jebriodo's Journal

12:31am: interests collage
( My Interests Collage! )




I have the feeling I am not a prolific journalist...

Anyway, currently playing around with Deviantart- still backgrounding for Chaykin- doing a bit of commissioned artwork on the side.

4:06pm: I am a Carton of Hate! I am a Wedge of Spite!
So I have been working on a commissioned painting for a client in Europe for a month or two.

I finally got it finished, got it framed and got it packaged- all of these things taking more time and effort than I thought they would.

I managed to get paid, and not have the checks bounce (though they did at first, and that was fun too).

And finally (I thought to myself) I got the package to the shipper and on its way to Rotterdam. Hooray, I thought, I never have to see the fucking thing again! Only the shipper sent it to Rotterdam, Great Britain. Which of course is afflicted with the shameful curse of not actually existing.

This joyous state of affairs came about due to inattention on my and the shipping clerk's part. Though for mental health reasons I prefer to think it was all his fault.

So now I am waiting to see if I have to pay to get it back, or if I can get the shipper to send it back, so I can resend it to the proper country. Because of course, it is only documented for export to Rotterdam, GB.

So either I will have to pay double the shipping cost, or triple if things really don't go my way.

So I am officially in the dirt. Curse my high falutin' previous incarnations! What were they up to that I get stuck with this crap! Etc!



In non painting related news, the Luna Moth story is in the next issue of Escapist, which should be coming out in January. It will have a Brian Bolland cover of Luna Moth... Eek! Feeling kind of out of my depth having my stuff in there with all these Grand High Luminaries of comicbookery.

9:43pm: Further Luna Moth news
I have gotten the preliminary colors for the Luna Moth story I drew. I am very excited- it looks much more like a comic book now- I haven't had any of my stuff colored before so it was an interesting experience.

I was happy with them for the most part, but had some suggestions- which I sent off to Dark Horse in an attempt to see how much clout I have with them in. Fingers crossed- there were a few spots that really needed fixing.

Also, I now have an actual issue # that the story will appear in. Amazing adventures of the Escapist #9, which I think is scheduled for next spring- march I think.

9:54am: Another year, Another wildfire
There was a wildfire a couple of hills over, that I think is contained now. Tuesday morning I was computing away and a gust of wind blew open the front door. I'd just read about a dutch word -uitwaaien
- meaning walking in the wind for fun, so I figured it was a good day for a walk. It was a hot wind, and I remember thinking it was fire weather, since the hills are all tinder dry.

Anyway, I was all paranoid and figuring out what to take if we had to evacuate, and B. just told me I was being silly. It's funny, as usually I am the one doing the calming.

7:44am: Comicon
My 4 days at the San Diego Comicon:

I took the train down from Moorpark, and almost missed getting aboard while smooching Belem goodbye.

I treated the con like a job fair this year, and carted my portfolio around to a lot of reviewers.

Through my connections with Howard, I got a look-see by Mark Chiarello, DC's editorial art director. He liked various panels of the Luna Moth story. Also through Howard, I had a sit down review with Shelly Bond, editor at Vertigo. She noted that I have shown a lot of improvement (a Jump forward) in my comics skills in the last year, which is apparently uncommon in artists outside of their 20s. She asked me if I was interested in inking, so I should try inking someone else's pencils.

At the portfolio review row, where tensions ran high amongst the waiting art geeks, I had reviews from:

Politi Designs- who plan to produce an innovative web comic, and were looking for a backgrounder with photoshop skillz. I had some involved background work (too cluttered in the opinion of some reviewers), but no examples of photoshop.

Dark Horse Comics- with editor Chris Warner, I believe. He hadn't seen the pages I did for Dark Horse apparently. He thought I could use some more variation of line for depth, and informed me that Dark Horse is leaning towards just printing tight pencil artwork these days.

Wizards of the Coast- with editor Stacy Longstreet, who still had a smile after 3 hours of portfolio reviews. She gave me her email and told me to send along iconic pinups of fantasy characters and situations. So that is doable.

I had a mix up with scheduling- Oni Press rescheduled their reviews (which happened at their booth in the main convention hall) to the same time as my 3 minute window to interview with Disney International, so I had to run all over and both of them were late.


Oni Press- with Editor in Chief James Jones. I had done the 5 page horror story for them. I was disappointed with this review because I had higher hopes, and had seen the examples before mine which were not too good, so the review seemed overly negative to me. He didn't like the wonkiness of faces and anatomy, and didn't care for the use of heavy blacks.

Disney International- I seem to have lost the reviewer's card, but he liked the softness of my character drawing, and the simplicity of the faces. He told me to get in touch if I had any kid-suitable stories.

