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

LA Noire

So, where have I been all winter? What have I been working on? Have I been hybernating? Maybe...
Actually I was hibernating, on a certain project for a creative colleague of mine. I took the gig, a 50 something page 2-part comic full of mystery and intrigue, crime, passion, and music. I sat, penciled and inked the first 10 pages and then it just sat on my desk for about a year to be honest. I felt terrible for not getting to it sooner as I wrote and penciled other work, mainly mine. But, sometimes some projects take a back seat to others depending on the frame of mind I'm in. This past January however she gave me a deadline and that lit a fire under my ass. So for two months I was finishing the last 20 pages and putting the book together in time to make it in time for the album debut. And behold, the latest helping from Whitney Mower aka Iva Dawn, True Voodoo!

Cover art (no text)

And there's those snips of some favorite pages without giving it all away. So now go listen to the album:

And of course buy the comic HERE!

#Inktober Run Down

Here we are folks, the glorious 2017 #Inktober Rundown. This year I stuck to my drawing board like clockwork and it paid off. I only missed the first two, and since I don't like to look back I just left them unfulfilled. So, we pick up at #3 and ride the wave to the end! Most of the pieces are on loose 8.5" x 11" illustration paper, unless where noted. These are actual scans of the work, as opposed to what was posted on Instagram, just photos. They will soon be bagged and priced and will join my stack of original art I sell at my appearances. If you find you absolutely must have a certain piece tweet me @toonzday or better yet leave a comment under the piece on da Instagram. Xmas is around the corner, wink wink.

submitted for your approval, the checklist of prompts

Day 3: Poison

Day 4: Underwater. I love otters. This is the only one in my sketchbook.

Day 5: Long. As in a long road. 1 of 3 of the travelling ronin samurai.

Day 6: Sword. Everyone's favorite emo anime soldier and his trusty Buster that he swears is not compensating for anything. 

Day 7 Shy. One of my faves, a bullied Shy Guy at Koopa High.

Day 8: Crooked. As in The Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang.

Day 9: Screech. As a vulture. Cuz vulture's also Screech.

Day 10: Gigantic.

Day 11: Run.

Day 12: Shatter. As in these young adveturers shattered the evil crystal golem.

Day 13: Teeming. As in I hope you're Friday the 13th is teeming with as much fun and excitement as Jason's is.

Day 14: Fierce. When you want the Fierce Deity Link but accidentally put on the Deku mask.

Day 15: Mysterious. Rorschach on the case.

Day 16: Fat

Day 17: Graceful

Day 18: Fithy. As in "Keep the change, you filthy animal."

Day 19: Cloud. Texas icon/ HEB President Scott McClelland as a cloud.

Doesn't he look like a cloud, like the smiley background cloud from Super Mario?

Day 20: Deep. Rapper Freddie Gibbs, who has a track called Deep.

Day 21: Furious. As in Furious George punches Nazis. Shoutout to Evan Dorkin who drew a strip that inspired this one.

I'm a HUGE fan of Dorkin's work. He's a big influence on my comics.

Day 22: Trail. As in, a new adversary blocks the trail. 2 of 3 of the ronin samurai.

Day 23: Juicy. From the PJs.

Day 24. Blind. Hold up, I scanned it but forgot to include it. I will soon.

Day 25: Ship. General Summer Solstice on her flag ship. Read her story in Screw Comics! #2.

Day 26: Squeak. As in, Techno-Squeak, the Exterminator Terminator. For some reason this one was really popular.

Day 26: Squeak. BONUS piece. I did this one first but I decided I didn't wanna cause a raucous on da 'Gram. Even tho I shoulda.

Day 27: Climb. 

Day 28: Fall. As in, the fall of Don Draper.

Day 29: United. As in, No. 08's gang is united for revenge. Stranger Things season 2!

Day 30: Found. As in, you'll never guess where I found Carmen Sandiego. Well, guess!

