Category Archives: Illustration

This is a collection of the various paintings, drawings, and pieces of fan art that you’ll find scattered throughout this site.

Game of Thrones – Brienne of Tarth

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“Brienne’s ugly, and pig-head stubborn. But she lacks the wits to be a liar, and she is loyal past the point of sense.”
~Jaime Lannister

The distinctly un-feminine Brienne of Tarth makes her first appearance in the second season of Game of Thrones, besting Loris Tyrell in a tourney and winning a seat in the kingsguard in the service of Renly Baratheon. Because of her stature (standing at six-foot three-inches), Brienne is considered extremely unattractive by Westerosi standards, and she is often mockingly referred to as “Brienne the Beauty.” But the tall, muscular woman with straw-colored hair is one of the most honorific characters in the entire series.

Like Eddard Stark, her sense of honor and duty often works against her interests.

Her character, much like Samwell Tarly’s, is a sympathetic one. As a child, she was met with mockery when attempting to dress and act like a proper lady. Once she turned to a career more suited to her talents as a warrior, she likewise received contempt and resentment because of her gender, despite her obvious and considerable skill. Having spent most of her life as an object of scorn and rejection, Brienne yearns for respect and acceptance, and she easily gives her love and loyalty to those few who treat her with courtesy.

Renly Baratheon, Catelyn Stark, and Jaime Lannister are the primary objects of Brienne’s friendship, love, and service.

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Game of Thrones – Samwell Tarly

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In a television series where no character is safe, the innocent and noble characters naturally become more valuable to us. When the threat of death is ubiquitous, the audience is more likely to become more emotionally invested. In years past, principle characters suffered from a certain invulnerability in television; no amount of danger they confront is insurmountable. When the audience knows, almost to a certainty, that no lasting harm with visit them, the drama isn’t as pronounced or effective as it could be. When we expect a happy ending, and when that expectation isn’t ever violated, storytelling becomes predictable – it becomes boring.

A number of television shows have begun to address this, but none with such success as Game of Thrones. Certainly, Dexter Morgan’s girlfriend was slain by the Trinity Killer in season four of that woefully mismanaged series. And years before that, Curtis “Lemonhead” Lemansky was killed off near the end of FX’s flagship program The Shield. So, from The Sopranos to The Shield and Game of Thrones to The Walking Dead, the killing of important or beloved characters isn’t entirely a brand new phenomenon. It began in earnest about fifteen years ago with cable television; network dramas and serialized storytelling doesn’t allow for the kind of jolt killing a main character provides. And I’m confident that there is a whole legal and contractual end to this discussion that I know absolutely nothing about (other than, of course, when a character is killed, the actor no long has a role to play and is, in one way or another, removed from payroll). Game of Thrones, unlike its predecessors, has managed to take things to the next level, obliterating audience expectations with a spectacle of violence and the elimination of beloved characters unlike anything else in television.

Unlike Dexter or The Shield – or any other of the modern television dramas with the story-telling courage to kill main characters – Game of Thrones has developed a reputation for mass slayings. The Red Wedding, The Battle of Blackwater, the wildfire incident at the Sept of Baelor, and the Battle of the Bastards – these didn’t see a single linchpin character die abruptly and needlessly. No, no – Instead we witnessed entire factions, whole families, entire congregations meeting their violent end.

With the possibility for such narrative mayhem, audiences gravitate toward the honorable characters and worry about their fates. Jon Snow is certainly a fan favorite, but he still wields the sword, struggles with his conscience, and is conflicted about his upbringing and lineage. In later episodes, we even find sympathy for previously reviled characters like the incestuous Jaime Lannister, and even more sympathy for his dwarf brother Tyrion. Out of the entire ensemble, in my humblest of opinions, the most innocent character – perhaps aside from Hodor, whose mental incapacities automatically make him more sympathetic – is Samwell. A coward, he finds bravery when defending the innocent. He is not headstrong and he speaks true, never using his words or his sword to harm his brothers.

As I launch a new series of illustrated portraits – all of the characters in Game of Thrones – I decided to begin with the most likable and honorable of characters. So today, available at my online storefront, are prints of this illustration of Samwell Tarly of the Nights Watch, the most likable of the crows and the lover of books. I hope you enjoy these portraits as they become available.

