Well I finally decided to sit down and start inking Rainmagic. It was my first time inking a comic page with a brush, so I was a little nervous. I think it turned out okay. A couple of spots that were sketchy, but for the most part things went well. You can watch the full video below.

Stuff mentioned in the show:

Claire Wendling’s awesome art.

The Pentel Color Brush.

Tonight I started on a project for my wife and her two sisters. They run a blog called wabisabi mama that’s all about being a mothers and celebrating their Japanese heritage. They’re redesigning the blog and they asked me to illustrate a couple of Kokeshi doll versions of themselves to go in the new header.

I started with these quick sketches.

Here’s the full video:

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

And here’s the still-in-process artwork. They asked me to put them into Kimonos instead of temporary clothing. I’ve still got to add one kokeshi and their kokeshi children.

You can download the PSD for you perusal here.

So I’ve been getting periodic emails asking what’s the best way to know when I release a new comic or print or something. I usually recommend that they follow me on twitter, but I’ve been trying to come up with a more effective way to do this that’s less work for those of you that are interested.

That’s why today I’m launching the Whistling Cloud Newsletter. It’ll be an email newsletter that I’ll send out periodically (monthly, at most) with updates on my latest work, my convention schedule, and special discounts in the store.

To start things off right, I’m giving away my set of custom Photoshop brushes to everyone that signs up for the newsletter. You can see me use many of these brushes here and here. I’ll also be doing a special demo of these brushes tonight on my Weekly Artcast.

In addition to the custom brush set, 5 random subscribers will get the print of their choice from the store.

So sign up for the newsletter in the sidebar, get the brushes and come check out how to use them at the Artcast. I’m excited to put the brushes out there and see how you like them.

Be sure to tell me what you think.

Here’s the latest Artcast. Using a modification on a coloring technique I learned over at Ben Caldwell’s forum. It’s the same technique I used to do all of these illustrations:

It seems to be the technique that I always use for pinups. Go figure. Anyway here was the end result of tonight’s artcast:

You can see the full process video below:

Stuff mentioned in the video:

Don Seegmiller

Boo hoo. I forgot to record last Monday’s Artcast. Fortunately, I can still show you what I did. This is a continuation of the painting I started here.

Adding more texture and tone to the face. Working out the eyes.

Adding in a background. The wallpaper pattern is a custom brush I built then varied its alignment and duplicated it across the background.

Adding noise and texture to the background. The texture is a hi-res custom brush.

Adding a flame to the background and some color variation on the wall. Also painting in some reflected light on the suit

The finishing touch.

Voila! Apologies for not recording this. I’m going to be doing a whole different approach to coloring at the Artcast Network screening room, tomorrow night at 9 pm EST. Hopefully that’ll make up for it.

See you there!

Here are a couple of quick cockpit and chair designs I did for Nerf N-Strike Elite. Baby seats anyone?

Just finished my first regularly scheduled artcast. You can see the whole thing here: (its about an hour long)

If you don’t have an hour you can just see what I did below. I was working on some character designs for a short story I’m working on about a Russian peasant girl that outsmarts the devil.

If you have any comments or suggestions on future shows, please let me know.