Hello, fine people of the planet Earth. I hope all of you are doing well. I am on the cusp of launching my second Kickstarter campaign. It is a 200 page sketchbook of portraits I've done over the past few years. I've done them in brush and ink mostly, like I do my comic book work. Some of them are created digitally as well, which also matches my comic book work - it’s about a 70% - 30% mix favoring the traditional side of the house. You can find the Kickstarter sign- up page here.
Speaking of “here,” here are a few samples from the book:
Before a friend took me to a comic book specialty store in high school (and promptly blew my mind), I wanted to be an illustrator, and primarily focus on doing movie posters. I loved movie posters back then, knew some of the great poster artists by name already, and recognized their art on sight. Because of this interest, portraits were of great concern to me from the beginning. I remember being 14 and trying to draw Indiana Jones as well as Drew Struzan did. I didn't succeed, of course, but I was pretty happy with my results. I'd love to show it to you, but I have no idea where it is. It's been lost for many years now. I may have given it to a friend.
I still love doing portraits and still find them important to my work. Even in my comic book work, I usually “cast” my major characters, using actors, friends, or family, then do everything I can to keep those likenesses as accurate as I can while drawing that story.
So I draw them often as practice. I draw men and women, as you will see, but I often focus on women because they were once a weakness of mine and I was determined for that to not remain a weakness. In this new book there will be a few faces you might recognize, many you won't, and if you pledge at the right level, you might just end up having your own face in the book along with everyone else.
Thanks for reading. I hope to see you over on my kickstarter page in the following weeks. Cheers.