Pete Draws Daily

T-Shirt Brainstorms

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:16:00 +0000

I've been fooling around trying to come up with a t-shirt design with which to christen my new silkscreen press. I can do up to three colors, but I'd probably do well to keep it to one or two for the first run. Anybody want any of these on a shirt?

"Ninja Turtle"

"Haystack Rock" adapted from a photograph by my sister, Molly Soloway

"A pear and its arch-nemesis"

"Stuffed Monkey"

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:41:00 +0000

Well the new drink-and-draw group is going great, although there's still lots of room for new members. I've been asking Steven Wilber what to draw, and he's been coming up with all these great comic strips right off the top of his head.

Also I did this goofy dude using a dry brushpen and I like how he came out.

Drink & Draw

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Wed, 21 May 2008 07:02:00 +0000

I'm organizing this little evening of drinking and drawing, which I hope will be repeated regularly. I made a little ad for it so I could post it on people's MySpace pages and whatever, and I suppose it belongs here as much as anywhere. If you're in Portland or plan to be, feel free to click through and sign up!

Dude and falcon both traced from a photo.

Another doodle using Microsoft OneNote

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:09:00 +0000

This time I was on a conference call, so it was even easier to be sneaky!

More drawing in bed

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Saturday mornings allow for more thorough drawing before getting up.

helmet.png

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sat, 03 May 2008 00:12:00 +0000

Another drawing done in bed, this time immediately after waking up -- before even putting my glasses on. I spent half my lunch break coloring it.

I like this little experiment -- my subconscious mind has good ideas for drawings. If I ever actually remember a dream, I'm gonna try and capture it.

First Thursday Link-O-Rama

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:59:00 +0000

The first Thursday of every month, the galleries of Portland's Pearl District open their doors to the public; as a result, most of the good art shows open on that day. Two of the guys I used to drink and draw with on a weekly basis were revealing their new Public Access show and accompanying comic book at the Sequential Art Gallery so I decided to show up. Their project is crazy and cool, and not totally my style but I bought the comic part of it anyway because it's well done and those guys are awesome. On my way out I started chatting with the gallery curator Kaebel, and ended up showing him my 24-hour comic attempt just to see his reaction. Another guy, who turned out to be one of the gallery's previous exhibitors, flagged my attention with a mention of pub trivia (one of my favorite pastimes) and when he passed me at the bus stop a few minutes later we struck up a conversation about Bill Watterson, creative ideals, lesser-known Greek myths, and the concept of absurdity. Check out his webcomic -- he reminds me of a cross between Randall Munroe and Brad Neely.

Aanywho... It's just another doodle but you can't accuse me of not posting any artwork.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the Sequential Art Gallery is located in an artist's loft space which was planned and developed years ago by my dad's old company. Kaebel lives upstairs from the actual gallery space, says it's a fantastic situation and, Dad, he specifically asked me to thank you!

MS Office OneNote: Margin Doodling for the 21st Century

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:26:00 +0000

I had a meeting today about the massive stock options my company is giving out to all its employees. Those who know me well understand that I think better if I'm drawing or doing something else with my hands. Not only does OneNote give you a nice, clean, wide-ruled sheet of virtual notebook paper which can convert your handwritten notes into text on command -- it's also a semi-usable drawing program.

This Engineer, Russ, is very smart and nerdy and accordingly asks many clever questions. I think because of that I got away with glancing at him and scribbling a lot without anyone catching on.

Sorry no posts lately...

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:09:00 +0000

I've had a busy week and picked up a new project which I hope won't take more than a month to complete. Hush hush until then.

I drew this in bed last night, just before drifting off. It's a wonder I get any rest at all:

Rose City Rollers Comic

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:56:00 +0000

The comic book I worked on as a colorist and designer can now be purchased online! In addition to its intrinsic educational and entertainment value, buying the comic helps support the fantastic sport of Roller Derby, Portland's Rose City Rollers league in particular, and improves my chances of getting to come back to work on a second issue — possibly as an artist this time.

Now, the RCR merchandise website is brand new, and looks like it needs a tweak or two. To stop it from blocking you based on your HTTP referrer, you may need to manually copy the following address and paste it into your browser's address bar:

For those who want to know exactly what I contributed to the book: it's broken into four parts, and I was the colorist for the 5-page story entitled "High Rollers: High Stakes on Fly Skates". I designed the credits page and the one-page article at the end, and prepped the entire book for the printer in terms of getting each page in the same resolution and format, placing the ads, adjusting the bleeds, and correcting (and making) a few last-minute errors. I also came up with a pretty clever idea to let us print the book with an alternate cover without need for a second print run -- we had them print all of the signatures the same, then flip half of them over right before binding. If you order online, you'll get one of two front covers chosen at random, with the other cover included as the inside of the back cover. It'll make sense when you see it.

