Wedding Style

 Sometimes I do commissions. Here's a large wedding caricature whipped out for a family friend.

Ink brush with dry pastels

Pull Into the Parking Lot at Number 39

 

39th birthday, last year in my 30s. My wife made an interesting dark chocolate cake with salted honey frosting from scratch. I met some friends up at an outdoor patio spot for drinks and then took the party home for some drunken karaoke. 

Special Dedication

 Here's a glimpse of the special dedication page in the next book.

Shane was big in the Houston indie writer and zine scene. Tommy was a hell of an artist, and was a bit of an eccentric character as well (bit is downplaying it tremendously!). Both passed away due to complications regarding diabetes. Shane got to a point to where he couldn't afford his insulin. Tommy's health, from what I heard, steadily moved downhill over the years. I'm not sure if he took care of himself as best as he could but I do know it's hard enough out here supporting yourself as an artist, let alone supporting yourself and paying these outrageous American healthcare costs. If healthcare had been cheaper or universal both of these human beings might still be here with us today.

So guys, here's to you and your continuing legacy. You are missed every day.

Bad Good Not Bad

At the beginning of the year frequent collaborator and friend Lee Lawson asked me to illustrate and art-direct his latest album release cover art. He filled me in on this project that has been in the works since 2012, a video-game-music-sampled beat album, and he wanted me to create something that spoofs the  iconic as the cover art for the US version of the NES classic Mega Man. Like, the first Mega Man, Mega Man 1. I looked at him and asked, Are you sure? Have you seen the original art to the first Mega Man? 

 

That's the one. I actually had a copy of this as a kid.

 He proceeded to egg me on to just do it and see what I came up with. Well, after some sketching and then the adding of color to paper I have to say it wasn't such a bad idea after all. Take a look:

This is gonna go right in the center of the spoofed cover, just the like in the art above. I  intend to match colors and a similar design to hopefully capture the feel of that old box art, one that raises the question Just what in the hell is going on?

Lawson tells me he's in the post-production stages of this project, mixing and mastering, and he said he's gunning for a an Autumn release. You heard it here first! I don't think he's even leaked this to his followers yet. He said he's gunning not only for a digital release, but one on vinyl as well. Imagine a design like this on a 12" sleeve. I'd love to see that! Stay tooned.

Couch Lock

 

Here's a piece I did that debuted earlier this month. There's an account on Insta and FB called Photos y Recuerdos and it's a special profile project that showcases the stories of Texas Latinas and Latina-identifying people. Started over lock-down last year it is headed up by my wife and her colleague as a way to publicize the stories and triumphs of Latinas with ties to Texas. 

So far the reception has been warm and positive with the readership steady growing and more and more submissions coming in. My wife commissioned me to create a piece that encompasses a wide spectrum of the representation they cover. For this she gave me a prompt; all the characters on a couch going through a photo album. I had free reign on the characters I could include, and since Latinas come in every shade, shape and fashion that left it wide open. 

Although my wife had to keep me on task to finish this piece, the project commissioners found the end result to be more than satisfactory. In other words, they love it. As do I. I tend to get a bit self-conscious when I do work for family but after I started the coloring process I really started to feel it.

Next up we have to choose a font and prepare the image for merch. Follow the profile on FB and INSTAGRAM, submit if you have a story about the Tejana in your life, share, and when the merch goes up please support!

Just a Little

 Wrapped up a commission piece for long-time friend Dirk Strangely. He's dropping a new music project soon and as such he's gathered some artist friends to whip up different pieces of art for different songs.
I got assigned the song "I'm a Little Kinky," with the general direction of 'surround the artist with at least 5 different scantly clad women.'

In black and white

and in Color

Dirk is quite the virtuoso with the guitar and comes from a country & rockabilly background in terms of band-leading & performing. Lately he's been venturing into hip-hop territory, inspired by the likes of Kool Keith, Cypress Hill, and Devin the Dude (which i got him into all those 😉) as well more contemporary artists like Lil' Dickie.

His new project is dropping very soon. Hit him up and follow for the latest details and to see all the other stuff he does! https://www.strangelystudios.com/

Insta: @dirk_strangely

Palooza Seventeen

My hometown show, Comicpalooza, blew thru earlier this month. I must say while I was looking forward to it, I don't think it was looking forward to me. I think there may have been a change in management since last year, there seemed to be less communication down to the Artists, at least this artist. Don't get me wrong, loading in and out and all that was butter and there were no problems on the technical level whatsoever. It just seemed a tad less personal this year, if that makes sense. That and I realized I was in a strange spot at the peak of the day Saturday. I was sandwiched by fan tables all around which some people told me is a veritable con death sentence.

