Thor Thursdays

The Apple Pie

2012-01-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

6x13.5" - 7 2011
With special thanks to Claire Nemes & Matt Deans

This illustration is a tribute to a Mœbius short story titled "The Apple Pie". I did this especially for the amazing Tumblr, Quenched Consciousness. They have been hosting a series of artist submissions that started after Paul Pope did a study of this particular panel.

Here is the original story from a 1976 issue of the French feminist comics magazine, Ah! Nana, published by Metal Hurlant. This story was done in collaboration with one of the editors, Claudine Conin, who also happened to be Mœbius' wife at the time.

Release the Death Animal!!!

2011-10-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

8 x 8" 2011

A while back one of my buddies asked me if I could design a shirt for a local biker crew. I accepted the job in exchange for some road protection. The skeletal motorhead is taken from a forthcoming illustration that I will post soon. Also, I put up a storefront of leftover shirts and patches for all you Death Animals out there!

Buy or Die!!

3.5 x 3.5" 2011

**** part III: Final Preview

2011-06-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

I recently finished inking the illustrations that I've been previewing as of late. Unfortunately I still can't show them off yet, but I can say that I'm quite happy with how they came out. The printers that I'm working with on this project want to wait until everything is completely finished to make any official announcement. But here is what I can tell you:

The pieces I've just finished are part of a series that includes seven other artists. Each artist will contribute one main illustration with a corresponding companion piece. The main illustration will be screen printed at 25 x 19 inches, while the companion piece will be printed at 8.5 x 11.5 inches.

I wish I could give more details but I don't want to ruin the surprise. Everyone involved in this project has pulled out all the stops to make it an incredible experience, and I think it will be worth the wait.

And as promised the final preview....

**** part II

2011-02-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

More pencil previews. This is from a different piece that is part of the same project that I posted about in December. I am currently in the process of inking both illustrations, wish me luck!

Summon The Frost Queen

2011-01-24T12:05:00.000-08:00

4x10" 1 2011

Pencils - - Inks

Inspired by the beauty of Winter and all that lurks within.

****

2010-12-05T12:15:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick look at some pencils for an upcoming project I'm currently working on. I'm not sure when I can show the full image, but I will as soon as I can.

Raven Crest

2010-11-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

6x6" 8 2010

I did this piece as a personal crest for someone great. Though the symbolism in the shield directly relates to them, I tried to leave it with the potential of being passed down as a family crest if they so chose. I inked the majority of this while listening to a reading of "The Haunter Of The Dark" from H.P. Podcraft.

Lyubov & Katya

2010-07-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

5x7" 72010

This is the forth illustration in my series of Nesting Dolls. Which is a companion piece to the one I did last November titled Sofya. And when put together they create a diptych. You can find the first in the series here.

This piece is somewhat interesting because it shows my transition from using Micron Pigma pens to using Rapidograph Technical pens. The piece on the right was done entirely with Microns while the one on the left was done with Rapidographs. By far my favorite part of creating art is the inking process. I love making things as crisp and clear as possible. But often when inking with Microns I found myself not able to produce the smallest line width that the drawing would call for. This problem came to a head when I was inking the gills of the fungus on Sofya. After not being satisfied with how those lines came out I decided to start using Rapidographs, since I heard that they could create a much finer and consistent line.

Here is a photo to show the scale of the smallest Rapidograph, which is .07mm smaller than the 005 Micron. If you look really closely at the tip you can see an almost microscopic point coming from the end of the pen. After inking with these and then switching to a Micron it feels like picking up a crayon. I'm extremely happy with how precise they are and the way they flow on the paper. I definitely will be using these for foreseeable future.

Hats .0410

2010-04-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand-

3.5x5"

SOL-740

2010-03-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you know that contrary to what you may have heard, I am definitely not dicking around. I've been busy with a bunch of different projects which I'm very excited about. So there is a stockpile of finished stuff that I can't show yet, but I promise it will be worth the wait!

Sofya

2009-11-12T15:34:00.000-08:00

5x7" 112009

*Detail*

Thank you to everyone who came to GallowLily's on first friday this month in Richmond for the opening of Goulash. It was a pleasure meeting so many new people and to catch up with good friends. At the last minute I decided to hang the originals from Solstice series, so see them while you can. The show will run through the 27th.

A small study I did last May which did not make it in the show.

Goulash Nov.6th-27th

2009-10-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have a few pieces on display in the up coming Team Eight show, Goulash. The opening is the first friday of November and will be up the rest of the month. So if your in the RVA area come over and check it out.

Lughnasa

2009-09-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

Just in time for fall, the last poster of the Solstice series. Colors are in progress for all four posters, and I'll let everyone know once I start printing at Team eight press.

