On the art front this week, I want to share a drawing I did recently. It’s of Jean Grey as Phoenix. I don’t do a lot of large-scale drawings anymore, but every so often I get an itch and need to scratch it. This is 11×17 drawn in ink. she’s not quite done yet, I might color her. I’m trying to start doing more sketches to take to shows, so if you have a character request, let me know (in the comments, perhaps?), and maybe your idea will make it onto the blog.

Be sure to keep checking out my new webcomic, Urban Wild, which updates bi-weekly.

PS – The last day for (as close as I can get to) Guaranteed Before X-Mas Delivery of stuff is Monday, Dec. 12. I’m mailing every other day in preparation for the holiday rush, so PLEASE get your orders in soon, so you don’t have to be mad at me when your posters/books don’t get to you before X-mas and your kids are all disappointed (that’s happened).

(no, I haven’t seen the new Tron, yet)

Man, it’s been a while. The X-mas season descended on us here at the Press, and relentlessly smacked us for about 2 and a half months. WHICH IS AWESOME, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But, now that it’s slowing down a bit, I figure I can safely poke my head above ground and give a bit of an update.

We’ve been busily working on the next book “Too Many Monsters”. We are planning to debut TMM at Phoenix Comicon this May, so be sure to check it out. I’ll be posting art and preliminaries prior to the release, so keep your eyes peeled. The book is going to be 32 Pages, 8.25 x 8.25 inches and full color throughout and will feature an all-new, original story by the other Half of MMP, Ashlie Hammond with art and design by myself, of course.

The Monkey Minion 2011 Con Schedule is nearing it’s finalized state, and we’ll be returning to two of our favortie shows ever, Emerald City in March and Phoenix Comicon in May. AWESOME! This will be our third year at the wonderfulness that is ECCC, and after a year away, our 4th appearance at PHXCC. I’ll have more info about those as they get closer. We’ve also gotten word that we will be attending SDCC again this year! WOO! We have a few more shows lined up and I’ll post about them as they get nearer.

So, with December very nearly over, and the celebration of various holidays commencing, the time for reflection is upon us. OVerall, this year has been pretty much great for MMP. We made a book, a lot of art, and a lot of new friends both online and in real life. I had my first experience as an invited guest at a comic-related event (more please), and we did our first SDCC as Small Press Exhibitors. MMP is slowly (but steadily) growing from a one-man sketchcard and freelance design concern into an independent artist and illustration business. We got our Zombie cards into a few more shops (TFAW and Cosmic Monkey here in Portland, Dark Delicacies in California) and got mentioned on some blogs and podcasts (including the AWESOME Geek In The City podcast) I miserably failed in my attempt to regularly update a sketch-blog, but no one seemed to notice. Maybe I’ll try it again some time later when I don’t have a day job to get in the way. LOL!

So, now that I’ve bored you to death, how about some art? This is the evolution of a brainworm I had earlier this year. I got to thinking and thought, you know, I’ve done quite a few Propaganda-Style Posters this year, but there’s one character that NEEDS to be on a WW2-style poster. That character? CAPTAIN freaking AMERICA. So, here you go. Incidentally, this is also available for sale at my Etsy store and my new Storenvy store, so go there and buy one, will ya?

Well, that’s it for now. Until next time, I suppose.

Happy Holidays, EVERYONE!

D

So, things are still happening at a crazy pace here around the press. Not only are we still ratcheting up for our first San Diego Comicon as exhibitors, it just occured to me that my birthday is NEXT WEEK. Crazy. So, expect something big here about that. I think someone is gonna be happy about that.

Anyway, not much else to report right now. See ya next time!

Welcome back. Not much new to share since last time. MY work was featured on an awesome tumblr blog called “Distracted By Star Wars” today which is AWESOME. (Seriously – go check it out. I’ll wait. Are you back? Good.)

Today’s ‘Sketch’ is another brainworm poster that came out right after I finished my SW recruitment posters. This one is inspired by that other “Star” series, Star Trek. I grew up on ST re-runs as a kid and when ST:TNG started, we watched it every week. (I still maintain that my dad was a closet nerd) So, it didn’t surprise me much when this image kind of issued forth from my gray matter. I wanted this to be in the recruitment vein, but felt that the overt “Military” vibe of the 2 SW images didn’t jibe with the mission of Star Fleet, which I always saw as more of a humanitarian/scientific service (like the peace corp or WPA). So, I went with a more WP-influenced style for it. This one is also available as a poster in the store and at etsy.