Flash CS3 + Tablet PC

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:33:00 +0000

Flash is the best thing in the world for creating content really really fast and with a lot of flexibility. It's designed to work with a keyboard, and there were some initial bugs with screen rotation — but once I got my workspace customized and learned to lay the computer flat with the screen on my left knee and the keyboard on my right, shit worked very nicely. Doing this reminded me that the one thing I always wished for in working with Flash was more vertical real-estate. We'll see if I find the time, but I may just bring this blog back to its roots a bit.

Click for more:

Tablet Doodles

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:13:00 +0000

Coloring on this thing is a bit awkward... it seems to change unpredictably with the ambient light. I drew some girls from the roller derby league last week over beers, then colored them later on:

Then last night in Tacoma I did some sketches of Charlie Bullock as he tore around the house:

There was a crude drawing on the bathroom mirror of a pineapple shaking its fist at the heavens and saying this. I'm sure it was an inside joke with a long story behind it, and it inspired me to do a re-imagining:

24-hour comics

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:02:00 +0000

This weekend I participated in an event with a bunch of other artists who came together at Cosmic Monkey Comics and each took up Scott McCloud's challenge to create a finished 24-page comic within a single 24-hour period. I stayed for the full 24 hours, from 10 AM Saturday until 10 AM Sunday, and I did finish a comic although it came out 10 pages too short to be an official 24-hour comic. It was a fascinating experience; working with such a short immediate deadline makes it impossible to procrastinate, and gives you a palpable reason not to get mired in perfectionism. I didn't have any good story ideas, but I didn't let that stop me.

The entire event was covered in real-time blog format by Leigh Walton" of Top Shelf Productions. To read his coverage, start at the bottom of this page and work your way back to the present using the "Next Entries" link near the top.

Alright, enough background -- here's the comic. I hope to color it sometime soon.

Higher-res CBR File for viewing in CDisplay

Owl

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:56:00 +0000

Muffin Pump

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:05:00 +0000

Dr. Sketchy's #2

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 05:43:00 +0000

This time I won only one prize, for best abstraction thanks to this one:

Here's the other worthy sketches that came out of tonight's life-drawing session:

Dr. Sketchy's

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:23:00 +0000

I'm just back from a "burlesque life-drawing" session, it happens every Wednesday night at Dante's and it's pretty neat although they're still working out their routine. They got cut short today so they're making it up with an extra-long session next week. If you're in Portland, check out their myspace page.

At the end of the night they give out little prizes for quality, which is sort of counter to the exercise but it's not like they're worth anything and it adds a little fun. I won both "best use of color" and "most true to life" and now I have two skull-shaped shot glasses, a switchblade comb, a whoopie cushion, a rubber dog turd, some pencils, and a couple of those little plastic paratroopers.

Visited a Karaoke night tonight.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 11:24:00 +0000

This was at The Alibi and I wasn't drunk enough to sing but I was inspired to continue with an earlier theme.

Popeye fights with a stingray while a shark and the ghost of Steve Irwin look on.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:48:00 +0000

What goes through my mind while I'm at work?

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:55:00 +0000

I scanned some of the stuff I've been carrying around with me for weeks in my shoulderbag.

I'll post more of those as I clean up the other ones and/or color them. This one's on the back of a Bingo sheet.

Sick day, part deux.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:09:00 +0000

After drawing my hand, coloring it in on the computer, and posting it here, I spent the remainder of my sick day watching Louis Theroux shows.

This is a freeze-frame from the opening sequence:

and this is an interviewee from the episode on extreme bodybuilding:

Home sick again.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:34:00 +0000

girl from the train platform

home sick on the couch, studying my hand and the sleeve of my robe with a brushpen

Excuses.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:56:00 +0000

Well I WAS going to bring this back daily but the next day I got a new hard drive and I installed it and turned my computer back on and it made a nasty grinding sound and then started smoking. I ignored it for a week, blew out the chipset fan with some canned air, and turned it back on. The noise was gone and it booted normally, so I went into the livingroom to get something and when I got back my room was full of smoke and the wire leading to the PC speaker was glowing red. I hit the power, went to unplug the wire and felt it crumble to dust in my hand. I powered back up and now the only problem is that it doesn't beep annoyingly when I first turn it on.

