If I had a time machine and could talk to my younger self

Dear 12 year old self,

Wow, look how young I look, I mean you look. Look, first off, shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry, I’m old and frustrated with all the mistakes I’ve made, which you hopefully will avoid. Now, you’re going to make mistakes in your general life, but that will lead you to some of the greatest times too, so don’t worry about that. All I’m here to talk about is your art.

This might be a shocker, but you don’t draw comics for a living. You make some good money drawing part time, but I’m better off working a day job and drawing comics at night. At least that’s how it worked out for me. Maybe that will be different for you. You’ll end up meeting and seeing a lot of great talent throughout your life, but don’t get frustrated or turned off because you’re not as good as they are. They can be helpful in inspiring you to do better. They don’t have more talent, they have just figured out some things you haven’t yet and their art is the result of hard work and dedication. 90% of an artist’s craft is hard work, the rest is talent. Everyone has a little talent, what we do with it is the important thing.

Draw what you like, not what you think others will like. Don’t worry about everyone liking your work. There are those who will hate it, love it, and some will just not care about it. You don’t have to please everyone, and more importantly you have to like it. That’s how you grow as an artist. Do what you love and put in 100% of your effort into each piece. Finally, and this is an important one, be patient. Your time will come soon enough. Live life, be with your family, enjoy the time you have, and never stop drawing. Even if you’re not doing it seriously for a long time, once you do get back into it your muscle memory will kick in and you’ll be back in action in no time.

Let’s go back to patience. Every piece of art should be thought out and executed with precision. You should put your work down before you’re finished with each stage of its construction. Each time you come back to the drawing you’ll find something you can correct, make better or keep the same. This can help to mold your thought process too. You’ve always inked your work, from day one, so keep doing that. Keep experimenting with different kinds of brushes, nibs and pens. Once you get a feel for the style you love you’ll find the right tools for the job.

Lastly, you will not miss out on anything. Every missed chance you have to break into the industry will not be the last. There are always opportunities around the corner waiting to present themselves. You just need to focus on the art. Keep pushing your boundaries, from comic art to fine art. That’s right, you end up getting a fine art degree, but that comes much later.

Obviously I can’t tell my younger self this stuff, but I am reminding myself of what I’ve learned over the years and hopefully someone will read this and get something good from it.

Josh

This is a sketch of Archimedes, who you'll see in the lastest comic I'm working on.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good...

Twas the night before Christmas, there was not a blog post in sight.

I've been working on a two projects. One is a Roman Steampunk story called Steamroma® and the other, well that is slow going so we'll talk about that some other time. I've finished a six page short for the Roman story and I'm already working on another 35 pages. My guess is that this story will start on the internet and then move into published works later on when there is more to offer.

The pages take me awhile to do, so this project will be going on throughout next year.

Josh

Sketch Cards

Started selling sketch cards on eBay. http://www.ebay.com/sch/sketchcardartist/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

Working

I've been busy at work on two project (a third I haven't started yet, but its going to be big), and only one of which I can talk about. Boosterville is one of the comics I'm working on, though we may change the name due to the URL availability. It has been coming along nicely and once I have some more images to post I will.

Josh

Submission to Marvel Comics

Here are the five pages I sent to Marvel a few months ago.

NDK update

These are in no particular order. They are the sketches I did at the convention. Some were repeat customers, but mostly new faces. I haven't been to a con for a while, so I'm hoping they come back for more next time I'm there. I'm planning to do most of the cons coming up in Denver, so I can get my name out there. I'll be bringing prints next time, because some of my friends really did well with prints.

Finally, I sold lots of my stock books. I've had many books for years and they sold like they were new, which they were to those who had not read them. I'm really happy to be back in the con circuit and I hope it is as successful as NDK if not more in the future.

Thank you all for stopping by my table and just saying hi, and extra thanks to those who bought a book and/or sketch. I really appreciate the support.

 

Josh

Con update forthcoming.

I had a great time at NDK. I have lots of stuff to share, commissions, people I met and old friends I've connected with again. I'll try to have this up today.

All set for NDK

Here is the final colors to my sketch cards I'm bring for NDK.

Sketch Cards Inked

One more day until NDK. I'll be coloring these tonight before NDK.

Sketch Cards at Denver's NDK

Hi all,

Here are some sketch cards I'm doing for NDK. I'll be selling these at my table in artist alley. Please stop by and say hi. I'll have some of my comic books.

Thanks,

Josh

Marvel Comic's Storm: redesigned

Here is a redesign I did of Storm. It is really funny, but when I started drawing this my daughter, whose 3, became infatuated with her and now she's always imagines that she's Storm. I did this for a contest that was due on the 13th. I had already drawn it a few weeks ago and just needed to finish coloring it, so that is what I did last night. I think the colors took me about three hours.

Josh

Boosterville

So, I have begun making the web comic, Boosterville. I have started drawing the characters and I have drawn two strips so far. I'll be adding posts periodically with updates. I have been given the go ahead to draw, ink, pencil, color and letter the first ten pages. Hopefully it works out, as this really has a lot of potential.

