This year's holiday card. Illustrator (to make the digital 'stencils') and Photoshop for the rest.

Guard duty.

Finally finished this image. Reworked the whole composition as it wasn't working at all. Too much going on, no focus to the central idea or characters. So I pared everything down and set it up on watercolor paper. Cel vinyl and ink.

Two versions of the same otter. And I guess he has a name now. Might make t-shirts out of this guy.

Finished portrait #8. 2 to go. This is the Weezil. I think the likeness is a bit off, but I like the painting as is and at the very least it helped me learn things to work on for the next one. Thanks, Weez.

I hate cell phones.

Inks and paint for the next portrait. Now I just have to wait for the paint to dry and I can marry the two.

Final version of the seventh painting in the portrait series. First version shows the application of color before lines and the second is the finished painting with inked lines applied. I don't generally let brushstrokes or "canvas" show so much but I liked the energy of them enough that I left them as they were. Hals, who did the original painting, was known for expressive brush strokes so I hope that the colors and energy invoke something of an 'Old Master' feeling. Possibly my favorite thing I've painted.

Crass commercialism:



Now I need to find other things that I enjoy drawing as much as I do these guys. I enjoy drawing them a lot but they make me feel cheap for some reason.

One more distraction before getting back to more useful things.

No idea where this came from. Channeling my inner 70s while home sick. T-shirt design maybe?

Did this one a little later. It amuses me, what can I say?

Color comp for the next in the portrait series. It's based on Fran Hals' painting, "The Mulatto."

Continuing with the portrait series, this is #6, me. Re-used an old image, recropped it and magnified it to 16x20. This is a lousy photo. Ink, acrylic.

Did a lot more drawing yesterday and this morning. Redesigned the characters again using details from the first version. It's getting a lot closer now. This is the sterile, Illustrator version. The final painting will be hand inked.

Redrew the right hand rhino to add some movement to the composition. Then I plunked him down into the background with the first rhino. There's still too much dead space at the top but I will fix that in the final drawing. Coming along...

Quick and dirty background test for the guard duty image made with Illustrator and Photoshop to simulate the painting technique I want to use on the final. What I didn't realize was how the incomplete texture of the sponge will reinforce the idea of snow.

More redesign of the character as well as tweaking of the pose, thanks to a friend's crit. Coming along.

More work on the rhino image. The taller color test showed that the composition won't work in portrait so I went into ArtRage to work on a very loose color test in landscape. These steps help me see where to tighten things up as there's a lot needed.

Color test for one of the sketches. I tried putting in the shadow that there would be on the horn and face behind it, but it made the image too complicated. Simplification is a necessary step for me in all this. Sometimes it's what looks better than what makes actual sense, something I can't make myself do without trying it out first.

WIP: Rhino guard duty.

Pulling from a design I did last year, I'm assembling an illustration I hope to sell at an upcoming con. These are the first sketches and color tests as I learn to use Cel-Vinyl paints.

And then some pose refinement:

Three sets from upcoming Tamino posts. I'm slowly getting to the end of this. I wish I had more time and less to do. I imagine this is something said by actual commercial artists all the time. Still, there is progress.

Got this in email a few days ago. I was approached via email by the editor of an online Russian gaming magazine to have Tamino featured in an upcoming issue. They apparently highlight various web comics each time. I have no idea how they found me but it was really cool to be written up this way. I can't read it but someone online translated it for me as best they could. Apparently it says;

"1/3 Japanese prints, 1/3 fifties cartoons, 1/3 Cubism" writes the author about his comic strip, and I'm sorry, but there's not a better way to say it -- at least when it comes to the art style. And the content brings to mind the works of David Lynch. Tamino, a big cat with a triangular head, always wakes up in strangers' beds, each time a new one, and wanders in the twilight in search of Voronenko-graffiti (lol, I'm not sure, sorry), and everywhere drawings of Tamino. The name The City Dreams of Tamino the Cat has many meanings: a dream of what is happening to the cat? The artist's dream of himself? And perhaps even, that the city is dreaming of the cat? Mike Luce creates in his drawings an uncomfortable, but at the same time, an attractive world with not one answer, but it seems that the answer is close and you need only to enter the next street.

Alas, the comic is currently on hiatus, but the author promises that the story of Tamino will soon continue. However, there are still many more and interesting secrets, that have not yet been said. "

This one done with cel-vinyls which just arrived. S-weasel.

EDIT: I never mind constructive criticism. However, nasty, drive-by comments left by anonymous posters will just be deleted and ignored. Thanks.

Colored version of bunny from below.

The 'E' is hard to see. But it's there.

He wants something... blueberry. Quickie done while waiting to get my hairs cut.

Still modeling the bunny based on Donald Duck. It really helps to keep track of the solids and how they work in a more 3D sense.

And one more.

While waiting for paint to dry, I've been working on this character's design. I found some old Donald Duck animation drawings online and tried to re-design this character using more solid masses. Then I drew him in the same poses as some of the Donalds I found. Man, could those guys draw...

This was a half hour aside. I think he wants a cereal to advertise. I'm almost sure of it.

Three paintings from the portrait series I've been working on, these in their final, acrylic form. And a couple of inked drawings done for fun and practice.

A little something done while taking a breather between paintings. Based heavily on a Huckleberry Hound title card so I could get the aesthetic down.

Two new t-shirt designs just for fun. Meanwhile, painting and comics go on in the background. Oh yes, there was the hand turkey, too:

Two sets of unfinished pages from upcoming Tamino comics. I only post them here so I can see them easily and as I know no one is looking.

More playing about with the bunnies.

Fifth in the series, half down! This is a co-worker, Natalya. She chose the color scheme based on two of her favorite objects. Not an easy palette to work with.

4th in the series, the Queen. I kept the linework vague to try and give the portrait a young/old feeling at the same time.