Derby Fever & Award

Here is another roller derby poster for the Gainesville Roller Rebels. Decided to go for a horizontal design this time. This was supposed to be the last one for the season, but its possible I may design 3 more for later this season.

Also, I just found out that I took First Place in the Single Illustration category at the Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards for my Rock Hall of Fame induction cover of Cleveland Scene. I'm told that I will be getting a plaque or something rad. I was pretty blown away when I found out.

Memorial Slay Derby Poster

Here's the fourth roller derby bout poster done for the Gainesville Roller Rebels from Gainesville Florida. Decided to go with an alternative punk wonder woman theme since the colors are patriotic. This is probably my favorite one I've done so far.

IRON MAN etc.

So I've been keeping very busy with art projects for the past several weeks. Here are two of my recent finished projects I've got another I'm waiting on approval for that I will post very soon. But for now, I give you IRON MAN.

I remember the exact day I first discovered comic books, I was 11 or 12 and I was spending a day with a friend and his brother and mom. She was driving us back from playing at the park and decided to stop at the local Dairy Mart. We went inside and my friend and I discovered the looming comic rack, filled with superhuman adventures. As we stared at them in awe, I realized at a buck twenty five, I could afford two issues and have some change for candy. So I grabbed two issues of The Amazing Spider-Man (Which I still have today) and took them to the counter to pay. Had I know as I walked out to the car and flipped through the pages, that this new discovery would cultivate and mold my artistic skills beyond what I could have even imagined. I may have put some of the candy back and bought a third issue instead. never the less, I was hooked.

I always gravitated toward Marvel Comics. DC comics was home to some amazing hero's including Superman, Green Lantern and Batman. But I could never seem to connect to them like I could with Marvel's Spider-Man, X-Men and The Avengers. Marvel had characters who I could relate to, normal people who were exposed to Gamma Rays or bitten by radioactive spiders to become who they were, not an alien from another planet who gets his power from the sun. Take Tony Stark, in the comic he had to wear the chestplate to his armor at all times, because the energy unit inside it was basically a magnet that was (same as the movie) keeping deadly pieces of shrapnel from entering his heart. Thus Iron-Man was born. Since I am such a fan of film, it was natural for my love of comics to spill over to the medium. I loved the first IRON-MAN. It's toward the top of a short list of superhero movies I can't get enough of. So of course I'm excited about IRON-MAN 2 coming out soon. What's even more exciting for me is that I know that these two movies are part of something even bigger. Marvel films has a plan of several movies that will interconnect and end in what's rumored to be the biggest superhero film ever made THE AVENGERS. Beginning with IRON-MAN, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON-MAN2 and the upcoming CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR films will be topped off with the AVENGERS film that will see Ironman, Hulk, Cap, and Thor as a team. It's exciting times for comic geeks like me. So with this inspiration driving me I thought I would try my hand at IRON-MAN.

This second piece is a character created for FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) I am told he will be animated and put into a short film for a presentation. I was basically asked to create an anthropomorphic FAFSA form who has the attitude and sunglasses of the Fonz from Happy Days.

April Showers of Pain!!!

So I just finished this new roller derby poster for the Gainesville Roller Rebels. I was going for an old school pinup look. And I chose to go with cooler colors because of the "April Showers of Pain" theme and the fact that both teams colors are similar. Gainesville's colors are royal blue & black and the Beach Brawl Sk8r Dolls colors are light turquoise & black. I am doing two more of these bout posters for GRR and I was thinking I need to do one with an angrier woman, I like the ones i've done so far, but I think I need to depict them tougher in at least one of these. Because frankly these are some tough women. They are always constantly practicing and working towards getting better. The proof of how hard they play & how dedicated they are can often be seen in the various team photos I've seen. Where there's usually a girl or three with crutches, leg braces and arm casts in every photo. despite their injuries they still wear their uniforms and pose proudly for photos. Although the rules of the game are confusing to me and I haven't actually been able to see my sister (Ruby Typhoon #77)'s team play (because GRR is in Florida & I live in Ohio). I am really proud of my sister and her entire team.

Here's a detailed view of her face.

New Caricatures

Here are a couple of recent caricatures I've done.

HOLD FAST

Just finished this and thought I would put it up, it's a personal project to see how realistic I could get using my Wacom. I'm pretty happy with it. What do you think?

The Fisticuffs of March

Here's the newest Gainesville Roller Rebels bout poster I recently finished. I went for a boxing match theme, I think it turned out great.

SLAM-entines Day!

