By the way, just wanted to mention I'll be selling my caricatures of the "LOST" cast at the comic0n. So keep an eye out for them. Here's another taste.

DONE!

BENTO BOX! When Good Sushi Goes Bad!

Pulled an all nighter to wrap up my new book "Bento Box"! It is off to the printer. Above is the final cover. After several fully rendered versions and a lot of wrong directions I finally found a piece that worked for me. For those of you that liked the sci fi girl, she's inside. For those of you that didn't (AJ and Ron) you can glue that page closed. The project had to be scaled down a bit from it's original inception. But I'm still pretty happy with it. It's kind of a tasty sampling of my work (professional and personal) from the last year. Okay there's some old stuff in there too. It is a forty-page, bite size meal that will leave you asking for dessert. (I mean because it tastes so good, that you can't get enough, not because it left you unsatisfied. Maybe I should come up with a better metaphor.) I'll be selling it at Comicon in the 8fish booth E5. So be sure to stop by and visit, Me along with Ian Johnston, AJ Bell, Ernie Harker and, of course, my booth babe, Jess. By the way we're going to be drawing caricatures at the con as well. That'll be fun to do some live drawing again. Can't wait to see you there. Meanwhile practice saying: 私はbento箱を有してもいいか。

Later.

And there's my weekend.

I've had some friends ask me to show some kind of a demo of how I do some of the paintings.  Since I'm in a Lost mood I saved out some iterations of a caricature of Evangeline Lily to show a little bit of my process.  It's really just the basics of traditional oil painting, hopefully with a little style.

I start off with a few sketches until I get an approximate feeling for the character.  The way I work I don't like to tie the drawing down too much.  For me at least, most of the pleasure of the painting comes from the discoveries along the way.  I guess I like to have a general direction without a restrictive plan.  Otherwise it's just math.  Once you get the basic equations down you don't have to do the long division.  That's when it gets interesting.  Anyway, I start with a sketch.

I put down the middle tone

Then I go from the general middle tone to a slightly darker tone, without going full contrast.  That way I control the tonal relationships with out getting too dramatic.  Ya know the old saying "Subtlety in tone creates the illusion of depth, while high contrast flattens."
I go back and lay in a lighter tone than the general middle
From there I go back and forth progressing toward the to extremes of the tonal range 
Cycle back and forth until the localized tones relate to the overall and.... viola. Ya know. Of coarse along the way I'm constantly adjusting the drawing with the rendering

You can pick up all of this stuff by studying some of Sargent's unfinished paintings.  He's one that seemed to relish in the process. He never tried to hide his stroke.

Now that I look at it...  This caricature kinda sucks.  Shoulda done a demo on a good one.  Oh well.  Another time then.

So this is my girl, Jess (the love of my life). I've had this on-going debate with a friend of mine about the similarity between Jess and Scout from the movie "To Kill A Mockingbird." Here is the evidence.  Not only are the photos indisputable,  I've never seen them in the same room a the same time.  You be the judge.

How cute is that?

So here's a comp for the new book. It's a collection of some of my recent work.