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Cardinal (illustration)

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Life sometimes gets in the way, and I haven’t had the opportunity to really pour myself into a project recently. My uncle, who has fallen ill, has been on my mind. Family is in from out of town, and everybody is coming together to see this whole things through.

One of the things that has completely stuck with me, though, is my uncle telling me that one of his favorite things to do is sit outside in his backyard. He enjoys spending time listening to the birds. At first, I think people gave him grief about it; it’s odd to sit on a porch and stare up at the sky for hours at a time. But then, if your time on this earth might just be running out, I would also imagine that the sound of a gentle breeze coursing through the trees might sound that much more soothing. The sound of birds chirping might sound that much sweeter.

Everything changes when you realize you’re living on borrowed time. When you realize how little you may have left.

So, thinking about these things, I sat down yesterday and worked on this illustration. It’s based on a photograph I took last year. I’ve always had a tough time getting decent photographs of birds, and one afternoon this cardinal managed to just hang out, for a good long while, on the tree outside our living room window. I’m sure my girlfriend thought I was crazy, walking back and forth, to both ends of the house, out the front door, through to the back door, moving like a slow lumbering, stalking maniac with a gigantic camera lens clutched in his fists.

But every moment truly is a gift. Even when we obsessively try to snap a picture of a bird and curse under our breath when we can’t get our camera to focus properly. Every moment is a gift, because we only ever get to enjoy each moment once. Enjoy your day. Find an excuse to smile. It’s important.

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Glitch Art – It’s A Thing

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Glitch art. It baffles me that this isn’t something that managed to capture my attention sooner. In a lot of ways, it has, but I didn’t recognize it at the time. The album art from Nine Inch Nails, a decade ago, with the release of the album “With Teeth” represents this artform, I think. But then, in the age of the internet, there’s so much that slips through our fingers. I was recently listening to an interview with Whitney Moore – an obscure media personality and the star of such ‘high-end’ cinema as “Birdemic” (an incredibly low-budget slosh, self-aware and celebratory for it’s obscene garishness) that added fuel. When asked what her favorite art is, Miss Moore answered (reactively, and without a moments hesitation) with a simple, two word remark: Glitch Art.

And Whitney’s no loser. She’s a smart commentator on creative media. She is an insightful voice with a pretty face, and likely not taken seriously because of that pretty face (and her proclivity for making YouTube videos while less-than-sober). Nevertheless, I hadn’t heart the term. And ‘glitch-art’ and ‘data-moshing’ are not the most recognizable terms, at least not in the circles I travel. Naturally, I started sifting through the terminology. Isn’t Google a remarkable resource?

In a technical sense, a glitch is the unexpected result of a malfunction. The term was first recorded in 1962 during the American space program by a gentleman named John Glenn when he described problems they were having. He explained, “Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electric current.”

Data-moshing, which I would suppose is the current way of saying “intentional glitching,” is a relatively new term. We have examples of “circuit bending” in audio recording, and I think that “data-moshing” is the commensurate term (in light of audio-engineers) to image-manipulation. What’s appealing about the practice is that the effects are unpredictable and randomized. The artist is present, but his (or her) intentions are violated by the practice itself. Accidents are acceptable, invited, and celebrated.

There are a variety of ways to “break” encoded visual data. Artists have taken scripted data – text documents of encoded pictures – and fed them into audio engineering programs in order to “listen” to their photographs. The reverse has been done, too. And one of the more popular experiments, it seems, is writing visual data – be they cell-phone pictures, digital photos, Microsoft Paint drawings – into the BitMap file format, opening the file in a text editor, and manipulating or deleting entire lines of code, just to see how these manipulations register when the data is opened back up with an imaging editor (like Photoshop) after being altered in a text-editor (like notebook or Wordpad).

Not all of these experiments yield anything worth looking at. Digitally breaking a document is a grab-bag, mixed-blessing practice. But sometimes something interesting happens. And it’s that unpredictable, random, unimagined result that artists like me crave. Being forced into reinterpreting a perfectly normal, easily understood image – it forces an entire aesthetic re-imagining. Most artists pre-visualize – which is to say that they have an idea of what they want, and then create it. But sometimes, I find, it’s valuable to have one’s vision completely savaged. The concept, tone, and nature of a piece can be altered entirely.

