Updates!

Whew! So, 2013 is off to a rocking start here in my little kitchen studio. I looked up and suddenly it was almost April!

So, what have I been keeping so busy with, you ask? Well, aside from storyboarding, I've had some exciting projects going on! For starters, working with Visual Storyline, I illustrated some pop art posters that were on display at Paypal's booth at SXSW this year! You can check out some of the final images in Paypal's video from the event.

I also had the good fortune to connect with writer Robert Jeschonek, who found my work online and hired me on to do some artwork for an upcoming Kickstarter to launch his graphic novel, "Hell's Treasure". I'll be giving some sneak peeks here on the blog of some of the finished pages I did for the Kickstarter, but for now, here's the cover illustration!

Better

These busy couple of weeks have kept me from my sketchbook, and from the blog! Today's random doodle is brought to you by a morning spent in the juror assembly room. :)

Letras

I draw a great deal of inspiration from the music I listen to. Even my warm-up drawings or my sketchbook doodles are sometimes pulled from the lyrics of various songs...whatever brings an image to mind.

You Look So Fine...

...I want to break your heart and give you mine.

Cosmic Love

Random sketchbook doodle today...it's a little bit classic Star Trek, a little bit classic sad Megan girl. 

Burguesinha

Finished the colors up. This is a little more muted and flat than my coloring tends to be, but I kind of like it. What do you think?

You Can Stand Under My Umbrella-ella-ella...

This has been a backburner piece for a while, but I finally finished up the colors for my "Only Happy When It Rains" illustration.

WIP: Copacabana

Finished inks on a piece I've been sneak-peeking on Twitter and Facebook. In what passes for my free time, I'm revisiting my story "Somewhere In Between", and this image is intended to be the cover. Brazilian readers, or anyone who has been to Rio, will recognize this as the sidewalk pattern along Avenida Atlântica in Copacabana. (My friends will recognize it as that crazy wave design that Megan draws whenever she's feeling homesick for Rio.)

Color coming soon!

Lost

Another birthday drawing for a friend. These two might be the worst pirates ever. I think I've drawn them in various stages of searching for treasure for about three years.

Inanimate Objects

After a busy week and a half, today's workload has lightened just enough to let me scan a few sketchbook doodles from various café sessions this month. Time permitting I may have some fun drawings after this weekend to share. :-)

Birthday Presents

For some reason, it seems the majority of my family and friends' birthdays are in June, and there's an usual concentration of them between the 16th and the 23rd. As a fun sketch after a long day doing storyboards yesterday, I scribbled this one of Joan from Mad Men for one such friend's birthday today. 

Samba e Amor

So, Tuesday (June 12) was Brazil's version of Valentine's Day, Dia Dos Namorados. As a little nod, I collected a bunch of sketches and art of the two main characters from my webcomic "Somewhere In Between"...hopeless romantic gringa Molly and her Brazilian love interest, Marcelo. Then I got a call that afternoon to do some storyboarding work which kept me busy for the past two days, and is going to stretch into today as well.

This is normally the part where I make some joke about this post being late in classic Brazilian fashion, but seeing as how one of my carioca friends managed to get a birthday gift to me before anyone else (including my own mom), I think it's more accurate to say this post is late in classic Los Angeles fashion...meaning, it started out early to arrive ridiculously late. Blame the traffic. 

Favela 3

Crazy week! But I had time during the "Mad Men" season finale to unwind with a new favela drawing, which I wrapped up last night. If it looks familiar, that's because it's drawn from the same photo I posted in the last entry!

Zou Bisou Bisou

Today's warm-up sketch. With apologies for getting that song stuck in everyone's head now. 

Uncanny

A little bit of a slack day today after a long weekend of working. I had so much fun drawing Wolverine yesterday that I decided to unwind tonight doing a few quick marker sketches of some of my other favorite X-Men characters.

I can't wait for my brand new scanner to arrive, and I hope it picks up colors at least a little better than this obnoxious thing. 

Someone Like You

After finishing the day's work on page layouts and character designs, and inking two pages of another project, I settled in with the last pages of my sketchbook to watch some TV and scribble. This is what happens when I'm stuck between the end of a special on Adele and the beginning of "Mad Men", and all that's on is "X-Men Origins: Wolverine".

Gato

Very very infrequently, my cat takes a break from shredding my tracing paper, knocking my ink bottles onto the floor, and attacking my ankles to let me draw him.

Yes, my cat is actually named Frodo.

Yes, his nickname actually is "Fucking Frodo".

Pizza Spider

Probably one of my most random posts yet. Hey, sometimes I can be silly.

Rua Barata Ribeiro

Missing Rio a little this morning, so I dug up some sketches from one of my last days there. I had this mental image that my time there was going to be spent in cafés and bars, with my sketchbook in hand, drawing all day. These drawings are from the one time I actually did sit in a café and draw. (As for the bars...yeah, forget about it.) 

Portrait of the artist

Some pretty exciting news over here today, at least for me. As of today I am officially signed on as the illustrator for Issue 2 of Run By The Gun...and what that means is that for the next month and a half, comics will be my full-time job, instead of that thing I try to do when my full-time job isn't consuming my life.

Not too shabby, considering it was just a little over three months ago that I quit said day job in order to pursue comics more seriously (with a nice little monthlong buffer of "fuck everything" time in Rio in between). I can't say everything in the last three months has gone according to my crazy plan, but, I can say I'm figuring it out, and so far I'm excited. 

About to get very busy over here!