Hooray—my website, jess-smiley.com is up! Comics, books, drawings, and more! It looks like this: What do you think? Building websites is the bane of my existence, but I finally have something decent to share. I’ll probably put up a post about easy web building in the future, but for now I’m just glad to have…
These aren’t paintings and those aren’t brushstrokes. These three portraits aren’t even digital creations—they’re embroideries. Each line of color is a single strand of thread, carefully stitched by artist Daniel Kornrumpf, completing what looks like a Chuck Close painting. These pictures take me back to a color theory class I took in college,…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv0YjQ2KN3c] The creator of Habibiย drawing page borders and sharing his workflow for his 12 hour pages (6 hours for panels, 6 hours for page border).
A couple of pages from my current sketchbook.
Tonight I am presenting How I Made My Graphic Novel at the Orem Public Library, from 7-8pm. The event is free and open to the public. I’ll be taking the audience through a step-by-step process of how I made my book, Upside Down: A Vampire Tale—everything from the initial idea, to developing the story, making…
Lucy Knisley has made what is easily my favorite series of images of the year in her pictorial summary of Harry Potter in 8 parts. Each picture summarizes a book, with the last book being split into two pictures. While each picture has, no doubt, taken Lucy hours and hours to make, she’s unable to…
Cartoonist Bill Alger is developing a new graphic novel for kids called Homeboy, and has started a blog to record his process and ideas over the next year. “Homeboy is a kid who runs away from home, then wakes up the next morning to discover that a tiny version of his family’s home has become…
A. He tells all here. Dustin is the mushy brains behind Diary Comics and Memoir Comics and has been getting a lot of attention in the comics world over the last several months. His scratchy line drawings and funny stories and easy to get into, but hard to get out of. In an effort to…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY&feature=player_embedded] Even if they don’t experience it themselves, everyone who works freelance knows the woes of the provider / client relationship. This video shows just how ridiculous it can sometimes be. Just watching this video gives you a pretty good idea of some of the ways the freelancing industry works.
Cygnus is a journal of speculative fiction headed by writer, editor and epic beard-grower, Casey Winters. The journal (which is listed on Duotrope’s Digest) will feature six to nine short stories, as well as speculative works of art (arguably, anyone could look at my pictures and speculate as to whether or not it is really…