Sometimes for the better.

I imagine I will be pouring over code and tinkering with these scripts, over and over, hoping for a new and expressive result. Like I said, it’s a grab-bag. It’s random. But soft, banal imagery is given a second life when they’re broken. And I could spend hours, days, weeks, tinkering with the code to see what happens. Script-sculpting is my new favorite past-time. Won’t you join me?

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The Dream Figure

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Irrationally peculiar dream figures – my loose, ‘armchair’ understanding of things is that most people don’t have recurring dreams, or even recurring themes or personalities in their dreams. It’s a popular trope in story-telling, which makes perfect sense – haunting dreams are a wonderful expression of foreshadowing, a device to inject a sense of inevitability, foreboding, or fate. The reality, of course, is far more banal. Those of us who encounter recurring dream figures ought not take too much from them; the general consensus in the psychological community is that they are completely happenstance, and may represent nothing more than a single event in one’s history – not even a particularly important event – that managed to get stored in our memory in such a way as to appear and reappear, like a skipping record.

This particular dream figure has been visiting me for the better part of a decade. I’m assuming she’s some remnant of my college days, which I spent at the University of Arizona. She reminds me of art school girls at house parties, smoking cigarettes in used clothes bought at Buffalo Exchange, a haven for hipster women looking to spend twice as much on a pair of pre-worn jeans than the original price-tag when they were brand new and not covered in holes.

This apparition – and she really feels like an apparition, an uninvited ghost that only I can see – is never aggressive, she never threatens me, never harms me. But I always recall feeling an extreme unease when she walks into the room. She usually walks around a corner, and it’s usually when I’m trying to leave and get outside. In most of my dreams, I turn around and nurse a drink, taking little sips, and make small-talk to the gaggle of faceless others around me, glancing occasionally to see if she’s still there.

She’s always blocking my path. And I spend my time hoping for a chance to scoot by and get outside.

Nothing bad ever happens. No gore. No evil. Just a faceless, toothed, unsettling creature.

I’ll let the psychoanalysts in the inter-webs analyze this. In the quiet of night, unable to sleep, I decided to scribble-out a picture from my dreams.

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Geometric Art, Color, and Heavy Metal

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Growing up I listened to a lot of Tool, a progressive metal band that some of you may be familiar with and some of you may not be familiar with. I still listen to my old albums. The percussionist, Danny Carey, heralded from a local community here in Kansas, giving us mid-western backwater hicks some prestige. I’ve spent my entire career as an artist trying to explain to people that the “fly-over” states are filled with creative artists and political malcontents, too.

Midway through their career, Tool began incorporating works form artist Alex Gray – anatomical cross-sections, repeating patterns, and other evocative images intended to illustrate the connection between body and spirit – into their albums. The images rely heavily on the symbolism of the third eye and chakra charts, but they also weave this content into renderings reminiscent of anatomy textbooks, esoteric symbols, and studies of celestial bodies. It’s really cool stuff.

At one point or another, after looking at all of that great art (and probably after watching Martin Scorsese’s film Kundun, and after attending a talk with the Dali Lama at the Tucson convention center), I really wanted to make a mandala. There are countless designs out there, but I’d never made one of my own and, frankly, I didn’t know the first thing about making a design like that. I’m pretty confident that I still, for the most part, still don’t. Nevertheless, I nabbed my metal ruler and protractor and took to making some of the most god-awful radial line-drawings the world has ever seen (except, of course, that the world never saw them – I threw ’em all away because, well, they were terrible).

I have, of late, taken the practice up again. It’s a great meditative practice. It’s complicated and simple at the same time, mathematical and symmetrical, but layered with compositional complexity. Today’s image is my first shot out of the gate – I know I can make more interesting images, but I’m very pleased to be back in the saddle and experimenting with these designs. I’m already working on others, which I will share once they’re done.

I’m “getting my zen on,” as an old friend from the San Rafael Valley would say. The repetition, the tedious nature of making pictures like this, open doorways in the mind. These compositions require a certain kind of concentration to make, but they’re also ordered, logical, straight-forward. The perfect kind of exercise for any creative personality who isn’t feeling any other specific drive; it’s a way of exercising the brain and being creative when one is feeling stifled, uninspired, or otherwise “blocked.”

