ugh- this site is taking forever. I am not going to get political because I want this site to be about my art not my personal views.

Let me just assure everyone- if you want to argue on a topic, please be informed. There is nothing worse than arguing with someone when you absolutely know that they have no idea of the facts. If you think a certain way- you have to justify it. Thats all... oh god.

well as exacerbating as Politics can be I can be happy that I am not involved. I vote and yell- but I am no political scientist. So I will not ever run for office so I should concentrate on what I do for the bee-hive, and thats draw doodles ;-)

If you dont read the news your un-informed of current events. (as obvious as this is- really consider it)

ink and webpage... another day another dollar.

so an hour and a half later I have a good inking job.

I am disputing starting the colorwork for The 5- because I might purchase a wacom tablet. Along with the Wacom tablet comes the onset/prospect of using corel painter X instead of photoshop.

Basically- do I want to learn all new software, when the kind I have been using works great. Well of course I should pick it up- but I might do the 5 in photoshop and wait till I get to the states to start work with a Wacom.

well it has been a busy busy week for my art. I will prolly get in one more day and then I am gone for the weeknd. The Justin Coombs Art webpage is coming along slowly but surely- and I should have the main page done by tommorow, but uploading it and wiritng the html isnt gonna be a possiblity- so maybe monday or tuesday I will have to time for it. NICE

Well it pays off to work hard. I have been toiling at this comic for several hours a night for about a week now but it is turning to be worth it. The end product is a long ways off, but I enjoy doing the work, and I am not burnt out yet.

Heres how the day went:

went to work till 4:30.
got home
pooped
and worked on my art till 11.

if thats what it takes thats what Im gonna do. Even though I have little free-time, I enjoy doing this. looking at some other artists work keeps me going- knowing that they are probably drawing when i am not is a good pusher. Another is that I am isolated in this country so I dont have interruptions from... well life. I am so excited to get back to America, but I am planning on doing a show while there so I am going to have to be extra-busy to get it all done in time.

The war continues

well you can sit and perfect somehting for several hours- or you could have spent that time creating somehting new. The end result would be one really perfect piece, or 3 fresh ones.

trust me, the fresh ones are the much better route. I forget this someitmes when I go into photoshop mode- where you can make placing a couple buttons and adjusting lighting take 2 hours. Its fun, but not necessarily productive.

well here is the newest version of the homepage. I also thought I'd throw some of the sketches up for The 5.

the thing about doing a comic is that it takes such a long time that your style throughout the production of it can change. perhaps not drastically,although I learned a lot from page 1 till page 9 in Cowboys and Aliens. You dont necessarily want a drastic shift- as coherency would be hurt, but this isnt going to Marvel or anything- so I think that falling into this niche or that isnt a good idea- so I will continue to feel free to change my style on a need basis.

The New website is gonna rock

I love screwing around for hours with photoshop. it is a great program, and CS3 is really running solid on my mac. Although still not solid enough to make this file at high-res, instead I am creating the website at native resolution (about 900 pixels by 675).

I acknowledged the idea is similar to fallout's (the game) old console menus. It is a sweet idea- but really I have taken it much farther- and honestly, any wrecked, rusty or beaten up old-school look is reminiscent of it.

I am excited to get this baby up soon. It should have some little animated gif images as well ( I despise flash, so am limited to by html, it presents a unique challenge but I can be sure that 100% of people can load it- and I hate flash-sites anyways)

comments? suggestions?

And KIM you rock- thanks for the input gal.

Keep on moving along...

so one part of the comic has the entire plane crashing (as you could see from the previous page) only 5 of the guys survive the crash, but I thought itd be cool to draw in all of the soldiers portrais before the crash- and show how many of them perished in the wreck. these r fun, and only took about 50 minutes to do. I spent the rest of my evening fiddling around with the new and improved version 3 of justincoombsart.com

Im bored with the current version.

I have written down several ideas for the webpage. The sketches I made have reminded me (almost too much) of the game fallouts menu system. Basicallly old ghetto-rigged computer pieces, with tarnish- mixed with some retro parcels of paper.

It really is up my alley- and I constantly do stuff in the same fashion. I am attracted to the near photo-realistic, as you can see from my current website. I am almosr trying to make a real object.

ill post when I get some more work done.

Ink it- yay

yeah, inking takes a long time, and is an arduous process, but the end results are always pretty cool.
ill add text bubbles and color this foo-g. and get to work on the next page. so far so good.

