!ZAKT!

This is one of the 100 images I showed last weekend for the Cheep Paper show. It is an image of the X-MEn character Cyclops if you can't tell. I really liked the way this piece turned out, and I will be sharing more as I scan them in.

Ciao,
Joe

RED

Hey All,
Just a quick update. The cheap paper show that I was a part of last Saturday was a huge success. I think everyone had a great time, and we Cheap Paper People are all looking forward to spending some more time together.

My next show to look out for will be on Jan. 15 at the SCAD sponsored STUDIOPLEX gallery. I will post more info on that sometime in December, but mark your calenders now.

This piece above is an oil and marker figure study that I showed in my "Big Baby" show last summer. I have shown it a few more times since then, but now it has to go to it's new home in the collection of Atlanta sculptor extraordinaire MARTY DAWE. Thanks for liking the piece Marty.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and an even better Holiday season,
Joe

SHOW TONIGHT!! NOV. 21

This is our very first group exhibition as a collective! Come out to show some love, see some art and hang out with the cool kids. The event is part of an entire evening of art events in the Old Fourth Ward called AXIOM, organized by the awesome folks at Public Acts of Art.

In association with Axiom, WonderRoot presents: The New Alchemy, a Cheap Paper show.

Cheap Paper is an Atlanta-based artist's collective. Working together for the first time, WonderRoot and Cheap Paper will curate and produce a one evening exhibit showcasing eleven of Atlanta's top emerging artists. Together they seek to support an artistic community which both embraces and addresses Atlanta's challenges and opportunities. The exhibit will be a interdisciplinary endeavor which includes works of a variety of mediums and will span beyond just visual art.

WonderRoot is an Atlanta-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization committed to uniting artists and community to inspire positive social change.

Cheap paper is an Atlanta-based artist's collective committed to breaking through to recessionary haze to support new and fresh movements in the city's art scene.

Hope to see you out there,
Joe

THIS JUST IN!!!

So grad school has my head completely turned backwards and inside out lately, and I have no idea what I'll be doing in the months and years to come. One thing that was recently suggested to me was to remove any humor, profanity, or vulgar imagery from my work in order to challenge my creative process.

I was beginning to work on these new pieces that combined pornographic imagery with New York Times headlines in order to create a new context for receiving these two forms of information. I did several sketches for this and this one was my favorite. I don't believe I'll be moving forward with these any time soon, so consider this post a farewell to controversy on this blog for a while.

Peace and Love,
Joe

ISN'T RELIGION A PEACH?

I came across this joke on Facebook today, and I just had to post it. It's a truly lovely text.
(The above image is Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" for those who are unfamiliar. I thought it a fitting image :)

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord? He said, Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" So I then said, "Die, You heretic scum!" and pushed him off.

JOE THE BARBARIAN!

Hey Everyone,
I just saw that Sean Murphy's "Joe the Barbarian" comic is going to hit shelves in Jan. and I felt inspired to do a quick sketch. I based it off of myself (since my name is also Joe :), but I'm wearing the clothes of his main character on the cover.

This is exactly the type of project that never happens. Super-imaginations of writing and art coming together for eight issues. I can't wait to see this book!

Peace,
Joe

BLOWN

This is an experimental piece I did after reading an interview with British painter Glenn Brown about how he will begin a piece with a famous painting, and then distort it and change it until it becomes his own.

I applied the same idea to this digital image starting off with the painting of a famous artist and manipulating it over and over until it became this. I couldn't choose between the first and the second image above, so I thought I'd share both.

I think it's an interesting process.
Joe

LE FLASH

Hi everyone. I participated in the "Le Flash" event this last Friday, and here's a picture from it.

I'll post most about this later with more photos.

Ciao,
Joe

SKETCH PUMP

Hey All,
Here's some of my latest doodles out of the new sketchbook as well as an amazing cover to the Sergio Toppi "Sparrow 12" book I picked up today.

Peace,
Joe

SHIRTS!

Hey All,
I've been trying to find some cool T-Shirts lately, and I've asked a lot of my great friends with sweet shirts where to go to get some amazingly designed stuff, and I found 0.000 shirts that I wanted to spend 25.00-30.00 bucks on.

So I'm going to make a bunch of shirts that I think are cool and funny and this is the first one I'll be doing. This is only the digital sketch, but I'll be rendering the doodle in pen and then coloring in the computer. I think I'll make 10 or so just to justify the effort, so I'll keep you posted on here as the process goes along and if you want to buy one just let me know. They'll be like $12.00 ea.

Peace,
Joe

Doodle

So I'm back to Grad school this week, and it's going to be a heavy 10 weeks. 2 stuios and one theories class + flatting an OGN + layouts +writing + girlfriend + cat/dog = no time to sleep.

