Honor Bound ch 1 Released!

 Hey everyone, long time no post! I've been working a bunch on new comics, and my newest one is now out in the world: Honor Bound! It's a dark fantasy romance story, about a gender neutral squire, Zheng, and the journey they must undertake to return to the love of their life, Rayner, after suffering a terrible loss while hunting a barbarian queen. This book has been my passion for the last year or so and I'm happy to have done as much of it as I have.

This book debuted at Momocon 2025, and I sold out of all the copies I had printed, which is a first for me in all of the years of creating comics and sharing them at conventions. I was incredibly moved, this book was instrumental in breaking me out of a very low point a year and a half ago so to see it do well was more than I could imagine.

You can follow the progress of Honor Bound, or read more about the worldbuilding, on my Patreon! Check out the link in my header to see the tiers I have available!

You can get a copy of this first book in my store right now! https://jorgesantiagojr.bigcartel.com/

Or, you can buy the pdf on my Patreon store! https://www.patreon.com/jorgesantiagojr/shop/honor-bound-chapter-1-pdf-1641698?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=productshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Illarys Ink Illustrations

 In preparation for the DVPit event where I pitched both Curse of the Eel and Illarys, I wanted to populate my pitch with illustrations so it wasn't just a wall of text in the story summary.

These were very inspired by Gary Gianni's illustrations for "The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," which is a series of short novels about a knight and his squire. I loved the book and the illustrations were amazing, so I wanted to try out this style of inking for Illarys, and here are the results!

Tools used were Deleter G-pen, Tachikawa Nihonji pen, Pilot drafting ink, on Stillman & Birn Epsilon paper.

This was the cover to the pitch, I still really love this image

Separation

Recovering

The Knight

The Cave

Panther

Illarys Chapter 0 Cover

 Hello everyone, here's a look at my cover for my next book "Illarys, chapter 0!" This is a prologue that happens before the chapter that will be published in StarTales. I loved this setting so much, I had to jump the gun and draw more. I should have this on my upcoming convention tables, at SCComicon in Greenville, SC and at Momocon in Atlanta in May!

 

More of this work to come! This was all drawn and colored in Procreate, with the type done in Illustrator.

Curse of the Eel has 1 Million Views on Tapas!

 Hello everyone, I wanted to post this before but my end of the year has been hectic, but Curse of the Eel has hit a really cool milestone! My comic has 1 million views on Tapas, which is amazing! I'm really lucky to have made a story that can be enjoyed by people, and I hope everyone will continue to enjoy Eel as the story enters its final acts!

https://tapas.io/series/Eel/info

Here is an illustration I made for the occasion! Thank you for reading!

Final Gamble Issue 2 Cover Revealed!

 Hello everyone, it's almost been a year since my last post! I've been updating parts of the blog, but I've been so busy with art I can't share that this page has gotten dusty. Here's hoping I can be better about updating it, even if I'm still super busy with stuff I have to be careful about sharing.

What I can share, is Final Gamble issue 2's cover, which was announced on Band of Bards' Twitter! I'll include the final image here, and my process on it! I draw and color the Final Gamble covers, which is why they're a different color approach from the interiors, where Harry Saxon is doing an amazing job! 

You can also add Final Gamble to your orders at your local comic shop! We're in Previews, so please ask you comic stores to order you copies of the book!

Okay, here's a look at the process for the cover:

 

This was drawn and inked on Stillman & Birn Zeta paper, with colors done in Photoshop, and the icons on the slot machine walls done in Illustrator. This is continuing the motif from issue 1, where our leads, Jasmeet and Danny, are being thrown into a gambling machine but are threatened to being crushed by the system.

 

 

Final Gamble #1 is on Kickstarter!

 Hey everyone! So this has been under my hat for a bit, but there's a book that I'm working that is available for pre-order on Kickstarter! It's called the Final Gamble, and it's about 2 people trying to gamble their way out of a terrifying situation. If you'd like to see the pitch and video and maybe donate to receive your copy, here's the link: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bandofbards/final-gamble-issue-1

TEAM:

Writer: Bobby Singer
Pencils & Inks: Me
Colors: Harry Saxon
Lettering: George Gant
Publisher: Band of Bards

I'll also include the process work for my cover of the first issue. So this one was tricky, so to make it easier on me, I created two separate pages for this cover: one was the characters and all of the money and pokerchips, and the other was just the slot machine background. After I inked them, I combined them in Photoshop and colored them.

The campaign starts today and goes for a month, so hopefully we'll meet our goal! 

This is the final version that you'll get if you preorder the book.

Without the type

Pencils where you can see the overlap of the two images.

American Bug Book Cover Illustration

 Hey everyone! I'm really bad about sharing my freelance work on here but I want to share the cool projects I get to work on! Nick Ulanowski is a journalist and poet and he's approached me to do covers and book design for his short stories and poetry books a few times before, and now I'm working on his newest book, American Bug! It's on Kickstarter now, here's a link so you can read about it and back it to secure your copy!

This was a really fun illustration! I penciled, inked, colored, and designed the type for it, putting that Graphic Design BFA to use. I hope you enjoy it!

My favorite works from 2020

 Hey all, 2020 was no joke, a complete nightmare. I wasn't really prepared for how much quarantine and the politics of last year would drive my mental health into the ground like a spike. I'm doing better this year, but I'm still finding it hard to make work with everything going on. Either way, I'll share some of my favorite works that I created last year, comics or otherwise.

Here's to a better 2021!

Spencer & Locke 2 is Nominated for a Ringo Award!

 Hey y'all, I hope you're doing well in the quarantine/world being on fire. The state of things has left a lot of people feeling depressed and this summer has been super hard to concentrate on making the comics. There have been a few bright spots, but it's hard to celebrate anything knowing that people are suffering out there. But this post isn't about my depression, it's about spreading some hopefully good vibes? Seriously though, stay safe and keep spreading good, the world needs it!

But yeah, I got the email about this years Ringo Award Nominations, and I must have been exhausted because I didn't even notice Spencer and Locke on it, but we were nominated for Best Single Issue for Volume 2 Issue 1!

I'll include some of my inks for that issue, which was a very different experience than drawing the first issue of volume 1. I decided to try using G-pens and other Japanese art tools because I wanted this issue to have a more scratchy gritty feel since we're essentially jumping into a war story. It was a lot of fun to play with these tools again, having left them aside for brushes at SCAD, but now I use a hybrid of both when I'm making comics. My tools on these are: Deleter G-pens, Zebra brush pens, Raphael watercolor brushes, Yasutomo Sumi Ink, and Pentel Hybrid Technica pens on Stillman & Birn Zeta paper.

Our team on this book is:

David Pepose - Writer

Me - Pencils and Inks

Jasen Smith - Colors

Colin Bell - Letters