Curse of the Eel volume 2 cover!

Hello everyone! A lack of updates to this site means I've mainly been working on freelance works that I can't really share, but it's good to be busy! I've also been doing my best to keep up with all my original comics, and Curse of the Eel volume 2 is almost ready to go! Here is my process for this cover and some of my thoughts on it.

Curse of the Eel is my take on a modern day world where eldritch creatures and magic wind up in the hands of some odd peoples. Connie is a goth girl who is bullied at high school, and the only person she's able to trust/talk with, is the weird Cthulhu-ish Eel monster that she accidentally summoned. Unfortunately for Connie, Eel isn't the only weird eldritch abomination wandering the halls of her school and the woods of the surrounding area.

This comic was my thesis for my MFA and has been running for 5 years at this point, and I'm working on the 12th chapter as we speak! It's actually doing well on sites like Tapastic and Smackjeeves.

For this cover, I wanted to mirror the first volume cover but also showing that the earth and the Eel's realm are being smashed together, and the thin veneer keeping the worlds separate are cracking, hence the fun glass cracks!

As always, inked with my Raphael 8404 #3 brush with Yasutomo sumi ink on Stillman & Birn Beta Paper.

 

Curse of the Eel ch7 Cover Process

Here's a little look at my art for the cover of Eel 7. I don't have the pencils scanned, I was really excited to ink this. At first, I did not plan for the cracks on the face of the red side. My theming with these, was to show the difference in planes that was so prevalent in Lovecraft's work that inspired me to make Eel. His thoughts were that the universe was infinitely vast and complicated and humans grasp of it was limited, so I tried to visually show two opposite but complimentary worlds: human and non-human. With the end of Eel 6, that split is breaking, and upon inking this cover, I had the idea to show that cracking here. For the first time, the two worlds are linked, and based on this cover, it can't be good.

My tools here were:
Inks: Raphael 8404 #4 brush and Deleter Gpens with FW and Maxon black inks
Paper: Stillman and Birn Beta paper

I hope you enjoy the cover and Eel 7 when it's out.

The Caverns Cover

Remember 2 years ago when I made a mixed media comic that played with reading orientation as well as using different art materials? Well I never printed it, mainly due to money being tight for a long time. I've finally dusted the comic off, and I plan to have it as some of the shows I'll be at this year! Now with a revamped cover, I hope readers will enjoy this experiment, even if it is a little old.

The materials here are Caran d'Ache Watersoluble pencils, Copic Markers and Watercolor on Stillman and Birn papers: Beta for the cover and Epsilon and Delta for the interiors.

Curse of the Eel chapter 6 page 1-4 pencils

Hello! So yesterday I was a madman and drew 4 pages of pencils in 3 hours for Curse of the Eel. I haven't had time to really sit down and vibe with my own projects in a long while. I've been drawing pages for an Action Lab comic that I can't announce yet, so here are the pages I did yesterday.

I like to pencil loosely, I used to spend a lot of time drawing things out exactly like how I would like for them to look inked. Looking at amazing pencilers like Stuart Immonen will do that to you, but he is working with an inker, so all of that detail is needed. In my case, once I became a confident enough inker and penciler, I tried to pencil less so my inks can feel more like drawing. That has really improved my speed, to where if I had the time I probably could do this entire chapter, pencils and inks in 2 weeks or less. Sadly, I've got other things to focus on but for now: here is what I'm working with! I'm aiming for this to be out for SPX 2016 which I have a table for! More details soon!!

Still Alive! Curse of the Eel 5 inks

After several months of no computer, I'm back and ready to share some art. 2015 ended kind of rough but I'm ready to make 2016 a much more productive year. On that note, here are some pages from Curse of the Eel chapter 5!

You can read Curse of the Eel online now on Tapastic, Tumblr, and Smackjeeves!

Curse of the Eel Ch4 Cover process

Here's another post for Curse of the Eel, this time for chapter 4's cover art. I'll go into a little detail about making this that I don't usually do on my other social media. Here we gooo! (I'll be at SPX on Sept. 19-20th at table J-13 so come by for books and laughs!)

These covers have been really easy to do. Relying on a simple layout set up has been the best thing, the books all feel related but have enough differences that they stand apart. I did struggle with this one though as the creature on the cover here is a mystery. It hasn't properly revealed itself in the comic itself, so even this is a clue to what it's going to be. I also wondered which character to put here, since the chapter doesn't focus on a new character, I decided to go with Connie but to raise her higher in the frame than in chapter 1, to show that she's getting better, even though things are getting worse. The hand lettering has also been really fun, although I hope I can keep it from being less confusing. This time it kinda was. You'll see in the inks.

I LOVE improvising. The greatest tool I've used since graduation has been that, and I do it a lot on these covers. My pencils used to be a lot tighter, it was me trying to really show people I knew how to draw, but what it also lead to was boring art. I was also taught to enlarge and trace over my thumbnails, but once again, it led to not fun results. I get why people do it, but to me, this isn't drawing, it's tracing. Same thing with inking over incredibly tight pencils, it's not drawing, it's tracing. I also wanna put forward that this isn't art theft tracing, what I mean is, when a step tells me exactly what to do in the next step with no room to play with the new method or tool, it just feels like work. I much prefer a loosely penciled page that I can have fun drawing with a brush and ink on. The results are a LOT better, and I'm finally understanding how to really shape forms with my brush. I've improved greatly in inking in a short time by being more loose, so I think there's merit to it. Draw how you want, that's what is most important. If it's not fun, don't do it.

There's not much to say on this stage, I'm not the best on coloring so having these preset and striking colors has been a godsend! I probably won't add more colors to them in the future, so I hope they're at least somewhat interesting to look at!

Thanks for reading!