DC Comics- they have a double blind reviewing system- you throw your samples in the hopper, they look at them and call back the people they are interested in, of whom I was not one.

So that took up most of my time Thursday and Friday.

Thursday night I went to a sci fi themed burlesque show. Princess Leia, The Metropolis robot, Bride of Frankenstein, Green Orion Slave Girl, and Special guest stripper Kitten Deville all shaking their tits in a tiny underground bar with bad comedians and overly loud music. It sounds a lot funner than it was- poor lighting, very hot, and we were standing next to the speakers.

Belem showed up on Saturday, so we walked the con floor, soaking up the mayhem and nerdy goodness. Actual conversation overheard between a pair of roving Imperial Stormtroopers: "We're going to find those droids..." We didn't get a good photo of Caveman Robot. We bought some porn at Bud Plant's booth. At dinner in the Gaslamp district we were seated next to a boisterous table of comics professionals, mostly British, but including Josh Middleton. I saw musclewoman erotica publisher Denise Masino at the free swag tables. Belem and I were disappointed by the abscence of Ted Naifeh from the Oni panel. We stayed late on Saturday to see the Masquerade, which was less good than expected, and cold, due to super-powered air conditioning. Sunday we hid out from the con and watched bootleg Thundarr dvds at my buddy's house. Then a 5 hour drive home. There has to a better con-going method. I'm still exhausted. Or maybe it's just too hot.

11:44am: Apparently my site is being discussed on hungarian message-boards. But the on-line translators that service hungarian are spotty at best, and overloaded at worst. What are they saying out there? Usual discussion of my paintings on-line seems to be of two varieties:

'Oh my god what is wrong with humanity?! Look at this sick art I found!'

or

'It is good to see somebody painting sexy fat gals.'

I think the Hungarians are saying the latter.

5:48pm: Update by demand
I have been recently completed drawing a story for Dark Horse comics, dealing with Luna Moth. Pages are up here.

Other than that I have been drawing sample stories to show to Oni Press when I am at the Comic Con in July.

Also a few new paintings are up at my website:

Small Tiger Girl

Sphinx Woman

Princess of Mars

Cyborg Portrait

Succulent Man

Woman vs Robot

Boadicea

ThunderGirl

11:12am: Preliminary Art
I have put up the first ten pages of a comic I am drawing, just to keep myself busy. (The wondrous inspiring power of not having a job!)

They are viewable here.

These are preliminary inks- I still need to go in and place more blacks, shading and copious amounts of white out.

3:11pm: Good news
I learned this week that I will be drawing a story for The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist! It will be written by Chaykin, as soon as he finds time amongst his other projects, and will feature Luna Moth.

Here is the art work which garnered me this job.

I can't ell you how excited this makes me. I may seem calm, but I am a storm of butterflies inside, I assure you.

11:33am: Ooh, internet piracy!
I just had my art site get piratified. Instead of the normal guestbook showing up- which was a rather lame and faceless list of messages- a big communist flag blowing in the wind, with some guy's official looking portrait on it, and the news "ADMIN OWNZ YOUR SYSTEM, NO WAR" showed up. Then it redirected to a site in some eastern european language.

I would feel violated, bit it is just so random... and it was such a cool, old school looking commie thing!

8:22am: Laid Off
Well crap! My position at the hospital where I work(ed) has just been eliminated.

So, no hard feelings, Jed did nothing wrong, it was his job that wasn't up to snuff. I am of mixed feelings, since I had a monster commute to get there and it was only part time. But I had been working there for 5 years, so getting a call from my boss first thing Monday morning after an hour and a half commute to come to her office, where I learned I wasn't working there anymore, was a definite floor-dropping out from under experience.

I still have my other part-time job drawing for Mr. Chaykin, fortunately, and I think I just sold more paintings (ironically, some of them are up at my work in an employee art show, and will remain up for a week or two after I am laid off.)

8:32am: Red Letter Week
I've had a good couple of days since my paintings went up in the show. I sold a bunch of them (1 2 3 4 and one I don't have a photo of) due mostly to their being really cheaply priced, and to the season I think. Also, I have gotten 2 commissions to paint portraits, so I should be off painting and not typing this. But it is a good month!

