Spongebob Ozpants!

So here's the image that I did for Nickelodeon Magazine for its special issue celebrating Spongebob Squarepants' 10th anniversary. They commissioned different artists to do their own interpretations of the characters, and after seeing my "Road to Oz" picture, the art director, Chris Duffy, asked me to interpret the characters as The Wizard of Oz characters.

Never having worked with licensed characters before, my first interpretation was a little bit conservative, and I made too much of an effort to stay "on model":



Then, when I realized that when Chris said "do your own interpretation" he actually meant it, I did this version:



Chris was pleased, and the image will appear in the August issue, which is coming out sometime in late July. Chris is my favorite art director, not only because he was fun to work with, but because he's responsible for the amazing comics section of Nick Mag. He hires the best small press and alternative cartoonists in the business, people that you'd otherwise never suspect could do kid friendly material. This is what a good art director should be able to do: look beyond the obvious and have confidence that an artist can do work that isn't necessarily reflected in their portfolio, and allow them the freedom to do what they do best.

Unfortunately Nick Mag has ceased publication, which is a big loss to kid magazines in general. Nick mag was a welcome exception to the usual condescending kid magazine fare.The good news is that they'll be publishing through to December, so be sure to get the last remaining issues of the best kids magazine on the stands! And here's a link to the magazine's website:

Nick Mag

Coming Soon:

I'm currently at work on a very large and detailed image inspired by a short story by Haruki Murakami from his anthology, "The Elephant Vanishes". I'll be posting it in a couple of weeks. Murakami's story describes a factory where elephants are manufactured, so I decided to draw what I think an elephant factory would look like.

New Color Kid's Strip

This is a comic I submitted to a kid's magazine. Unfortunately the magazine isn't accepting submissions at the moment. The magazine in question publishes some of the best comics for kids in the business, so it's pretty competitive.

Edit: The magazine in question was Nickelodeon magazine, for whom I did a recent illustration (August issue). Unfortunately Nickelodeon has been recently cancelled. It will be missed, as will the great work of Chris Duffy, the editor responsible for the deservedly celebrated comics section! I'll be posting the illustration I did for Nick Mag in late July when it should hit the stands.

At any rate, I'm looking for a home for this one, so if anyone knows or can suggest a kid's magazine that might be interested please let me know.





And here are some of the characters, inks and pencils.

Art Opening at Barista Brew on May 8th!

I'll be having a show at Barista Brew on May 8th for the Davis Art Walk. They have really great food, and from what I hear, some of the best coffee in Davis. I just had a pesto chicken wrap with sun-dried tomato spread that was awesome! And the prices are really really reasonable. My wrap was only $4.50 and was one the best sandwiches I've had in town.

I'll be showing a few originals and selling prints, and the show will be up till the 31st. Things should start around 6:00 pm.




More info about Barista Brew:

Here.

And more info about the Davis Art Walk:

Here.

James and the Giant Peach

So here's my giant James and the Giant Peach picture. I've always been a fan of the book by Roald Dahl, and love the imagery. My favorite illustrations are the ones done by Lane Smith, who also did the designs for the stop motion movie, one of the best book to movie adaptations I've seen. Lane Smith was the third official artist to take a crack at it, and though I like Quentin Blake, I was never satisfied with his images for the story, and the original illustrations weren't quite there, so I guess the third times the charm.

So my objective was to stay as true to the book as possible. This is the scene just before my favorite image in the book, when they tie the seagulls to the stem and the peach is lifted up into the air.

In my new illustration style my aim is to leave nothing to the imagination, and to cram as much as possible in there, so I have the sharks, the seagulls, all the main characters from the book with relatively accurate insect anatomy, and James. I gave James a couple of patches on his shirt because he was much abused by Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and my guess is that he didn't have the best clothes.

The descriptions of the characters in the book are sparse, which leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation, but I stayed pretty literal. James was the biggest bitch to nail. I drew James I don't know how many times. I"m still struggling with my kid drawings, but received much good advice from Mark Martin and Angelique Benicio.

So this one's all about the peach, so I gave the peach the most room in the composition.

So click on this one for the bigger version:



And a detail:



And last, the ridiculously huge version:



As before, I drew and inked each element of the picture separately. First the background with the water, the peach and the sharks, then each character and seagull. Here a few of those figures:





I drew a lot more seagulls than I ended up using though. If I had used all of them you wouldn't be able to see the ocean, so I kept it to a few.

Once again I made watercolor textures and scanned them in, then cloned them into the drawing as needed.



I very seldom use anything but the clone tool for color to give it more of a wet media look, adding only a few highlights here and there with the regular brushes. As a final touch, I printed out some of the seagulls in light blue, painted each individually and scanned them.