There I was, Klingons to the left of me and Cosplayers to the right. I was scrambling for an hour looking for someone to give me a green light to move to a better spot, indeed I had one picked out. On the next row was a corner table ripe for the picking but I didn't want to just jump at it. So i stuck it out at my spot and made the best of it, and sure enough other people claimed it, including a table of squatters hawking shitty USB cables.

It was definitely a slower con than previous years. I asked around and other artists concurred, so it wasn't just me and my weak position. Also, the con didn't quite have huge names like it did last year (um, how can you compete with the entire cast of Aliens?). A few even speculated the election and new president was affecting the economy. I don't know, a lot of factors. And for some reason my name was left out of the list of exhibiting artists in the printed program, even though I booked my table well in advance. 

 But I'm not tripping. I still sold quite a bit of things and whenever I make new fans they're always stoked to buy my stuff. I also ran into a quite a few old friends who also kopped stuff. So at the end the show was still a good time. Hell, I didn't even have any new books or prints for this show either, so we'll call it even.

The piece at this years live art show. Whoever got it could get it signed by all 3 of the actors depicted cuz they were at this year's show. Thanks for the idea, Ms. Cornpoppy. 

A couple of commissions:

But the highlight of this Mother's Day weekend has to be my own mother coming out to help. I showed her the ropes, whats what and way to talk about and sell it and she was off! 

Love ya, Ma!

Newcomer "Macabre Ross" showing out at the live art auction. Did this guy have a table? Cuz I missed it.

Super dope Samus cosplay, complete with a blonde girl inside. I wanna dress up like Samus.

Read Wolf Puppy comix!

And that's my round up on Comicpalooza 2017. It was kinda skimpy but that's how my experience was this year. But don't worry, I'm workin round the clock to get Screw Comics! #4 out by this Autumn, and I may have a pending show in Cali. Stay tuned. Also, peep the Grand Phillie Mansion post if you're not ready to leave yet!

March On

Big news for my friend Van:

Big news indeed. Of course my hand drawn cover had nothing to do with it. ;)

And now some sad news: Shane Patrick Boyle, founder of Zine Fest Houston has passed away this month. A man about town here in Houston, the only person I know brave enough to not have a car and get around on the Metro Bus, soft-spoken yet had a booming literary voice. The news came as a real shock. He moved to Arkansas to take care of his ailing mother who passed a week before he did. Known to ration out his insulin during tight times I guess he just ran out of luck. He had a GoFund Me page to raise money for his months insulin but sadly he didn't raise the money in time. So sad, and so needless, and quite eye-opening in a time where the American healthcare system is under a lot of scrutiny and debate, where our motto can literally be "Pay or Die."
Here's what i typed out on his wall:

 

From 2013 Moving-to-Arkansas Party at Rudz.

A memorial is being planned for May 6th, a Saturday afternoon. I'll tweet out the details when they're more concrete. Man, Shane, this year and all subsequent years at Zine Fest will never be the same. Journey well.

Washes & Works

Greetings! I hope everybody had their fill of stuffing and other heavy foods. It's now time to proceed to that lovely season where we brave the hustle and bustle of the shopping season and, well, more eating and drinking of heavy foods. In the meantime 2016 continues to kick our asses.
Yup, and the hot topic on everybody's minds, whether you like it or you're just sick of it, we have a new president! It's almost been a month since the election has been over and I guess this joke is really starting to sick in. Sorry folks, nobody's gonna come from around the corner and be like "Psssh, SIIIKE! You're on candid camera, man!" This shit is here to stay. And without making a whole post about it, yeah it sucks but it is what it is. I guess the part I'm excited about is the possible wake-up call for us Americans to take a good honest look at ourselves. Only then can we stand up to make the changes and progress necessary to make the world a better place.
Now here's what I did this month.

Every now and then I'll check in to see what the prompt is on #Sketch_Dailies and if it's interesting and I have a sec I'll take a crack at it and whip something up. This time around it was She-Ra, Princess of Power. Come to think of it I've always known about She-Ra but I've never drawn her. At all. My lil' sister had her action figure, as a counterpart to my He-Man figures. But, I've never drawn her...until now.

 

She-Ra, Princess of Power, in a standard action pose.

 She-Ra, Princess of Power, having a cigarette after kicking the shit out of evil.

Earlier this month I came up on a 11x14 watercolor pad in a clearance bin. I've since started drawings in it and I dared myself to fill it cover to cover every page with a watercolor piece on it. The following pages are each a page in this new book. The first piece is the new banner my website right here.

