ZOMBIES! (Friends with a Thirst for Blood 2007)

Rat in a Suit

I was bored yesterday and I had all these manila folders lying around so I decided to start drawing on them. One of the things I drew was our hairless rat NHN [Nearly Hairless Nick(who is a girl)] in a pinstriped suit with a bowler hat.

Christopher Lee Portrait (a James Madison Portrait)

Recently at work I've undertaken a project of drawing all of the presidents for my friends in P.D.G. (Product Development Group). They  just created a render farm and have about 42 computers so I suggested that they used the names of presidents for all of the computers to distinguish them from one another, and they didn't think it was such a bad idea either. They wanted all of the computers to have pictures of the presidents on them, which I thought would be a fun little side project that i didn't have to take seriously, and one they didn't want me to take seriously either, so I've just been having fun with it and here are some of the results.  I started to do portraits of the presidents (I'm sure i will post them all in the future) then i got to our 4th president James Madison and found this portrait.
























(NOT MY WORK)

Looking at this the first thing that popped into my head was the fact that he looked like Christopher Lee. So I thought it would be funny to do James Madison's portrait as Christopher Lee from one of his many horror movies.



























I could have done him as Saruman the White from Lord of the Rings, but I thought the beard would confuse things, anyway, I think having the 4th President as a Vampire would be funnier then having him as an evil wizard.

This is my portrait of Christopher Lee;  if you can't tell it's a cheater portrait where I took a picture of Lee and traced it in Illustrator. I'm a tracer. Though it did turn out nicely so I'll forgive myself for my laziness, and you should too! If Chasing Amy taught us anything, it's that it's it's ok to be a tracer... sometimes.

KOOOOONG!! (When Scotland Stole My Girlfriend)

This is a piece from the Mine series, though it doesn't fit in the series completely because niether of us are saying "MINE", we're both exclaiming "!" and neither of us are monsters. However, this one was done at the same time and in the same vein so I decided to include it.

This piece is a Donkey Kong Spoof where Laura is the princess (yes I know fellow nerds, in Donkey Kong the princess was not there but I wanted to make her the princess so I did) , me as Mario and Scotland as Donkey Kong (because when I had started this Laura had already left or was about to leave for Scotland)















The pencil Sketch















More sketching in Photoshop














Illustrator Out lines


















Final Version

This was the first drawing I completed with Illustrator, and it turned out better then I had expected it... though I did take my sweet ass time finishing it.

MINE (How Eric Stole Laura and Visa Versa)

This is a series of sketches titled  "Mine!" They're pieces that feature me and Laura stealing one another exclaiming "MINE!" as the other exclaims "!" (in surprise, of course). In each piece one of us is a different kind of monster. 

 The last one i did was a Donkey Kong Spoof where Laura is the princess (yes I know fellow nerds,  in Donkey Kong the princess was not there but I wanted to make her the princess so I did) , me as Mario and Scotland as Donkey Kong (because when I had started this Laura had already left or was about to leave for Scotland). These are just sketches, most of which I plan to finish; one I have finished, one I'm working on, and I would like to add more to the series when I get the chance.

Peter Thomas Hair (T-shirt design) PART 2

I WON!! WHOO HOOO!

I won the Peter Thomas hair T-shirt design contest!


























YEEEEEAH!

Laura and Me (cute stuff)

I’m not really known for doing cute things and several of my past attempts have resulted in something more creepy than cute (like one of those dolls that looks like it would rip out your throat as apposed to just sitting there politely). I didn't really want to do cute things and I didn't exactly understand what makes something cute (I have a better grasp of it now, but understanding the aesthetic of cutesy things is still beyond my grasp). The only thing I knew about drawing cute things was that if you give small things really big eyes, they seem cute. I much prefer drawing things that bleed, get naked or are robots.

Then I met Laura and I felt like drawing barf enducingly cute pictures of the two of us.

















This is the first sketch that I did of us as cute little versions of us. Also on this page is Laura as a mermaid, as a half human half millipede, and a pipe smoking yakuza.






































I’ll show how I did one of them because they were all pretty much the same (which is pretty much the same way I do all of my drawings)




















Here is the sketch from above that I blew up in Photo shop to be the size that I wanted to work in.





















I went over the sketch in a new layer completing the picture by cleaning up and finishing some lines in order to make it easier to outline. I decided to get rid of the glasses because at the time they were still new and I didn't like them. I still don't really draw myself with glasses on; I don't really see myself that way despite the fact that I’ve been wearing them for almost a year.





















