Selected Sketchbook Spreads (December 2008- present)

These are chronologically ordered from most recent to oldest... or at least as close as I could get.

Du Bois Fan Art

Since I've been in a state of residential limbo for a good minute, there hasn't been much time to focus on working on anything serious. That makes me really sad. The silver lining is that I've found some time to dust off some books that have been in my collection (aka shoved in a corner, waiting to be loved). Of those books, W.E.B. Du Bois' "Souls of Black Folk" has been occupying my free time, and I'm definitely digging his brand of brain food.

More from 4/20...

...just because, really.

A snapshot from "Earth Day"...

...or at least the 4/20 celebration of said holiday in Overton Park.

Mashup in Progress

National Geographic, outside of having a wealth of eye candy, is also good for pulling random subject matter when the mind occasionally goes blank. I've been toiling away at this gouache painting for a couple of sittings, and it's getting close to "finished" status. It's hard to say because the painting is completely improv, but I have some other stuff to get to, so it may have to come to a close soon.

New Comics (finally!)

For the past few weeks I've been working on comic pages and if you've been around me during that period of time, it probably seems like that's the only thing going on with my spare time. Okay, it has eaten a lot of spare hours, but I'm stoked to be back on the sequentials again, and hopefully I'll have the first issue of "Red String Phoenix" (written by Donald Juengling) finished pretty soon. Some inks of the first five pages:











P.S.- I'm all about the feedback, so any suggestions or critiques are welcome from all comers.

Art Jumble Week 131: Lord of The Rings

This is the piece that I contributed to Art Jumble for the weekly topic "Lord of The Rings". I'll admit that I'm not really familiar with Tolkien's literature, so I went for one of my favorite characters from Peter Jackson's movie adaptation, which I still think is good in its own right. It's always fun to draw a big ugly monster every so often.

Yep. Still truckin'.

I think I'm a blogaholic...

Seriously, there has to be a succinct and institutionally-approved prefix and suffix combination that creates the word to adequately describe such a disorder. If not, then blogaholic will do. I've noticed while going through some older posts, that there some things, while being fun to share, should probably have another home. Preferably one in which they're not rooming with my attempts at being an illustrator. Plus, with a supplement blog, I'll have more freedom to blab on about things that make me look more like a well-rounded human being with emotions and opinions and such. Getting on with things, I give you my latest fix.

Collaboration with Billy Welch

My friend Billy Welch recently offered one of his drawings to the general public as a challenge to see who could give it the best color treatment this side of the Mason-Dixon. Since I had recently bought a new Wacom, it seemed like it was time to go digital all over that drawing's candy ass.





I made two versions because I wasn't sure which one worked better. I'm trying to work with colored line work in Photoshop, but sometimes you can't beat the visual "oomph!" of black line art. Feel free to offer feedback.

Since I feel all show-and-tell-y, here's the painting in progress that I mentioned a few posts back that started as a drunken impulse. I'm doing well to develop it with more consideration and less Pabst.

Never mind...

...Blogger can be quirky sometimes.

WTF?

Why is my blog blank? WHAT THE HELL?!

A few days ago, my friend let me borrow her Wacom tablet. Nothing particularly special about it. It was in fact, by today's standards, painfully obsolete. But for someone who's been itching to do some digital work, that old tablet was the sexiest thing in my sight. Now I have something else that will keep me busy and happily reclusive.

According to the last post...

...I was supposed to have finished a painting inspired by a drunken whim. Lessons learned:(1) Alcohol should never enter the equation when doing anything that's supposed to have a resolution. (2) The ability to draw, paint, drive, stand or do basically anything else is dulled by booze. So, (3) when intoxicated in any way, shape, or form, just hole yourself away until you become socially acceptable and STAY AWAY FROM YOUR BLOG. All that said, that night wasn't completely unproductive. I did manage to do a decent underpainting which will be finished and posted soon. Since I feel bad about not having a completed painting to show, here's a drawing that I finished yesterday. "Finished" is a tenative term,  but I'll use it since the piece saw a day's worth of nearly uninterrupted labor.

Kaki King, colored in Photoshop

It took me longer than expected to color this, partly because I'm lacking a Wacom right now (If someone can help with getting one, drop me a line!). More stuff to come in the near future.

More!

James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem

I'm a bit iffy about this one. I'm pretty sure James Murphy is a bit "fluffier" than this, but at any rate, it's not a bad drawing. I haven't colored it yet, so maybe I'll change my tune by the time the piece is finished. Hrummph...

...yeah...

...but anyway...

...SKETCHBOOK PAGES!!!! WITH QUESTIONABLE SCAN QUALITY!!!

Shuffled iPod playlist = New Series?

Still recovering from the feel-good epidemic that raged across our country earlier this week, I have found another very specific (and somewhat selfish) reason to celebrate the New Year: I HAVE INTERNET POWERS AGAIN! AND ACCESS TO A SCANNER! A little geekish sure, but it was killing me to not be able to post any new work or do any digital jazzamatazz. That obstacle overcome for now, I can start posting some work from my shuffle playlist-inspired series of illustrations. It'll be a fun excuse to draw the people that make me tap my toes and nod my head on those long daily commutes, and since my iTunes library is kind of all over, I don't expect to get bored anytime soon.

Update 4/23/09: Derrick got bored with this series and moved on to something else.

Kaki King

This quickly turned into one of those painstaking "I really like drawing hair!" drawings. I'm gonna add some coats of Photoshop paint to the piece and post the finished work in a follow-up. I say that a lot, but I mean it this time, baby. Promise.

21 Speed!

So as the last two posts implied, I was incredibly busy this past semester. I was putting together a comic that would be my senior project for college. It took about three months to plan, thumbnail, draw, color, print and put together. After all of that work, it turned out pretty well, and I was able to finish the rest of my classes after the book was finished. As an act of celebration, I'm doing a "making of" post, documenting some of the earlier parts of the process and the tail end of things.

Drawing the actual pages...

...scanning those pages, putting them together as spreads, and coloring them in Photoshop... 

...making a mock-up and printing the spreads accordingly...

...getting the screenprinted covers ready along with the print spreads to construct the book...

...printing out the black and white copies...

...and skipping through a few tedious steps, we finally get to the finished products.

I'm pretty stoked about how well the comic turned, as well as the awesome reception it's been getting. I'm already getting ready for my next comic, but before I get too far into what's on the horizon, I'll leave you with a few pages from "21 Speed".

Still busy.

I did some things...





I'm still busting ass. Cool things are in the making, I promise.

I'm really busy...

That's all you need to know right now. But I felt the need to show a little bit of my work so I don't feel like a hermit.











Okay, bye.