The most recent quartet for Tamino. Coming along, just more slowly than I'd like.

This one makes me laugh. It's not some president, a spiritual leader or a military genius. It's the commander (or major?) character from "Destroy All Monsters." I hope I captured both the seriousness and the goofy quality here. Perhaps if one didn't know who this was, the effect wouldn't work. Ah, well. Acrylic on panel.

Still working on Tamino, more slowly than I'd like. Every so often, during the coloring process, I turn off the level that has lines in it to see how the composition works without them. It helps me balance the colors. Of course, for whatever reason, the colors are sharper in AI than as a jpg. Still, things are coming about. I hope to be done with the comic soon as I want it to be done and to move onto other things.

Portrait of my dear friend Max for his birthday. It's really cool doing portraits of friends as you get to stare at their faces for hours and rediscover things about them. I find that the closer the friend, the less I look at them in person as I think I know what they look like.

Finished these two today, the remaining charity pieces I was working on for MoCCA. Wish I could go. They're all 9x12, watercolor, cel vinyl and ink on paper. I hope they help raise some money there.

Another quickie portrait, this one of a friend, Chris Goodwin from a photo taken while he was deeply engrossed in a book about Russian art. Acrylic on brown paper, approx. 16x20.

Did this today for a charity event coming up at MoCCA, which I am not attending. It was a good reason to come back to the otter as well as use some of my cel vinyls. Cel vinyl, ink and watercolor.

Lucco is still my boy. Once in awhile, I get an itch to draw him and of course, now that the comic is long done, he's easier to draw. I use him to try and learn more expressiveness and to figure out how to add it to my other comics.

After finishing the portrait series yesterday, I still felt like painting so threw together this quickie self portrait today. I was out of masonite so tossed some brown paper up on the wall. It's still 16x20 or so, acrylic on paper. And I think it even looks like me, which is a nice bonus.

Now that the portraits are done, I can concentrate on Tamino. This is the recent finished quartet. I hoped to add a sense of movement to things with this one which necessitated some editing after individual pages were done. Because I work the way I do, I can move single characters around, remove them or add them without having to redraw. Love me some Illustrator.

This is the whole group of ten portraits I was doing shown in two photos. They're too big to be shown all at once and I had to stand on a chair to do even these lousy photos. Still, they're done. Now to get them in a show...

Each is 16x20 on masonite, done in ink and acrylic.

Next one in the quartet.

Next one. More to come.


The next page. More to come.

New year, old comic. I'm still working on Tamino though slowly. My aim is to complete the comic in the first half of '10. I'm well on my way there but I have to step up the frequency as it's sat waiting too long. Also, I won't let myself move on to another project until it's done.

So as my first post of the new year, here's the first page done this week. Three more to come.

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.