This is Becky. More to come.

Josh

I'm working on creating a webcomic with a guy that lives in the same city as I do, Colorado Springs. We met over the internet and we have been discussing the making of a webcomic that I'm really starting to like the possibilities it has. He is paying me, but I feel like it is both our creation, since I'm drawing the style of the art, creating the look of the characters, and building the overall visual aspects of the story. It is his creation first and foremost, though. This is J.J. Ink on card stock blue 8.5 x 11 inches.

Happy Labor Day

This was my attempt at inking with a brush. I don't do it often anymore, because it's more convenient to ink with a pen/marker. I am possibly going to be working on a web comic soon and I think the work is more of a style that needs a brush stroke rather than the pen style. I may have to keep playing around with it before I'm ready to start inking the strip.

Josh

There is a redesign contest going on for Marvel's Storm. I was thinking about her as a character and she is definitely African, so I found some cool African female models to reference from. I came up with this idea on a whim and I'm thinking of doing something more African on the final image. It is due I think in mid-September.

I'm finished with school and life is finally getting back to normal. I'm getting ready to go to comic book conventions again, so it is about time I get some comic art done. The above is a digital painting I did the other day. This took me about two hours all together. I remember it taking less time when I was doing this stuff regularly.

Now that I'm finished with school I thought of posting on a regular basis. First thing I want to do is just draw stuff I'm interested in—nothing for work. I have a book cover I need to do that has been bought and paid for, so I really should get to that, but I just want to take a little break from the work stuff and draw for fun.

I thought of reflecting on the last 2.5 years and what it means to me, but I really need to reflect on the last 16 years to really understand what the last 2.5 years has meant. First off, I went back to school because I went to school for an art degree back in 97, but got distracted by a number of things going on in my life. I started off taking various music classes and art classes, but I ended up getting married and moving to Colorado Springs to pursue a career in law enforcement in 99. I did this because I thought having a stable career was better than being a full time artist. After I finished the academy and got POST certified I realized being a police officer is not my forte. I ended up taking a job as a machinist and worked in that field for about 3 years, before I was laid off (didn't turn out to be very stable after all). Then I decided to work in IT. I worked for Gateway for six months before getting laid off again. This time I took a job with T-Mobile and stuck with it for over 2 years before I had to leave due to a tragic life event—divorce. In itself it is not a big deal, but my daughters were 2 and 4 at the time and it was just us for about five years before I got married again. After the divorce life was kind of a blur. For five years I just wondered with little direction, worked for Verizon Wireless, Microsoft helpdesk and finally got a great job working for Progressive. I did end up finishing an associate’s degree during this period of time, though.

After I met my current wife life started over for me. I'm the father of four daughters, one of which is starting high school next year. Life is moving right along. So, 2.5 years ago I thought life was at a good point to go back to school to finish what I started way back in 97. I thought "I have a stable job, my wife and I are doing fine, and my daughters should have a father who at least has a Bachelor's degree". Now I'm finished with a BA in Visual Art from UCCS and it is time for me to get back to doing what I love, making comic book art.

I am a different artist now. I’m a cross between a contemporary artist and comic artist, which makes it difficult to explain what I do exactly. I draw comic books, but my art goes in galleries and I say things like, “I’m exploring the way sequential panels juxtaposed with each other can create movement and meaning for a narrative.” I imagine it is difficult to understand what that means to someone who reads comic books for the entertainment factor, but for the academic side of art it means my work has a little more meaning than entertainment, but in contrast it is not just about how the content works with form or theme.

Ultimately, my audience is both the fine art world (mostly academic audiences) and the comic book reader. I consider myself one of the general comic book readers myself. I don’t teach and I have no interest at this time in getting into that field of work. What I want my audience to get from my work is twofold. If you’re a teacher, I want you to learn about comic books. How they can function and how in different ways they can communicate ideas. If you’re a comic book reader I want you to be entertained and learn something about the contemporary art world. I want you to see how comic books can be pop culture and how they can teach us about ourselves. Whether I succeed in my goal or not, I hope everyone enjoys my work.

Josh

I was thinking about all the stuff going on in the world and it seems everyone is screaming about something, which got me thinking about good reasons for screaming. Maria Sharapova has some great reasons to be screaming. I love to watch her play.

A bit of sketching before class starts today. I'm really looking forward to this last semester. I'm finally going to be finished.

Here is a little process and sneak peak at what I'm working on.

Pencil and inks. Notice I switched the angle of some of the panels to flow better.

I do all the perspective work before I ink or while I'm inking. I did all this on the computer. Normally I do most of my work free hand and then scan it in, but my scanner broke, so I have to do everything on the computer for now. 

I put down the gray tones and then use a nice tool in Photoshop to overlay color. I did some traditional (digital) painting after I did the main areas of color. 

Took a break from the sequential pages I'm working to do this sketch.

Quick sketch for fun.

Happy New Year

Did this drawing while waiting for midnight to role around, so technically this is the first drawing of Hulk in the entire world in 2013...or maybe not.

Happy new year to everyone!