Rocky Albatross

2009-09-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

Here is something you should put on the top of your "to read" pile, Rocky Albatross, by SugarBoukas' own Steven Sugar! This guy shows no sign of slowing down his stelar work, so be sure to look out for issue two. There are a few printed copies of issue one floating around but they won't last long. If you are interested give me or Steven a shout. I'll have a few at this years SPX.

Singles

2009-08-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

This winter I was lucky to be asked to join Rebecca's make-shift animation team for her most recent project. This was the first time I had ever been throughly involved in animating, and it was incredible to see first hand how much work and vision it takes to create cartoons. This film took her a little over a year to complete and was completely worth the wait.

Singles is the first of three short films all taking place in the same apartment complex.

I also strongly recommend watching Metal Boot, which has just about everything that I miss in cartoons, by Paul Villeco.

Born Boukas

2009-07-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

Scraped from the overflowing talent of Richmond's gutters comes Born Ugly. A much needed skate mag, filled with vulgar displays of grody skull-splitting fun. Artistically driven by James "Barf" Callahan and Mike Broth, so you know its gonna be good.

Callahan has been a true inspiration for me since I'd first seen his work. So when I was asked if I'd like to contribute to the second issue of Born Ugly I quickly jumped on the opportunity.

You can find this piece, in full color, in the Two Minutes Hate section of issue two.

Also if you didn't get a chance to pick up either my or Becca's Goon back-up story, they were both reprinted together in the latest Goon trade (#8) which recently hit shelves. Go pick it up!!

Samhain

2009-06-22T16:42:00.001-07:00

The fourth poster of the Solstice Series.

I have started coloring the pervious posters and the third (and final) poster in the series should be done in a few months. Even so, you can expect some good updates before then.

Beltane

2009-04-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

The second of my solstice serigraph series for Team 8 Press.

Imbolc

2009-04-10T19:51:00.000-07:00

Soon after becoming reacquainted with my favorite group of illustrators and cartoonists, Team8 press, at New York comic con last year I was invited to do a poster for them. At the time I was dying to get this particular illustration on to paper, and after getting the chance to work with Team8 I decided to develop this into a series.

This is the first of four illustrations that are based on the solstices; beginning at Spring. All four posters will be screen printed by hand in the Team8 studio. Each poster will be printed to original size (17x26") and colored by the fabulous Rebecca Sugar.

The Perennial Quest

2009-04-09T19:08:00.000-07:00

I finally decided to put a close to my current doodle book due to fear of it completely falling apart. This particular one lasted me from May 07 to March 09. Here are some of the last pages along with some hats and things.

Also!

Poplar Spring Farm

2009-01-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

Last Spring Claire and I attended the Maryland sheep and wool festival.

We had a really fun time meeting so many farmers, crafts people, and especially animals. While there I discovered a creature I had never heard of, let alone seen.

These four horned sheep are known as Jacobs and hail from England. I was immediately in awe the moment I saw them. So much so that I decided that I needed to figure out a way to obtain a skull of one of these animals. After much deliberation I approached one of the main Jacob breeders to see if this could at all be possible. Luckily I had asked Roy Deppa who was very obliging and interested in helping my artistic pursuit. We later arranged a trade of an illustration of his farm (posted above) for a Jacob skull. Even more to Roy's credit he had me over several times so that I could study and learn about the sheep. If you ever find yourself in Maryland or in need of a new sheep I suggest you visit Poplar Spring.

My hand-style determines my death-style

2008-12-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

Letters and hand lettering have always greatly interested me. I love the way words can be made to feel more organic and tangible when drawn. Sometimes they even are given a new meaning through their form or motion. Which can greatly aid ones vision or just give impact to a simple idea or common surrounding.

Since the Spring I decided to make a concerted effort to improve my lettering

With color assists from my awesome girl Claire!

The majority of my letter exploration happens in my sketch book and then makes its way on to a hat.

Doodle Dump

2008-12-01T21:29:00.000-08:00

Since I normally share pages from my sketch book at the end of my posts I thought I would catch up by making one big sketch post. Here is what has been going on-

HM Jacket

2008-11-30T19:08:00.000-08:00

Netherlands 08

2008-11-23T11:09:00.000-08:00

In the first week of September this year I flew to the Netherlands to meet up with my family for my grandmothers (Oma) funeral. The last time I had seen them was about four years earlier so I was quite happy to make the trip. I arrived at Schiphol and then took the train to my uncles in Apeldoorn. The train ride was great and the scenery was made up of horses, cow, and really good graffiti.

One of my favorite things about going back to the Netherlands is the meals. This is what breakfast and lunch normally looks like.

After crashing at my uncles I went to get groceries with my cousin Maarten. He wanted to know what kind of beer I might want, I said, "anything with a gnome on it".

