The CLOCKIES

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I'm excited to share some wild illustrations I did for local author David Erik Nelson's Kindle novella TUCKER TEACHES THE CLOCKIES TO COPULATE. It's a funny, profane, thoughtful tale set in an alternate version of post-Civil War America, where steam-powered automatons fought as soldiers, and are now adrift amidst Reconstruction. I can't recommend this book enough--it's exactly the mix of humor, wry observation, and imaginative magic that I love. So go buy it!

 

30 QUEENS: My new collection of DRAG RACE art!

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So! I've finally collected my Drag Race art into a nifty little art book! It features 30 queens (more or less), is 5.5" x 7", and is available to buy online!

Each copy is $10 plus $2 shipping in the US. Orders for 30 QUEENS and Shadow Play can be combined for a flat shipping rate of $2. Shipping of 30 QUEENS is free with any purchase of my Drag Race prints!

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 E-mail me if you have any questions!

panjacomics at gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting Raja

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[slideshow id=5] So, I was lucky enough to meet my drag superstar muse, RAJA (aka Sutan Amrull) when she performed in Detroit!

It was an absolute thrill to finally give her a hug and hang out--she proved to be every bit as cool, down-to-earth, and smart as I'd expected. 

In honor of the event, I made this illustration, depicting her look from the Detroit show--she's gone blond and was sporting some amazing, glittery jewelry!

Thank you, Sutan, for such an amazing night!

Doodlin'

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So, I haven't been updating The Sellout much, and I feel bad about that. I've been having a blast with Manta-Man, and so most of my time has been focused on that. Plus, I've been busy with some other projects that aren't quite ready to present to the world, and I went to the Summit City Comic Con, hung out with friends at the Kids Read Comics Convention, etc. In any case, I wanted to share some ninja doodles I made today--I'm still trying to develop the right style for my self-contained Sachiko spin-off story. My tendency is to obsess over page layouts, anatomy, and clean lines. To mix things up, I'm playing around with different approaches that lead to much looser, lively results.

More soon!

Manila prints now available!

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THIS IS AN OUTDATED VERSION OF MY ONLINE STORE--PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PRINTS OF SEASONS 3 AND 4 OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE I'm glad to finally offer my prints of Manila Luzon for sale!

Each 11″ x 14″ poster is available on either glossy or matte paper–the glossy paper is thicker and looks more like a slick poster, whereas the matte pieces look almost like silkscreen prints.

Prints are $5 each, shipping is $5 within the US (for orders of up to 15 prints) and $7 for Drag Race fans in Canada. (Sorry, shipping elsewhere has proven to be too expensive!)

And, of course, you can combine orders of Manila, Raja, and Delta Work.

Click the images below to see what each print will look like (with the exception of slight changes in color that result from the printing process.)

I’m happy to sign the posters, if you want– just mention it when you check out!

When you’re ready to check out, click here:

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. Again, I'm happy to combine your orders of Manila with prints of Raja, and Delta Work.

When you're all done shopping, click below! .

The Sachiko Spin-off!

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I've been referencing it for a while now, but I'm excited to officially announce that I'll be doing a self-contained story featuring Sachiko (from my webcomic Manta-Man) in a creepy, supernatural tale of desire and destruction. I'm hoping to have it complete within a few months, possibly in time for some of the comic conventions at which I'll be exhibiting. The idea had been germinating ever since I ran across Obakemono, a delightful site collecting illustrations and descriptions of mythical Japanese creatures. I was immediately drawn to some of the eerie folktales, and it seemed perfectly natural to incorporate them into Sachiko's ninja world. My new comic story will feature my own spin on one of these stories--given my inclinations, you can guess in what directions I'll be taking it.

The story will also give me the chance to experiment inking with a brush and brushpen--in fact, while sketching out some of my ideas today, I was so taken by my early results that I wanted to share some spoiler-free glimpses here:

 

The Pit Crew

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What better way is there of celebrating this season of Rupaul's Drag Race than by illustrating the talented men of the Pit Crew? Seriously, we didn't see nearly enough of them (and I mean that in the sense that they both clearly have a lot of personality and have a lot to offer! sheesh!). In case you didn't already know, Shawn Morales is on the left, Jason J. Carter is on the right.

I had been putting off this illustration for a while, because I wasn't sure how my "Drag Race" style would translate to a depiction of studly men, but I was surprised at these results! Here are some slightly more tasteful excerpts:

 

 

 

(Wait, I didn't mean for them to be looking meaningfully at each other. I shouldn't post anything after a beer.)

 

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Too far? Judge for yourself.

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So, yeah, as if weeks of Drag Race portraits weren't enough, I decided to draw my two favorite judges from the show--aside from Rupaul, of course. (My portraits of her are on their way, don't worry) Santino Rice: When did he get so cute?

