I Hate It When This Happens

So, I was working on an design for work this weekend.  I got the illustration drawn, and most of the design set up, and then went to put the logo into it... It wasn't supposed to be a soccer design. Oh, man, I was not happy.  Ha-ha-ha!  But that's what I get for not checking all of my elements before getting started.

 

So I started over.  Amy mentioned the other night that she doesn't know where I get new ideas for stuff everyday.  This one came from Donald Duck playing golf. There's really no huge secret to where ideas come from, mostly it's just watching a lot of stuff, and remembering it later.  Ha-ha-ha!

Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Happy Fall!

It's been a super busy work week, and until tonite I haven't had more than a minute to think. Still, I'll be lucky to get to bed before midnite.  Ha-ha-ha!

At any rate, I don't have much time for a "real" post, but thought I'd share some of the drawings I've been working on for my day (nite...late nite) job, celebrating the end of that aweful summer heat..

 

A jack-o-lantern...

 

and a turkey playing soccer.

That's it for now. Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

More Sprites

I'd meant to have these up here a couple of days ago, but have been experiencing some technical difficulties the past few days. Three more of the Sprite Illustrations I did last month. All six of these watercolor illustrations are available to purchase in my etsy shop Handmade Family. There are also a lot of other really cool items there made my my wife, like superhero capes and masks, key chains and baby blankets. Go check it out!
"The Mason Jar"
"Hat Shopping"
"Three Little Birds"

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

All Stars

Recently, I did some interior art for a new release from Hex, "All Stars", A game of low-budget superheroics. Basically, it's a game about the other guys. The super heroes that just didn't quite make it. Think "The Tick" or "Mystery Men". At any rate, this project was a lot of fun.

You can purchase your very own copy, written by Steve Johnson, with cover art by the talented Lindsay Hornsby, and interior art by Leighton Connor, Josh Burnett, and myself here.

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Some Of My Personal Work

Just a quick post to show you all a few things that I made for myself lately...well, they were actually so that I would have something to put in I Am What I Am on Main Street a local shop in downtown St. Charles where Amy and I have been Featured Artists this month. The link is to an interview we did with them for their blog.
"Walking in the rain"
"Bullfrog Ridin"
"Just One More Thing"

I did a longer write up about them, and the process over on the Handmade Family Blog and I actually documented them pretty well, so go check it out! I should have these available on my Etsy and Big Cartel shops as well by the end of this weekend. I'll keep you all posted!

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

A Little Bit of Process

As promised, here's a little bit of my working process. This isn't everything, because I'm not including my initial thumbnail sketches or any of the work on the logo, and I'm terrible about actually documenting what I do during the painting process...but it'll have to do for now. ha-ha-ha!

First I get the brief, and (usually) a copy of the current version of the text. Depending on who I'm working for, the brief can be more or less specific. Ian is usually pretty specific about his ideas, but is also pretty cool about letting me choose from his list of things. The cover brief for Edison force looked like this:

In the grand tradition of Fratboys, I like the idea of a host of evil rising up. Some things that might be good

In the midground

Luther Burbank with his vegetable minions

Marie Curie with her radium gun

J. Pierpont Morgan and his accountant henchmen

An X-ray image of a man

Nicholas Roerich seated crossed-legged in midair using the power of Shambala to levitate

An early tank

In the air maybe an evil black dirigible, pterodacyls—small, far off

In the background,

an ominous black figure, backlit by a sparking Tesla coil

In the foreground,

a ca. 1908 Thomas Edison backed by a team. Maybe a Roosevelt look-alike, an Annie Oakley, a guy in a leather flying helmet, a kid working a crystal set.

So as you can see, he gave me a lot of ideas to work with.

