We The Robots!

A brilliant new strip by Chris Harding. I used to sit next to him in illustration class at the U of AZ. and we just hit it off as the resident cartoonist rejects. Really cool, talented, humble guy that I consider a good friend. -Wes

Untitulated

Bleh

Messing around in ArtRage for a Hallowe'enie post.

Why do vampires say "bleh?" I guess blood doesn't taste that swell.

What sizes should my originals be?

As I lay out roughs for this book I'm doing, photoshop has helped to get an idea of how big original drawings should be. It's probably a given for most Pro's, but it's easy for me to make mistakes here and have one drawing turn out too weak or bold because of the size differences in the originals. I'm trying to avoid that with these simple diagrams. -Wes

Mystery Machine

My six-year-old daughter decided she wanted to have a Scooby-doo themed birthday party. My wife decided she wanted to build a Mystery Machine for it. This is our 4-foot-tall late-night result.

Horatio Jackson.

Automobile-er extraordinaire along with his mechanic and dog. -Wes

Costume

This is a quick drawing I did for the Online Costume Party being held over at The Picture Book Junkies Blog.

Check out the party and enter a photo or drawing in their contest!

Cool Beans.

I just looked on the cover of the Scholastic school catalog (they print a billion of these) and Stacy's book "One by One" is one of the books being promoted on the front page.

Way to go, Dude. I'm going to get one. -Wes

Poster Series

I just finished drawing this movie poster for the historic Artcraft Theatre.
It's an old theatre in Franklin, IN and our poster company Mile 44 has teamed up with them to provide money for funding the theatre by creating a series of collectible, handmade movie posters for some of the theatre's showings.

The posters in the series are sold in the theatre lobby as well as through our poster company.
If you want to buy one (they're $20 each + shipping), you can e-mail me by clicking here.

The Land of Lost Things

I was reading "Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook" and came across this children's book Mort Walker (creator of the comic strip "Beetle Bailey") and Dik Browne (creator of the comic strip, "Hagar the Horrible") collaborated on in 1972. It's called "The Land of Lost Things."

After reading about the book, I had to have it.

I dug around on eBay and Amazon.com and found a copy.

It's a beautifully drawn, amazing book.
The interior spreads are staggered ... a black and white spread, then a color spread, a black and white spread and then a color spread and so on. Maybe for cost purposes, but it really does spotlight Dik Browne's beautiful black and white linework.

Book summary: "Booney is the forgetful keeper of the Boondocks. One day Tad, a lost boy, wanders into Boondocks. Since Booney has misplaced the magic words for sending lost children back to their parents, he makes Tad his permanent assistant - in charge of the toy department."

I highly recommend it.

Thwack

Finally finished the dinosaur books I've been working on. Ten weeks, six books, one move, one funeral, one chest cold & two toothaches. You know what I'm talking about, don't ya.

Steeenky Diaper.

Stinky stinky stiiiiiiiinky stinky. -Wes

Gobi Desert

This is from a series of dinosaur picture books. Some of these are turning out & some aren't. The frustrating thing is that it all seems accidental.

Scanning Watercolor

I share the frustration of scanning watercolors with less than desired results. One thing I've noticed that affects results is the angle of the paper on the scanner. This image shows the difference between scanning at a horizontal angle and a verticle angle. The first image has the grain parallel to the fluorescent bulb itself, and perpendicular to the path of the bulb. (Click to enlarge and see the difference.)

I think this is the trick with photographing art as well; to set up lighting so that no shadows, at least unflaterring ones, are created.

Getting a scan to look more like the original.

Watercolors are hard to scan. After the art is flattened and a large book is on the scanner and the lights are off "dirty" looking pixelation can sometimes still creep in. Subtle paper texture is fine, but too much of it and it just looks bad.

I use a Musetek A3 USB scanner and I'm really happy with the color so I don't want to jump ship to a high end epson just yet. Epsons seem to have some of the same issues too. Photography results haven't been great with me either, even with a 7.1MP Canon and good lighting.

I've found a filter that can automatically/or selectively clean up some of this stuff and it's called Noise Ninja. The first one is the original here. -Wes

Spooner- New link

Hey, Spooner is in the top ten comics on Wowio! BTW, apparently I put the wrong link to the free Spooner books. Here's the correct one:

Free Spooner e-books

Another warm-up drawing

Natural Influences

We just got back from San Diego.

The whole time I was there, I had Dr. Seuss-itis.
We were less than 20 miles away from where Dr. Seuss lived in La Jolla.
I had planned on going to La Jolla and hopefully finding the tower where Dr. Seuss lived, but on the day we had planned to go, there was a landslide in La Jolla and we thought it was best we stay away from all the hubbub.

Anyway....I kept seeing all these plants and trees in San Diego that reminded me of the trees and plants in Dr. Seuss drawings. It got me to thinking about the influence of our natural surroundings. Was Dr. Seuss just drawing from his natural surroundings? A little imagination and these wonderfully unique trees in Southern California became that much more wonderful!

Take a look at Wes' work and you don't see traditional trees, hills and grass in the background. You see desert. And that makes Wes' work so unique and so beautiful. Drawing from the desert and landscapes Wes knows and sees every day makes his work absolutely terrific!

Above are a bunch of photos I took of trees and plants I saw on our vacation.
Do they remind you of something you've seen in Dr. Seuss drawings?

Spooner on Wowio

The Spooner comic books published by Astonish Comics are now available for download at Wowio. No money down! No credit checks! In fact, NO COST AT ALL! That's right, FREE! I don't know how they do it! But if you missed the books and can't afford these Collectors Editions, buzz on over to Wowio and get your free Spooner books.

The books contain an original story in comic book form and the first several months of Spooner daily and Sunday newspaper comics.

Spooner books on Wowio

My little plates of muck.

I'm sure there is a better way to do this, but having unique templates on these styrofoam plates for individual projects seems to work for me. That way i can just label them and go back at another time without having to mix colors up again. They dry and stack up neatly and then it's like going through a deck of cards to find the right one. -Wes

Bump!

This was done on Strathmore Imperial hot press 140lb watercolor paper.
I did 60% of the watercolor and then started going in with colored pencil but then backed off and finished the detail with a small brush. -Wes