Since you probably weren't dumb enough to read all that bullshit, let's just skip to a few of the drawings I did while my computer was out. I colored two of them, since the mood struck me.

Someone should invent a glow-in-the-dark pencil.

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:22:00 +0000

I'm bringing this blog back in an unspectacular way. I bought a scanner last weekend and I've been doing enough drawing anyway I might as well share some of it.

I'd like to do some more comics but I don't have the time or inclination to do them in Flash anymore so what you'll probably see here is mostly sketchbook stuff like the following:

My housemate Tim talked me into going to the Doug Fir Lounge last night to check out a band called Loch Lamond, which was opening for Fernando Viciconte. It was a great show, albeit a change of pace for me in that it didn't drum up a lot of wild dancing. I took the opportunity to knock out sketches of Loch Lamond's Amanda Lawrence (viola, vocals) and Peter Broderick (drums, violin, mandolin, saw, theremin, vocals, etc) before they wrapped up.

Fernando was good too, but sort of a mismatch for the band. I drew him, and then we went home and watched Metalocalypse until 2.

I'd like to scan some of the drawings I've done during the lapse but my computer is all coked up on Windows Vista, which makes doing these scans a bit frustrating -- so don't hold your breath.

Update on my life

noreply@blogger.com (Pete) — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 00:15:00 +0000

I haven't gotten to check in with a lot of people about my goings-on lately, for reasons you will soon understand. On the day of my birthday, this past January 19th, I had a job interview with a company called Extensis, which makes software for use by graphic designers and other professionals who need to manage large numbers of fonts, images, and documents. I found out about the job through two of my friends, who are now my supervisor and colleague, respectively. I do phone and email tech support, not my favorite things to do, but I'm good at them. Mostly, though, what makes this a fantastic job is the company itself. At a time when most phone-based jobs have been outsourced to massive call centers in countries like India, for a company to pay its tech support agents over $30,000 a year plus great benefits, is itself a refreshing concept. The whole company, minus a branch office in the UK, is located in one floor of an office building in downtown Portland, and we have a very friendly, casual atmosphere, with a pool table in the break room and a free beer fridge in the kitchen. I don't drink beer during the day, but the point is that they trust me to make that decision for myself. Anyway, before they hired me, my boss described the place as being stuck in 1999 -- right before the dotcom bust, when companies everywhere were making radical attempts to improve their employees attitude and stimulate the coveted "Innovation." Two days ago, for example, my whole department cut out of work early and walked to a nearby theater to watch Dave Chapelle's Block Party on the company dime. Not only was that a surprisingly good movie, I want to report that this strategy is proving very successful for Extensis. In extreme contrast to my last tech support job, they have made me feel like a professional -- not just some phone-monkey reading instructions from an online knowlege base. I'm motivated to become constantly better at my job, I'm not tempted to leave at the soonest opportunity and let them start over training another newbie, and when I'm on the phone with a customer I feel confident in my ability and freedom to help them solve their problems in the best way possible. Extensis gets all this from me in exchange for an "intangible" attitude of trust and respect for all their employees.

The downside is that I'm currently a contract worker, so I get no regular benefits and technically have no job past the end of April. My boss and his boss want to make me permanent since we're overwhelmed as it is, and great tech support is a large part of why many of our customers have been loyal to Extensis for over ten years... but the company is below its revenue estimates and the CEO has a hiring freeze in place -- so unless he can be convinced, or another agent quits, or some technical loophole can be found, the whole situation is rather out of my hands. I'm trying to enjoy it while I can.

Okay, now, this is an art blog, not some kind of Livejournal or something, and I haven't had much creative energy beyond what's required for work and my half-time classload at PCC... but I have had these paintings lying around since last summer and most of you haven't seen them since I never digitized them. They're only snapshots, but they're enough to give you the right idea. Maybe now that they're digitized I will go over them in Corel Painter sometime and fix all the massive technical problems.

Anyway, I'm now in the final drive to finish the last of my class projects -- I'll post it when it's ready -- and after that I think I will have enough spare time/energy to upgrade this blog's status from "temporarily suspended" to "tentatively active" and start making new shit every day. You'd all like that, now, wouldn't you!