This is the re-do of the old cover for issue #2,which is the book I'm releasing for free via PDF on the interwebs. My wife is an amazing Art Director she has been giving me lots of great feedback on this journey. Originally the head was more rendered and she gave me the thought of leaving the figure of Oink mostly in silohoutte, it made the piece way more impactful and got accross the vibe of what I was aiming for.

Here's an update on this cover with a lot of feedback I got from folks, thanks!! I really believe in critique I look at these things for a long time so fresh perspective is always welcome!

This was a straggler page so it's out of order with anything I've posted here. Chapter 2 is now complete so I'm going to wrap it all up into a PDF and release it in a month or so. I'm anxious to see how it reads! haha...crap that only took 3 years of after hours, weekends, and christmas holidays. The other 2 chapters will go much faster I think...it's all about momentum!

Here's a the final on that promo sketch I posted a while back.

New page I enjoy these quick little portrait talking head pages, they go pretty fast and it's fun to explore the angles.

I had this dream last night and it was a story called The Butcher's Boy. The story was about a little pig boy being raised by a butcher, he feeds the pigs and takes care of the shop, but he's only allowed out at night and he can never see where the pigs go...at some point the Butcher who loves the boy either dies or the boy sees him slaughtering the pigs and he runs off into a city filled with people who are horrified by him. He runs and runs until he meets a little girl who doesn't seem to care that he's a pig-boy, she befriends him and convinces him he's special...well her parents find out about the pig boy and put him in a barrel and throw him in a river to not be associated with such filth..it will probably twist and turn a bit more, but it ends wit the boy thinking he's escaping and running down the road to this point...only to see factories stretching to the horizon....or something like that. It was a powerful dream.

Here's the final Angel's splash page, pretty much redesigned the page. This first part of the second act had a lot of rework, but I'm glad I'm starting in the middle so I can really kill the last issue next and then just make the first 30 pages my best work.

here's the final.

Here's the rough

Here's the finish on the sketch from the last post. This was a brand new page that wasn't in the original series. I took the one page intro from the second act and split into two to give a bit more weight to the intro of these guys and establish the setting.

I'm doing a process series to illustrate what 'digitally remastered' means...sometimes it's just re doing a page entirely.

Forward ho!

Page of the week

Peh, what's a few months! I'll see if I can get some momentum going again.

Jury of your peers

I'm working through a couple of things, I haven't done a page in almost a month, gah! I had so many things hit me at once I'm still just trying to keep my head above water. One of the things that came up was I had to serve on a Jury for a week in a civil case! While this was an educational experience the timing was bad, anyway I had to just paint today for a bit of sanity, this is what came out...I think it's the jury. I kept on thinking of that movie Twelve Angry Men.

My drawing tools

I got a very nice letter this week from a fellow artist following my blog. He asked about my tools and it's something that's really taken a number of years to get materials I like to work with, everyone is different, half the fun of being an artist is trying new tools! When I was a kid the art store was my church, I can spend hours perusing a good art store.

My digital tools.

I draw on a Wacom 21X Cintiq.
Windows 7 PC- Intel Core Q9450 @ 2.66 GHZ
4GB of memory
Second Monitor is a 24" Dell Ultra Sharp
I use Photoshop CS3
I use Jaime Brushes *you can find them by googling Jaime Jones Photoshop Brushes. It's a great tool set and I've found it has everything I need.

Overall with all my tools I've tried to keep it simple over the years. I usually have 1 or 2 tools in any medium that I do 90% of the work with. The same is true with color and paint, the best workflows are simple.

My layout tools

Eraser sheild for cleanup of my layout
Helix Auto Eraser
Staedtler eraser
Color Erase for rough layout
Staedtler 2h for shading and roughing in the line
Mechanical Pencil with a B lead, I use the manual one for fine details.
I use Staedtler Pigment Liners .01-.05
Standard Sharpie fat and thin markers
Any 'white out' type marker for ink corrections
A standard toothbrush for splattering *not pictured here

My painting tools
I use the Creative Mark brand of paint brushes
I use 2 flat sizes for 90% of my painting a size 4 and 6
I use rounds size 1 for detail work
The palette knives are for impasto FX which is what I use the Impasto paste for, I use a flat and a angled blade.
I use Derivan Matisse Acrylics and mediums.
The types of mediums (the white jars) are a Retarder (keeps paint wet longer), Acrylic Painting Medium, Impasto for building up the surface, and the Varnish is a final coat application when a piece is done.

Surfaces- I like to paint on 3 ply Strathmore cold press (rough texture) Bristol Board, it has a little round stamp on the corner you can't miss it. I've also taken to canvas recently, but Bristol is my standard.

Page of the Week!

I bitched and moaned on the idea of this page internally, mostly because I thought it was going to be a lot of work, and I'm always intimidated by city or large environment shots...what artist isn't. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a nice challenge and I actually don't hate the results!

Page of the Week

I had these huge ambitions over the break, mostly I just relaxed a bit, played a ton of games that piled up over the very busy last year, and decompressed...but I did manage to reorganize my website, and do a new page! The lettering is busting my ass...gah, so much text on these pages. I'm also offering up my very first print from my website, you can order here, so if you like what you've been seeing here, show your support and have your very own Mueller art print...at a very affordable price I might add.

Page of the week

I've been knee deep in lettering the last couple of weeks, going back and lettering all the pages in my hand script, oy! There is a reason people use fonts, haha, but I'm really happy with the look of them so...what's a few more hours!

Page of the Week

Cover mockup #2

Drawing letters

I took a type class in college where the teach made us spend an entire semester hand painting a single word in Helvetica with plaka...it was probably one of the hardest classes I ever had, she was a font Nazi. I think the hardest part was during the class I thought it was completely pointless...turned out it wasn't! I've really been looking at different approaches to lettering...I did the original with a croquil dip pen, on acetate like an animation cel, I liked the slick surface...but dang was it messy and hard to tweak. This page was the first 'talking heads' page I've done since I started this and it was challenging. I've ditched the font computer lettering for hand drawn letters, and I couldn't be happier about the switch. It's definitely more work but it has the character of the orginal...but more legible, haha.