The trick is to keep the pen moving. This is how I keep moving. I hope you like it.

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Illustration – Nude Study

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There is no genre of art older than the nude study, the bare human form. It commands our attention and often makes some of us turn away, either in modesty or – more sadly – in shame. The question of its endurance as an art-form throughout the ages is an interesting one. To my mind, the nude is deeply symbolic philosophically, and elegant in its accidental eroticism. The nude is both attractive – and to many, uncomfortably attractive – because it symbolizes true vulnerability; exposed flesh presents a form with nothing left to reveal.

The nude subject is in its most confident and vulnerable state, achieving these at the same time. This cannot be found anywhere else, and that is why nude studies are so captivating, so mesmerizing, so subtly profound. We objectify and sympathize, simultaneously, and this duality forces certain truths to snake their way into our consciousness, about how we view our own bodies and how we use them.

I am proud to be both painter and subject in this genre, to continue this great tradition. In a media landscape that barely bats an eye at extreme violence but suppresses the most natural of sexual desires, I regret only that my artwork isn’t more filled with genitalia.

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Sin City – Nancy Callahan

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I sat down today and watched both of the Sin City films. I’ve been a fan of the comic series ever since I bought a used paperback at ‘Bookman’s Buy-Sell-Trade’ superstore in Tucson when I was a freshmen in college. At the time, the rack was overstuffed with copies, and I nabbed mine for a measly ninety-nine cents. It was cheap enough that I didn’t find it sacrilege at all when I chopped it up and pasted individual frames into my sketchbook.

I was a comic collector since childhood – mostly X-Men titles – and had no idea what Sin City was about. I didn’t even read the book. I just sifted through the pages and appreciated the art. When it was adapted into a feature film, I started paying attention. It had the noir elements, the over-clocked one-liners, trench coats, and fedoras. It was black and white, self-referencing, darkly comedic, and playful. It was a perfect film specifically because it didn’t take itself too seriously – it was engineered to be pulp entertainment. It was designed to be fun.

Sin City was also a throw-away film. It appealed to a niche demographic, not turning too many heads. This is a disappointing revelation because the production was insanely innovative, inventing new film-making techniques that allowed the comic book to come to life. Of all the comic book movies that exist today, I can’t think of a project more true to the source material than Sin City. Most of the film was shot on green-screen, with the background environments inserted in post-production. The violence is stylized, and the black-and-white palette is used with intuitive brilliance.

The sequel, A Dame To Kill For, didn’t perform well at the box office. But it’s a fantastic voyage into the back alleys of Frank Miller’s fictitious city of crime and corruption. Think Gotham, only more fucked up. The vignetted stories are fun, dark, grimly humorous, and worth a look.

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Illustration – Steam Punk Poster

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Right up front, I have to admit that this poster-style illustration is based on a photograph. I made a lot of choices while constructing this graphic but, I don’t know, I think it’s always important to be honest when sourcing other material. In cases where I’m doing fan art, it’s obvious that I’m sourcing from various popular culture properties, but it isn’t obvious when it comes to pieces like this.

I’ve never been into cosplay or SCA (society for creative anachronism), but I brush shoulders with countless creatives who participate in these activities. I’ve only been to a couple of comic book conferences, and I spend more time in front of the computer than I ever could spend trying to problem-solve my way through an elaborate fan costume. Rather than create a costume, I derive a lot of inspiration and develop ideas by knowing these people, listening to their ideas, and witnessing their marvelous creations.

That being said, the steam punk aesthetic has been popular for maybe about ten years now, but it wasn’t until the past few years that it has become recognized in a more mainstream way. Steam punk has been around for decades, tracing it’s origin back to the science fiction sub-genre ‘cyberpunk,’ usually attributed to the stories penned by William Gibson; Neuromancer should be required reading for anybody who feigns interest in cyberpunk and steam punk.

Aesthetically, steam punk designs are generally influenced by the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley. It incorporates the technology and designs of 19th-century industrial steam powered machinery (hence the name), often implementing clocks, gears, modified 19th century dresses, suits, and hats, and other such paraphernalia.