And Michelle Visage: Sorry Raja, but she should've been America's Next Drag Superstar! (I mean that in only the best way, Michelle!)

Stay tuned for my Rupaul portrait(s), the Pit Crew, and the reunion show!

How to Draw a Drag Queen

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Some Drag Race fans have been asking about the process of creating my fan art, so I wanted to share some of the steps in creating my "Money" look for Raja, even though my methods continue to evolve.

It all starts while watching Rupaul’s Drag Race every Monday night--as the girls start coming out onto the catwalk, I grab my sketchbook and start laying out loose, gestural poses and ideas.

You can see from these samples how rough and simple this process is--I've found it's better to work out ideas with quick sketches while figuring out your plan, rather than investing too much energy in the first drawing you come up with.

(Aaaand since I don’t have a DVR to pause the show, I have to work quickly to keep up!)

My favorite catwalk looks tend to be the most striking and distinctive ones, which is why I've drawn Raja each and every week-- her frequent use of varied cultural and historical fashions conjure up a slew of associations and ideas for me to work with. In this case, I saw Raja as the star of a lavish 1930’s musical.

I decided to go further with this drawing. Although I (clearly!) still needed to work a lot of stuff out, I liked the angle of Raja’s head, her hat, her torso, and her arms.

At this point, I scan in my sketch, move things around, then print it out a little larger. For this part of the process, I use a lightbox-- a fresh piece of paper is placed on top of the print-out, and the light shining through both layers of paper allows me to derive a more refined sketch from that chaotic first drawing. You'll see I also changed the position of both her arms and her legs.

During the lightboxing process, I frequently flip over the drawing and look at its mirror image, which allows you to see the weird assymmetries in your work--it's a horrifying (but essential) trick if you want to fix the strange distortions that would otherwise go overlooked.

Once the new drawing is done, I scan that, too. You’ll notice the use of both blue and black pencil--the blue is for the sketching process, where I'm still trying out different ideas. Then, in Photoshop, it’s easy to knock out those blue tones, so you’re left with a cleaner image.

At this point, I kept switching things around, subtly changing the pose and blocking in some rough colors to get a better idea of the final piece.

At the last minute, I decided to bend Raja's leg up and loosely sketched it in with my graphics tablet. I was starting to get worried that the pose looked too unrealistic and weird, which is often the case. One of the tricky things about the Drag Race portraits is determining when my simplification and exaggeration of the figure looks good, and when it just looks f*&ked.

Back to the lightbox! Here, I do the final drawing in both blue and black ink. The reasons for that get kind of complicated, so click here to go to my "technical addendum" if you want to find out more about some of the more elaborate Photoshop tricks I use.

With my earlier Drag Race art, I would literally just draw each shape with a polygonal "lasso" tool in Photoshop, though I switched my process about halfway through the season. Now I'm able to use this final drawing to serve as a guide in which Photoshop is able to assign different blocks of color to each section, according to my specifications. Depending on the complexity of the drawing, it can take a while to go through and individually designate all the colors that will go into the final piece.

It's a tedious process, but it's exciting to see the portrait start taking shape. And once that’s done, I begin fussing over everything else--where to throw in some texture, tweak the face, fix things that aren’t the right size or are at the wrong angle.

This is the first Drag Race portrait where I finally let myself use line-- for my previous pieces, I had always forced myself to use flat shapes of color (with added textures and shading for some, of course) but I wanted to try incorporating a little bit of line while keeping to the style I've developed over the course of these past few months. I tend to rely too much on linework in my other art projects, and one of my favorite aspects of this Drag Race illustration series has been that it's rejuvenated my love of, and confidence in working with, COLOR.

For better or worse, I only settle on the final layout at the end of the night, as I'm starting to go crazy from spending too many hours at the computer. I played around with a few different ways of framing Raja and finally came up with the giant burst  of yellow to use as the background.

RajaAnd there you have it! Working on all this Drag Race art has been an incredible experience on a number of levels-- it's been thrilling to keep pushing my abilities further while earning such a great response from other fans. I hope this little write-up of my process has been informative and maybe even a tiny bit inspirational.

Again, check out my "technical addendum" for more specific Photoshop techniques I used in making this portrait!

Please send along any questions you might have!

How to Draw a Drag Queen: The Technical Addendum

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Alright, so you want to learn some of my Photoshop tricks? First of all, you should know that I'm using the ancient CS2 on PC, so feel free to laugh at my expense if I use any obsolete terminology or betray my ignorance of whatever fancy new tools that may be available to those with newer software.

The final drawing for my "Money" portrait of Raja utilized blue and black ink, because it's easy to separate the two in Photoshop for whatever nefarious purposes you may have in mind. In my case, I'll use the blue outlines to serve as the boundaries for my flat colors, whereas the black linework will stay just that-- linework.

