More Varitey Soon

I can't help it; I've been having fun tweaking this book cover for Resonant Blue by CJ Marsicano.  Had to redo the coloring to make sure it was done properly in CMYK.  I used The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering which is a good primer on those topics.

Here's a crop of the final version.

Latest update on the Resonant Blue Blog over here!  Its Kickstarter page is here or you can click on the widget in the sidebar. Thanks!

I'll have to move quickly to keep things going here.  What will the next job be?  Not sure.  There's a project with a couple of friends, but I do have some things of my own to get to; they currently exist only as simple notes in my notebook & sketchbook.  I'll probably miss the ImageCon going on in Oakland this weekend to work on those and will do my best to do the drawing marathon at Merritt College on Sunday, something I haven't done in years.

Hope the rest of your Friday is a good one!

Just Waiting For Approval

Before I head out into a beautiful California day for a jog, I'll post this crop of the finished book cover, now with a decal on the guitar.  Will that be a copyright issue?  I should know these things by now, but I do not.

Book Cover Almost Done

I'll get a good night's sleep, so I can look at this project with a fresh perspective.  I need to find some new fonts and also work on some hand lettering again.

Profile image for the Facebook page just in case CJ wanted a new one.

Still Working On Final Cover

BUT the Kickstarter campaign is up!  Way to go, Mr. Marsicano!

One More Step

Instead of just posting what's in the sketchbook, I digitally inked one of them to throw caution to the wind.  How exciting.  So many sketches left as warm-ups and nothing more, which is fine, but why not see what else I can do with them, not that I did much with it except move the ear and draw some white lines in Photoshop.  Next time I need to add griffins and garden gnomes and a full body for the giant head.

reference here.

I was working on the book cover and then decided to find something to sketch from and found this from Yadis-Art on Flickr.

Here's my take in the sketchbook.  Time...to...sleep...

2012 !

Waiting For Food

Girl on the left was waiting in front of a taqueria with two guys that could have been her father & husband.  Older lady walked by another restaurant (why can't I remember), and I only saw her for three seconds. 

More stuff on the way.  Can't believe it's Christmas on Sunday.

Look who never got scanned.

These two!  Angry soup eater, and big man at coffee shop having a meeting with an older gentleman (not drawn).

Unhappy at SFO.

I'm not afraid of hamgurgers.  At local cafe.

Cook it. Write about it. Now, draw it.

Food.  I like all kinds of food, but I don't like the word "foodie."  I like making food, and I've been spending time most recently making bread recently because it's simple, and I'm not one to omit food from my diet.  Butter it!

Anecdote: I may or may not be allergic to shark's fin which was in a soup that I had in the Philippines when I was bout seven to nine-years-old (long ago), and the drive back to my uncle's house was memorable.  My neck became warm and slightly itchy.  Soon I was itchy all over.  I got back to his house to discover hives all over my body, and my eyes and areas of my face were swollen.  I was scared, but it was never confirmed that the shark was the cause.  The logic was that it was the only food that night that was new to me, but that's all for another time, and maybe a personal comic down the road.

On to sketches.

Picked up this old issue of Saveur magazine on my bookshelf and just started drawing.  Below is what happened.  Ended with a photo of an older, female server in Greece.  She was probably a looker in her early 20s.  What?

I don't know how many tomatoes I've drawn in my life, but add one to that number.  Pow!

After these first sketches, I needed to stop looking and think to myself what eggplant I was going to represent without thinking too much about the photo ref.  Something I need to do more often. I don't need photos to draw, but I agree with the visual vocabulary idea; it's something that you can improve upon by oberservation, practice, repetition.  In the end, how one portays an object or person, whatever, is up to the artist.  I always imagine what I'd say to a group of young artists who sought advice; I wouldn't be very helpful to them.  Sorry, kids!

Again I had to remind myself about "getting it right." Just draw. Work out a way of laying down brushstrokes because I need the practice.  That's it.

Wonky lines.  Who cares!

Enough blabbering about my own drawings.  Back to drawing!

Comic in Limbo

Finally back to this blog!

