South Florida, 2007

Coral Springs. 2022

One of my shift leads is an older man who lives in throwing distance of me. From time to time he'll give me a ride home if I can't get in contact with my brother, or the Uber prices spike. The drives are always pleasant, we're very similar and have always gotten along well. He tells me about his time in college, he's an amazing mathematician who loves astronomy. We also talk about the thing all retail workers talk about.

What did you really want to be doing?

He wanted to be a photographer. When he takes his daughter to her classes, he walks around the campus, checks out what the students are doing, and thinks about compositions. When I told him I'm an illustrator, he gave me the warmest smile.

On one of the last rides we'd had, he took a beat and turned to me. "I'm proud they're giving you more responsibility, but don't end up like me. Don't always tell them 'yes'. Don't bend over backward. Take of yourself and your family"

Coral Springs, 2020/2021

When I was starting out in high-school and had found out about Corey Lewis, I took pieces of his techniques because his work was so bombastic and stylish and bold. So I threw big chunky outlines on everything because I wanted to get that sensation across with my own work. But if I'm being honest, that didn't ultimately pan out for me, because I didn't know HOW he was using his techniques to convey that bombast to a reader.

The biggest issue I was having is that, when a piece was done, I'd look back at it and it'd feel flat. The design might be interesting, but that bold energy I was trying to convey just wasn't there.

A few months into 2020 I finally put the pencils to rest on the Thor piece pictured up top on the left side. It's rough, because the inks were supposed to, ultimately, add depth to the piece. But after inking it, I ran into the same issue. It's too flat. All the cross hatching and stippling I was using with the inks just weren't conveying the depth and bombast.

I can't put the date to it, but I was reading a post by Chase Clooney where he was giving advice to people looking to get into animation and he suggested picking up "Creative Illustration" by Andrew Loomis. I put it in the Amazon cart and never pulled the trigger. Cut to Christmas and a family that wouldn't honor a request for 'socks and a cheap wallet' and I found myself with a copy of the book in question.

In 2020 I read about the Form Principle. I then spent seven days slowly reclining in a busted computer chair rubbing my temples because I'm a fool.

The reason Corey Lewis has such a bombastic and bold style is because the rules of his art are still conveying form with line, light, and shadow. I stole his lines and left the other two. Every time I took a technique, I took a piece instead of seeing the whole of the thing.

Your paper, in most cases, provides you with the light. Lines will bind the shape. Shadows will cut out the form of the thing. Light, lines, and shadow. That's the trick of it.

The Thor pencils interested me because the idea was that he's supposed to appear as a mournful giant that you'd spot out in a clearing. Playing with the shadow's values could have taken it to more interesting spaces, but the inking was heavy handed and robbed it of some of the depth.

Coral Springs, 2019

This is part of a group of pictures that I'm particularly proud of. I'm not sure what I was going through, but this piece along with a Godzilla piece and one Chiitan piece were projects I felt really comfortable/competent putting together.

A big part of that was going through those daily drawings and con pieces the year before. I'm trying to get back to into that mindset. I wanna do a bestiary 365 for 2021, get that energy flowing again.

Coral Springs, 2018

Nice little chunk of change between posts. Left cold, relatively quiet Mount Vernon NY for hot, relatively quiet Coral  Springs FL. It’s like a curse in an old Victorian play, just with more mosquitoes and less corsets. 

That aside, being away from the grind of NY has given me more time to put actual effort into art again. I might not be connected to the weird ‘chaotic vibes’ of that place anymore, but hopefully I have enough of it stored up to put out some interesting pieces. 

Mount Vernon, 2013

I sometimes forget how therapeutic drawing can be. It’s not a profession, so the stress that comes bundled with work isn’t there. 

Coral Springs, 20XX

Coral Springs, 20??

After spending what felt like forever in Ocala, I moved back down to Coral Springs to try and start school or, failing that, look for some work. I didn't do either. Instead I'd wake up, make a list of albums to download, take a bus to the library, and for a few hours a day, I'd sit and draw and read the same "comix" retrospective until I couldn't take the hunger any longer and head back home. 

Waiting for torrents to load gave me time to acquaint myself with Deviantart. I wasn't oblivious to its reputation, but when you're not surrounded by peers who are digging what you do, you have to search them out. Just having the ability to see someones work, leave a lil' message, then coming back the next day to see a lil' reply is a LOT for someone who seemed to be creating in a vacuum. 

