One month left in 2022! Time has flown fast for me! I’ve been trying to stuff as many of my art projects into the month as I can while keeping my sanity!
New Website
The first big thing I can say in November is that there’s now a new website for Blackmask and news of its development! This is a large task that’s been taking up my time. Even if I’m getting things down on this website, there’s still much to learn about self-promotion.
I will say to join the Blackmask Mailing List! It’s a direct way to get news of our progress without missing any of my posts due to algorithms. Now that the website is set up, it’ll be less confusing for anyone who’s been following my website and getting unrelated news.
Things have been picking up for February! I’ve been starting up the con season, doing commissions, and more art! If you want to keep up with my tasks in real time you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram! I’m also cultivating my new Ko-Fi page for tips, so stop by there as well!
Most of Early February was preparing for Northwest Indiana Comic-Con, the first con I’ve had in years due to the plague. It’s nice to resupply and get ready. I’ve been taking on extra hours at my day job to get more money to print and reprint missing things. Luckily, NWI Comic-Con was better than I worried about! My Cat Stickers are a smash hit, they sold even more than my comics!
My stickers have grown with my newest addition to my growing collection of stickers!
Thanks to StickerNinja, you can get a large 5×4 size of my Hipster Medusa stickers!
While there, I took one nice marker commission of a Tracksuit Mafia guy from the Hawkeye show and comics.
His comic-inspired colors were simple enough, though I was worried I’d run out of ink in my Copics.
My next cons are CODCon, and Schaumburg Library Con. All of these before my giant event at Anime Central in April! It’s going to be a big jump for me, and I have a bunch of rethinking of my convention approach to do.
I’ve been working on new digital commissions as well! This Family Portrait commission is another experimental one where I’m doing my hardest to try simple painting. I’ll say that I’m getting faster and cleaner at painting, since I’m not getting lost in the weeds with brushes. I also decided to stick with my stylization and not stress hard about an exact likeness.
This one is more of a likeness drawing, and I get kinda nervous when it comes to commissions where I draw likeness. But my client was satisfied with the sketches, so I’m no longer worried.
The Art experiment continues where I skip the inking process and go straight to colors. The coloring went faster overall because I began the flat coloring at a lower resolution and I didn’t use the lasso tool on my line art.
To break out of my comfort zone, I bothered to look up how the skin varies in temperature. Unfortunately, I got frustrated by the odd in between look of this painting, thinking I was making the face look clownish. I settled for a subtle red splotch in the middle to settle my mind. I’ll figure this out if I do studies in my own time.
This next part is the more tedious part, as I’m painting over my pencil art like a physical painting. Without formal painting training, I’m going off of tutorial videos. Many about basic edge control and blending.
I don’t like the rendering step in the process because it’s boring, and I have no idea how to make it interesting. The rendering is half the reason I don’t like painting. Despite that, I press forward!
I tackled another large commission for a friend. This one was for an icon, which is simple enough for me!
I’m getting used to sketching in the Artflow Phone App on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9. I draw all my icon sketches on 150 dpi 3 inch canvases because it emulates drawing on a Post-it Note.
She liked sketch number two on the top middle and wanted the Mohawk to be longer, so I obliged.
I ink and flat color in my trusty Clip Studio Paint program! It’s a common step where I use my Lasso and Hard Round Brushes to get down a drawing area. Once that tough part is done, I can plunk down the basic colors I need with a Clipping Mask!
There’s plenty of trial and error with figuring out my lighting. Other than that, I took enough breaks to get out of my own head and simplify what I wanted to do.
Add some detailing to show off the materials and I complete a great looking icon for silly Discord conversations!
Here’s some old art from a game jam Adam and I worked on 2018 about being a liar in an office space. I was messing around with silly designs for office workers. Adam converted my art to pixel art, as I didn’t know about making pixel art at that time.
Other Art I’ve been doing and uploaded to my Illustration and Sketchbook Galleries. A bunch of bird people just vibing. I don’t draw that many birds. There’s too much to draw out there.