Should be fun. I'll try and duck over to the scanner from time to time show some work.

Peace,
Joe

ALDO the APACHE

Just saw "Inglorious Bastards," and I really liked it, so I thought I'd do an Aldo for the bunch a you mutts. This one is certainly a lot closer to a finished image than the one below it, but it took me some time to get here, and it's a bit stiffer than I'd like. I'll keep whackin at 'em though.

Hope you're all having a great Labor Day.

Peace,
Joe

Cute P'Toot

Trying to work on my digital drawing and find the fine line between sketch and finish. I think this is still more of a doodle than a finished drawing, but it's getting closer.

'Nuff said,
Joe

Learning from the Masters

I took another break in between flatting and decided to do some Buscema studies. John Buscema is one of my all time favorite artists, and I sometimes forget that because he didn't draw anything that I like to go back and read very often. I mostly look at his work when I'm doing layouts or when I'm just not understand the figure.

Anyway, I made it funny after the fact. Hope you dig it.

Peace,
Joe

Break Time

So I've been working on some flatting work that I picked up today, and I just had to take a break and switch gears. This image started as portrait of Jon Hamm from "Mad Men," but the finished image looked boring. I ended up throwing around some color and slanging some liquefy and I finally drew right on top of it.

Hope everyone's doing great out there.

Peace,
Joe

DISNEY MARVEL MERGER

I'm officially throwing my hat in to draw/write the following crossovers:

1. Spidey/Mickey
2. Goofy/Stronguy
3. Donald/Wolverine
4. Peterpan/Jubilee
5. Mulan/Powerpack
6. Howard the Duck/Scrooge McDuck
7. Ducktales/X-Men
8. Goof Troop/Hulk
9. Aladin/Fantastic Four
10. Tarzan/Daredevil

Please contact me about any of these. I am not playing games here :)

Peace,
Joe

J Hearts T2

Here's my latest pass at my Jesus Loves Trannies concept pieces. It's a bit more stylized than the first, and I like it more. The colors pop a lot better I think, and it's overall a step in the right direction.

Hope this isn't ruffling too many feathers out there. Just trying to keep it real on the old blogg-O-sphere.

Peace,
Joe

JESUS LOVES TRANNIES

So this is in a way different direction, but I'm working on a new series for images for Grad School called "Jesus Loves Trannies" wherein I will paint transgendered men with Jesus genitals.

Still with me? Good. I'm glad I could connect with you for once :) The "imagine a cure" type ties into an even bigger theme that I will reveal later.

This digital sketch is one of twenty five that I'm working on for a post card set, and then I will be painting at least eight of these in oil on canvas.

More to come.

Hope you like it,
Joe

WILDECKER

Hey everyone,
Chris and I are just waiting to get cranking on these 144 pages of "WILDE," and while we do, we're producing some sweet illustrations of the character from different stages of his life based on the artwork from that time.

This piece comes from a spell that Wilde spent in Africa during the early 20th century and it originates from a beautiful J.C. Leyendecker image from that time. Our character is an amazing hunter that learned everything he knows fighting and hunting in Africa.

I like to think that a ton of crazy stuff happened to him there. Stuff like this ghost horse he nakedly sits atop in the image above.

Chris and I are handling the process of doing these illustrations much like our pages. First, I'll draw the image, and then Chris will ink it, then I'll paint the background and Chris will come back and render the color of the figure in the computer.

I'll post the rest of the process next week. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Peace,
Joe

WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO

Hey Everyone,
Well Chris and I have made it out of the fire yet again. This time we were up against a 7 day deadline to completely re-color, re-draw some, and re-compose every single page for our "WILDE" pitch.

The days were long and the nights were longer, but after it all, we are only short one page of color, and the finished rendering on some of pages 8 and 10, and that ain't bad. I really like these pages and colors much more than the ones below. I still think we have a lot to learn about telling a story and laying out a page, but we're getting there, and I know that each page we do will be better than the last, so I'm just keeping my head down.

I hope you all enjoy these, and let us know what you think about them. Thanks so much for coming by and checking in on us.

Peace,
Joe and Chris

WILDE TAKES AIM

Here's another finished panel for you guys. Chris and I are finishing up all the colors today for the pages we're sending up to Wizard World Chicago. It's going to be a crunch, but I guess it always is HAHAHA.

Wish us luck out there :)
Joe

EVIL JAGUAR SPIRIT

Hey Everybody,
I really can't wait to share the new finished pages with all of you, but Chris still has to color all the figures in. I've finished painting all the backgrounds in watercolor, and they turned out way cooler than I thought they would with this time crunch.

This image was an image that Chris redrew of mine, that I redrew from Tarzan. One day, a little boy will draw it when he reads this, and that little boy was Eli Whitney. What?!? Anyway...thought it looked cool, so here it is.