I had a lot of fun tinkering with this illustration, and I certainly hope you enjoy it.

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The Walking Dead – “East”

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Carol and Daryl, taking things into their own hands, are the catalyst for a host of poor decision-making among the Alexandrians in this week’s episode of “The Walking Dead.” Carol, broken and weary, leaves a note behind announcing her departure, insisting that nobody come looking for her. Daryl, on the other hand, heads off in another direction, recklessly in pursuit of Dwight to avenge the needless slaughter of Doctor Denise. Rick and Morgan head out to find Carol while Rosita, Michonne, and Sasha head out to stop Daryl.

At this point in the story, “The Walking Dead” isn’t really a horror-genre narrative – it’s a study on survival on recovery. That being said, there are certainly horror tropes that persist, lest we forget that dead cannibalistic corpses continue to roam the countryside. Every character in the show that we have come to know as capable, dependable, and intelligent does the one thing you never do in a horror film: they split up, leaving Alexandria vulnerable. None of this is really in-character, but one might surmise that the storytellers are trying to cement the notion that the Alexandrians are prepared, have united as a community, can face any problem together, et al. But it falls flat. When all is said and done, the audience recognizes that this is an excuse to fragment the group, push forward with the character drama, and leave the principle characters in an exposed position for the [likely] explosive season finale.

The heart of this episode’s themes exist in the interaction between Morgan and Rick. We are reminded of the flimsy morality in the new world as the two characters explain why they have chosen their own particular path toward survival. Morgan refuses to kill the living and Rick sees killing as an inevitability; one message seems sage-like, the other authoritarian. As Morgan expresses how he sees everything as cyclical, explaining to Rick how he saved the Wolf who, in turn, saved Denise, it’s difficult not to view Morgan as the more sympathetic, morally upright person.

“We didn’t finish it like we thought we did, with The Saviors,” Rick says midway through the episode.
“No,” Morgan says. “You started something.”

And we know that Morgan is absolutely correct.

Watching these two talk reminds us that they represent far opposite ends of a moral spectrum. As members of the audience, we know that both of them are right in their thinking, and that it’s the circumstance that lets us know which course of action is the correct one. That’s what the jail cell Morgan built is all about: creating an option other than falling on routine and regular summary execution. The set designers didn’t build that room just for one small scene in last week’s episode – that jail cell is going to get some use. At least, that’s my prediction.

We’re also reminded that, even though Rick and Morgan view the world from radically different lenses, they are on the same side. There are several paths that can lead to the same destination. Thankfully, the end their conversation on peaceful terms instead of thrown punches; they know that they can learn something from one another, temper their philosophies, and survive together, even if this conclusion is explicitly presented.

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Is Daryl Dixon dead? Don’t count on it. That spray of blood was pretty spectacular, but super-fans have Zaprudered it, as have I, and there are a few things to keep in mind. First, the advertisement for the season finale clearly shows Daryl in a scene, so he at the very least isn’t dead yet. More importantly, he is a fan favorite with plenty of qualities rife for further exploration in this increasingly character-driven narrative. I have long predicted that Daryl would eventually be killed because he is one of the few characters who only exists in the television series (not the source material of the graphic novel), but I have actually reversed my position on this. As the show veers further and further away form the source material, characters like Daryl and Carol and Morgan are actually more essential than ever, allowing the show-runners and the writer’s room to keep the story distinct enough from the graphic novel as to keep the show unique.

Who was the man in the barn that Rick and Morgan happen across? He had a spear that was clearly forged by the blacksmith at The Hilltop, and Rick concludes that he must be one of The Saviors. But what about the peculiar armor he’s wearing? It’s my guess that this is the first hint at yet another community wrapped-up in the trade agreement with The Hilltop and The Saviors. It’s my hope that the seed is planted in the season finale – and the brief glimpse of an armored man on horseback in the season finale preview metes this out – and we start to learn more about The Kingdom. There’s no need to spoil anything here, because I could just as easily be wrong, but it’s certainly one of my hopes.

See you next time, after Negan crushes a few skulls with his barb-wired wrapped baseball bat, Lucille.
I’m guessing she’s pretty thirsty…

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