Exciting Milestone and New Projects
Above — “Debut” (censored), featuring the character “Twisted. This piece is my latest, finished this week.”
I just hit an important artistic milestone and I’m so happy to share that with you and tell you a bit about what my next goals are.
I’ve been drawing since I was six years old. Without being specific, that was a long time ago. In my 20s I published several comics with my creative friends, and pursued a career in illustration that unfortunately went nowhere. It was that frustration that led me to pivot to a career in photography.
Most people who knew me over the past 20 years were surprised to discover that I did artwork, because I walked away from that for about 15 years. I wish I had that time back, but that’s another story.
Above—A piece that I created using pencil, brush, and ink, on paper, around the mid-90s.
In 2015 I returned to creating art, but instead of working on a piece of bristol board and using pencils and inks, I decided to work as a digital artist. The learning curve was steep. Not only had I lost a lot of line confidence and knowledge about anatomy, but I was using new tools in the form of digital tablets and apps to create new art, plus I was tackling a world of new options in color, layers, and output.
Above — “Dr. Apoc” one my first digital pieces in 2015.
My early stuff was crude and frustrating. I was used to the smooth and detailed effects of a sable hair brush on paper, and I was not getting those effects with digital means. But gradually, over time, my tools and my skill improved.
2018 marked the year that I started offering commissioned artwork. Most people don’t know how important commissioned artwork is to an artist. It allows you to invest more time and resources to become better. Commissioned artwork also gives you finished art and immediate feedback. It also justifies all the time and effort that you pour into art. If you like an artist’s work, then supporting them through commissions or subscriptions to services, is the best way to help them grow.
I did 40 pieces of art in 2018, and similar numbers until 2021, when I did 64 pieces. Last year I did 65, and I’ve done ten so far this year. The only way I could do more is if I could stop doing one of my other jobs, and again, that would require more support from fans and patrons.
(Above — “Lithe” from 2019.)
Way back in 2015, I had a goal, and I just hit that goal this week. What I wanted to do was get my art to a level where I was consistently happy with the quality I was creating, that I could render characters without any photo reference, those characters would look the same in every piece (or close enough), and that I could do backgrounds that I could render from different angles.
The piece that I did this week, “Debut,” was all of that together. The figure is a character that I created over 25 years ago, who has been rebooted with a fresh design. The pose, the lighting, the color, and the background all came from my initial layout sketches and I brought it home with no outside information.
Why does that matter? It’s exactly what I would need to be able to do… if I was going back to creating comic stories.
Over the past few years in particular, the resounding refrain from fans has been to request that I do comic stories. Since I’m well-known for doing kinky art, and kinky writing, and there are so few kinky comics now, it seems like a good fit.
So, with that milestone crossed, I want to officially announce that I’m going to start work on a few new projects in the next months and years ahead.
New Projects
Twisted
The illustration that leads this post is of a character named “Twisted” that I wrote a short story about well over 25 years ago. It’s set in a cyberpunk world (long before the current Edge Runners series), and it follows Twisted as she is pulled between the illicit career she has chosen and a burgeoning love affair.
The content of the story will be sexually explicit and have graphic violence. That means that it’s for adults only, and will be unique for those reasons. If you enjoyed Heavy Metal stories in the late 70s and 80s, or adult science fiction graphic novels from Europe, then this is going to be your jam.
“Twisted” will be created, panel-by-panel, on my Patreon account here, and subscribers will be allowed to see all the behind-the-scenes work, the finished work, panel by panel, and also give input to influence the work.
Demontowne
Above—Faral from “Demontowne” in a recent piece of art.
Around the same time that I created Twisted, I created a whole epic adventure called “Demontowne,” set in a horror/steampunk/western setting. A woman loses her husband, child, and arm, in an attack by a demon, which sets her on a quest for revenge into The Wastelands.
I have several projects with this character, including a comic anthology, a book, and maybe a bit down the road, a comic adaptation of her main story (that’s going to be a lot of work).
The comic anthology already has one 8-page story fully penciled. It was done by my friend Robert Henry, who is currently writing and inking the “Bad Candy” comic. I have two other short stories that my friend Shawn Wilson has agreed to do. And I have an 8 page story to do. Those two friends, and I, are members of Rain King Studios and you can keep up with what we’re doing here.
I may try to get another few artists to draw stories that I’ve written, or do pinups for that comic anthology, and then offer it on Kickstarter. I want it to be a cool project.
“Demontowne” is for adults too, but much more geared toward general audiences.
What’s Next?
Comics are very labor intensive, and they take a long time to create, even if you’re working on them full-time (which I’m not), so it may be a while before you see the finished product on these.
However, you will be able to see the Twisted comic come together on my Patreon account, and I will definitely be sharing any news on how the other projects are going here.