The first thing I do is start gathering reference. Mostly I'm looking for photos to cover the specific references, as well as poses, attitudes and inspiration. My reference files can get pretty big.
Like I said, I didn't scan the initial thumbnail sketches I did, exploring composition and content, and now I don't know where they are. This is my initial pencil drawing. Nothing too special, I use a 2h pencil for the initial lay in, and then go back over part of it with a 1 or 2b, to darken and finalize things.
After scanning in the pencils, I went ahead and did a composite using the graphic elements that I knew would be going into it. Basically, I wanted to make sure everything fit before putting too much work into the project.
Next I ink the pencil drawing. This defines all the major areas, as well as adding some textures and details to objects.
Finally, I color everything. Here's a detail of what the colors look like both with and without the inked lines.

One of these days I'll get more of a tutorial post together. The problem is that I'm still learning a lot with each new cover, so I don't always do it the same way. Hmmmm... Maybe that's the way it is with everybody though. I hope you all got at least some peak into the way I work through this.

Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Edison Force!!!

Well, July is coming to an end, and with it will come the release of Edison Force from Hex Games!

This is probably my favorite cover to date...I guess that makes sense since it's the most recent, but I think there's more to it than that. I enjoyed the research and inspiration phase of it very much, and also the writer Ian gave me a lot of ideas to work with for what he wanted on it. So many ideas in fact, that I had to sift through them and unfortunately had to end up leaving a lot of them out.
I've been wanting to do a more in depth post talking a little bit about the way I work and develop my ideas lately. I'm not making any promises because I have a lot of other work to do to get ready for Archon, the holiday season at Fusion, and (hopefully) the Small Press Expo this fall, but I think I may put together something with this cover to kind of show it from start to finish.
The boy with the electric rifle was the first illustration that I did for this project. This is actually the second version of this drawing, as I felt that in my first go he was a little too old. The game is set in the turn of the 20th century, and revolves around a lot of electrical, steam/diesel punk technology. I felt (and I think this may have been Ian's intention) that there would be a lot of kids working for Mr. Edison's organization.
Diamond Jill and her Electric Handgun. I struggled with this one, wanting to do more of an "adventurer" design, until I realized that she really should be more subtle...like a member of the upper-class. Or at least a LADY, and not just some street urchin like the boy with the electric rifle. I imagine that she normally wouldn't use her electric handgun unless she was cornered, and that's why she's just a bit disheveled.
What game about turn of the century super-spies and mad scientists would be complete without a radio controlled monkey?

That's it for today. Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

What I've Been Up To This Summer

It's been a long month since I posted last... actually, it looks like it's been more like two. There's a tendency to want to either apologize for being away so long, or make grand promises and set a rigid schedule for the return. I don't think I'm going to do either of those things. Admittedly, it's hard to get back into the blogging mind frame after being away. I always want to come back with this incredible, thought provoking post. Something I haven't done before, that will inspire and amaze those of you who've managed to stick with me. Really though, the hardest part of starting again is... well... starting.

So, here we go. What I did over my summer break. Part 1 of 12. (Just kidding)

I've been super busy designing lapel pins for baseball, softball and soccer teams. What's sometimes great about that is getting a design back months later to be edited into a medal or coin. I opened one of those jobs the other day and didn't remember doing it. It's weird, saying to yourself "That's really cool! Did I design that?". For the record, I did, but maybe that's a sign that I need to trust myself more than I do. Ha-ha-ha!

Did some more work for Hex, went to hang out and play some games with them at Die-Con, and am working on more stuff for them. Needless to say, I'm still very excited about the work I do for them, and hope to be able to expand on that a little bit this fall.Title logo for Edison Force. I've been describing it at "Charlies Angles at the turn of the 20th century". Don't know how accurate that is, but there you go... I'll do a post just for this a little later, because I did 4 or five things for it.

Really Excited about Hobomancer. This is still just a work in progress, but like I said, I'm pretty excited about it.

We cleaned and reorganized the studio. I can finally get to my bookshelves again! Sorry about the horrible panorama...
There's a whole stack of drawings on my desk that I've been trying to get finished for a book I'm working on. Also a very exciting project with it's own share of new experiences and challenges. I'm nearly to the point with it where I'm starting to think about the next book... this is always a difficult place to be, because I have to keep my energy and enthusiasm up in the face of something new and shiny.