We then set out with my mom, uncle, Maarten, and his brother Lennaert to clear out Oma's apartment. Luckily my aunts and uncles had been organizing her things all week so we were able to move out a lot of the big things all at once.

The next day we had the funeral. We started at the funeral home then the Church, and Cemetery. We ended our day at a super fancy country restaurant.

Maarten, Cas, Amber, Hjalmar

Desert was amazing. Hungarian cake encrusted with marzipan.

The first free day I had I spent re exploring Apeldoorn.

This is a normal two lane street in the Netherlands, room enough for both bikes and cars.

I recognized a few spots in town since I was there last. I went in to an AH (the company which owns Giant) for some hard to find Dutch food.

The first and absolute favorite being Hagel Slag!

Since most meals are sandwich based, Hagel Slag is a fun treat to put on sandwiches aside from your normal spreads. Its pretty much a variety of chocolate sprinkles made for bread, and is truly amazing.

To further illustrate the importance of sandwich making and cows, I give you the wall of cheese.

On the way home that day there happened to be a beer fest. They were definitely making the royal palace out of empty crates.

On monday I had plans to help my uncle and namesake move an extremely large armoire from Oma's apartment to his place in Amsterdam. The armoire had been through the war and had the bullet holes to prove it. It also weighed a ton a it took four dudes to lift it five flights to my uncles flat.

The view from his balcony

I was greeted with a meal of traditional Dutch pancakes

This is how real pancakes look

Frans' neighbor is a huge comic fan. So much so that his marriage is more or less based on a mutual love for a certain comic. He shared his collection with me and we had some pretty good discussions. With a full skeleton its not hard to understand why we got aong.

The weather was beautiful for the last days of my trip

I spent the rest of my time hunting comics with a fair amount of success. I went to a few different stores and ended up spending a whole day in this one.

http://lambiek.net/home.htm

The owner was extremely informed nice. He showed me a few rare Moebius portfolios and, some really good books. The other half of their store was set up as gallery space. Which housed some great pieces.

The best part of the room was the random stacks of comics. I was looking through some piles when I came across the complete run of the original French Heavy Metal magazine. Which I took my time with.

After that I got ready for my flight with a hefty suitcase full of comics. Here is some of what I came back with.

Time may Frans Me, but I can't Frans Time

2008-11-22T14:24:00.000-08:00

To any one who ever checked in on this blog I am extremely sorry for the almost six month hiatus. Two weeks after the Crypt-O-Vision post my dad had a heart attack and died. This set in motion a Summer and Fall of large, unfortunately time consuming, events which took some priority over me getting behind my desk or computer.

This is by far the most awesome picture of my dad-

After dealing with some dead people affairs the tentative plan was to continue the drastic changes and move to Arizona with my current betty. Plans were made, and though having a vast supply of white people and fire arms, the Grand Canyon state could not sway me to move there. Moving was still eminent due to the fact that I was renting from a house who's landlord had past away, and banks were closing in. Two days before moving to a new place get a call from my Mom, who was in Holland at the time, saying that her mother has past away and the family needs me to be there. So in a whirlwind of cardboard and packing tape me and my girl uproot beating the termination of utilities. A day after the move I pack a suitcase from scattered boxes and am on a plane. The trip went well and I arrived home the night before my birthday. It then took me quite some time to reorganize my studio in its new spacious environment.

Where it thrives today-

The old command center-

Now after a few weeks of dying computer issues all major tedious problems seem to be subdued. I give my word to the Thunder God that this place will be more active and that there will be much more major works from me.

Crypt-o-Vision

2008-06-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

Colors by Rebecca Sugar

Shirt design for UK Thrash band Lifeless.

PICK ONE UP!

Plus, more hats and sketches-

SkullSpliter

2008-04-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well I feel like I've got a ton of things in the works but nothing has found its way to completion just yet.

So heres whats been on the table-

And off the table-

Some over due doodle pages-

NYCC 08

2008-04-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

So it was decided that even though there hasn't been a lot of new sequentials, SugarBoukas comics still needed to represent at New York con this year. Unfrotunatly we couldn't be there in full froce, due to poor planing of the con falling on passover, but a great time was still had by all.

I headed out Friday afternoon with my bro from the Library of Congress and his awesome wife. Traffic getting out was horrible due to the religious trifecta of Pope, Passover, and othadox Easter and it took us about two hours just to get past Baltimore. Once underway the road was fine and was complete with classic kitch america roadstops.

Who says Veritists can't be big boys?

The Con itself was the largest one I have ever been to, lots of media, that and it being in the big city made me pretty apprehensive towards the whole ordeal. Even getting in was crazy. The wait was so great that Stan the man came out to keep morale up. Once in there were lots of distractions.

I seriously want this guys hat.