I was asked to create a bout poster and flyer for the Gainesville Roller Rebels in Gainesville Florida for their first game of the 2010 season. The theme was anti-valentines day. I was free to do pretty much whatever I wanted, which was awesome. If only everyone were as easy to please. I'll also be working on a poster for their second bout as well, look for it soon.

The Holiday Season

Every year I have big artistic ideas for things like christmas cards and different holiday theme pieces to give away as gifts, but always procrastinate until I only have the time to make one. So this year I haven't been in the holiday mood yet so I wanted to make something that wasn't a Christmas theme and wasn't a snow covered scene, so I decided to just draw what I see this winter in the small wooded area next to my apartment. Leafless trees and flying chirping cardinals.

I also have a couple of other project that I just finished, the first is a poster I'm really proud of because it's for my sister's roller derby team in Gainesville Florida the Gainesville Roller Rebels. My sister Ruby Typhoon #77 is Co-Captain of her team and they are planning on using this as a promotional poster to raise money for the many organizations they support. Go GRR!

The last project was a digital color job for my friend and fellow artist Joe Kuzma. Joe provided the B&W art of The Hulk & Wolverine and I provided the color via Photoshop. Turned out pretty great. Nice job Joe!

OUT-OF-THE-BOX gallery show

I'm very proud to be participating in this years Out-of-the-Box Exhibition & Auction. This project was really fun because I got to make something 3 dimensional rather than my usual 2 dimensional work. The piece will be on display at the Summit Art Space gallery in downtown Akron from Oct 29 thru Nov 7. And will then be auctioned off at the Akron Area Arts Alliance (AAAA) awards ceremony on Nov 15. All proceeds will go to AAAA to help with their operating costs.

My box is entitled The Kraken & The Sailboat.

Projects from work...

Here are a few of the different projects I've been working on at my job at the Akron Beacon Journal. Over the last year I've been doing a lot more art related projects for them.

The first is a series of logo and character designs for a new job search related site called Job Jungle.

Also anytime someone has reached so many years of employment at the Beacon Journal they throw a party for them and I usually do a caricature of them to be signed by the staff. Last week I got to do two of them...

Last is a piece, featuring Zippy, the Akron University mascot, high-fiving the Akron Beacon Journal mascot Browser. This will be used on a table setting for a private dinner at the new InfoCision Stadium during an upcoming game.

BLUE MOON #2

Click image to enlarge...

Issue 2 of my new comic BLUE MOON. Comments are welcome.

BLUE MOON - My new comic!!!

Click image to view larger version!

So after attempting to do this for a few years I've finally started what I think could be a really fun project... an online comic book titled "BLUE MOON."

To describe "BLUE MOON", I would say it's an action packed, scary, monster filled, detective mystery, thriller!

It's really an experiment for me too because I wanted to do something that wasn't exactly formatted like a traditional comic book page, but simply a single horizontal panel at a time (Kinda like a widescreen movie). when 3 of these are completed I can combine them and make a traditionally sized comic page (just in case I plan on getting this published or printed some day).

I also am trying a unique approach with this for the writing, because basically I have a really solid outline of the story in my head, but I will be fleshing out some of the details as I go. This will be a good exercise for me because I'm really good at piecing things together to make something great.

Well, I know it's not much today, just one panel, but I promise you are in for a fun out of control ride with "BLUE MOON"!

ABJ Mascot Contest

I did these different characters for a mascot contest they had at work. Basically the sales team split into 4 different groups and came up with these four teams... The Flasher-Roos, The End Zone Warriors, The Beacon Boxers, and the STEALERS. Two of mine were chosen the Warrior and the Boxer.

Vampire VS. Slayer

Here is a new comic book inspired panel. I thought a vampire attacking a vampire slayer would sum up all these warm feeling I've been having towards the show True Blood. My girlfriend told me the guy with the stake reminds her of Ken or Ryu from Street Fighter and David Hasslehoff! Is that funny or what?

I do have a small announcement though. I've been working on a new comic book concept for the past several weeks and am very close to starting it. The comic will be a heist story with a monster twist. I will have a tittle soon. and maybe some concepts. I'm still unsure how I will publish this or if it will be b&w or color. This story is really great so I'm more than likely going to have a ball with this. I attempted to do a comic last year, but the concept and story just weren't coming together. But I'm excited!

Illustration Friday-Tango

Update: I've finished the full color version and I think it turned out decent. Check it out!!!

Well, it's been a long time, but I decided to participate in Illustration Friday this week. The topic was "Tango". But instead of drawing a couple dancing the Tango, the first thing I thought of was Dave Tango from SyFy channel's Ghost Hunters. So I did this illustration of Steve Gonsalves (left) and Dave Tango (Right) hunting some ghosts.

