2006

I was working consistently at the Children's Aid Society at this point and I was busy trying to figure out where life was taking me.  I continued drawing as often as possible, but some goals had shifted a bit. I was spending a lot of time learning how to play the Vs. System card game that was similar to Yugi-Oh, but had Marvel and DC characters as their players. I studied the game a good deal and either won or placed highly in a few tournaments, and just had a great deal of fun with the game, so naturally I wanted to bring my artistic talents into this new passion.  I started drawing images I felt would work well in the card game I began to love so much.

I was also entering a stage where I was making t-shirts of my designs to market myself a bit more. The spider-man image at the top of this page was my very first shirt and, years later, I was able to show it to Spider-man legend, John Romita Sr.... He gave me the most immense compliment I have yet to receive in which he said if I were around when he was drawing Spider-man, he'd have hired me to do his backgrounds! The validation i felt after hearing that was extremely uplifting and pushed me to keep pushing towards my goal of making art my life. 

Fun times

I had a chance to do three commissions that had some classic themes to them and that was right up my alley! The three pieces below are the final illustrations completed for a very happy person!

Jonah Hex vs. Adam Strange.  Old vs. New, Earth vs. Sky, Skill vs. Technology..... if you are into the DC Universe, this is a pairing of cult classics with a modern take.  Working on creating the balance in this was the most fun as an artist for me.

Mr. Miracle takes Darkseid's thrown..... Luckily the late great Mike Turner created Darkseid's thrown room in the story ark introducing Supergirl into the DCU.  There are no stairs in that image but I felt it'd make for a nice design element especially since the stairs puts the ruler higher up than those he is lording over. Rendering fire and showing a happy character, such fun=]

Green Lantern, Black Canary and green Arrow, a classic grouping of characters from the 70's. The characters are still around but back then, they were very buddy buddy and worked together quite often.  I wanted to create a classic styled look with again a modern sensibility for this one.  I kept the characters very animated in tone, less rendering and more direct with the lighting to make it look like something that could possibly be seen on tv.....

I made sure not to go too dark with any of these, I've noticed that my colors tend to be very dark so that was something I specifically was mindful of.  I hope you enjoy these, feel free to contact me if you'd like something custom made.