Being the figure collector that I am I can't say that the distractions were unwelcome.

This dude did a figure-mod of himself and has a site totally dedicated to pictures of who his little guy has hung out with.

He was behind the four Horsemen booth, who make awesome figs such as-

I was so stoked to get to meet Bertie. Fully articulated and awesome accessories. He is an amazing robot and an incredible figure, as well he should be for 300 big ones.

And yea, the chambers totally spin.

As for the actual reason to go to a con, artists alley was pretty weak. Most of the names you would want to see weren't at their booths and were scheduled for one hour signings or had ticketed events. I mean damn all I wanted was to tell Keith Giffen how much I love Lobo!

All of this was made up for due to the fact that my boys from Richmond, Team 8 showed up. They came up with awesome shirt designs and the best hand done prints you'll find. I hadn't seen them for a good while, and getting to catch up with them was definitely the highlight of the con for me.

Gnarly new shirt from the team

And these are just a few rad designs that Team 8 had to offer in the past. So you know it serious buisness when I say that they're back at it.

They also let me know what my bro Callahan has been up to, rad things as always. It just isn't a good convention if I don't come back with big Barf art. Can't wait for that book to come out.
Check out this new piece he did. Its pretty much jaw-dropping:

The best and biggest news though, was getting to say hey to DarkHorse. I got to meet one of my editors on the Goon short that I did for them in the fall. Which was really cool because it made that experiance actually start to feel real for me. Amazingly, somehow, I was able to show my work to Mike Richardson. He was extremely nice and very supportive. So as long as I keep up the quality and stay on point I might have a home at DarkHorse.

On that note I hit the road with my buddy and his wife for the journey back home. But not before invading Princeton for the afternoon.

Great pre-colonial dive with a huge original Rockwell behind the bar.

Show me a flying buttress and I'm pretty much in love. And with that we joined the rest of our road-dogs and made our way home.

Theres nothing greater than the first bowel of cereal back home while surveying your plunders.

Traditions and Space

2008-02-24T15:55:00.000-08:00

This winter I did a small series of "Traditions" illustrations. The first in the series was the Kabouter in the mushroon feild, which I put up a few posts ago. Here are the last two-

I'm still starting up on my new comic that I had mentioned. I'm a few pages in, here is page one-

Some recent figure drawings and sketches-

Pumpkin-Man, The Goon, and more.

2008-02-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

At long last Pumpkin-Man has found his way on-line! Its an odd read but I hope you can enjoy it.

Most recently SugarBoukas Comics was able to contribute to the launch of the year of the Goon over at Myspace DarkHorse persents. I did the pencils, inks, and some story of Bogged Down At Bush Street, while Rebecca did the wonderful colors and story.

And even an odd interview at CBR.

Here are few Inks to Colors of a few choice pages and panels.

Right now I'm a few pages in on my new comic. The premise is that a cosmic space crab comes to Earth and inhabits an infant and grows in him like some hermit crab. Basically Kaiju meets Lovecraft. I'll try and post some in progress stuff as I go.
Here are a few of my most recent sketch pages.

Hats

2008-02-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Some time early 07 late 06 I decided it would be a good idea to start piecing up hats. Since then I have growen a little libary of them. Here are a few done for a SPX and some from my personal collection.

Recently I have started to work on jackets.

If any of you out there are interested in having your own funky flip-up hat feel free to contact me, I love to make these things!

SPX 07

2008-02-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

So here is the very belated SugarBoukas Comics Small Press Expo report. We had a great time this past year and much thanks to everyone who stoped by to vist our booth. Here are the few pictures I have from Oct 07 in relation to the expo.

Becca and I found some great things this year.

My score:

By far the best figs from the con

A long time grail fig of mine came in a trade from a most excellent patron of the expo.

But the best score came from my bro James "Barf" Callahan. Every time I see this pice it gets me pumped to draw!

And there are always excellent buttons to be had at SPX, and this year was no exception!

Aside from comics from SugarBoukas this year was the debut of Pug Davis shirts!

It was a extremely limted run so limt your expectations. If you ask me or Becca we may be able to scrounge up a few leftover from the con.

Becca and I will be at the NYC con this year and as always Batcon and SPX.

Christmas and Kabouters

2007-12-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

Teaser panel of "Bogged Down On Bush Street"

Feetal's Gizz!

2007-10-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

Sleazoid Scum!

2007-10-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

Final Shirt design for VA skate shop

And Some doodles-

Be Shitty in Boner City

2007-10-08T22:00:00.001-07:00

Joe Rosas Where Are You??

2007-09-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

SBC design for SPX. The next week or so will be spent printing up me and Becca's designs at my buddy's place. While inadvertently skating his mini ramp, all the while cranking out illos..riiight!