6:27am: Art Show
I'll have some paintings up in the holiday show at the hospital I work at for the next month or so- mostly small and hopefully salable paintings of heads and faces. If you are in Santa Barbara, stop by:

Harris and Fredda Meisel Gallery of Art

Rehabilitation Institute at Santa Barbara

2415 De La Vina St, Santa Barbara



Also- I just turned 35 yesterday. I don't Feel that old, but the numbers, they never lie. B and I went to look at the sculpture garden at UCLA- they've got a Gaston LaChaise sculpture there that I wanted to see. I really wnated to see this one in the Met at New York, when B and I were on our trip, but we arrived too late in the season, and their roof sculpture garden was closed. Also at UCLA we saw some interesting Haitian Art, showing the Loa (I think they are called) immigrating to Haiti and then to Miami. They have an interesting and colorful pantheon, so when painted in a group they sort of resemble a super hero team.

9:31am: Ken Bruzenak
So, I've been drawing backgrounds for Mr. Chaykin for a while now, and we just did an American Flagg short story for the reprint that's coming out.

It was looking okay, drawing-wise, and coloring-wise after we got done with it. But the other day, I saw the final version, with lettering by Ken Bruzenak, and I never thought I'd say this, but Man! that guy can really letter!

Most of the lettering I've been seeing on Chaykin's stuff just looks like decals stuck on top, but this lettering by Bruzenak looks really good, helps the image graphically, and just looks like it was lot of fun to do.

12:19pm: Big Money, Big Prizes
I sold a painting this weekend to a random Edgar Rice Burroughs fan- Yay! I remain a barely functioning professional artist! Take that, low self esteem!

1:10pm: Comic Con
Well, the Con was fun and it was overwhelming.

Imagine taking all your geeky friends and running off thousands of slightly variant copies of them, them circulating them for days through a giant, poorly ventilated hamster maze of comics booths. It was hot and humid and there was nowhere to sit down.

On the plus side, I got to shake hands with a number of people whose art I like (Walt Simonson being foremost), I showed my comics to a few people and got mostly positive feedback, there were all sorts of cool, cute, and funny costumes being worn.

I probably spent too much money on comics and sketchbooks- which I haven't had time to sit down and look through yet.

12:46pm: Comics update
Well, I finally got the first dozen pages of my friend's script drawn and inked. They are viewable here.

This is good, as I have some new stuff to drag along to the comicon now.

11:52pm: Comics in progress
I am almost done with the first 12 pages of a story written by a friend of mine. The pencils and script are up here.

It's my first comic in a year, and hopefully worth reading. I should have completed inks and lettering in a few days.

Otherwise, it is more backgrounds for Mr. Chaykin. What's strange is, I think I do better backgrounds for him than I do for my stuff.

12:21pm: Quiz

Non curo. Si metrum non habet, non est poema.
"I don't care. If it doesn't rhyme, it isn't
a poem."
You are a type A personality. You like bright
things, you don't call in sick to work, and you
have devastating opinions about art.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

That's me- Type A.
In other news, President Reagan remained dead today. I am wondering how much traffic there will be due to the motorcade.
Also, at some point this month, Challengers of The Unknown should be coming out- check the backgrounds- that will be my drawing there, behind all the Chaykinosity, word balloons and sound effects.

10:41am: Pondering Politics, etc.
I was just thinking-

Here in California, we are having power outages, wildfires, and soaring gas prices.

Isn't it time we recalled the governor again? I mean, that is the solution for these things, right?

10:36am: Art Website
I have updated my website- it is now at Jedsart.com, and has a lot more space, which I have promptly filled with paintings.

Check it out- let me know how it looks.

6:40pm: Tintagel
For some reason the castle Tintagel has been coming to my attention recently. It has showed up in two books on tape I've listened to lately. First in 'Mists of Avalon', then mentioned in 'Searching for Stones' as an inherently holy place- due to terrain, quality of light, and scarcity of people. Then a guy looking at a painting of mine in progress said it reminded him of Tintagel, being of a restless seascape with rocky cliffs, topped off with big storm clouds.
I have never to my knowledge seen or read of Tintagel before. Have any of you-all been there? I am curious about it now.

3:39pm: First post
Mostly I started this journal to get posting access to other journals. I am not a profound thinker or journalista.

Anyway, here are the minutiae of my life at present by way of introduction:
I am working at home, drawing backgrounds for Howard's comic- this installment is a safecracking short story- so lots of vaults and technical looking stuff.
I am listening to a book on tape- 'In Seach of Stones' by Scott Peck.
I am considering putting art in the San Diego Comiccon... I'll have to look and see if any is appropriate.
I am in the very beginning stages of laying out pages for a comic written by a friend of mine. Still getting the characters to look consistent when I draw them.
Belem won't be home til late, so I will have to remember to eat dinner at some point.
And it's really hot.

I hope you have enjoyed this slice of life, now go and look at my art sites- I will update them soon.

Jed