Look, Up In The Sky It's A Bird! It's A Plane! No, It's A Burd!

Here's a drawing done for the San Jose Mercury News Sunday business section. The story, by Heather Somerville, can be found here.

Open in new window for SUPER-HUGE image!

Steve Burd, the CEO of Safeway will be retiring soon, and the article explores his legacy. Was he super-heroic, or was he as helpful as a hole in a bag?

Concept, design and layout by Daymond Gascon and Chuck Todd; I got to do the fun and easy part!

On this occasion, I drew a rough in Photoshop and moved to Manga Studio 5 for most of the drawing and inking. I was going to color in MS5 but I haven't worked with it on deadline before, so I fled back to the comfort of Photoshop when I got lost amongst the unfamiliar quick-keys and mysterious brush controls!

Here's about how it will look if you find a newspaper out in the wild, except it's missing the fold in the middle.

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Posterous Is Dead

I started posting at Posterous in 2011. The blog you are reading -- a sturdy old BlogSpot production -- was and is my formal blog, and I started using Tumblr for quick, informal blog-spasms. I didn't quite know what to do with Posterous, but I didn't want to be left out if it blossomed into something way cool!

Well, I didn't see much action or activity there. Within a few weeks, Posterous faded from my routine and from thought. In all, I only managed five posts there, and I would never have thought about it again, but for the email I received from them yesterday informing me that they were shutting down. What a surprise!

So, in remembrance -- lest I forget to ever remember them again -- here are the pieces I posted to Posterous. They might exist in some form on the this blog's past, but I don't want to expend the energy to looking for them.

It looks like I just zoomed in and took detail shots of my work.
That's a cheap way of padding a blog. Hmm. Kind of like this post, maybe...

And the following piece -- which definitely is on this blog some where in the past -- is a rerun but, for the Jeff Durham Posterous Collection® completists, I include it here.

Self portrait of Me, working late on the job.

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Impression of Evelyn

While she naps, I paint a quick impression of the daughter. Unintentionally kind of spooky. Oh, well.

Painted in Photoshop, about 15 minutes. Open in new window for a HUGE! image.

Haven't painted in a long time. Maybe the picture isn't so hot, but it sure feels good to do it.

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Predicting Silicon Valley's Future

On a Wednesday evening, in haste -- for the end of shift was near -- I doodled this thumbnail after a brief brainstorming session with the art director and page designer. I submitted it to the editors for approval and went home.

I stole the hand from the illustration in my previous
post and scribbled the rest in about 10 minutes. 

The next day, in the early afternoon, the idea was approved. At 12:58 p.m., this sketch was all I had. By 6:45 I was done:

Open in a new window to see a MUCH larger image!

Whooosh! That was pretty quick. I spent another 40 minutes tweaking it for two online presentations, changing it from a vertical to a horizontal design, which necessitated a little more drawing, but I'm not counting that!

Here is what it looked like in the paper after Daymond Gascon put the page together. He made it look nice, didn't he?

And here is the link to Mike Cassidy's excellent story.

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Rolling Stones Tickets Are Hella Expensive

Here's my effort at an illustration for Jim Harrington's fine story about concert ticket prices. If you read the story I must warn you that the next time you exit the subway and pass by that old guy sitting on a bucket playing an erhu, you might feel compelled to drop at least a 20 in the cup. After all, you're getting front-row, v.i.p. access to live music performed by someone over 70.

Open image in a new window for a GIANT! version. It's much easier to see the sloppy handiwork.

Below are four screenshots of the illustration in progress.

Top left: My rough idea sent to the editors for approval. A hopefully amusing play on the audience-raising-lighters-at-a-concert shtick, with one guy in the foreground burning money representative of the amount of a ticket. The editors liked it, but wanted more people burning money. Dang. That means drawing more hands doing different things.

Top right: Mick and Keith line drawings -- at this point I wasn't crazy about Mick's likeness, but I hoped to fix it during the coloring process.

Open in new window for a bigger picture, if you're that interested.

Bottom left: I started filling in the flat colors behind the linework after the long slow grind of drawing hands. I had also drawn hands holding money, but they were on hidden layers; I kind of preferred the visual joke of having just the one pair of hands lighting the money, and kept this as an option in case it was later decided to go that direction.

I did re-use a hand or two, but redrew a few fingers on each so it wasn't so obvious.

Bottom right: Here the rendering began. Mick's face started to look better after this, although I'm still not happy with how the final looked, but deadlines will be deadlines. At the last minute I decided I didn't care for the big, bare fore-arms right up front, so I put some sleeves on them, probably with a bit too much haste. The coloring helps, but they look more like tubes than sleeves.

Also, at the very last minute I put frets on Keith's guitar. No time for strings, tho!

And here is what it looked like in the paper, on a page designed by Scott Swyres:

Don't bother clicking, it doesn't get any bigger.

