Merry Christmas!

Thank you to all those who used me to wish someone else a merry Christmas in the form of a commissioned piece of art. I stuck all my commissions from October to last week in the gallery below. 

I'll be open for business again in January. If you already have a commission in mind, feel free to reach out now and I'll tackle it first thing in 2014. Have a safe and happy holiday!

Also, there was a request on Facebook to post our holiday cards through the years. I've illustrated them for four years now, and it's always fun to look at how our family has changed, as well as my art style.

This Wolverine thing I helped make

My friend Jon and I are comic nerds. A couple months ago we thought it would be funny to see an infographic of what Wolverine would look like if he couldn't heal. We're both busy dads with demanding day jobs, for a while it just seemed like a fun idea that we could maybe do in the future. Once we started making it though, our nerdery took over. I had way more fun making this than I probably should have. My wife caught me chuckling to myself multiple times while I was bent over my graphic tablet.   

Here's the finished product. I'm quite proud of it. I did the illustrations, supercuts and words. Jon did the mega-fantastic design. If you'd like to see the version with the videos in it, head on over to www.dsl.com/wolverine.  Thanks for checking it out, and feel free to share it our embed it in your site too. 

Created by http://www.dsl.com

Book Recommendation: Framed Ink

I’m two days into Doodle-a-Day May. If you haven’t sent me a request yet, feel free to do so here, on Twitter, Facebook, or in person.

What I love most about art is how big it is. How there’s always something more to learn and improve on. To that end, I’m always on the lookout for new art books. I’ve been reading one recently that I’m sure will have an influence on how I approach my daily doodles (actually, it already has).

Framed Ink by Marcos Mateu-Mestre is a phenomenal book about visual storytelling. A few years ago I had my portfolio critiqued by an art director at a SCBWI conference. He told me too many of the images in my portfolio looked like standalone pictures. It would be better, he said, to have pictures that looked as if they were part of a scene. They should make the viewer wonder what would happen next. They should be part of a story, and tell a small story on their own.

Framed Ink is all about the story. Marcos Mateu-Mestre is clearly a talented and thoughtful artist. Just read the text in these examples.

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Amazing right? I never would have thought of things like eye level of the characters, or the subtle acknowledgement of power. The book is packed with neat stuff like that. Framed Ink is available on Amazon if you’re interested. I highly recommend it.

Iron Man 3 postered!

I successfully got Bioshock Infinite out of my brain by making the posters. Unfortunately I replaced it with making posters. So I made one for Iron Man 3. This time, instead of the Saul Bass and Olly Moss style minimalism, I went with my own style--cartoony. I like it. I wanted to do something that fit the trailers, which all seem to fixate on a pretty bummed out Tony Stark. Cheer up Tony!​

Bioshocked [UPDATE: More Posters!]

I finished Bioshock Infinite the other day and it's still rattling around in my head. Because I can't stop thinking about the game, I made some posters. I'm wondering if I can make them cryptic enough to not spoil anything.