To my friends and colleagues in Boston; my heart and thoughts are with you today. My sincerest hope that you and your families are safe.
I initially attempted to write a group email to all of my friends and people that I have worked with over the years that are in Boston. But I have worked with so many wonderful people that have lived and worked in Boston that tracking down everyone’s email had become overwhelming.
I hope that somehow this message is able to reach you.
Oh, hi Internet. I didn’t even miss you.
Over the last few months I have been working on a handful of projects that were like super-duper secret. It’s been kind of a pain not having anything to show off, but at last I finally have something for you guys to see!
Since the beginning of the year I have been working with Paper Farms and Black Hill Press doing the covers for their next collection of novellas officially and somewhat embarrassingly titled “The Matthew Woodson Collection”. Silly names aside, it was a lot of fun to work with those guys and I think we came up with some really nice covers! “Sci-Fidelity” in particular is one of my favorite pieces I have done in a long long time. So here is to Kevin, Richard, Ryan, and Alex. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with next!
There are still plenty of other “super-duper secret” projects trickling through the cracks, so be sure to keep your eyes pealed for those in the near future. And my apologies for the sporadic web-presence up until this point and for the unforeseen months to come. But for those who unfortunately just can not get enough of my bullshit and thinly-veiled secrets, be sure to check out my Instagram where I post pictures of my gross dog, reclusive lifestyle habits, and even occasionally some work in process shots.
And as mentioned on my Facebook fan-page, I have updated my downloadable portfolio with some new work (some of which has never been seen).
Oh, and for those who expressed concern: My hand has not withered to a desiccated vulture’s claw just yet. Things could be worse.
This ran as the cover for the sports section in today’s L.A. Times. It was an article about how some MLB players actually get very little time on the field even though they have long-standing major league careers. I did this last week in the midst of biting off more than I could chew and juggling more jobs than I probably should have been. But thanks to art director Derek Simmons, I think that this came out to be one of the better editorial pieces I have done in a while.
I have been sick for the last week and a half. I have had a constant migraine for nearly two weeks straight. The arthritis/carpal tunnel in my drawing hand has gotten so bad that it feels like my hands is perpetually buzzing. I quit smoking (again). And to top it all off, I have spent the last 4 days straight doing my taxes. The remainder of the week will be a much needed break.
People keep commenting on the hair in the illustration from my last post. So I figured I would post a more detailed shot of it. Though, honestly this is no different than any hair I have drawn over the last 5 years. Maybe it is just more noticeable because there isn’t a bunch of other dumb shit surrounding her head to distract.
Nothing fancy, just 5 color/shadow separations (base, line, shadow, deep shadow, and highlight). Same old, same old.
I have been working on this here and there over the last week or so, as a wind-down from my “day” job. This started out as kind of an odd exercise that I think I will call “Kitchen Sink Illustration”. Basically the desktop of my computer is full of….well, shit. Reference pictures, website, stickies with quotes, tax information, unfiled invoices, MP3’s, Wii game ROMS, photoshop palettes that I didn’t know where else to put, etc. So I took everything that was even slightly interesting on there, and just started using it as reference and inspiration to draw basically just to pass time and not put too much thought into what I was actually doing. Think of it like cleaning out your fridge, and making an omelet out of everything that hasn’t melted into a science experiment yet.
This was also an opportunity for me to try out some things I have been messing around with in Photoshop. Masking layers, dithered gradients, noise overlays…just a bunch of stuff I really never got a grasp on before now, or at least never got to use to any real extent. I still have no idea what I am doing most of the time, but it seems to work out on the back end.
So, thanks to everyone I inadvertently ripped off in the making of this. You guys gave me a much needed break from drawing mobsters and methamphetamine addicts over the last few weeks.
Last week I was asked by The New York Times to do this quick illustration for their Op Ed column with art director Erich Nagler. The piece was about the increasing crime, drugs, and poverty in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Even though I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked on this piece (less than 18 hours, with room to sleep somewhere in there), I was really happy with the outcome.
Coincidentally enough, just a few days before I did this illustration I had had another illustration killed with a similar western motif. It is always a shame to have a million ideas about a project swimming around in your head, and then have them cut short abruptly. It was nice to have such a quick turn around and be able to flush out some of those ideas, instead of just locking them away in my brain for use years later (or more commonly, to just let is waste away into the ether of unused mediocre ideas).
Last week I worked on some editorial pieces for The Boston Globe about notorious gangster Whitey Bulger’s life on the lam. The team over at The Boston Globe are fantastic, and working with art director Nicole O’Toole was an absolute pleasure. After a couple of weeks of disappointing projects, these pieces were a much needed respite. It was great to have the opportunity (and time) to really play with color and light in a way that is a little out of character for me.
It seems that all of my years of complaining about being “the guy who draws bad relationships” have finally paid off, considering this is maybe the 5th or 6th job I have done in recent memory pertaining to convicts and seriously bad dudes.
Fifteen years ago TODAY, Image Comics released Channel Zero #1. I was working at a dot com job and bought a copy for myself at the now-defunct Cosmic Comics on 23rd St. Warren Ellis emailed me to say he liked it (kicking off a long friendship and the long start of him helping me throughout my…
And fifteen years ago today, a comic book fell into my hands that would change my life forever. A book that would allow me to realize what comics could actually be. A book that ultimately gave me the motivation and confidence to look at illustration and comics as a serious career and life path. A book that allowed me to become the person I am today.
I was fourteen years old fifteen years ago when I sent Brian a fan letter asking his advice on choosing art and comics as a career. With more compassion, patience, and honesty then I could ever muster Brian’s response was a pivotal moment in my life. And in ways that even I will never be able to understand, he saved my life.
No words could ever truly describe how thankful I am to both this book and Brian Wood. Throughout the years he has been both a mentor and friend to me, and nothing I could ever do could properly show my true appreciation for this man and the incredible stories that he creates.
So here is to fifteen years of drawing my fingers down to the bone. Fifteen years of breaking my own heart for the shear sake of putting it down on paper. Fifteen years of never looking back and never regretting. Fifteen years of falling in love with comics over and over again.
Thank you Brian.
This is a quick editorial piece I did for New York Magazine of Obama’s speech writer John Favreau (not to be confused with…well, the other famous John Favreau).
Normally with these portraits for New York Magazine, I only have an evening to take them from sketch to finished illustration and the art direction isn’t much more than “Draw this dude”. As much as I like doing portraits like this, they can get a bit tedious. So this time I really tried to play around with the colors, line work and blocking. And for an experiment that I didn’t really have a lot of time to mess around with, I think this came out pretty nice. A little weird maybe, but nice nonetheless.
Sometimes describing the simplest things can become quite an undertaking. Especially when you have repeated that thing in your own work so many times, that it has become second nature. Couple that with trying to explain it through images to someone who is an extremely talented artist in their own right? Well, it can be a bit daunting.
So this if for you Becky. Hopefully it is more helpful than me saying “Like, just draw a vaginal seashell or something.”