Here are four attempts for a one page comic that just hasn't worked out yet.  Maybe someone would find it funny (not showing the last panel & dialog on purpose), but I know the solutions I had drawn out didn't feel right, a bit forced. 

As you can see, these were attempts at finding a drawing style that I liked, and there was a lot banking on the finished inks.  These were fun to draw though, and I'll give it another go now that some time has passed!

Given The Green Light!

Post 3 of 11.

I have yet to mention the book cover that I've been working on for CJ Marsicano's novel Resonant Blue, so here I go.  It's been a fun process, and CJ has been a good art director with plenty of kind words for my simple pencil sketches.  You can check out the thumbnails on the novel's -Facebook page-.

Here is the current drawing for the approved design done in pencil with some Photoshop white thrown in.  I feel like I'm going to be repeating myself a lot today, but as I told CJ, the kimono/yukata pattern is still being worked out in the sketchbook.  I can't wait to get that finalized, so I can start inking and digitally coloring this piece.

© Chris Mendoza

Post 2 of 11: Elephant Redo

Plenty of stuff to work on today but had to do this warm-up and fix that funky elephant I drew in the previous post.

11 Posts Before 11-11-11

I've been meaning to post here since returning from Maui, but I've been working on ultra top secret projects that I can't share with you just yet.  If you guessed that's only partially true, you would be right, so let's just get to what went into the sketchbook today.

Met an adorable and intelligent 7-year-old and her lovely mother at Elevation 66--a small local brewery that I decided to give a go.  The young girl asked me if I was an artist and then asked me if I could draw her.  I tried my best to do so and keep the conversation going at the same time; it's not easy to sit still for drawings, so hat's off to Erin for being a champ.  I did take a quick cell phone pic before giving her and her mother their drawings.  I'll get it from the cell phone to the laptop soon.  The food, beer, and company were all great.  Thanks, you two.

Reminder for today: work on drawing animals. Any and all because you'll never know when you'll be asked to pull one from memory.

I was asked to draw an elephant, and this is what I came up with.  Yikes.

This was drawn at PIQ Berkeley prior to the ones above. This lady was sharing a meal with a friend a few tables away.

Enjoying the warm Berkeley afternoon.

Catch Up

Miscellaneous doodles from the sketchbook. Would say more, but it's time for reading and checking on a Dropbox item from LM.

Okay. I will say that the one below was from a talk from the Super 7 founders.  This bearded gentleman was seated a few rows in front of us. We checked out the presentation last Thursday at Academy of Art on Post Street, and those students were a tough crowd. Maybe LM was right, and they were just tired from classes & labs, but I didn't sense any enthusiasm or support from the audience.

More St. Paul Airport

Lady on her iPad after she had spent a good amount of time on her cell phone.

There were a lot of pear-shaped people in the airports.  I couldn't render the folds of his shirt fast enough.  A line formed behind this guy once they started boarding.

Waiting In Line

This lady waited patiently in line with her newspaper for the Delta agent while everyone else around her stared into cell phone and tablet screens. There sure are way more official charging stations in airports these days for those electronics.

Post #50!

Here are a couple from Detroit airport which had a nice, bright red tram inside.  What it didn't have was decent Mexican food.  The "torta" with pulled pork was gross, and the service sucked, too.

Actually, all the people except the girl with the striped top drawn in black pen were seen inside Jamaica Station in Queens.

More Sharpie Environments

I'm liking this new Blogger interface, but that's not really necessary to state in this post. How about: I want a samurai to live in that second drawing below. I just saw 13 Assassins, and it was pretty damn entertaining. If you've seen a few samurai movies, you haven't seen one like this one.

Didn't Get Lazy

I was in Sag Harbor, NY for 10 days (five of which we were without power thanks to Tropical Storm Irene) helping my friend at the Hampton Classic.  I'll post some airport sketches later today, but I wish I had time to sketch at the horse show.  Many beautiful animals, and the experience reminded me to find my old photos from Baguio in the Philippines which is the only place I've ever ridden a horse.

There were definitely some memorable moments from the trip that would make for some decent comics, so enough blabbering.  Back to work!