I'm most proud of the water in this one. Water is a very weird thing to draw with a clean contour line, since it doesn't really have any hard edges. You're sort of making it all up, coming up with your own vocabulary to describe this moving substance. Drawing things like sea foam and waves with lines is a real challenge.

So that's it. This one also took about three weeks to draw. On to the next one!

Click Here to Buy the Poster!

Road to Oz Redux

The same image, more saturation and contrast.

The Road To Oz

So I've been trying to figure out for a long time how to make a living making pictures. I tried editorial work for a while, but I was never too terribly good at it. I didn't have the same feel for it that a lot of people I admire have. I've never been that interested in journalism or politics, and solving those kinds of illustration problems didn't come naturally to me, but I had it stuck in my head that if I wanted to be successful in the field, that was what I'd have to do.

So, in an attempt to emulate the people I admired, I tried to cultivate a very graphic, eye-catching style that I thought would appeal to that market. But somewhere I lost track of why I wanted to do this in the first place.

So David Maxine of Hungry Tiger Press asked me to do an Oz picture for his fanzine, just a one-off black and white picture based on the book, "The Road to Oz" for the magazine. I had always liked the Oz books as a teenager, and it seemed like a fun project, so I decided to make a color image instead (I could always grayscale it later), something that I'd have liked looking at as a kid. Looking at a lot of Winsor McCay, I decided to do something really lush and detailed. I've always been much more interested in traditional storytelling than editorial, and as a kid I really liked fantasy, and I had always wanted to make picture books and comic books.

And this is as close as I think I've ever come to something I would have liked to be able to make when I was a kid:



On my browser the colors always seem a little more muted on these blogger posts, so the real colors may be more brilliant than what you see here.

And here are some details:







Process

Doing an image as complex as this would have been intimidating if I didn't approach it in pieces, and lately I've been drawing my figures separately from my backgrounds. I drew and inked each figure individually and then composited them into the picture later.












Perspective has always driven me nuts, and I've never been particularly good at it, but recently I've been using google sketch-up to put together primitive backgrounds that I can then work up and add details to:




And the finished background:



I've always been heavily reliant on photo reference, and usually take a number of photos of myself posing for each figure, but this time I didn't. Most of the reference I used was for for costuming and to get a general idea of fabric folds, but this time all the poses came mostly from my imagination. Here's an example of some of the reference I used:



I colored in on the computer, cloning in watercolor and dry brush textures on photoshop that I had scanned for things like the marble, the rust, and Polychrome's dress.



So I don't know where this is going to lead, but this seems to be the general direction that I'm headed in, with a new focus on Children's markets. We'll see how it goes. I'm kind of excited.

Click Here to Buy the Poster!

Model Sheets

These are model sheets for a new sci-fi comic I'm working on. I usually don't do this, but last time it was a challenge to keep all the characters looking the same, so I guess there's a reason why people do these things.

New Wordless Comic!

It's called, "Anonymous". This is a superhero story about social masks. Here's a sample page:




And you can see the whole thing (13 pages):

Here.

I might have more to say about this one later. For now I'm just glad I finally finished the thing. Probably the most difficult comic I've ever done!

Before and After photo Reference

After I posted the last painting, there seemed to be some confusion as to whether I'd become an abstract expressionist, so I thought I'd post both the photo reference and the painting side by side so you can see what I'm up to.



I generalized some of the information, but i think the foreground rock in particular is pretty observant of the source material. These are meant to be portraits of specific rock formations from photos I've taken myself--I'm not sure how successful I've been, but that's the general aim.

Two New Paintings

These are the first two of what I hope will be a series of rock and water themed watercolors.



I'm on the fence about this second one. I used guache for the sky, and went nuts trying to make this perfect, flat application. I'm not sure if the painting benefits by it. It's kind of dead.



These were painted with Chinese brush, ink, watercolor, guache and just a little acrylic. This is my first really serious attempt to do landscape painting. The landscape painters I'm probably most inspired by are Emile Nolde, Turner, and Hokusai. I was going to do this series in oil, but I wasn't getting the immediacy I wanted. It was too easy to overwork the painting, to paint over mistakes. Watercolor records everything. There's no faking it or fudging it, which is why I ended up painting the first painting about 3 times. I'm pretty happy with it now though. It has an unusually muscular look for watercolor which I hope to maintain throughout the series.

Pence Show

The Pence bicycle show is up now, and will be up till the 15th. There will be a reception the evening of the 13th. The bicycle show is meant to celebrate the Amgen Tour of California as it makes its way through Davis. This is apparently a big deal, and Lance Armstrong will be in the race. I didn't know anything about Mr Armstrong until recently. What I've been able to gather is that he's won the Tour de France 6 times, and aside from having a really annoying website which is probably not his fault, he's a remarkable guy. He came back from a serious bout with cancer to win the Tour deFrance again, but I'm not sure which time that was.

