Sketchbook Project! Last Round!

Last group of pics from my Sketchbook Project submission, this time focusing on some space-scapes from 'Supernova Lullaby.' The show itself opens this Friday in Atlanta, Georgia at the Art House Gallery. For a complete list of cities and dates, please visit their Web site: Art House



These last two kind of snuck in. I liked them, but I didn't have the space to draw more superhero images.

Yes, I'm on Twitter

Total immersion in the internets continues. Follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/msgier

Thank you!

More Sketchbook Project

It may have been a small sketchbook, but there were a lot of pages. More from my Sketchbook Project submission:




Most of these characters I was trying to work with in my first year of grad school, but the criticism I received wasn't very helpful, or it tended to be negative, so I scraped them. Of course, now that I'm out of school, I have a better understanding of them, so I guess it wasn't all bad. You can now find them in my mini-comic strip 'Dear Friends,' which is part of Supernova Lullaby.

More Sketchbook Project Images

Thought I would go ahead and post a few more images to my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project, which will be starting its exhibition tour in a couple weeks. These are a collection of images featuring characters from my comic series 'Toby & Sara.'

Cold Floor, Warm Hearts

Spying from the Balcony: Toby and his roommates, the Crooks Sisters

Cross Culture Love Affair: Guanyin and Rapha-el

Sara's Boring Day

Ah, 'Toby & Sara.' To those who have supported the series up to this point, I promise you more stories are on the way. It's just been taking me longer than I anticipated, and every week some new project pops up that seems to take priority. Hang in there!

'The Island at the End of the World' Book Cover

So, a few months back, a friend posted a link for a contest to design a book cover. Unfortunately, the contest was over by then, and the site now shows the results of the contest. But, the story and idea intrigued me enough to go ahead and create my own cover for the book. And after fighting with the design for a few months, I think I've come to a point where I'm finally satisfied with the result.

It definitely posed some challenges for me. One was that I was working with ink washes, which I've rarely done. I also had difficulty with the type, redoing the font a couple times. And the illustration, for a long time, was cast in a blue-green tone, but changing it to a golden tone seems to have helped out a great deal. There were also conceptual issues. The contest didn't give a lot of details on the characters, but since my design was so focused on them, I had to take some chances and hope that in the end I got their appearances right.

I'm a big book reader, and doing book illustration has long been a dream of mine. You don't see a lot of it done outside of childrens books and comics, but who knows, maybe one day there will be a rebirth. And I hope I can be a part of it.

Illustration Friday-Time

A late entry for the Illustration Friday them 'Time.' Since I'm currently working on a Web comic about aliens called Supernova Lullaby, I asked myself what time would look like in an alien civilization. And by the look of the watchmaker, it would appear to be very confusing.

Seth from Somewhere

I've been working on a couple images for friend of the blog Seth Brooks. He's putting together a web site of his various world travels, and wanted to have some illustrations done in the style of old travel posters. Here are the first two, with two more on the way:


Please visit his site at Seth from Somewhere. He's been to some amazing places, and he has a lot of photographs to gaze upon.

Sketchbook Project part 1

So, later this month I'll be participating in the Sketchbook Project, a traveling art exhibition sponsored by Art House (you can find a listing of the cities and dates here.) I sent in my book this week, a 3x5 Moleskine, and I thought I would post images from it periodically. I didn't start out with much of any idea for the book, but as time went on I started telling little stories about characters, sometimes across multiple spreads. This round of images will focus on the story of the Minotaur and Medusa, two monsters whose last chance for happiness may be with each other:

Illustration Friday-Climbing

I don't know why, but I must have Middle Earth on my mind these days. I haven't read the books in ages, and I haven't seen the movies in recent memory. But this is the second week in a row where I've illustrated an IF topic with 'Lord of the Rings' subject matter. In this case, the climb up the stairs of Cirith Ungol, with Gollum, Frodo, and Sam.

Illustration Friday-'Pale'

When I saw this week's topic, I immediately thought of Gollum, from 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings,' hiding in his cave with the Ring of Power.

Tribute to Atlantis Lad

Just a little something to show that I haven't forgotten about this blog. I recently did a drawing of Atlantis Lad, from Danno Klonowski's 'Manly Tales of Cowardice.' You can find more of Danno's comics here: Staple Genius. Danno's a key member of the Cartoonist Conspiracy here in Minneapolis, and a prolific creator of mini-comics. Thanks Danno!

'Supernova Lullaby' premieres Friday, January 9!

As part of the big plans for 2009, I'm starting a weekly Web comic called 'Supernova Lullaby' starting this Friday. You can find it at this address:

http://supernovalullaby.blogspot.com/

Stop by then, and if you like what you see, please consider becoming a Follower (for Blogspot users), or subscribe through an RSS Feed like Google Reader. Thanks for your support, hope you like it!

Season's Best

Jenny Lewis

I made this drawing some time ago, thinking that I would make it into a faux concert poster. Alas, it fell to the wayside on my Flash drive, but I decided recently that it was worth at least bringing to some form of completion. Pen and ink drawing, with digital coloring and modification in Photoshop.

Illustration Friday-Opinion ('The Senators Discuss Over Coffee')

A late entry for Illustration Friday. I was out of town last weekend, hence the delay.