Curse of the Eel c4 p1-7 inks

Hello internet! Here are some pages of inks from the next chapter of Curse of the Eel. I've been working on this one again finally, and I'm really happy with how these are turning out. I switched to a new brush and I'm getting really great lines from it. I used a Raphael 8404 #3 brush, which is the same size as the last brush I was using, it's just not as battle worn. That brush lasted me about a year, that's pretty good I think. Anyhow, here are the inks. The paper is Stillman and Birn beta paper. It's the only paper I really trust to do pencils, inks, and watercolors on.

My plan is to have this chapter printed by SPX on Sept. 19-20, so wish me luck!

Curse of the Eel chapter 2 cover process

Sooo Curse of the Eel 2 has been done for a while, and originally I printed the chapter with chapter 1 because I thought it would make it easier to sell. Instead of selling 2 smaller books, you get one big fat book and I hoped to keep the price down by not having to print 2 covers and bind a second book when I could print them all in one. However, the printshop I was going thru was charging so much to print the book that it's just not feasible, plus the increased page count made the book so thick, it was hard to drive a staple thru. Ugh.

So I found a new printer! I'm getting test prints done now, so I'm hoping that this will make the book more affordable so i can sell them less, but splitting Eel 1 and 2 meant 2 needed its own cover. So I whipped this together yesterday! I say whipped because the thing I love about Eel is that I have a design scheme for the covers, so finding ways to make each cover interesting but following that same idea is super easy! I'll need these books because I'll be tabling at SPX next month! I'll post again when I know my table spot!

So here are the steps, pencils to inks to color for the 2nd chapter cover of Curse of the Eel!

Silent Hills

I drew this fan art because lately I have been watching multiple playthrus of P.T. on the youtube, and I just love that they're all so different. What the game does that is fascinating, is it lets you discover things at your own pace, but each person's game is different, in terms of what happens. Sometimes you get attacked, sometimes you don't, sometimes the ghost will appear in front of you, sometimes behind, it's nuts! I really hope that the team that worked on the game can make something all their own and cut Konami from it so they can go nuts.

Tools: Zebra Brush pen, Pentel Hybrid Technica and a Pentel ink was brush (unsure of the name)
Sketchbook: A new Stillman and Birn product I can't quite talk about yet

R is for REMUS

R is for Remus, first son. Well, not really, but sort of. So, I started drawing comics when I was 17, mainly just aping what I saw and what I liked but it was fun and nothing really serious came from that. Remus was the first thing I created that had some depth to him.

Remus was the son of a business man and a Romanian dancer. His dad was rarely home, and when he was, he was abusive and mean. Remus's only solace was his mother, who was both kind and naiive, and unfortunately she couldn't leave her husband as the times just wouldn't allow it and she was a stranger in America. Well Remus's father brought home danger with him, and in the middle of a skirmish, Remus's mother was killed and Remus was left at the mercy of his father's enemies, The Wolves of Sariel. The Wolves was a sect of religious vampires that sought to use their strength to fight for God's flock, using the devil's gift in the name of the Lord. So Remus joined the group, and in the 80 years since then, he's been one of the Wolves most proficient and steadfast killers. Remus is the only vampire in the Wolves that is feared by their opposite number, the Crusaders. The Crusaders were vampires who, unlike the Wolves, were victims of religious persecution or of the law being used by the corrupt. While the Wolves represented the strength that people could draw from religion and each other, the Crusaders represented the hate that festers in people and they were survivors of their own tragedies, like hatecrimes and racism.

In the end, the Wolves of Sariel was probably too big for my 19-22 year old mind, so I ended up leaving the comic aside after a while to focus on other stories like Good Night Mrs Goose and KCNO, which were more managable with smaller casts and more focus on character building than social commentary. One day I'd like to return to Wolves but in a more restricted and more pointed manner so I don't end up with my cast in various places and it feels hard to jump between them. SHEESH!

Tools: Zebra Brush Pen and Pentel color brush
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

H is for Hameon - A to Z Character Challenge

H is for Hameon, another vampire from my old webcomic, The Wolves of Sariel. If you're feeling like looking thru some cringe-worthy old comics, it's still out there on Smackjeeves.

Hameon was an orphan child who caught the attention of the Wolves of Sariel. he was quickly brought into their coven where he finally had a family. Hameon was a cheerful guy but wouldn't ever question the violence of his life or of his family's "business." As the story went on, Hameon becomes a much more important figure, becoming the center of a war between the religious Wolves of Sariel and the anarchic Crusaders. I didn't get to draw all of his story, but it would be fun to get to one day.

Tools: Pentel Pocket Brush
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

E is for Eel - A to Z Character Challenge

E is for Eel! THE Eel! he's from my book, "Curse of the Eel."

The Eel is a creature much like Cthulhu, from a plane of existence that couldn't possibly exist, and the Eel defies comprehension. Unfortunately for Connie, who hoped it would be a monster like Cthulhu and start driving people mad, it'd rather help her solve her problems and get some tasty earth food. It's a fun buddy comedy with a Goth girl and her Eel creature who is really more down to earth and calm than she is.

If you'd like to read the first chapter of Curse of the Eel, click here! If you'd like to buy the first 3 chapters, I have some copies available here.

Tools: Pentel Pocket Brush
Paper: Stillman and Birn gamma sketchbook

Curse of the Eel chapter 3 pencils

So this one took me a while to get to. While I've been planning it out and and working on it when possible since June, but I think I needed a break from drawing this large so I could recharge. I ended up spending so much time from it that returning to 11x17 pages was a treat and a joy. I haven't done many touch ups on the older pages, partially out of laziness but more out of wanting to let my inks do the fixing.

I can't wait to ink these, I'm going to use a tandem of brush and Zebra brush pens. I look forward to the challenge.