The Pence will be selling my posters and prints. I have two pieces in the show.

I'm currently working on a new strip in collaboration with Tin Salmunic. I'm plotting, writing the dialogue and lettering, and he's doing everything else. At the age of 25, (he might be a little older by now, I'm not sure) he's done work for the likes of ESPN and Playboy and many others and teaches illustration in Virginia. he draws constantly as you will see if you check out his blog just about every other day. We're all of about 2 pages in, but Tin seems fired up about the strip and I'm optimistic about where we're headed with it.

Here's a sample page:



I set out the basic plot, plot a scene, Tin draws it, and then I put in the dialogue. It's a science fiction/humor sort of deal, nothing like what I've typically been involved in with comics. The feel is something between Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Phillip K. Dick, and possibly a Coen brothers movie. I'm making up a lot of it as I go along, which is both exciting and frightening.

Where's the art?

The art is still in progress. Because of recent responsibilities I've slowed down a little on my comics, but the new story will be up soon. I've also just started what I hope will be a new body of work, a series of landscape paintings with a rock and water theme. I'm working in acrylic and oil, so the style's a little different than what I've been doing before--it's probably closest to what I've done in watercolor, but more painterly, possibly less line oriented. I'll put some of that up soon as well.

The Best Popeye Panel Ever!

I've been selling minis and posters at the UC Davis Campus and reading the new Fantagraphics Popeye collection (3rd volume) to pass the time.

And I found this...



Picasso always did like the funny pages...

The staff has been very kind at the UC Davis campus, and its been nice to meet everyone. I've even sold a few mini comics! (Usually the posters and prints do better than the minis) It's been seriously windy but my signage has been holding out well. UC Davis has been so kind as to provide an actual living cashier complete with cash register in exchange for their small percentage of the profits! All the cashiers (3 shifts worth) have been very friendly.

I'm 3 pages shy of my new 13 page wordless strip, and since I won't be getting much done this week, it might be a little while till you see it here. I've been putting everything I've got into this one, and have been slowly eking it out at the rate of about a page a week. I don't think I've ever worked so hard on a funnybook story before.

Events!

UCD Campus!

On the 25th, 26th, 28th, and 29th I'll be appearing on the University of California Davis campus in the Quad near the bookstore. I'll have posters, mini comics and stickers, and I'll be glad to sign anything you'd like me to sign.

The Pence Galery!

I'll have two pieces at the Pence gallery in Davis for a bicycle themed show in February. I'll post the date as soon as I know for sure. I'll be selling "Yes We Can!" stickers, and possibly more.

Edit:

The Pence will be carrying my postcards, but not the stickers, since they're a non-profit and carrying the stickers might be seen as endorsing the president. The Bicycle show will be from February 1st through the 15th, and I'll be selling my bicycle tree posters at the opening.

The all NEW jedalexander.com!

After our earlier posters sold unusually well at the Alternative Press expo, I asked Ethan Miller, the designer of my previous site and a childhood friend, if he could design a site for us where we could sell our posters online.

Yes We Can!
Shortly after Obama made his inspiring acceptance speech, Regina described this poster and asked if I could make it in the style of the famous Shepard Fairey portrait. Happy with the results, we decided to have the poster printed and to offer it for sale on the new website Ethan was designing for us.

This is the first time we've offered the poster, and with the launch of the new jedalexander.com and in celebration of the upcoming inauguration, we'll be selling it at a special reduced price!



And here's some free "Yes We Can!" wallpaper for your desktop:



There's more to see and buy on the site: posters, mini comics, online comics and galleries. We're excited about the new site and Ethan's easy to navigate design, and hope that you can check it out!

jedalexander.com

Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan Kwanzaa, or Non-Denominational Celebration

Or if you choose not to celebrate anything, that's ok too. This is the first year I've actually kind of been into it. At least since I was a kid, but that might've been more about the anticipation of getting stuff. Actually I'm still really into getting stuff, and Reg and I have been having fun giving one another early Christmas gifts.

For instance, Reg got me this, the first good new newspaper strip in over 20 years, Cul De Sac. I love this strip! Buy it immediately! It has an introduction by Bill Watterson, and he just doesn't do that kind of thing!

Reg also got me collections of old post code "New Direction" EC comics, like Extra, and MD and Piracy, and for my birthday, my favorite, Psychoanalysis. If you don't know what I'm talking about it's because you have to be really into this stuff to a geeky extreme to even know it exists, and you're probably not missing anything.

