Nice R2 Unit...

Biker Halloween Ride--nothing but trouble!

Nice Handlebars!

Keeping Up With Jones: Mean Lookin' Bikers

The first Jones comic strip. Lots more to follow. I may change his hair color. I may also change the name of the strip to Keepin' Up With Jones to find a way to signal that it isn't "Keeping up with the Jones", which is a phrase sprouting from a comic strip of the same name from nearly a century ago.

Jones is the guy you see here.

Two fisted blogger

I had posted this morning (and then deleted it a few minutes ago) that I was moving away (permanently) from my BlogSpot blog for Cartoon Thunder. The main reason is that I'm working the Cartoon Thunder Site as a WordPress blog site, which is easy and fairly flexible.

However, it has occurred to me that I leave a lot behind if I do simply abandon this blog. Follow my thinking and give me some feedback, informed or not:

1. Five years of good traffic (20-60 hits a day) can't be wrong; SEO is worth something.
2. I just learned I can schedule posts for release just as I am with my WordPress setup, allowing me to schedule releases of comics, promotions, etc. Here at the same time I post at Cartoon Thunder.
3. I'm out on a limb here, but I think that I can feed one blog with the other through RSS, working once and publishing twice. If that turns out to be the case I'm in like Flynn, Errol or otherwise.

That said, look for the publishing of my new strip, Keeping Up With Jones right here at Blogspot. Starting maybe in a few minutes.

Powerblogging. UberBlogger. BlogMeister...

things to come

I've been working diligently new material. While I'm not ready to reveal it whole hog, I've got a few pieces here and there I'm willing to show off.

I've been doing all my rough work in pencil, but haven't really chosen a committed workflow for inking yet. I've tried Illustrator, am thinking about Toon Boom, and have experimented with both ink/brush and brush pen. Of these, I find the brush pen the most fun and satisfying, so I'll likely stay there. Color is done in Photoshop.

Anyway, thought I'd share something to point the way.

The interesting life of an educator/cartoonist...

Boy have I been busy! As happens every year at the end of summer, any artistic momentum I might have gathered up gets sideswiped by the beginning of school. This year seemed worse in some ways as I'm really focusing on a lot of details at work, continuing to develop my curriculum and also be a better department chair. This means my art takes a serious back seat.

Or that I sleep less.

I've been continuing to work at painting, including a practice run at a painting from a drawing I drew several years ago at the Burrito Run in Gilroy. I'll work up a larger canvas once I take lessons from the 24x12 I'm working on now.

And while I have been using Saturday School time to do school work, a week ago a concept came to me that I'm very excited about and have quickly developed into a few comic strips. My golf coach suggested that I not worry about anything but telling my stories, drawing, having fun, even if it stays sketchy. It'll come, he says.

So I've been working on 24x12 paper and have nearly finished my second strip. So far it's top secret, but true to Cartoon Thunder and my own hunger for wheels, it's a biker cartoon. The characters are totally new. I've actually got a different look to it, but I think it still looks like my work.

The first one I inked in Illustrator, but this last one wasn't feeling fun that way so I grabbed a brush and some ink and did it the old way, though it was new to me. I used a size 0 liner brush and didn't do too bad.

So the plan is to build up to having ten in the bag, then start releasing one per week until I really have a habit going and a lot of back-stock.

Working in Paint

Learning to use acrylic on canvas. It goes...

Web Comic--Bug Pudding

My friend JK, a frequent commenter on my blog, has launched a terrific new web comic called Bug Pudding. It has nothing to do with bikes, but everything to do with good design, and well worth checking out.

JK works hard on his art and on his funnies. Check him out!