To separate the black lines from the blue: You can knock out the blue ink using color channels--I hit CTRL + 3 to select this "blue" channel, which filters out the blue (or something. I've never completely understood this.) Given the particular shade of blue I used (from a cheap felt tip marker) almost all of the blue is taken out of the drawing. I select it all and copy it to a new layer.

To clean up the new layer, I use "Threshold" to remove any lingering traces of blue ink. Then I use "Select color range" to make a selection of all the white on this layer and delete it. This will leave you with JUST the black linework. In my Drag Race work, I don't like to rely on only black line, so later on, I'll hit the "transparency lock" button (or, uh, whatever it's called) and I can easily use a brush to color the lines to more successfully integrate them into the final work.

 

 

 

 

 

So, back to the original layer with the blue (and black) ink. We'll use this to lay in the "flats", which are the flat patches of color that serve as the foundation for the piece. This process utilizes a free Photoshop plug-in called Bpelt. (you can download it here) It's a great tool, and you should totally support the developers, as they've made life easier for countless illustrators and comic artists. HOWEVER, it comes with a bit of a learning curve--you should follow their instructions closely to avoid any number of f*&k-ups that will result in your first few attempts at using it.

Basically, you need to use the "Threshold" tool once again, making both colors of ink into black linework. Once you run Bpelt's "Multifill" and then "Flatten" filters, you'll have something that looks like this:

Bpelt divides up your drawing into random colors, which you can then easily fill in however you choose (use the paintbucket tool, with anti-alias turned off).

Some of my simpler Drag Race art is entirely comprised of these flat colors, but if I'm going for something more complex, I'll add layers of texture or transparent color--especially with the queens' cheeks!

And then, in the case of this portrait, there are those crucial lines in the face and hair. As I mentioned, I color some of those lines to make them more subtly incorporated into the colors beneath. (Again, use the transparency lock)

There are plenty of technical mistakes that I'm still working through, but it's about using the technology to serve your artistic vision. You could use the most advanced, complicated software, but if you lack a good eye and striking composition, it's not going to be anything special.

Thanks so much for reading through all this! I know it's not exactly a step-by-step guide, but you can feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions about the process.

 

Another week, another MANTA-MAN!

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It's been a busy week--I shipped countless Drag Race prints out, and I've just posted a brand new installment of my webcomic MANTA-MAN! (uh, for mature readers, only) I'm gearing up the the finale of Rupaul's Drag Race, of course, and will soon be posting a "behind the scenes" look at the process of creating my Drag Race work.

As if that wasn't enough, I've also been messing around with some Japanese brush pens and have, fittingly, been toying with a comic based on Japanese folklore. Check out some of my results!:

Prints of Delta Work, now available!

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THIS IS AN OUTDATED VERSION OF MY ONLINE STORE--PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PRINTS OF SEASONS 3 AND 4 OF RUPAUL'S DRAG RACE  

Due to popular demand, I’m now offering my Drag Race illustrations as 11″ x 14″ prints!

Scroll down to see the full selection of DELTA WORK prints available, and click here for prints of Manila and Raja!

Each poster is available on either glossy or matte paper–the glossy paper is thicker and looks more like a slick poster, whereas the matte pieces look almost like silkscreen prints and have a bit more texture to them.

Prints are $5 each, shipping is $5 within the US (for orders of up to 15 prints) and $7 for Drag Race fans in Canada. (Sorry, shipping elsewhere has proven to be too expensive!) And yes, of course you can bundle RAJA, MANILA, and DELTA prints together--they're friends, so they should get along.

Click the images below to see what each print will look like (with the exception of slight changes in color that result from the printing process.)

I’m happy to sign the posters, if you want– just mention it in the "note to seller" when you check out!

When you’re ready to check out, click here:

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.Click here to see my prints of RAJA, or click the button below to check out!
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Drag Race prints now available!

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UPDATE: I've revamped my online store, so please make any purchases through the new shop! Thanks!

Due to popular demand, I'm now offering my Drag Race illustrations as 11" x 14" prints!

As if Raja weren't enough, there are also prints available of DELTA WORK and MANILA LUZON!

Each poster is available on either glossy or matte paper--the glossy paper is thicker and looks more like a slick poster, whereas the matte pieces look almost like silkscreen prints.

Prints are $5 each, shipping is $5 within the US (for orders of up to 15 prints) and $7 for Drag Race fans in Canada. (Sorry, shipping elsewhere has proven to be too expensive!)

Click the images below to see what each print will look like (with the exception of slight changes in color that result from the printing process.)

I'm happy to sign the posters, if you want-- just mention it when you check out!

When you're ready to check out, click here:

(PLEASE let me know if you have any trouble with the order form! panjacomics at gmail.com)

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(.((A note about "sci-fi" Raja--this is the one print that actually looks better on glossy paper, just so you know!)

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