Sad Boomer

A couple of friends of mine are putting on a charity video game marathon, from Oct. 26th - 29th, to support the American Cancer Society, and I've been lucky enough to get involved. What they're doing is streaming a 72 hour marathon of interactive gaming where you can drop in and play along, or simply give them company while they suffer through until their eyes and fingers bleed. Obviously  the whole point is to raise funds and awareness of cancer, so it'd be nice if visitors could chip in a few dollars along the way. There will be Prizes and Give-a-ways sponsored by Valve, Arenanet, World-8, Anothercastlegames.com, and ZOMBIES&Toys. I'll be playing through at least part of Left4Dead with them, probably on Saturday the 27th, so drop in and say 'hi.'

They're also hosting an exclusive Fan Art Contest with prizes all weekend long. To jumpstart submissions, I created this little guy and sent him in. You'll have to check out the link above to see the specific version I submitted to the cause, but until then enjoy!

"Sad Boomer" 954px X 646px Mixed Media (colored pencils and Photoshop)

...and hey, do everyone a favor by heading over to Videogame Nightmarathon 2012 and click the donate button. They're not taking any of the cut--they're not even gonna handle any of the money--it goes directly to the American Cancer Society and it's a tax-write off for you. Everybody has a few lonely presidents somewhere, why don't you do the right thing and help them find their friends? 

Zombie Stories

Over the past few months, I've been working on some content for a new zombie anthology with a few friends of mine. As I was laying in bed one night, I just kept thinking how cool those old Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories books were back when I was a kid.  I wanted to do a throwback to them, and since every painting I do, while I'm developing my skill with watercolor, I want to try something new, I went with a really wet, free technique and just started painting.  After about ten minutes, I started to see a couple of bodies and a windmill developing in the negative space, and I just ran with it.

There's also a nice negative of a tree forming there on the left. See it?

What followed was a series of laying down color, disappointment, picking up the color, and starting over again. I think I re-did the texture on the windmill at least five times, and the dude on the right got completely sucked up and repainted. Eventually, though, I got to a point where I was okay with what had gone down. I rinsed all of my brushes and just went to bed. In the morning, I found these little monsters staring back at me. 

After a little while in the Gimp, I was finally staring at what may just be the cover of this collection. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, enjoy Zombie Attack at the Windmill; Reeves Watercolors on 9X12 Strathemore Coldpress. 

major league come at me bro

the other day I was putting some thought into a couple of designs I'm working on for Z&T and I had an image pop into my head. I guess this all makes sense if you shuffle through humorous images online to make long days better; if not, you won't know what I'm talking about unless I first show you this.

and this...

this...

this...

and finally, this. The king. The Major Leaguer of Come-at-Me-Bros...

like I said, I've been working on a couple of designs for some swag over in the Zombies and Toys Store, and I just had to do this. I've submitted it to a couple of different online retailers, and we'll see if they pick it up. Otherwise, there's a company just down the road called Blue Sheep Printing that I'll be putting in an order with. Either way, this tee shirt is happening; and when it does, I'll let you know.

Major League Come at Me Bro, Tee Shirt Design, 2-3-2012

You see, Jason was my son and today is his birthday

It's Friday the thirteenth and that means only one thing...

Bam! The man himself. Today is kinda special here on the blog of the dead. If there is something I remember from my childhood, it's being scared mindless by popular horror. No lie, I used to dream that my parents were really Freddy Krueger and Jason voorhees in costume. I'd have nightmares that they'd strip off their mom and dad costumes and sit around the kitchen table comparing notes after we kids had gone to bed. Is that normal?

There's just something about slashers that I dig. One day, I'll find my way over to Elm street and I'll bring something back. Until then, have a little look over someof the creative ways you could get rid of promiscuous teenagers.

(click for more soupy goodness)

How the Invader Stole Christmas

I have always liked the blog posts where the artist shows step by step progression of their paintings, so I thought it was time to give both of you readers a post like that...

Let me take you all the way back to a couple of weeks ago. I got a new phone and was creating an image for the background.

(640 X 960 iPhone 4s Wallpaper. Feel free to steal it)

'twas the week before Christmas, and I had an image pop into my head. I saw Gir and Piggy pulling a grinch-like Invader Zim through the night sky delivering diabolical gifts to the greatest leaders of Earth. His hopes are that his gifts will self-unwrap on christmas eve and destroy all humans within their battery-life, preparing the earth for invasion by the Irken Armada. The image stuck with me, and I had to get it out of my head and onto paper.

The way things go, nothing ever works on the first try. Normally, I paint from an 11 X 15 Strathemore watercolor pad. I use it because it's cheap and works as well as I need it to at my level. Anyway, I put alot of distance between the characters and expected to make it look like they were high in the air, but on that size paper it made them so small it would be impossible to paint.

The next step was to forget about the depth effect and just paint it to show the characters, but that didn't tell the story I was hoping for.

Roman painted this one before I got around to taking a picture of it.

Finally, I ended up with something right in the middle, which was going to be a pain in the ass to paint, but would still give it the depth I wanted.

I'm still trying to figure out how to do this whole watercolor thing, so I like to try something new in every painting. This time around, I decided I'd go buy some inking tools and get the ink down before I splattered it with paint. I took some suggestions from two of my favorite artists, Gris Grimly and Georgia Dunn, and set to work. On Grimly's word, I used a number 4 Crowquill and Speedball black calligraphy ink for the finest of the lines. Then I followed Georgia's advice and used a Micron pen for the intermediate lines. That still didn't give me the line quality I wanted, so I invested in a Faber-Castell PITT artist brush tip pen so that I could play around a little more. There are still things I don't like about it, but for my first go it'll do.

Two days after Christmas, I had totally forgotten about this piece. It was only because I was trying to clean up the post-holiday destruction of my living room that I stumbled across my lonely monochromatic brainchild. It still took me until New Year's Day to get down to business, but Roman and I busted out the paints and we got the job done. I tried to use our DSLR to get a better picture of this, but I'm still trying to figure out how to get good digitals of this stuff. The faster I can figure it out, the faster I can start offering you guys prints and being able to set up some kind of store here in the great WWW. Anyway, there's the story of how the Invader Stole Christmas. I hope you enjoyed the show.

(How the Invader Stole Christmas, Reeves Watercolors on Strathermore Coldpress 1/1/2012)

Ninja Stars

So, I guess this makes me official; I'm a watercolor illustrator. This little guy was painted over about 30 minutes using Reeves watercolors on Strathemore coldpress. I actually achieved what I was trying to do, so I'm happy with it.

ZomBiE GiR

will eat your tacos.