Rex

This is my girlfriend's neighbor Rex. He lives in a garage and recycles lawn mowers for his only source of income. Rex makes around $6000 a year. He knows everything there is to know about his craft and even showed me the "Ferrari" of lawn mowers. He also has a large, beautiful garden he maintains. Rex (like most interesting subjects) is a talker. I spent about 2 hours talking with (listening to) him. He struck me as one of those insane genius types. He talked about anything from lawn mower mechanics to Egyptian lore. Crazy or not Rex was fun to listen to and made for great frames.

Scarecrow Inked REMOVED

This post used to contain a piece of digital art I made. It was a poor copy of the scarecrow from Skottie Young’s oz comics. I removed it because I realized that it was offensive. It was wrong of me to replicate his art, tag his name in it, and act like it was something special I did. I am a big fan of Skottie Young’s work and it made me a little sick to imagine he may have seen this image, if so, I’m sorry. I was naive at the time I posted it.

Oodles of doodles

This is my most recent drawing, and by far my favorite so far. It's the Scarecrow from Skottie Young's Wonderful Wizard of Oz comic books.

I'm not the most educated artist and sketching has only recently become a bigger hobby of mine, and it's all thanks to Skottie Young. I had the fortunate opportunity to meet him and Eric Shanower (writer of the Oz books) last October on a photo assignment. Wamego KS was having their annual Oztoberfest and had Skottie and Eric as guests for the festivities. Now having lived in Kansas my entire life I am kinda burnt out on the Wizard of Oz. It seems like the first thing anyone I meet from outside of Kansas does once they find out where I'm from is make some kind of Wizard of Oz reference. So naturally I already had little interest in working this assignment. When I found where I needed to be there were two guys sitting at a table chatting, various Oz books on a table at the side, and an elderly couple looking at the pictures on the wall. Thinking I was in the wrong place I found an employee working there and asked if I was in the right place. She informed me I was and assured me the two gentlemen at the table were who I was there for. In my head I'm thinking "There is nobody here to see these guys, they're obviously uninteresting." If I was going to be sent out of town for some lame shoot (ESPECIALLY AN OZ RELATED ONE!) I was not about to put much effort into my work, so I conceded to shooting quickly and leaving. Once I was about to bounce a couple showed up to see Skottie and Eric, so I figured "Ok, I'll shoot this a little longer because having at least a couple of other people in the my frames will be way better and I can still shoot quickly and roll out." Skottie ended up doing a sketch of the scarecrow for the guy and I was amazed. I was fascinated with how quickly he drew it and how cool it looked. After the couple left I spoke with Skottie and Eric for a little while and they signed a little flyer for me to bring back to my editor and I left. Once I was back in town I looked Skottie up because I was intrigued. Long story short, I was inspired and began doodling in my classes and at work. I wish I could redo my meeting with Skottie now that I know more about who he is. I collected a few of those scrap drawings and am including them below. The first group are all my versions of some of Skottie's drawings.

Dorothy from the Oz books.


Human Torch from fantastic four (cut off because it was drawn on a paper for work.)


Gambit from X-Men.


Tin Man from the Oz books.

The rest are random, most based on pictures I found online but a few of my own ideas.

Assassin's Creed 2.


Boy.


Captain America.


Girl.


Hood.


Spawn.


Wolverine.

Cochlear Controversy

This is an illustration I did for a piece on the controversy of cochlear implants. Took me between 2 and 3 hours to do total, I wish I would have had a little more time to work on it but I'm pretty glad with how it turned out.