Some dog guard sketches that I’m brainstorming for Blackmask. I’m still doing new writing for the game, as I’ve sent so much pixel art for Adam to program. Adam’s shooting for having a playable demo ready for summer, but I’ll keep you all informed.
Monkey Knight Sketches I’m also considering for Blackmask. I haven’t thought about monkeys that much before recently. But now I’m figuring out cool ways to work in Blackmask. Having a prehensile tail is a straight-forward, yet unique way to add some flair to a sword and board warrior.
And finally, some more miscellaneous sketches I drew of people I see around when I’m at work or anywhere else. It gets tough seeing people’s faces with their masks on, so I use my imaginations on many of them.
These posts get long in the tooth, so next time I’m going to make shorter blogs for easier, faster writing. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more of my daily tasks. I’ll be off to celebrate my 30th birthday!
It’s almost the new year and I look back on 2021 with thoughts. It started out with promise, but I think it went downhill closer to the end. I can’t help but say I felt directionless and the stuff I’ve been doing wasn’t as amazing as I’d like for it to be.
I made several proofs, and I was just about to go forward on buying prints, but I realized that instead of sitting on many floppy comics that don’t sell that much, I’d make a big trade paperback containing not just my comics work so far, but behind the scenes stuff like my original pencil art and inks! I can even include other illustrations and sketches in the book to show off more of my artwork!
There’s not much to write about besides being laser focused on my freelance stuff. I’m in the final stretch of the books’ completion, so hopefully within the month I’ll be through with it.
I’ve recently had an interview with Will Humphrey on his podcast Will Vs. You Talk Too Much! It’s a great time, and nice to touch back with my old friend from college!
You can listen here!
I’ve been making changes to my website when I have the time. Been video editing, drawing, and some other things in life.
Recently, I’m posting art that I haven’t posted on this site before. As much as I maintain my Twitter and Instagram to keep my art in people’s eyes, I still need to remember that I built this website to archive my artwork.
After someone scrutinized my website, I found some issues that I’m taking time to fix. I haven’t been able to focus on personal projects as much as I’d like, as I’m crunching and focusing on finishing my freelance work for Flawless Extra-Ordinary Super Heroes.
I’ve made myself busy over the start of my new year and I already feel stressed out with all the stuff I put on my plate.
Currently, I’m video editing stuff from my art streams and game dev progress on Twitch, and I having trouble deciding out what to keep or dump. I’m doing what I can to not worry about doing a phenomenal job and just focusing on getting some clips made.
Along with this is some gift pixel art I made for my 100th follower on Twitch! Thank you and here’s to 100 more!
From my January 29th Twitch stream, I made a tutorial going through the basics of animation with a ball bounce! It might be rote, but it’s a good primer to get people to started just drawing objects multiple times and staying consistent with them. It went smoothly if you ask me, so I’m interested in doing more tutorials when I scrape up the time!
Most of my art time has gone to freelance and big book projects like Flawless Extra-Ordinary Super Heroes, so my sketchbook has been getting neglected. I’m trying not to let it burn me out since I am drawing “useful” art. But here’s art from the past few weeks that I have scanned.
I’m in this odd in-between feeling of having plenty of free time for personal projects but no free time because I’m taking on so many projects. I’m still not good at relaxing but old habits die hard.
My sketchbook priorities are going to the purpose of writing and rewriting the Blackmask story to a real plot. My programmer has plenty of character assets, so now I’m working harder at sketching environment assets.
I keep psyching myself out over how much this matters to me and I need to remember to ask for help and not take this insane stuff alone even if I think I’m bothering people about my obscure ideas that I struggle to explain.
Somehow, I’ve self-published and sold comics,yet I still feel like I’m stumbling when I’m trying to convey the overall direction I want to take Blackmask’s story. I’m sure I’ll figure out sooner or later, since the game will be edited and iterated on as it goes.
I’m doing alright for the past few weeks as there isn’t much to report. I’m still plugging away at my ongoing freelance commissions and Blackmask.
Artwise, I wasn’t very productive. My day job is beginning to pick up again and I spent most of my week making a promotional video for my Youtube Channel.