 

a post-future frontier cowgirl, "Vamoose" LaRose, a main character in a new series I'm developing.

 a drawing of my friend Chris as he painted.

Newt Scamander, author and star of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

 The Return of Mac the Knife.

Upon hearing the song again and relishing how dark it is for such an energetic jazz standard I couldn't help being reminded of that old McDonald's ad campaign "Mac Tonight." Not only did their names sound similar, the mascot played a piano (with mannerisms similar to Ray Charles) to the tune of something that sounded kinda like "Mack the Knife." So I went ahead and drew Mac Tonight as Mack the Knife, doing what Mack the Knife is famous for. While it was such a while back when the campaign came out Mac Tonight is not at all forgotten about today. He lives on in a vapor wave video, his ad campaign is having a resurgence in Asia, and  hilariously enough he's the image part of the Moon Man meme, where a moon-faced man uses his text-to-speech voice to cover rap songs in a racist, parodic manner.

Working on updating this page for more user-friendliness, and I have some other store fronts in the works as well. Gonna pop out into 2017 with new merch and ways to buy it. Onward.

Token

Missed a month of September post so I'm tossing this in so I don't miss a month. Next month I'll have the Inktober Art blast but for this month I'm just throwing up a birthday photo (Virgos whats up?).

Also taking this post to plug the podcast my boy Lee Lawson has been doing month to month, check out the Shuffelapod, it's dope! He asked me to do the cover art for each episode and he just said do whatever I want, so the art truly is whatever I want and it works.

They're up for download and/or streaming on his site. Really good mix of music to work to or jam out doing whatever, spans all musical genres. If you're a music lover as I am you'll dig it. 

For episode 5 I literally used a pic from the remains of my birthday dinner. Lee said "fuck it, that's dope. The pope in a glass box, dope..." or something.

For the latest episode, 6, I give a shout to my late Grandfather who recently passed away. I like this old photo of him in the driveway with the family car in the 60s. 

Alfonso Perez Sr, circa age 17.

what a month.

The Metroid 2 remake AM2R is my shit. Been on that the last few months. Highly addictive. Highly recommended. But it's taken down, ya gotta scour the internet underbelly to find a copy. Snag 1.1 if you can.

Be sure to peep my upcoming events, details at the top right spot under "Where to Find Me"

I got a table at a sneaker summit last Saturday in October on the TSU Campus, 12pm to 4pm. I'll be next to Van G. Garrett.

and or course I'll be posting up at Zine Fest Houston 2016 with possibly a new zine. We'll see.

And lastly, my old curmudgeon of a coworker finally retired this month. This was his desk. I took this shot right before he took everything down. This is what we looked at everyday. He drew the stuff.

Okay, That covers the September post. Peace!

Crystalized

Ok, wrapped up the summer with a comic in the can and a cool ad for a partner of mine.

The comic; an 8 pager, new story I whipped up for a local outfit Pulp 21 Comics. They're doing some interesting and strange stuff, and it's coming out regularly. Peep 'em.
So, the comic is called Rock in Time, and it follows the travels of young woman who's been traveling to all the great rock shows in history, via a Chrono-Navigator gauntlet. And she's being chased by a creepy bizarre agent dude.

 

Just some fave panels without spoiling everything, oh, and the whole page count shot. Ha, good luck reading that. 

I've also been working, developing an ongoing series of mine, code-named Sun Eaters. I may have told a few of you about that already. Well, it gets deeper and deeper. It's so fun building up a world and creating characters, there are so many possibilities for many different types of stories. I'm also still working on visualizing these characters and their costumes. It's not as easy as you think, unless you want them to look all cub-scouty with all types of gear and tools strapped up and down 'em, then yeah, it's easy.

I've got ideas churning for some dope-ass concept art for this series, so sit tight and we'll see if I do it.

Also, I'm working on a new book for Iva Dawn, who, if you remember the last time we collaborated, we made THIS. Well, we're back and bring you the next chapter of the infamous and sulty Nyx. Here are some concept sketches.

Nyx and her new threads

Alternate costume

Exciting! I'll post some pages/panels when it's in the can. Also, sit tight.

And lastly, this wraps up my month. My boy Van landed a new sponsor, and it's a company that makes a product I can get behind 100%: Honey! So, we made an announcement. Check it.

Bye bye, Summer! Hello Autumn, my favorite time of year. All #inktober is coming up so let's whip out (yes, i said it) our brushes and ink wells and draw some shit.