Pathetic Knuckles

Today would have been my best friend's 27th birthday. He has been dead for nearly 5 years now and I still miss him a lot. I decided to commemorate his birthday with this cover photo (which I squared out because for some reason Blogger doesn't like long things) for his face book page.

Pathetic Death Day 2011

Four years ago today my best friend Patrick died.

In honor of his memory, and because I didn't have a chance to make a portrait on his birthday, I made a portrait of him today. I painted him Dia De Los Muertos because that holiday is coming up soon and it is a day to remember and talk to the dead, which I wish I could do today.

The Best Wing Man

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my Best friend Pat "Hetic" death. If you remember him share some feelings on his Face Book fan page.
Before Pat died, he would sit around joking about him becoming a ghost and helping me out after he died. He said he would haunt Stan Lee and all the comic executives to get me a job. When he was alive he was my wing man, I would like to think he tries to continue that role from beyond the grave.

I miss you so much and wish you were still here to be my wing man, there is no better then you my dear dear friend.

Pat the Irish

Concept art for my viking story, The Drunken Sagas: Monsterous Mead.
Pat the Irish

Pat was a hardheaded Irishmen who fought against the Viking occupation of Ireland. Armed only with his Burda club was woefully out number and thus was captured by a horde of Vikings and brought back to Norway as a thrall, which was the Viking slave class. He did not acclimate to being a thrall very well; he would pick fights, steal, and lie. How he survived the first few years was nothing short of a miracle. Through his time as a thrall he learned the Viking language and came to appreciate their country, in particular the ale he took to pilfering.

One day the village where he lived was being terrorized by a mad hill witch; his master gladly gave him to her in exchange for the her leaving the village alone.The hill witch quickly became infatuated with the young thrall; she placed glamour on herself to trick him into believing she was beautiful and desirable, and he quickly became infatuated with the hill witch and she made him her sex slave.

After Pat had lived with her for several years, the hill witch was approached by young nobleman one day about a warrior that he could not best. A few weeks before a young berserker and his companions came to his father’s drinking hall and challenged them to a contest of strength in exchange for draughts of ale. They were mighty and won many of their battles and quickly became hall favorite. No matter how the young nobleman tried he couldn’t beat the berserker so he needed help in order to regain his glory and his father’s respect. The hill witch agreed to help, though in exchange she wanted copious amounts of blood and gold.

The hill witch packed and small bag and she and Pat left the small cabin in the hills for the drinking hall down in plains by the fjords. Her scheme was simple, poison the young berserker before he fought with the nobleman. Before the fight she moved up to the young berserker she placed a vial of poison in his ale and encouraged him to drink it before the fight for good luck. He drank every last drop. The berserker fought the young nobleman and still he bested him. The young noble flew into a rage at the witch, and if it weren’t for Pat he surely would have killed her. The hill witch was bewildered; the poison should have killed anything that wasn’t a god or a frost giant. The witch had another plan, she knew the nobleman wouldn’t like it, but he would earn him the respect that he sought. She would place a glamour on Pat that would make him look like the nobleman and the next night he would fight the berserker and win. The nobleman protested but was convinced by the witch that it was the best course of action, he eventually agreed but only after she agreed to also place a glamour on him so that he could watch the contest as well, the witch hesitated, though when he offered more gold she agreed.

The next night Pat entered the hall disguised as the nobleman and quickly challenged the berserker to a fight. The witch quickly found a place next to the ring; she needed to focus on Pat or the glamour wouldn’t stand up to a beating, and the nobleman sat next to her to make sure that her man could beat the berserker. In the ring the two began their fight; they were matched blow for blow. The berserker was confused and surprised at the change in style that the nobleman fought that night, it was much more like his own and wild and unpredictable. Pat quickly gained the upper hand and knocked the berserker into the crowd around the ring. He hit the witch, who fell into the dagger that the noblemen had at her back in case she failed him. This did not kill the witch, as they are very difficult to kill it simply broke her concentration and every one lost their glamour including her. The witch grew crazy and flew into a blind rage, she froze the young nobleman and turned and attacked Pat. Realizing that the threat was no longer the nobleman but the witch, the berserker jumped up and took the brunt of the attack meant for Pat saving his life.

At that second Pat could see who the witch truly was and he was enraged that she had tricked him for so long. Pat flew into a rage and threw himself at the witch. Fighting her tooth and nale as she tried to cast her magic on him, her spells of ice and wind quickly started exploding out of her wildly and with no rhyme or reason. The berserker’s companions quickly ran into the ring to help fight the witch. One of the berserker’s companions threw a knife to Pat and he stabbed the witch, and she fell to the floor and shattered like glass. The glass hissed and crackled and a screaming specter exploded from the shards and flew away to the hills to the north, as witches are very hard to kill.