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The Artist Resurfaces...

"Over thar! Off the port bow! He's posted an artworks, laddies. How can he have stayed down so long? Is he breaching? Is he going to thrash the ship with his mighty tail? Or has he expired? Mayhap he is merely bobbing to the surface to show his belly to the sun and feed the gulls."

I am still in the cold, cold grip of a monumental art-slump. I haven't scribbled anything of merit since my last post several weeks ago, and I won't insist on the "merit" bit if you feel differently. Still, I have hopes. I will be off of work for a few days and I have aspirations and I have a pencil. That is all an artist needs, right?

Don't bother clicking, it doesn't get any bigger.

In the interest of keeping the blog floating -- be it belly-up or not -- here is a small scan of a mid-90s acrylic painting I did on the cover of a small 3x5 sketchbook. That should be enough for at least one gull.

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Cartoon Portrait!

Me & E. We got up early and couldn't go back to sleep. Today will be a long slog, to be sure.

The end.

Trying To Get It Going

Total frustration has set in when it comes to getting any traction in creating my own personal artwork. I HAVE to start pushing and get some done. I'm going to try to post something every day or two. It won't always be good, but maybe bad art hanging on the internet wall will help drive me.

These are screen snaps from a couple of panels on a comics page I started last week. I worked on the giant guy in armor a little bit this morning. And now... damn. Off to work. Grumble.

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TV Binge? I Confess. I've Done This.

I may have mentioned this 200 times before, but I hate television. "Hate," some say, is a hard word and rarely should it be used, and I agree; but even that word, applied with premeditation and with the respect for the true feelings of disgust it should convey, is far too tame for the angry loathing I feel for television. Earlier in life I unplugged my TV with a snarl and unplugged it remained for nearly a decade.

I've relaxed my stance slightly. The television gets plugged in for the occasional football game and the World Series, but my temper is tested by the wretched tide of repeated commercials; particularly those pleading for me to watch a sitcom or singing contest. Please. I will never! watch your show. Unless.

Drawn in Photoshop. Putting the cans of soda on the toaster oven is probably a bad idea. Please switch the slice of pizza and the six pack in your imagination and save me the trouble of redrawing it. Thnx!

A friend gave me Battlestar Galactica season 1 on DVD. Thank you, I said, and put it on my shelf. There it stayed for more than two years. But one night, after a very long and frustrating day at work, I came home mad and hungry. I made a quick dinner and put the first DVD into the computer, just to trick myself into thinking about something else. It worked. The show was great.

I was up all night. No. Really. All night and into the late morning of the next day. No sleep. I staggered back to work, tired and twitchy. If you watch a TV show in a dark room for twelve or thirteen hours and then go sleepless back into your working life, every moment has an out-of-body quality that makes talking, walking and thinking seem wearily bothersome. Your eyelids have the impression that they're just not supposed to shut anymore, so blinking on purpose becomes the most important thing you have to remember to do.

I made it through the day, drove home safely, and, yes, watched several more episodes. I didn't finish the whole first season without sleeping, but I powered through in three days without missing a shift at work. I must have been prompted to such irresponsible irrationality by something close to love. Maybe it was love; that was the first television show I was fully committed to since Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks was canceled in 1991? 92? True love, for me, is rare but it bites deep.

So, getting back to the purpose of the blog, Hey! I drew this picture! Chuck Barney wrote this story about how some people avoid broadcast television shows so they can watch an entire season or an entire run in a very short amount of time. I completely grok.

Rough sketch (left), refined drawing with flat color (center), and, on the right, the illustration in-progress when I was still trying to figure out how I was going to paint this.

No, this isn't a caricature of me watching Downton Abbey with a lap cat and a pile of supplies, but it will be once season 3 hits streaming on Netflix! The first two seasons were fab. Don't tell me who dies! Don't tell me who dies in season 3 of Walking Dead, either. Those are the next TV binges on my list.

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p.s. Moments ago, as I type, I watched the last episode of Caprica. It's taken me a few weeks to get through it, as I have learned to be patient and pace myself.

New College Try

Here is an illustration that ran on the February 24th Sunday front of the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, the Daily Review, the Argus, and um, the ... well, all those Bay Area News Group papers. (Nobody's really sure how many there are.)

A digital drawing accompaniment to a fine story about online education by Katy Murphy.

Here is how it looked in the paper:

      

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In Progress

A few characters from an in-progress illustration. I'll post the final later.

Seven Years of Blogging

Today, the 19th of February, marks the end of this blog's 7th year. I hesitate to say that today also marks the beginning of the 8th year because I haven't been a very good blogger of late and Year 8 might be a very weak character.

I'm not planning on stopping entirely, but I may take a long break, or perhaps I'll open up a new blog somewhere else. I think I need a change of scenery, or a new start; that might be reinvigorating! Or maybe I'll upload a new banner and get back to posting regularly tomorrow. I have no idea.