Pages to follow this week.

Ciao,
Joe

FINAL PROCESS

This shit's the bomb.com. I couldn't be happier with it, and just so those of you out there in TV LAND don't get confused, it breaks down like this:

1. Joe does the layouts and then tightens them up a bit one panel at a time (each on it's own piece of paper).
2. Chris finishes the drawing with ink by way of a lightbox transfer
3. Joe gets the ink back and scans it into photoshop.
4. Joe knocks the black line down to blue and prints it on a watercolor paper.
5. Joe paints the background only with gouache.
6. Chris comes on top of the figure and background with a digital color pass.
7. Joe crops and composes the panel on the final page in photoshop.


And that's how babies are made.

Gooooooooood Night Everybody,
Joe

Pardon the Delay

Hi Everyone,
I'm sorry to say that you will have to wait just a couple more days to see all the pages that Chris Bivins and I did lately. We produced 11 sample pages of a story to show around San Diego Comic Con and Wizard World Chicago, and I have only posted 4 of them.

The rest are coming.

Chris and I have decided to readdress some panels and the colors for the pages, and we would like to do so before sharing any more with the world. That being said, here are some of the panels that I painted in an effort to find a better and faster coloring process.

There will now be a total of 15 pages, and 12 of them will be colored and ready by next Thursday, so keep an eye out. I'll try and post some more process between now and then.

I hope you enjoy,
Joe

COMIC BOOKS!!!!

Hey Everyone,
So I know I've been talking about posting some comic book pages for about two years now, and the wait is finally over.

About 8 days ago, I was contacted by a comic book writer, and we began talking about doing a project together. It didn't take long before this guy says "Hey, I know it would be a crazy rush, but do you think you could put something together in time for San Diego Comic Con?" I said "Sure, I could try," and that was that.

I spent the next seven days designing characters, doing layouts, penciling pages, handing them off to my "SUPREME INKER OF THE UNIVERSE" Chris Bivins, and then getting them back and coloring them in the computer. *fwew*

So now that I found out what my limits are, I present to you the first four of eleven total pages produced in the the last week. I'll post another four tomorrow and the final three on Saturday.

Hope you enjoy,
Joe

BIG BABY JESUS

Hey All,
Some new work is getting done on my "Big Baby" painting, so I thought I'd share. I'm doing a ton of new paintings that will all be wet for months, and I'm also doing a bunch of comic book designs that won't be shared for some time, so Big Baby's all you gets dig?


Peace,
Joe

A TALK WITH CHRIS CROSS

So I was chatting with comic book super artist Chris Cross today about some of these colors I've been working on, and he suggested I work on my values a bit and maybe try to paint my grays first and then lay some color on top.

I said, "Yes Sir, that sounds like what I should do." So I did, and here's what happened. Thought you might like to see more of the steps, so I shared a couple of them along the way.

Also, I sniffed around online and found an old Cross image that I thought was pretty dope to use for this little adventure. It's not the best quality, so I lost some sharpness and line quality here and there, but I'm not going to cry over that for a practice image.

Peace,
Joe

BIG UPS TO BRIAN STELFREEZE

Hey all,
Next up here is a Batman image by Mr. Brian Stelfreeze. This dude is so super cool. I had the privilege and honor of hanging with Brian a bunch back in 2005 when I knew even less than I know now, and he was amazing about dropping these little gems about art on me every two or three seconds. I just can't stress how cool he was and is.

I really don't know how he would feel about this piece, but I know it's a step forward for me. I'm really trying to go more and more detailed with every one of these images and just see how far I can push my knowledge of Photoshop and Illustration.

I'm working on coloring some old Toth pages right now as well. It's a five page WWII story, and I hope to post it some time this week.

Peace,
Joe

MR. ERIC CANETE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

Hey guys and gals,
Earlier today I did a quick color job on a Cory Walker image from his book "Destroyer," and I had such a good time doing it that I thought I might try it again with another one of my favorite artists Eric Canete.

This image was a little more complex in terms of lighting, effect, and depth, so it took me about 35-40min to do, but I had a super duper time doing it. I really like the way the value study ended up too, so I included it in the post. Also included, of course, is Eric's original beautiful inks.

If I have the time, I'll probably do an Alex Toth or a Joe Kubert image next.

Peace,
Joe

CORY WALKER'S DESTROYER

So, like many of you out there, I'm a pretty big fan of Cory Walker. This cat can really make a wonderfully clean and cool image. That being said, I think it would be cool to see little more color play on his work. Most of the time, a relatively flat muted pallet is used on his images, so I just wanted to play around a bit with one of his blog posts and see what I could do to spice it up bit.

This is what I came up with. I know it's colorful. Bear with me :)
Joe