Pat was sitting in the rubble of the witch as the Berserker approached him with a large horn filled with ale, the berserker said, “I guess you won, so here is your prize.” They both laughed and shared the ale and became quick friends. Pat had nowhere else to go and found he enjoyed the company of the Berserker and his companions, so he decided to join them for more fights, women and ale.

I posted this today because this would have been Pat's Birthday, I think much like my portrait of my grandfather I will be doing a picture of Pat every year on this day.

PATHETIC Zombie Portrait 01

Yeah, this feels more like Pat to me.

PATHETIC Portrait 01

I watched this video of my dearly departed friend Patrick today and it made me miss him - so I decided do a portrait of him. He has been on my mind a lot as of late and I feel compelled to do some more art about him. It's been a while.
Also today I became an Admin on a fan page for Pat Hetic - a page for all of us who miss him to share images, videos, and memories. I may just make this the profile picture. Though now I feel Like doing a second portrait where I turn this one into a zombie... I think that will make a better picture and seem more Pat to me.
I will never forget you hetro-life mate.

Consensual Tentacle on Paper Bags

Surprisingly I have not done a post on this Blog about the resurgence of the web comic that I draw co-write with with Scintilla San. Check out Consensual Tentacle every Monday and Friday for new comics about alternative people and their oh so normal problems.

Gilda Green

She works in the I.T. department of some big faceless soulless corporation and hates her Job. She spends her free time with her beau August either at their apartment, at the bar, or on some wacky adventure.

August Edwards

He is a struggling artist who is currently unemployed. He is based off of my dear departed friend Patrick "Pathetic" Herrman.

A Pathetic Family Portrait

Today would have been my friend Patrick's 23rd Birthday. To commemorate today I’m posting something that he started and I finished. This is a family portrait that Pat started to work on before he died, though he never was able to finish it. His mom asked me to finish it for him so she could have something to give their family, and I said of course I would do it and that I was honored and happy to do so. Pat had already drawn the majority of his family members, he just didn't have the strength to get to drawing the final ones. That was were I came in and as Pat's best friend and as the person who Pat claimed was the “best artist” he knew, I took up the task of finishing the project. I wanted to make sure that I copied his style exactly, something more difficult then I initially thought it would be.




















Here are the drawings that pat did. He did all of the drawings in pencil and then i went over them in pen and ink.















This is a sad note that ended where pat was working on the project. It says "I'm not done But I'm too tired to go on." when Laura and I saw this it made us incredibly sad.










Here are the sketches that I created in Photo shop to immatate Pat's style.










Here are the inked versions of Pat's additional family members









Here is the final version that i gave to Nancy (Pat's mom) yesterday after a very lovely dinner. Hopefully by posting this i don't ruin any surprises.

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.

Seasons Eatings (or a zombie christmas)

Here is my personal Christmas card for the year 2006. This idea spawned from the drawings I was doing for the family Christmas card at the time. The primary concept that my mom suggested for the card for that year was Santa with all of our family in his bag, just our heads poking out.

Family card sketch 01

Now, with my being in a typically morbid mood I took things too literally and decided to portray Santa as a serial killer with all of our severed heads in his bag.

Family card sketch 02

This led me to do another drawing of the family as zombies about to devour Santa with the tag line “season’s eatings”, my personal favorite spoof on season’s greetings, if I do say so myself.

Naturally my mom rejected both concepts for our Christmas card (though my dad liked the season’s eatings idea despite the fact that he knew it would be a poor choice for the family card). So I changed everyone in the piece from my family to my best friend Pat and myself. I thought it was a fitting part two to the piece where he turned me into a zombie.

Sketch

I essentially knew what I wanted from the get go with this sketch. There are a couple of versions of it, but they are all the same, just refinements on the caricatures of Pat and me, so I didn't feel any need to post them.

Photo Shop Out Lines

Color

my favorite part of coloring this was clearly the blood, which came in several phases. I started by coloring the blood that was in the sketch which is blood on pat and I. it was just not bloody enough. Then I added blood coming out of Santa's wounds. It was just not bloody enough. Then I added the body coming out of Santa's mouth. Still it was just not bloody enough. Then I added light layer of blood to his end trails and that was bloody enough.

Shading

I think this was the first photo shop illustration where I shaded in this fashion and decided to add a layer and start painting the shadows solid black with the paint brush then decrease the opacity. This makes it easier to find any areas I’ve missed and results in a more complete shade for the piece overall. Plus it makes it simple, clean, and gives it a more cartoonish style, which was what I was going for. I then added a few highlights on Santa’s cheeks, the intestines, my hair, and the eyes to make them more round.