I made these biscuits back in November. They are little stale, but they still look kind of fresh!

I'm in a horrible art-slump. I haven't made the time or found the energy for my own projects, and I haven't been digging the work I've done on the job at all. 

I'm pretty certain I have a touch of that mid-life crisis thing going on. Am I doing what I want to do? Do I know what I want to do? Should I quit my lousy job and work at the local bookstore only to find out that is an even lousier job?

Wait. The bookstores are all gone. I guess I have to keep doing what I'm doing. Or do I?

Don't mind me. I haven't had a proper whining session or an on-internet meltdown in a long time.

Happy 7th, Blog! 

The End?

Maybe You Should Get A Real Camera

This is a digital painting I did last week for Troy Woverton's story about why you might want to invest in a digital camera and not just rely on your smartphone for taking pics.

There is a cluster of similar-sized triangle shapes with the lapels,

the collar and the mountain on the screen; that's kind of bad design

but I didn't notice it until the very end. I wish I could have fixed

that, or maybe played it up so I could say I did it on purpose. 

I finished the above painting just before the print deadline. For the online version below, I was able to finish his other arm. I design illustrations primarily for print and then tweak them so they will look okay for online. I probably should have roughed in some kind of background but my hand was a bit crampy and so I opted for just throwing down an ill-advised texture thingie. 

So, here is how it looked in the paper:

And, just for kicks, here is the rough I made while brainstorming:

I was looking at a few pictures of young Ansel Adams when I drew this. I wasn't trying to do an obvious portrait of him, aiming instead to capture that frontier and wilderness photographer vibe. He's the standard for that, I think.

Just A Doodle

Here are a couple of panels that don't mean anything. I did these in an attempt to jump-start my personal work. I spent about four hours on this over the course of a week. I started to color it but I decided that I'd spent enough time on it, and I don't think color would have helped it much.

Drawn, painted in Photoshop!!

Happy New Year!

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Doodles

Here are three hasty and somewhat grubby iPad drawings created with Paper by 53, a very nifty app I've taken a liking to. Paper has a very limited toolset, but it's simplicity is its charm. How nice to draw directly without the countless complex temptations that digital tools often give. 

I know, perhaps I should just pick up a pencil and draw on real paper, but drawing on an iPad makes me look much cooler than I actually am.

I'm going to try to slip another post in before 2012 slams shut if I can wrangle the time to do a little art this weekend.

The End. 

Old Editorial Illustration

I used to do illustrations for the Sunday editorial section on a regular basis. They were very quick turnarounds. The editor would most often wait until mid-day Thursday, or even Friday, to select an article for publication. That left only a few hours of time on the clock to come up with something and finish it up.

My recollection is this was for an article about the previous Pope, who was not doing well at the time. He looked shaky and weak and miserable, but he kept doing whatever it was he was doing. I think the story compared the Pope's suffering to the tales of Jesus' suffering, so that's the hook that latches article  illustration.

No larger size available.

I don't know why this sticks in the memory, but I clearly recall this was done in a hasty panic the day it was due. I felt all kinds of regret and remorse when I had to send it to the page designer in order to meet deadline; I hated Jesus' head and wanted to do more to the chair.

*     *     *     *

Sorry I've been posting old stuff. I hope to get some fresh work to show soon. I'm in a bit of another art-slump and the time and energy for personal work has dipped to new lows, while work for the paper seems to have been steady but hasn't been of the fun and artistic variety.

But, I'll try to get it going again very soon!

Tiny Old Star Wars Jpegs

A few years ago I did an illustration for the review of the final Star Wars movie. I thought I had blogged about it, but it was done before the birth of the blog. I found an archive of my website where I had written about it. I've edited that text and placed it below.

Will update with larger image when I find it.

For this assignment, I was given a slab of page one real estate and told to fill it up with Star Wars imagery. "Just put a big Darth head at the top, above the fold." Yes, I can do that.

The writer of the review -- the great Barry Caine -- was a familiar face to the readers of our papers. He was featured prominently in our entertainment section on a regular basis and his smiling mug-shot was often used in promotional ads, so my use of him as a character in this package isn't as off-the-wall as it might seem to those of you from outside the area.

My intention was to have Barry-Wan standing with several of the movie's characters. I did drawings of Mace Windu, Chewbacca, Threepio, Obi-Wan and Padme... but they hit the cutting room floor. I was running out of time and getting them to fit together and look good in the space provided wasn't going to work out.

And I almost forgot about leaving room in the image for the story. Kind of important.

I had good fun. It was cool to see it so big on the front page of the paper.

*       *       *       *       *

This is an arrangement of some the discarded doodles which has been rattling around in my screen-saver folder since 2005.

If I ever find the original files for either of these drawings I'll post 'em big and update the blog.