Well, after a trip that I’m calling a ‘comedy of errors and fail’ (including a 26-hour layover in Denver b/c of snow the first day of the trip), I lived through the harrowing ordeal of my visit to the midwest for Planet comicon and family visits, and have returned to the sanity of the Pacific Northwest. I apologize for the absence of the sketch blogs recently. ECCC and trip planning took up all of my time before I left. But I’m back.

So, not much to say about Planet Comicon. The fans were great and I got to meet and hang out with some cool local people. Also, Clayton Crain‘s table was next to ours. He was super cool, and he bought a hat from Ashlie (we couldn’t get a pic of him wearing it, tho… LOL). I don’t know if it’ll go on our list of ‘must-do shows’ tho. Oh well.

So, the sketch! Well, today’s sketch is something that has been playing around in my brain for the past year or so and I sketched up this morning on my bus ride to work: SPIDER-KID! Everyone remembers as a kid tying towels and pillowcases around your neck and jumping off couches and boxes pretending to be superman. Well, this is kinda my version of that memory. I’ve always been a Spidey fan. I used to throw yarn around pretending it was webbing, too. It was awesome. I may do some more ‘kid super heroes’ in the future. Who would you like to see as a kid? Who did YOU dress up as when you were young?

In unrelated news, I was interviewed (along with good friends Daniel and Rebecca) by the fine folks at the Seattle Geekly podcast at Emerald City. You should go check that out, for sure. I’ll be putting that in the press page for future reference, as well.

So today, I took it upon myself to do a quick sketch of what I think Skeletor should look like. Gone is the “Barbarian Smurf” motif of yesteryear. To me, Skeletor should be scary. He should be the thing that Eternian Parents use to scare their kids at night. The dude’s supposed to be a sorceror, let’s play that up. The tattered robes, the staff, the chain made from animal bones, the snake skull cloak pin all say “mystical scary dude” to me. I also think that the dude should be thin. Like skeleton thin. I think that in the western world especially, it’s scary when you look at someone and can see their bones through their skin. Like it reminds us of our own mortality. That should be Skeletor all over. His name is Skulletor, after all.

Agree? Disagree? Do it in the comments!

On a related note – If you’re an artist that like to draw with pen, you owe it to yoursef to check out the Pentel Stylo Sketch pen. I drew this with one of these and it was awesome. Variable line widths, easy to control and it flows smooth like buttah. Do it, you’ll thank me later.

This is my version of He-Man. I always thought that He-Man looked a little too much like a wuss. Maybe that’s why Skeletor was always giving him trouble? If He-Man had looked like a proper badass, maybe Skeletor would have behaved himself.

In an unrelated turn of events, the Seattle Geekly  Podcast did a feature on our line of Valentine’s Greeting Cards! Click the link to check them out!

I’m going to try to make some updates to my site here in the next few weeks leading up to Emerald City Comicon. Mostly in the store section. Keep your eyes peeled!

Lots of new developments in the MMP world. But let’s start off with a little history first: Remember last year when I was helping Steve Rude with some photoshop coloring touch-up work? Well if you don’t, I just reminded you. Basically, what it was was that Steve was touching up the 20-some year old colors of his Nexus comic series for inclusion into the definitive printed verion of the stories in the Nexus Archives books from Dark Horse Comics. My job was to use photoshop to make the changes he needed made to the artwork. This included recoloring characters, pages and panels, making the effects more prominent, moving, deleting and rearranging word balloons, and so on, so forth.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, mainly because that gig has pretty much led directly to my new gig: doing color touch ups on Invincible for the new animated comic series coming out from MTV Mobile and GAIN Limited. Check this action out! (I would have embedded it, but apparently blogger can’t embed flash vids.:() This is super huge for me because I am a HUGE FAN of Invincible. I’ve been reading the series since issue #9 when Ryan Ottley started drawing it. I’m really excited about it. AHH!

Also, I’ll be doing sketch cards for the upcoming Marvel Masterpieces 3 set coming out of Upper Deck. I’m doing 75 cards, and hopefully I’ll get to do most of them in color. Gonna be sweet!

What else? Oh yeah! Since moving to PDX, we have hooked up with a great group of artists here and have been showing my work around, and I have a show of my artwork set up in September at a small gallery here in town. And of course, I found an artwalk to participate in, the Alberta Arts District Last Thursdays! I’ll be set up in front of This Place Blows a really cool little Glass Blowing Studio and Shop (This is also where my show will be in September).

So, I think that’s enough for now. Check back soon, because I hope to have more news!