker paper...something I'll never do again! Its absolutely pointless in this day and age to sit there cutting and triming tone when you got a perfectly good version of photoshop nearby.

As for the big pen and ink drawing, its another in my series of portraits of nba basketball players. This time the model is big Ben Wallace, currently playing for the (sadly underachieving) Chicago Bulls. I drew this one a while ago too, but never got around to posting it, so I thought itd be good to do so now. If you're a b-ball junkie like me, you can check out my other pen and ink portraits of Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh, Lebron James, Kobe (ugg! I hate that dude, don't know why I ever drew him!) and Kevin Garnett posted earlier in my blog.