The microwave and tile back-splash are finally done. Yay! It's hard to put into words what a weight having that project done takes off my shoulders.
...and of course the kids just keep on getting bigger.

What You Talkin' About? Does It Disrespect God, or You?

The week before Easter, a young man and his mother were sitting in the pew in front of me at church. The young man sat, very sullenly, with his ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and his arms folded across his chest. His mom, beside him stood and participated in the service. She was there to worship, and it seemed he wanted to make it clear that he was only there because she wanted him to be. I remember thinking that he was being disrespectful to his mother; that if nothing else he was reflecting poorly on her and the things she felt were important. It seemed like maybe I should lean forward and tell him that he needed to be mindful and at least act like he was participating. While I watched him though, I noticed that his eyes were open. If he wasn't sleeping, then he was at least hearing. His mother was quietly witnessing to him by making sure that he was there to hear the message. Maybe the important thing was that he was at least here, and he should be allowed to come to that message in his own way rather than to adhere to mine.

This week, I wore a hat to service. I made a conscious decision to do this because I'm letting my hair grow out, and it's in that in between stage where it starts looking bad because there's nothing to control it. It didn't seem like a big deal, because at least all my clothes were clean, and my appearance was between me and J.C. A man came up to me just before the beginning of service, and told me (told me) that it was disrespectful to wear a hat here, and asked that I remove it... This stirred up a few things inside of me, and I would like to talk about it a little bit.

First it made me feel unwelcome, which caused a downward domino effect. J.C. said to go out and make Christians. Not Methodists, not Catholics, not people who don't wear hats to church. Make Christians, and making anybody feel unwelcome goes a long way towards defeating that purpose. I didn't want to sigh the guest book. I didn't want to give my tithe. I didn't want to come back. I spent the entire service thinking about him, instead of being present, where I was. Spending time with God. He may as well have asked me to leave, because I wasn't there anyway.

I wanted to wear my hat to service again next week. To actively disrespect the man.

Maybe that's one of those instances where we ignore God's soft voice so that we can get our own way. Whether I wear a hat in church is between me and J.C., and not me and some guy. I actively decided to wear it. It's possible that this man telling me that it is disrespectful is Gods way of letting me know that he thinks it is too. Or...

He could be telling me through this experience that I did the right thing by not stepping in with that boy a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it was His way of saying that I should let Him speak to th this young man with out my being a distraction. It could be that the best way to witness for God is to step back, and to watch and witness.

Or maybe there's a better way... Sometimes the Big Guy can be difficult and makes us figure things out on our own. After the service, as Abby and I were getting in the car to come home, the guy came up to me in the parking lot. He told me that he was sorry if he offended me, and that it is just the way he was raised, and something that was further ingrained by military service. (For the record this is true for me as well, and 90% of the time this situation would never have presented itself.) I told him I understand, and I appreciate that he felt it was important to talk to me, but that kind of approach will always leave one person on the defensive and become a conflict. I told him my story of the boy from a couple of weeks ago, and commented that there had to be a better way to go about it.

I don't know how he could have asked me to take my hat off without me feeling like I didn't belong. I don't think that was the point that was being made though. Two weeks ago, instead of worrying that that young man was being sullen, or disrespectful, I should have made a point to say "Welcome" and "I'm glad to see you here today". This seems silly maybe, but sometimes it's the silly little things that make the biggest difference.

It's okay to get upset with the man for handling a situation that he thought was important badly. That doesn't make it the church's fault, and doesn't mean I'm not welcome. Every week we recite the Lords Prayer, and ask him to forgive us our trespasses, and he does. Part of the deal there though, is that we also need to forgive those who trespass against us.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

100 Themes: Break Away

Seriously, Barbie legs just don't bend like G.I. Joe legs did. Plus, I'm like twice as big as I was when I was playing with the G.I. Joes'.


The next theme is "Bliss". Until next time, take care and be good!
Your friend,
Jeffrey