Mount Vernon, 2014

Mount Vernon, 2013

In the middle of the attempted "365 Days of Art", I ran through a 30 day Pokemon Challenge(I've lost the link, apologies). I believe this was supposed to be favorite fire type and I ended up with a re imagined Magmortar.

I was having trouble with the construction of Magmortar, so I opted to redesign him as this sort of kerosene engine. I could have put more time into making it look like a more functional biological engine in lieu of a jumble of parts that sort of resemble a fire duck. Just something I'll have to take another shake at.

South Florida, 2008

I could never get the hang of portioning out body parts to fit around a giant shark face. 

Street Sharks is one of those shows that I loved a s a kid, but haven't visited again as an "adult". I'll put some viewing time aside when I get the urge to draw them again.

I have a sincere love for the old designs. Street Sharks were the second best toys behind Beast Wars transformers. They were big and made of this thick rubber that hardened around the teeth. They had this great smell to go along with all of that. 

Mount Vernon, 2013

This is another in a series of recent pieces I wanted to get out of the way because it's going to be a regular thing on here for a short time. The 360 Day Art Challenge. 

At the beginning of last year I was unemployed, depressed, and very far away from the family and friends I had grown up with. On top of all of that, I hadn't made any attempts to draw anything for too long. So, on January 1st, I let my small group of Facebook acquaintances know that I would be posting a drawing a day. The great 365 Days of Art would sweep 2013...until June. 

Drawing a picture a day isn't hard. Drawing a picture a day with a wonky class schedule and making it look decent, is annoying. 

Some of the entries were lazy, some were unfinished, and some were a chore to even get through. But at the end of 2013, I had all 164 pieces to revel in. Underwhelming.

I did benefit from doing the daily drawings though. I got faster and more comfortable with whatever style I'll eventually settle on. 

Mount Vernon, 2013

This one is very straight forward. It's a Semi-Blind Cross Contour piece for a drawing 101 class I had to retake. I failed it the first time because it's hard to "unlearn" things. 

The first time I took that class, I felt like a king. There were a mix of kids and adults who were taking the class as either a requirement or a passing fancy. I was here for the art! I was here to hone skills and hopefully blow minds. The ace up my sleeve was being an awkward fat kid with very few marketable skills that took to drawing early on. How could I fail?

By not understanding the college class aspect.

I didn't do assignments. I didn't buy materials. I started staying home because that 45 minute bus ride was a pain if I had to carry an assignment home and back. I got lazy. There was an extra credit assignment where the professor let us keep sketchbooks that we had to "fill" for some bonus points. I bought the biggest sketch book as soon as I left that first class. I was gonna educate these flyovers. I didn't. I got a D. 

I felt confident in what I could do, so I never absorbed what the professor was saying. There was a flow to her lesson plan, but most of the time I was more concerned with making something that looked nice, than focusing on the elements she was trying to teach. 

South Florida, 2007

Olympus Rox was a comic idea that I won't get too deep into right at this moment because the more I look over this, the more I sort of really like it. I might have to spend more time on this and let it ferment into something quick and fun. 

Heavy borderlines on everything was and sort of still is the motto when it comes to drawing. This idea actually came from a separate drawing that I decided to expand into a complete universe rather than study for a remedial algebra class, which I think is what those numbers are about. 

They're probably wrong answers.

If you use those numbers for your own test, you WILL fail.

South Florida, 2007

Oh my. This should probably have been the first post. 

The reason I started this blog was because I came across a stack of old drawings and notes I had taken up with me when I left Florida. I had them on the floor ready to toss, but I couldn't let myself. I've lost an unfortunate number of sketchbooks in moves past and I didn't want to lose some of the most embarrassing and fun things I'd produced. So I set this side blog up to catalog all of my pieces and everything I can remember about them and the time in which they were created. 

South Florida, 2008

This is most definitely a trigonometry piece. I used to keep a little yellow legal pad in lieu of an actual notebook because I was a fucking moron who thought this would impress...someone. Instead everyone around me was taking world class notes and I was just sitting there with my mess of numbers I was barely paying attention to. What I WAS into, were words that sounded cool that I could maybe use later in a story.