Here are the outlines





















Here is just the color





























Here is the final version with shading, highlights, shadows , complete with a background.
When Laura and I got together she had a scarf that we some how lost in the course of moving from one room to another in our old apartment and I didn't have my beautimous beard.


























A regular date with a Bone Room girl.
This is where I had grown my beard and sweet stash in (that’s what the yellow steak on my upper lip is; my moustache grows in blonde and looks like I have dirt on my lip) but Laura hadn't lost her scarf yet (or the sketch still had it so I didn't feel like changing it).

























Tickle fight

Here is the one that I created for Christmas (DUH) with me as a young Santa (as my friend Pat had described me to Laura before she met me; she still finds the description fitting to this day) and Laura as a younger still Mrs. Claus.

I really enjoyed doing these and looking at them again makes me want to do more of them. I think that if I did them in Illustrator that they would turn out really nice and crisp and look even more barf enducingly cute.

Peter Thomas Hair (T-shirt design) PART 1

In the name of keeping up to date here is a really new project, in fact, it’s the last thing that I’ve completed. This is a t-shirt design that I did for a contest that Peter Thomas Hair put on for a t-shirt to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I finished this last Thursday on the 10th of April.


























here's hoping that I win.

Special thanks to Laura for telling me about the Contest.

Pat Memorial Pumpkin (Funeral Fun)

This is one I should have posted back in October, but back then I was still trying to post things in some kind of in chronological order (oh what an exercise in futility and counterproductive that turned out to be), so I’m posting it now. This is piece is something that I did for my friend Patrick "Pathetic" Herrmann’s funeral service that was held in October. His mother asked that people who attended the service to bring pumpkins because they were one of Pat's favorite things, and to feel free to carve or write messages on them for the funeral.




















I drew this sketch of what I want to do on pat's memorial pumpkin. I wanted the drawing to have a tattoo feel to it, so I added scroll with text and roses. I wanted his artist name and the name he claimed to have legally changed it to (though I never saw any documentation to verify that) PATHETIC in a scroll banner like one would might find in a memorial tattoo. I was going to do his favorite flower, because knowing Pat he would have one, but I didn't recall what it was so instead I picked the rose because it is an element that you often see in tattoos. I did a portrait of him they way I always drew him, and I added his character Stupid Ugly baby as both an angel and as a little devil. I wanted to add some silhouette skulls and fill stuff to make it look nice and fancy (because, as you know, silhouettes are quite fancy). I also had planned to put a pumpkin on the pumpkin, because it is totally something that I would do and Pat would make fun of me for, which I knew he would appreciate.























Here is an illustration that I did of Pat's character Stupid Ugly baby. He is a charming back alley aborted fetus who survived and lives in a bucket.


So my dad hearing this went out to the country early on Saturday morning the day before the funeral and got the biggest pumpkin he could find, easily a foot and half tall and two feet wide. First I tried working on the pumpkin with sharpies, but those didn’t work too well; they wouldn't stick and ended up looking faded and was too much work to get anything that looked half decent with them. So my dad offered to let me use his acrylic paints, which worked really well. But he didn't have too many, just a basic acrylic set that you get in an art box which comes with really bad brushes. So my and I went to a local art store, bought some more paint and some nice brushes and went home to start painting the pumpkin.

























This is how it turned out. I changed the design from the original sketch because I wanted it to look more like Pat, and also some of the other elements changed because of the amount of time I had to work on it. I added a hat because he wore those trucker caps often and I couldn't pick just one of his many haircuts. So I gave him a hat and wrote “Fuck” on it because I always draw him with a shirt with “Fuck” scrawled across it, but without the body for a shirt I had to add it to the hat. Which my mom didn't care for and made sure I had a thing to cover it up with incase it offended any one, but I knew it wouldn't because it was totally Pat. I didn't add the devil stupid ugly baby on the bottom and the pumpkin on the bottom because it wouldn’t have been very visible or recognizable, so I added Rest In Peace at the bottom instead. I made the devil and the baby angel on the top because I didn't have time to add a bunch of Stupid Ugly Babies on there and also I wanted it so you could see everything from one angle, so I placed them both near his head. I added BFF and BFAM on the top of the pumpkin which is what me and Pat were, Best Friends Forever and Brothers From Another Mother (respectively). These were also the inscriptions that we had engraved on our friendship rings (that Laura referred to me as Pat’s “manwife” for. I now wear his on my pinky).