This isn't quite finished, as I need to ad color, but I wanted to put something up before the topic changed. Comments Welcome.

Wedding Caricature

Well, I just finished  this caricature for a client, and am going to show it to her on Monday. As I've said before I've never been a fan of caricature style drawing, but I'm starting to find doing these more enjoyable. I've been really lucky so far with fantastic clients who have been really great to work with. Thanks.

New Tattoo

I got a new tattoo, done by the amazing Eric Starr, owner of Arkham Tattoo in Akron Ohio. It's a red winged blackbird, which I designed. If your in the area and want a top notch ink job, Eric or any of his amazing artists can handle it. 

Sick about stolen artwork!

I've made some mistakes in my life, but a positive intention turned and bit me in the ass and regularly pops up so I can't forget an amateur mistake I made a few years ago. (Above, my tattoo. Below, the original artwork in my sketchbook.) 

About 4 years ago I decided to start promoting my artwork online. the idea was that I would promote myself as an illustrator and a custom tattoo designer all at the same time. I had plenty of illustration examples, but only a handful of tattoo designs, which happened to be most of the designs for my own very personal tattoos and a few other things I had done. Well, I didn't have my tattoo designs up for more than a few months when I began getting emails asking permission to use my designs. I was dumbfounded, surely these people meant that they wanted me to design them a tattoo. Wrong. They were asking if they could use the designs as is. I would reply in a friendly manner that the design was my own personal tattoo, but that I could design them something similar for a fee. Most of the time the reply was a sorry and they liked my artwork but no one actually hired me to draw for them. The final straw was when I received an email from a guy in Germany. Who, in very very broken english thanked me for my swallow tattoo design and sent along a photo of his brand new rip-off tattoo. I was furious and took down the tattoo artwork immediately. (unfortunately I don't have the photo any more because I deleted it out of anger.)

Fast forward to today. I still continue to find my tattoo designs online on a regular basis. I will just be searching on google checking out tattoos when BLAM. There it is, one of my designs. Usually on someone's blog or myspace page, but worst of all I recently found 3 of my designs on a foreign tattoo flash website, promoting them as "Free Tattoo Flash Art" They even had the nerve to set it up so you can email yourself your favorite ripped-off artwork so you can easily print it out  and take it to your tattoo artist. The problem is the entire site is German or French (my foreign language knowledge is limited) and there is no email address for me to complain to. I even looked through the source code to see if it was stored there. Nothing. So if you are more knowledgeable than me at finding email addresses please help me find this. Here are the links. (Note: the original artwork had copyrights on them but they were photoshopped out.)

LINK 1, LINK 2, LINK 3

I also just today found someone on Etsy, who is using my Swallow art for necklace designs. I am furious about this and don't even know what to say to her in the email she is making money off of my artwork ARGGGG. I will write to her but I need to cool off first so I don't blow my top completely in the message. Any suggestions of what I should say to her? Here are the links and a couple photos of the stolen art.

LINK 1, LINK 2

Here another example of someone using my image for their own gain. This girl even lives in the same area as me and was using it to promote her photography business on Craigslist. As far as I know she stopped using it after I emailed her.

The other is a professional xtreme skiier who claims to have come up with it himself, but it is clearly badly traced or copied. Here's that link and a pic.

LINK 1

I do know that I made a mistake in believing in the goodness of people and now know that not everyone respects or understands art. Especially tattoo art. Everyone seems to think that the internet is just full of free tattoo artwork and that it can be used with no respect. So The lesson today is, ask your talented tattoo artist to design something for you, and if you just "have to have" that swallow tattoo you found on the internet, at least ask your tattoo artist to alter it so that the original art stays original!

Scene, Space Girl Pinup, and Car Salesmen Monsters!!!

Hello all. I had the opportunity to do a cover for a really cool weekly news magazine for the 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction issue, and was very pleased with how it all worked out. The final cover exceeded my expectations and looks super cool with the typography.


I've also just finished another illustration of a retro space girl pinup. I tried really hard to get that old school 1950's pinup style and think that I've nailed it.


Lastly just a couple monsters for ya. At my day job I'm occasionally asked to do some minor illustration, and these were created for an extremely picky auto dealer, who wanted to advertise his "Monster Car Savings Sale". so after other artists created about 8 monsters that he was not happy with they asked me to come up with something. His reference for a monster was Mike Wazowsky from Monsters Inc. So it was pretty obvious he just wanted some monsters that looked like they could be from that movie. So I created 2 that look like slightly sleazy car salesmen. Maybe that's why he didn't end up using them.