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Gift Giving Etiquette

No time for typing today. So, in brief, here's an illustration done for work. The story is online here: Gift giving dos and don'ts.

Open in new window for a larger version!

And here's how it looked in the paper:

No larger size available.

Drawn in Photoshop! Two things really bother me: The Santa cap doesn't wrap around the teddy bear's head very well and I should have drawn a clearer coffee cup shape.

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Bay Area Hobbitats!

Here's a bit of fun!

Angela Hill had an idea for a story highlighting places in the Bay Area that might fit in to a vision of Middle Earth. She's a Tolkien fan and, for inspiration, she even loaned her copy of "The Hobbit" illustrated by Alan Lee. Her story is here, and it's very nicely done!

"The Hobbit" was a passion for me in my tweens and teens; I couldn't even guess how many times I read that book. Lots. I knew this would be good fun for me.

Open in a new window for HUGE version.

Secretly, I dread these kind of map illustrations. Well, not so secretly now, I guess, but it's just so dang hard to get things to fit!

This was a quick turnaround, so I didn't have time to fret over each bit. It was a straight forward sprint all the way. I was really worried about how it would look until a couple of hours before it was due. I wasn't certain I could fill the page but I had to discard a few other ideas because I couldn't wedge them in comfortably. Which was good, because it took much longer to color than I thought it would, and another 5 minutes spent on the drawing would have sent me tumbling into the deadline crack of doom.

Still, I wish I could have worked in a gag about the Oakland Raiders. And Iwas going to have Gandalf and Bilbo saying something like "How strange this place is." "I knew we should have taken a left Lothlórien." Or something nerdy like that.

Jennifer Schaefer designed the page, guiding me along the way; and here's how it looked in the paper:

I drew everything except for the dragon Smaug at the bottom. I traced it from a picture of the cover to the first edition of the book. I thought that would solidify my Tolkein-geek cred.

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Very Old Painting

Once again, propping up the blog with an old thing.

This is a 2004 study, referenced from a still frame from of one of the Sherlock Holmes tv shows made in the 80s. Not sure, but I might have painted this while watching the TV on pause -- the lime green iMac didn't have a DVD player, so that may have been the only way to do it.

This is full size. Don't bother clicking.

I've been completely burnt-out by the job-commute routine these past few weeks and so I haven't had the time or energy for more personal work. Hope to improve on that soon.

Hm. Feel like I've typed that 500 times before.

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Don't Stuff Yourself

For about a month and a half -- mid-november to early January -- everywhere you go there will be bowls of candy, trays of cookies, office party snacks, free samples as you walk through the mall and plates of junk when you visit family and friends. Yeah! But, if you're worried about over-doing it perhaps this story by Angela Hill can help you cope.

This is my illustrative accompaniment for said story as it appears on the website:

Open in new window for a larger image. 

This is what I arranged for the print version:

Open in new window for a much larger image. 

And this is what it looked like in the paper:

All the bits were drawn separately and assembled in Photoshop. I web-searched for images of holiday cookies and candies, and I used those pictures as reference and inspiration. I invented the lady as the final piece, and -- without meaning to -- I almost made her look like a cookie, too.

The End.

Head Drawings

Created these head drawings for a graphic that ran in the paper a few weeks ago. Only used about half of them. Drawn in Illustrator, and I was trying to achieve a Chris Ware vibe. Kind of close, I think.

The End.

Are We There Yet?

Yet another old illustration I did for the newspaper, probably 2005 or so. I think the topic was how to make your family vacation drive more enjoyable, but that might not be totally accurate.

Don't bother clicking. It doesn't get any bigger than this.

I don't know if this is the final and I don't know if that was headline that was used; it looks a little peculiar and makes me squirm uncomfortably, but it might have run like this.

I kind of dig the crazy-looking characters and mad color scheme.

The End.

Doctor Strange

Hey! It was Steve Ditko's 85th birthday the other day. I think he's the last of the old guard of comics artists I've admired since I was a wee lad. Coincidentally, I've been re-reading his run of Doctor Strange stories that ran in Strange Tales in the 60s. Quirky, bizarre and beyond brilliant.

Updated the picture with a slightly more careful coloring effort.

Tried to get the Ditko vibe when I did this quick drawing this morning while drinking coffee/feeding the baby/ etc. Fun to do!

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Evelyn Again

Spent a week (mostly) away from the computer. It's nice to take a break but I feel like I haven't done much... and I haven't! So, here's a 20 minute drawing to try to get back in the swing of things.

Open in new window for the actual size.

Grabbed a photo of the lovely Miss Evelyn B. and -- using the biggest, most jittery and uncontrollable photoshop brush I could find -- I put on my Mary Cassatt hat (or should I say bonnet?) and hacked this out.

Eh, it's alright. Fun to do, no matter how it looks.

The End.