Arik Roper’s Mind-Altering Art and Illustrations
By Jason Thibault Arik Roper is an artist who transcends time. You stumble across his art and you think you've found some long-lost illustrations from the late 60's to mid 1970's era. Yet somehow his work perfectly complements the various album covers and concert posters of modern-day rock and metal groups. He is endlessly toiling with new materials and techniques it is of no surprise that his art is growing in popularity. What inspired you to first start drawing? Did you struggle in your formative years or did it come easy to you? I started drawing around age 3. Both my parents were ...
The Art and Illustration of Florian Nicolle
Man it's been an amazing week for random awesome emails sent in to me. I was contacted by Florian Nicolle who is an illustrator and graphic designer who lives in France. To see more of Florians work you can visit http://www.neo-innov.fr/ , his DeviantArt page or see him on the Bahance network. He's only 22 and clearly is going places. Enjoy a shitload of cool illustrations on this fine Friday morning. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
The Pen and Ink Intricacies of sAnTos
by Jason Thibault I first started noticing the intricate pen and ink line work of sAnTos on a Hire on Fire t-shirt. His insanely detailed and creepy drawings immediately took me back to my punk and metal days of the 1980's. Luckily I still dig punk and metal AND talented artists. We corresponded back and forth over the summer and sAnTos finally delivered a short novel's worth of answers to my questions on how he does what he does. What inspired you to first start drawing? Did you struggle in your formative years or did it come easy to you? I've always ...
Ryan Patterson’s Dark Designs and Illustrations
by Jason Thibault This week I'm going to do a multi-part feature on all of the components that make up Optimum Wound Volume One. The book is out in limited distribution but we haven't spoken a whole lot about it unless you've happened to run into us at Canadian comic convention. We're going to turn up the volume a little louder this week. The book is something we're very proud of. It took us four years to get this off the ground. It's with great relief that the book has finally found its' way onto the other side of the printing press. Towards ...
Artist David D’Andrea on the Melding of Art and Life
By Jason Thibault David D'Andrea combines the draftsmanship of the poster artists and album cover designers of the 1960's and 70's with a raw detailed grittiness to create an organic pen and ink style that is unmistakably his own. His t-shirt designs, hand colored silk-screen prints and album covers are highly sought after and have won much praise and even more fans and admirers. He completely throws himself into his work and each new piece is an extension and evolution from the last one. David is a wandering soul and will probably continue to search and improve until the day he ...
Blog
Our Top 5 posts of 2009
by Jason Thibault I should’ve done this earlier in January but we’ve...
Tim Bradstreet’s Illustrations for Robert E Howard’s El Borak Collection are looking damn good
Tim Bradstreet gave us a preview on his blog of his illustration work for the new...
12 Great Videos on Inking Comics
The other week I decided to hunt around online and see what types of videos were...
The Art and Illustration of Florian Nicolle
Man it’s been an amazing week for random awesome emails sent in to me. I was...
Our extremely talented friend Anville is selling some incredible prints
I love finding cool shit in my inbox. I was reading through the morning’s...
Ryan Patterson’s Dark Designs and Illustrations
by Jason Thibault This week I’m going to do a multi-part feature on all of...
Tips for Con Season and Having Your Portfolio Reviewed
by Richard Serrao This Column will be a bit of an overview of things to come and...
Read More Posts From This Categorymasters of ink
Arik Roper’s Mind-Altering Art and Illustrations
By Jason Thibault Arik Roper is an artist who transcends time. You stumble across...
The Pen and Ink Intricacies of sAnTos
by Jason Thibault I first started noticing the intricate pen and ink line work of...
Artist David D’Andrea on the Melding of Art and Life
By Jason Thibault David D’Andrea combines the draftsmanship of the poster...
Artist Michael Cho on Putting in his Time at the Board
By Jason Thibault Michael Cho is one of those artists that simply fascinates me...
Artist Ed Laroche on Doing Things His Own Way
By Richard Serrao I first saw Ed Laroche’s work on MySpace when he added me...
The Insanely Detailed Art and Work Ethic of Anville
By Jason Thibault I first saw the extravagantly detailed work of Anville through...
Drew Millward’s Stunning and Unique Artwork
By Jason Thibault Odds are if you’re wearing a t-shirt with an image created...
Read More Posts From This CategoryArticles
Anatomy of a Pen and Ink Drawing From Concept to Finish
Hello, my name is Richard Serrao. I’m the co-owner of Optimum Wound and I’m also a graphic black and white artist. The purpose of this Column today is to give a little insight into the creative process I employ, along with some of the tools I use. Which I’ll also show and talk about how I use them. Above is the type of India ink I... [Read more of this article]
23 Ways for a Comic Artist to Survive and Thrive in any Economy
By Jason Thibault This was originally a to do list that I wrote for myself. I was trying to think of as many things that I could do as an artist to expand my reach and get the word out there. Some were stupid so I immediately omitted them and tried to chisel this list down to only the good stuff. This isn’t meant to distract you from your goal... [Read more of this article]
Five Reasons to Draw with Pen and Ink on Paper (and sometimes big)
by Jason Thibault Now that computers and the internet have overtaken the world I sometimes fear that a lot of the traditional things that we take for granted will slowly begin to disappear. It may be an irrational fear as the internet has also brought to light amazing factions of creators in different pockets of the globe. I’ve been noticing... [Read more of this article]
The Submission Guidelines for every Comic and Manga Publisher in the Universe
By Jason Thibault LAST UPDATED: JANUARY 25, 2010 Late in 2008 I was curious about which comic companies were still accepting submissions. In an act of pure masochism your friends at Optimum Wound visited the websites of every known comics publisher over the past two months. Back in 2004 Tom Spurgeon over at The Comics Reporter had posted an insanely... [Read more of this article]
ANATOMY OF A PAGE: A PROCESS BLOG FOR PAGE 22 OF BATTLES
This was an older process blog that I had done in early 2006. It was sitting out there lost in the Myspace archives. I had a lot of fun putting it together so I dusted it off and put it back up. I wanted to discuss the process behind a page that I drew for my online graphic novel. Things were about to get rather violent in the story and I wanted to... [Read more of this article]
By Jason Thibault, This article was originally posted on Myspace back in 2006. It was sitting lost in their archives not doing anyone any good so I ported it over here to our homepage. This was one of the techniques that I was playing around with a few years ago. I now use a digital camera to take most of my reference these days and miss using my old... [Read more of this article]
4 books to help inspire you to get off your ass and create something
When I’m up against a creative brick wall or need a little push I’ll often return to a core group of books that have inspired me over the years. They’re not heavy on tech or even “how-to” chapters. They get straight to the heart of the matter. Breaking through resistance, procrastination, summoning the muse, remaining consistent and achieving... [Read more of this article]
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