The best part about this project was that when people walked into the church and saw that pumpkin they knew who painted it. Pat's mom and ex-girlfriend both said "I can tell that Eric is here," just by seeing my pumpkin, which was a very sweet moment for me.

The Pumpkin now resides with Pat's mom and is holding up despite the fact that it’s six months later. The most miraculous thing is that it has no signs of rotting whatsoever. Leading some of us to believe that Pat is still around, inhabiting this pumpkin and making sure that it sticks around.

I am the Dungeon Master (a work doddle)

My job recently moved to a new location and I received a whole room to myself complete with no windows, bad lighting and some exposed air ducts. I’m way in the back, out of the way, and the door can only be locked from the outside; in many ways it is similar to a prison. It was an old machine shop and sometimes smells of old chemicals, a co-worker of mine even said it smells like the chemicals that infected his kidneys. It’s a very bright and cheery place to say the least. As such, we’ve deemed it the Dungeon. And some co-workers decided to deem me the Dungeon Master. Now for some that might conjur up images of the medieval dungeon master, one who was in charge of prison and torture; a hard man with a difficult disposition. I on the other hand being nerd core decided it was more my style to be a D and D Dungeon Master, complete with purple wizard's hat and purple robe.





















Here is the sketch that I started with and inked so that I had an easier time outlining it in Illustrator. This is a new technique that I picked up that I really like. Not inking it that is, but doing the digital outlines in Illustrator, which if I do something cartoony it is perfect because it gives me very smooth outlines that are all vector based and makes it so I can scale them and do what ever I want. I find outlining a sketch is doable, but it is far easier if I ink the sketch so I know which lines already work best with the drawing before I start messing with it digitally. I find that the more you do with your hands in the early stages, the easier the digital process is.























These are the outlines done in Illustrator





















Here is the basic color, also doe in Illustrator


























Here is the final version that I have hanging up on the door to my room. It was finished in photo shop by adding shading and highlights and a spiffy dungeon brick wall behind me.

Laura and NHN (Nearly Hairless Nick)

This is a picture of Laura that she asked me to do after she saw my Went For Coffee doodle that I did for work. She really liked the style and asked me to draw her like that, so I did! This picture is the debut of our new pet the hairless (nearly hairless) rat NHN, or Nearly Hairless Nick after the Harry Potter Character Nearly Headless Nick (the Griffendor Ghost).





















This one was really straightforward; the whole idea behind that other drawing was tube arms and a manic looking face. So I used the same elements but with Laura holding NHN instead of coffee because her love for that rat almost rivals my love for Coffee… almost.























This is the Illustrator Outlines




















Here is the Illustrator color


























Here is the final version with the Photoshop shading and highlights.

Laura (My Muse)

I have found my Muse my friends and she appeared in the form of a 5 foot 3 inches raven haired(dyed that way), hazel eyed, tattooed, pierced, nerd girl named Laura. She is quite amazing (if I do say so myself); she’s smart, morbid, funny, interesting, ambitious and she ain’t too hard on the eyes either if you get my drift. Yes, I am bragging - tough titty if your lady isn't as awesome.

Laura and I have been together for about a year now and I have yet to post any thing that I’ve done for her (I was trying to post things in chronological order from when I created them, however, I have recently thrown that completely out the window and declared it a glorious free for all. WEEEE!).

some of the Numberous sketches that i did of laura.





















(Me and Laura in a windy sketchy kiss)

This was a surprise drawing that did for Laura while she was away in Scotland studying abroad (longest 3 months of my life, particularly in contrast to the three months beforehand when Laura and I were together - those were some of the quickest and happiest that I can recall). It was a surprise in that she asked me to send her a flash drive and I had put the drawing on there unbeknownst to her. However, the drive was presumed lost, and I had already kept quiet about it for like 2 weeks and for me that was long enough so I simply e-mailed it to her. Later the flash drive was found, and she now uses it to tote the papers she’s always complaining about having to write from home to school.






















Here is a drawing I did of Laura being rather fussy in her fuzzy ushanka hat. Inked in Photoshop.

Laura and I now live in Oakland together and are quiet happy.
Expect to see way more pictures of this particular lady, these are just a select few of the sketches I’ve done that feature her.