Day 31: Mask. As in, the adversary that blocks the trail has a peculiar mask. 3 of 3 of the ronin samurai set.

And there you have it, the Inktober 2017 lot. Phew! What a month. Coming up next, more work. The fun don't stop.

Sugar Crash

February was touch and go. It came and went as fast as it's 28 days are short. Still, I have a few things I whipped up.

Hope ya had a Happy Valentine's Day, love.

And here's a bookmark I whipped up for Ms. Cornpoppy. She was sending some books to a friend and thought this would be a nice bonus, a custom bookmark!

Fly high with books.

 ...

Had a big break thru this week: I was able to print some black and white ink work onto watercolor paper for coloring purposes. Many artists these days produce work digitally and I'm not knocking it one bit. Do what you do. But when it comes to digitally coloring my work I find it to be tedious, painstaking and extremely time consuming. It's probably due to my outdated techniques and hardware, yet despite my prolific output I'm still a hold out to drop down the money to update to some decent hardware plus deal with the learning curve of said hardware. So, perhaps digital coloring could be a lot funner. Lotta my friends tell me so, but, here we are. Analog coloring, on the other hand, comes natural to me. I AM a painter, after all. And it's way less time consuming, which is why it was such a big win that I was able to run these pages off in such a fashion. Here's that concept page, now with a splash of color.

Color concepts. Not quite done but you get the idea, and that's the idea.

The way the black print out, as you can see, provide a sheen of sorts. It may look strange here but it should scan just fine. The black ink does "seal up" the surface it covers, so any color that goes over it just sits there, which I wasn't expecting. It's also a very print friendly paper at 98lb, and not crazy porous like other watercolor papers. Still, I needed something that could take the color without buckling and ruining the paper and this is it: 11"x14" Canson Mixed Media 98lb (160g) paper.

Gearing up for my 40 day "coughee" fast. Those that know me know what I'm talking about, and may no I used to do it almost every year, but have slacked off in the last few years. But alas, it's time to clear out the cobwebs; get my motor skills back up to snuff, as well as my equilibrium. Become the clear-headed, fast-talking leaping gnome ya'll no me to be. I've also decided to give up coffee, so we'll see how that goes. You might be thinking "Why the hell would you do that to yourself? You're not even religious." Just trying to be a master of my dominion, and to prove to myself that I indeed can quit any time.

I'll keep ya posted on how that goes. 😵

Sugar Tits

I keep pumping out Star Boob concept art. I still have a lotta of visualizations and fleshing-out to do on the characters before I start this first issue. Good thing is I have a rough outline for the story, but even that needs polishing. So just chipping away at it.
Such a fun concept. I've never written a deep superhero story in my modern work, and with all the rage happening with superhero movies (as well as all their parodies and cliches) I was a tad bit reluctant to dive in. But, I'm loosening up in the idea department and creating a strange and colorful cast so it won't read like these same old stories we heard before. At least that's the idea. And there's this other side to creating superhero comics, it sort of taps into that feeling we felt as kids when we created our own characters and would try and mimic the poppy sequential art. How we would shape our characters similarly to the characters we would read about, posing them in identical poses whipping out the coolest art in class. Yeah, there's definitely some homages and other references taking place here as well, and they just pour outta me, so I'm going with it.

Throw Starboob from the Train. Starboob throws Trains.

Starboob vs. Epitomi O'Fine, arch-nemesis.

Starboob in Blue.

For this piece, I did some very sketchy pencil work with a very classic comic feel to it, something I don't do very often. I then tossed the piece to my boy KCool and he inked it and threw the blue wash on as well.

Starboob: Plane Dream sequential.

Been sitting on this penciled test page for months now. And when I say test page I do mean test page, I shoulda did it on some better paper. Maybe I will. The imagery is too gorgeous to not redo it and take a bit more time on it. 

That's Star Boob's development so far. This is gonna be a real cool story. I would tell you more but I don't wanna give it all away.