On a side note, in many of my works the lighting comes from the same direction (the right); I recall hearing that this is a tendency artists develop due to their dominant hand.

Though it makes sense to me, I could be totally wrong, but it’s certainly true in my works.

Emily Loen’s Calligraphy

I was unable find any typefaces that achieved the aesthetic I wanted for this card. I wanted the text to look like it belonged on a fancier Christmas card, you know, the kind of Christmas card where zombies aren’t eviscerating Santa Claus. So I asked my friend Emily who happens to practice calligraphy to help me and create the lettering. These are the ideas that she gave me. I imported all of them into the picture and played with all of them but the one on the lower left worked the best for my purposes.

Final Version

Here I added a couple of layers to the background to make the text pop. I added a layer of shading, a layer of a radial gradient of white coming from the center of the “season’s eatings”, and a gradient of yellow coming from the top of the piece. This all helped to draw attention to the text as well as push the background father from the characters and give the whole picture more depth, which I ended being very pleased with.

My Best Friend the Zombie

This is a comic of my best friend Pat "Pathetic" Herrmann and me as zombies. Pat died this year (October 10th 2007) after a valiant fight with cancer. Not only was he was a giant influence in my life, but he also without a doubt inspired me as an artist and he helped me grow as a person. We met in Fall of 2003, in our first quarter at college; helped me transition from moving out of my parent’s home and being on my own, making it less painful, while teaching me a few things about life along the way. He was the definition of a best friend, he loved and cared about me so much and I loved and cared about him greatly as well. He told everybody about me and always had great things to say. Sometimes when I met acquaintances of Pat’s, they already knew all about me from everything he had told them; admittedly, not what I would have necessarily highlighted about myself, but it was always true. At times he understood me better then I understood myself. I miss him greatly, and I assure that this will be far from the last time you read his name or see his zombified visage.

Pat was obsessed with zombies and horror films and nothing would have made him happier then to be a zombie. So, I drew us as a pair of zombies! This concept is based off of his always saying that if he was a zombie, he would bite me first. I finished this piece sometime in early 2006, and I think it was one of the first pieces I completed with with my Wacom tablet. I think I started this piece some time in 2005. (Yeah some times these things take a while, but the Mona Lisa took 7 years, so get off my back.)

Sketch 01
the rough stuff
This is the first sketch that I have (or can remember); I think this idea like many others started as a sketch in my notebook at school. My favorite time to draw is when I’m supposed to be doing something else. I think I drew this soon after Pat had told me he had been diagnosed with cancer. The way I drew Pat is reminiscent of a sketch I did for his friend Jason (see below) who asked me to draw Pat as a zombie for a tattoo.

sketch done for Jason.
(this drawing may come up again in later blogs i recently rediscovered that i was reworking it in photo shop)




















Sketch 02
As you can tell from sketch one to sketch two that some time has passed, my hair has grown out, and Pat’s gone bald (this was after Pat had started chemo). I also changed it so that he was less decayed. I figured if I was the first one to be bitten he would have done it quickly and not had much time to decay. I also changed the dialogue here because it didn't get the laugh I wanted with the last set. If you were wondering, yes, that is a Lance Armstrong Live Strong cancer bracelet that Pat is wearing. I also sported one at the time but it's on the hand out of frame. On a side note, I always draw Pat with a black T-shirt that had the word “Fuck” scrawled across it. It was his favorite word, and matched his larger than life persona to a t. Or, a t-shirt, in this case. It’s a design both Pat and I got a laugh out of, and considered having made into a real shirt.





















out lines

Color
Here it is with color I also added more of Pat's tattoos after visiting him and getting some reference pictures. I’m lucky I drew this when I did and at the angle I did otherwise I would have to have drawn way more little tattoos. Though I did take the easy way out having traced a few.

Shading Technique
I decided to post this piece mainly because it made Pat look like the Fantastic 4’s Silver Surfer, which I thought was hilarious. I shaded this picture this way because I wanted to create a cartoon tone value as well a multi tone. I colored all the tones that I wanted for the picture on a separate layer in grey tones and then I messed with the different modes for the layers. Pat's shade layer mode is “Vivid Light” and mine is “Overlay”, which gave me the fine tone values.

Here is the final version. I was very happy with how it came out. Pat thought it was "rad". He printed it on some iron on paper and put it on the back of a sweatshirt that he wore pretty often.

So now he can be a zombie forever.