5

heres the first page skecth of one of the body pieces of the comic I am doing- currently entitled 5.

ww2 biatches

well I like the subject matter. War and world war 2 particularly are always fun. I have a lot of experience in the subject as well.

The following is another study for what could be. My brother Jordan, who I will prolly colaborate with on the project prefers the full-color version, as opposed to the aged-effect of the less-color/stencil/paper style.

First off the full-color version offers a depth of field and clarity that wouldnt be available with the aged style.

However it has been done about 1000X other time sin your typical comic style. Whereas this aged look has a fresh feel to it that I really like. Somehitng to seperate it form the mainstream. It also has inclinations to be more experimental in coloring- to the point of adding to the drawing. we-ll see.... I will try full color of this or a new one tommorow... if I can get out of dinner with a cute chick. Have you ever had to decide between work and play- well I like this work- and it is going steadily. Damnit. stupid life.

A New Comic is Born

Well here was my dillemma:

Problem: Making comics about Aliens, while cool, won't be published... ever.

Solution: Come up with your own damn comic.

Results: a ww2 comic series- I am still coming up with the content- but here is a test coloring/style sheet. I will do a few more and get to work on the real deal.

Here is the B&W of this little doodle


Here is a regular colored version (how I normally color)


This is a more experimental version- I love the look and am pretty sure the final one will roll with this.

INKED bitch!

Here is the aliens pager inked. I have been working pretty steadily, but have had a lot of things coming up on weekends and weekdays. But steadily and surely I am pushing forward on this comic- however, it isnt my story. The next few arent going to be practice and they arent going to be for this comic- in fact I will have to start my own comic, so as to not be wasting my time. :-)

the odds of fox approving this comic are nil.

here are the pencils. the process is always the same. You simply draw in the darkest spots- and then sort of hatch the mid-tones. Some comics use hatch lines for the mediumgreay- other comics will only use 100% black or white- and then depend on color to fill in the greys. This makes it much harder on the colorist- because he has to know what the penciler/inkers wanted as dark. Sadly, I don't have that rpoblem is I am a one-man team. :-)

I suppose shading is a much better name for this step. The phase of conceptual thumbnails, to blue pencil, to outline to shading is all done by the 'Penciler'.

now comes the inking- really my favorite step... but its a bitch... 2 hours+ for a comic this size.

45 min concepts
1 hour blue pencils
2 hours pencil and shading

Total: 3 hours 45 min... this time is too slow for professinal pencilers. Like I would need to 1/2 this and increase my ability expnentially. Basically if the drawing isnt utterly jaw dropping at this point- you arent good enough. It is a viscious industry- afterall, who wouldnt want to draw aliens all day?! So I have to persevere and continue to improve improve improve.

And now the pencils come

So these are the pencils over the blue. My god it can get tediuos, but this is Justin at his most left-brain. So the work takes a while. It is also on 11x17 not 8.5 x 11, so it is much larger.

The final product usually looks cool though, so I am going to persevere.

so saturday I will hopefully have the shading done and I can start the inking.

fun fun.

as of now I have about 4 hours into this thing- form conception to penciled state. lotta time eh? Basically the comics industry works at 1/2 this. each artist would have to do a 30 pager in about 4 weeks. yeesh.

And so it continues

well had a hlaf day today so i started coloring the first aleins page, and have begun to work on the second. I like when artists show the prcoess so today I am posting the first 2 steps of my process-

It starts with thumbnail sketches to get ideas down- thumbnail compositions are really important because the more you do- the better the final turns out. Another aspect is that while they take time- they save time, and they also let you work out the areas of drawing where you might be weak. Say a hand or facial expression.

Then using the thumbs I draw in a loose outline using blue colored pencil. The blue is very light and enables you to differentiate it from the pencil (which comes on next). The more information the better- because after pencils everystep thereafter (lining, inking, coloring) loses details, so keeping things tight and defined is important for the blues and the pencil.

Ten was Hung

I caught a wicked wicked c hest cold last week- so my art took a turn for the worse. Then I went surfing for the weekend.

The others are fruits from tonight and the week before last (time flies... wow). I hope to get a page done every couple of days for this alien comic. As with cowboys and Indians it is hopefully a good way to practice and is fairly real-world work.

I have included the penciled page X of this series.

I have also included a random venom doodle I did on a ferry.

And finally is the colored Aliens piece from previous posts. I asked my brother Jordan to do a version for him-hopefully I can post it on Digital webbing and on here soon.

THANKS FOR READING YA'LL