You may or may not have received or be receiving a card with this picture on it:



If you haven't, or don't soon, just ask and you shall receive. I have plenty of them.

I haven't posted in a while because I've been spending most of my time working on a 13 page comic book story that has a lot of very hard things to draw in it. I'm very proud of it, and it should be done in about another month. It is also wordless.

Other News:

Two of my posters, The bicycle Tree and The Rooster, and my postcard sets are currently available for retail at the framing department at Ace Hardware here in Davis CA. We're looking into other retail possibilities in the near future, and are in the process of setting up the website for retail, though we have yet to "go public" with the whole retail thing.

I've also got an ultra top secret hush hush poster in the works that we're going to sell in conjunction with the inauguration guaranteed to make Mark Martin's eyes glaze over (Shhhh).

More Comics On Top Shelf

My superman strip, now titled, "Crime Fighter" is currently up on Top Shelf's website. And of course, it's also on the previous post, so you can check it out there as well if you haven't already.

I must thank Leigh Walton, editor of Top Shelf's online comics, for requesting to post the strip after finding it on my blog, thus proving that someone actually reads this thing.

The Blue Kid

Top shelf has also posted the complete Blue Kid, and all strips can be viewed here.

No news yet about print publication of The Blue Kid. It's been sent to all likely parties, but I've yet to get a yay or nay. If all else fails there's always the Xeric.

This Is Happening

It's really happening. Just a few weeks ago I wouldn't have thought it was possible. I've never been so excited and enthralled by the outcome of an election. Obama's acceptance speech was genuinely moving. Obama has the potential to be one of the truly great presidents, maybe to be among the greatest presidents in history.

Unfortunately he's inherited a big mess, but so did Franklin Roosevelt. This is a genuine opportunity to make revolutionary change. So don't blow it Obama!

Edit: It looks like prop 8, the proposition to ban gay marriage, is going to pass here in California. As excited as I am about Obama, prop 8 is a real setback for California.



APE

After that this seems pretty trivial, but here I am at the Alternative Press Expo that was held this last weekend:



The picture's are a little blurry since I forgot my camera and we had to use Regina's picture phone. It was pouring down rain, so from what I heard, the turn out wasn't what was expected, but despite this we did really well. To the right of me is Mari Naomi, author of Estrus Comics, autobiographical comics about her love life. She was really a neat woman, and it was good to meet her.



Here's our spread. We sold out of the elephants print, and sold a ton of the smaller bicycle tree print. We had a larger bicycle tree print, but the small one had a little color, and people seemed to like that one better because of the color. The Baby God minis did Ok, but I sold very few Blue Kid minis for some reason. Since the Blue Kid is the thing I'm most proud of right now this was a little disappointing, but I did learn that people really really seem to like these two particular prints. I didn't have business cards, and I'm not set up to sell anything on my website, so I'm probably going to have to do something about that. Regina is the one hiding behind the table. She won't let me include any pictures of her on the blog.

This was my first sighting of the elf:



To the left of me is Ben Costa, author of a really amazing comic called Shilong Pang and another really cool guy.



More elf. Just in front of the elf is another talented cartoonist that was seated near us. His name is R. Carrasquillo according to his mini comic, The Heights, but I don't remember what the R stands for.To the very far right is Morgan Lee Kessler who had mini zines and prints. She was responsible for our first sale, a Baby God.

And here's the elf in all his glory:



For some reason he reminds me of Doug Henning.

I vowed this time not to buy anything at APE that I could buy anywhere else, something that, for the most part, I stuck to. My major purchases were from the one and only Jason Shiga. Most of his books are hand made, and all of them are amazing. This year he even recorded a rap album! "I Love My Shigacorn" and "2Pac Lives" are my favorite rap singles of all time!



From top left, clockwise: Shiga's rap album (I bought three), Hello World, a choose your own adventure type of comic that is mindblowingly complex (Shiga is a mathematician and often uses math in the formal presentation of his comics), and last, Empire Park, Shiga's newest. Shiga is not only amazing with the formal aspects of comics, but he's great at writing characters and dialogue and, in the case of his books Fleep and Bookhunter, suspenseful plots. His books get very poor distribution so he's the best kept secret in comics.

You can buy his books and music here.

Other highlights included the new giant Kramer's Ergot which is mindblowingly huge and mindblowingly beautiful but also really really spendy. Ted Stearn has a very funny and underrated strip called Fuzz and Pluck. His new hardbound is called Splitsville. Lets see, Jesse Reklaw's Diary Comics, the new Acme Novelty Library, too much stuff to recount, but I didn't really get as good a look around as I would've liked since I was so busy selling things.

I almost forgot:



The Wuvable Oaf! The sweetest gay bear comic you will ever read. It's also very funny and beautifully drawn!