Serpentine Spread!

Jan 05, 2024

Hi everyone! Happy new year! This week was a little busy for me, between New Years and other things, but I still got some good drawing time in :). Lately I’ve been doing this funny thing where the whole week I feel like I haven’t drawn anything, and then I sit down to write this and say, “Hey, that’s a lot of stuff!” So enjoy some stuff :). The above is my weekly bigger piece. I’ve done some smaller Sci Fi Amalgamation illustrations in my sketchbook, and I wanted to try and bring one to a bigger scale. I’m also still getting to know my Super Cheapo Water Makers. This one isn’t quite done, but I like how the colors so far sing for themselves.

A broader project for me this week was to do more two-page spreads. I love seeing the drawing leap across the gap, and my smaller sketchbooks are a great size for expansive yet compact design. Here’s what I did!

In the interest of being super Real And Raw, I wanted to include some unfinished pages this week. Above left: some more ideas for Squid Dudes. I will probably keep noodling on this until I’m happy with the design. This time around, I included more elements from snails, slugs, and nautiloids. Above left: 1/2 Scott Pilgrim style study, 1/2 design sketch for a comic I’ve been thinking about called GAY-DAR. The premise is basically, what if gaydars worked like Spider-Man’s spider sense?

Sometimes I’ll let a page sit for weeks or months before I finally come back to it. Other times, I’ll use a mostly blank page like the one on the left as a test for colors later. Above left: a sketch from New Year’s Eve that ended because my pen died. Above right: the cousins playing my new least favorite game, Farkle. I don’t say that lightly. It’s worse than Sorry! AND Monopoly.

This is probably my favorite spread from this week. I was inspired by someone named gummygunk on twitter; I love the whimsy of the liquid colors against the background.

As a kid I wrote to the publisher of a dinosaur encyclopedia book saying they had made a mistake. I’m still that kid.

A close second-place favorite for me this week was this guy. My friend Caleb just started running a D&D campaign where we are captives of a bunch of snake-people cultists. So instantly I had to go draw some snake people.

And lastly, I’ve got some design notes for a game idea called THE CHOSEN that I previewed last week.