Saturday, February 28, 2015

Pure Evil

Google wasn't satisfied with the occasional -warning label- gate keeper- ability.
They want it all.
They want to be the ministry of truth.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Jeff Jonas @ The Oscars, circa 1978

Had to share it. If you haven't read it, check out Jeff's Facebook post about attending the Oscars. Inspired me--I've been itchin' all week to finish this!!

UPDATE:It feels good to be wanted. Esp'ly by Raquel.
My photo ref (via the estimable J. Jonas hisself). Dunno 'bout Farrah, but Raquel had to be wearing Mackie:
 
p.s. I had to massage Ms. Welch a wee bit in PhoSho to get a better likeness--she's tuff! I'm glad you recognized her right off, Elz...but I thought the Farrah was dead on...!

Leonard Nimoy

Wouldn't do a caricature and don't have any pictures. I saw this link when reading various obits. Found it comforting.

Smithsonian Enterprise restoration

Nimoy's not in Zombies of the Stratosphere a lot. But he's in it.
I'm glad he was the guy they cycled into all the new Trek movies.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Just how anxious am I to see green?

Beata sent this little note to me.
Terribly exciting.
I will have a pair eventually.
I will investigate some more. Here's Beata's letter / email

Ellis, I saw this posted on Facebook by Maurie Manning, and thought it was a joke at first.  The article is from 3 days ago … why isn’t this headline news?!
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/02/23/berkeley-lab-accidentally-discovers-solution-to-fix-color-blindness-enchroma-cx-sunglasses/
Here’s the company’s website ...
http://enchroma.com/

Edit- Finish-inks on that commission.
Don't spread around.
NDA yet to be signed but I won't be doing my usual of showing it all over social media.


It was work to get there. But I've had a couple of good experiences exploring perspective aids in Photoshop today
Color rough...
Add color notes here if you like... Paint into it- slide hue saturation edits around. Whatever.
I got the colors from a fragment of the incredibles color script.
4th down on the left
 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

It was only a matter of time.

Hi, gang .... I continue to write, sketch, work Home Depot, and try to get those "mythical" arcade games out to a waiting public. But I have now launched an actual e-commerce Web site called "Apron Art by Tom" to do aprons for Home Depot associates. I do the decals, actually, not whole aprons. I mail completed decals to the purchasers and they iron them on their own aprons. The tipping point toward e-commerce came when my district peeps asked me to do 58 aprons for a big walk event. THAT'S A LOT, in case you didn't guess. I figured I must be onto something. So far I am heavy in California, but have a toe into Oklahoma through a former associate from my store. Arkansas is also in the works; same kind of connection. It will grow slowly, but with 365,000 total employees and scads of events each store hosts, well ... I like my chances. I am very liberal with disclaimers about not being affiliated with Home Depot and have doctored many images to minimize the implications(s), so we'll see what happens. I also donate to H.D.'s charity, the Homer Fund, which might mitigate things. So far I am getting orders through the site from local associates. I'll keep y'all posted.

commission. Probably 6 more pages to go

I like working with my patron. It is pay as you go

Colorful Dinosaurs

I'm still working on little index card art to sell at the con.  I really hope they gather some interest... I'm probably not going to be able to put together the extra money for sketchbooks, so the only new stuff I'll have are prints and these little marker/ink drawings.  I've been having a lot of fun working on them... they haven't really taken that much time.  I'll still have my old books to sell, too.  I had a large binder of sketches from EQ and such and folks looked at those drawings but I don't think I sold one of them at RCCC.  Of course I sold almost nothing at RCCC, so that might be the best gauge.  We have a much better spot in the heart of Artist Alley this time around, so I have higher hopes to at least break even.  I'm so happy to discover that my brushpen lines don't bleed when I use the Copics over them.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

In Lieu of Something Relevant...

I'm trying to get back to the regular Tuesday posting thing....But in lieu of anything new/worthwhile, lemme share some more childhood art, this time from High School and my earliest felt-tip tom-(or in this case, Marty-)foolery.

 The "album art" I worked up for what was going to be a collection of girl-themed songs recorded by our No Wave band Exit House. In my mind I envisioned a full-on double album with wrap-around jacket art (I went so far as to gesso my entire "KISS: Alive II" blank white in order to make a full-scale mock up--oy!), but realistically we were only going to make a few color xeroxes at the local Kinko's and put them inside a few personal cassette copies--but we didn't even get that far. Album was to be called "House of Chicks."

The art teacher at my Chino high school used to order in lots of these very toxic, very intense basic marker sets--just BLUE, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, etc., no fancy Pantone shades, no "Indigo Blue" or "Blush Pink" "Light Flesh" of the professional set. So I had to resort to mixing colors to get what I wanted. I learned early to love a hyper-saturated multi-color mix. Here's my double self portrait as bug (I was big into Kafka at the time--so pretentious!).


I tried to keep going with markers in college, (the "Anonymous Superheroes" piece), but all the love had gone out of it. I'd felt invincible in High School--artistically speaking. I thought of myself as totally fearless, (tho' I was too maudlin and narrow-minded). But college really kicked the stool out from under me. Not because the teachers were harsh...more that they were indifferent.

It's taken me a long time to recover.

Started watching Game of Thrones.

Up to season 2 episode 1
Good escapism

Finished Season 2
It should be named THE IMP- and everything else.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Blogger Good- Tumblr Bad


Having Tumblr crippled because I can't update my OS pisses me off.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

doodles- while I watched Game of Thrones s 1- eps 5 and 6





Con Print

This is a print I whipped up for ECCC.  Marty saw this gag already because I came up with it at RCCC.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

It's been awhile....

 ....Since I posted. Been busy with a contract job and all the family care crap, So no new art. But anyway, from last nights episode of The Flash. Gorilla Grodd cometh for all the ape lovers here.

Pings-one where I play with transparency-Edit-Finish Pencils



Had to trace this up before I take it to finish. Needed a point where I got as loose as I like or it would be too painful to finish.
I'll post a color version eventually.
I was thinking night sky. We'll see.
 Fixed some things.
Color tomorrow--
Maybe
 Now that is a comic book page.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Another Group Caricature

Done for Carlo's wife...going away present for the boss.

Arthur Rackham

Do you think that he ever looked at his finished piece, saw all the things he could have done better and felt embarrassed by all his mistakes?


Better than Fiction podcast appearance again

 I haven't listened to it yet. They may have cut some of it out.

I also discussed introduced the podcast hosts to Bedman.
Use the link that says 'don't have itunes?' for an easy to download button.
That's the way I like to listen to them. 
On my hard drive with quicktime doing the playing.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Empire of the Sun doodles

The top left doodle might be a direct reaction to the movie. The rest are just having a sketchbook handy.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Old Drawing

I'm not sure if I've shared this before... this was a drawing I did on spec when I was between jobs a few years ago.  I kinda like the characters I did for this, but they never saw the light of day.  It was a sort of steampunk dungeon crawler, hence the magic with nuts and bolts crystal thingies.

Update:  MOAR.



Saturday, February 14, 2015

OCU art social-2-9-15-At the top for Sony Online news-Good till after Valentines


Only took blackwing pencils and sketchbook this time.
I've decided as a mark maker the pencil is too wimpy for life drawing.

Tom mentioned this news in this thread.

Republic Serial Captain America and png xperiment

I added the shield
 From something very closely related to the old serials.
Some very cool effects could come using the pngs here.