Growing up, I enjoyed stories with Thor, but he was never my favorite.  I think the King James-style dialogue made it kind of hard to relate to him.  Well, a couple of months ago I picked up the Thor relaunch by J. Michael Straczynski and Olivier Coipel, and it blew me away.  Straczynski does such a great job of incorporating the mythological characters into modern day Earth in fun and unique way (Asgard in Oklahoma?).  And Coipel’s art… wow.  The guy’s characters really feel solid and powerful, without being over-the-top.  He’s just one the most impressive artists I’ve seen in years and has inspired me to get better.

My sketch of Thor has him in the new outfit from this series.  It was fun to work with the highlights of the lightning in white sharpie.

One of the biggest things we’re changing at conventions this year is how we do sketches.  For the first time, we are charging for them, but we’re also doing them a bit differently.  We now do fully inked sketches on colored paper and then add some highlights with a white poster paint Sharpie.  Above you can see some examples that Matt and I did before the con, and below some actual sketches that customers requested.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy the new format!

Hopefully we can do one for you someday!  (If you’re interested in commissioning a sketch, email me for details.)

Easily one of my favorite animated films from the last few years, Kung Fu Panda is full of so much fun energy and great character design.  Master Oogway here would have to be my favorite from that film.  I really enjoyed how they portrayed him as both frail and strong at the same time.

Apparently, there is a sequel on its way to theaters in 2011 (Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom) and a new series on Nickelodeon later this year… so thankfully we’re in for much more kung-fu goodness!

I’m excited to announce that our new collection of sketches, Sketchings #3, is now available! While the first two issues each focused on a single artist’s work, what’s great about this issue is that the emphasis is on collaborations between Matt, Dusty, and I.  There are several “creature jams” (including the cover) where different artists took turns drawing different parts of one character and then one artist inked the whole thing.  There are three jam comics (improvisational stories), including “Goblins Hate Fairies” and “Sushi Bar” which you’ve already seen on the Random Ink site.  And there are many pieces that feature one artist inking the work of another.  In addition, we threw some other fun stuff in there, like the time we drew each other as zombies.

You can preview and order a copy right now at our IndyPlanet store or pick one up from us at HurleyCon (March 6) or Planet Comicon (March 27 & 28)!

I finally finished a commission for another one of our Evil Ain’t Easy contest winners.  Daniel Pevar requested a portrait of one his favorite writers, Anna Akhmatova.  It’s was fun to do a realistic portrait… been a while.

Still cranking away at Random Ink #3… should have much more to show you very soon!

A couple of new sketches for ya… a random ancient kung fu master and yet another hobo from John Hodgman’s list of 700 hobo names.

Here are some of the free commissions I created for winners of the various contests I ran while Evil Ain’t Easy was on Zuda last month. First up is the Mystic Yak for Andrew Wales. Andrew was the first winner of the Facebook contest, and he requested I draw one of the characters from his Eclectic Comics…

Next is my version of Josh Alves’ Araknid Kid, which was won on the Twitter contest:

Another Twitter winner was Kevin J., who requested a portrait of himself:

Two more contest winners, both from the DeviantArt contest. First up is a commission I did for Jonathan Sanders of his character, the Crusterminator (which he created as a kid):

Next is one for Josh Alves of his villain, Ippy Cac:

Thanks for participating, guys!

Part two of that zombie series… I’m really happy with how the inking turned out on this one.  He looks somehow content as a zombie.

One of my students and I are having a drawing challenge.  He printed off reference photos of three actors and we’re both going to draw each of them as zombies.  First up is Jon Heder as the immortal Napoleon Dynamite.  Stay tuned for a couple more…

Randy and I had fun drawing each other as classic monsters at the last Joplin Sketch Night.  Check it out.