I think everyone has wanted to be a pirate at one point in their life. Especially when you’re a child. Thrills, excitement, danger, sword fights, and all of the swashbuckling fun that goes with being a scallywag. There are very few adventures you can undertake as an adult that hold that kind of wide-eyed wonderment, and even fewer jobs you can wind up having that fill you with that enthralling sense of fascination.

I’ve been very, VERY lucky the last 3 years of my adult life to have such a job. But I’m not sailing the high seas, raising a flag with a jolly roger on it up the mast, drinking obscene amounts of rum or pretending like I know how to handle a sword (well…that’s not entirely true, I do enjoy drinking obscene amounts of rum now and again) No, I’ve been coloring comic books and doing illustration and digital painting commission work, but mostly coloring comics.

So while that can be a pretty exciting job, that allows you a lot more freedom and the occasional moment of wide-eyed wonderment, it can also at times be the thing that causes the kind of stress which drives you to want to drink obscene amounts of rum for one reason or another. Trust me on this.

Taking into account all of the positive and negative aspects that come along with being a freelance artist, it is still almost like stumbling upon buried treasure when you come across a project that gives you freedom, enjoyment and offers you the opportunity to grow as an artist. So I was more than a little wide-eyed with wonder when I was given the opportunity to work on my next comic coloring project……

Neverland.

THE Neverland, of Peter Pan fame. My absolute favorite story of all time. Everything that you ever dreamed of doing when you were a child, meeting Indians, giant pirate ships, rescuing maidens in distress, fighting pirates and fighting WITH pirates, living in a treehouse, mermaids, fairies, sword fights, danger, excitement, and lots and lots of FUN. Especially when you take into account the fact that THIS version of Neverland is going to be a darker, more twisted version of the classic tale, complete with all sorts of new interpretations on the characters we all know, and introducing some new ones as well. All of the things I love, and an opportunity to really showcase all of the strongest elements in my work.

You can read more about the series here,

Neverland Interview

and yes….Captain Hook……

….if you’re listening, I really DO want to be a pirate.

been working like crazy here the last 2 months, and running around on top of it all.  Finally finished another concept piece for my personal project though.  It’s finally moving in the direction I want to end up visually I think now, which is part animated/part painted.  I’ve been writing more script the last couple of months than I have been doing artwork, but now that I’ve finished this piece, I’m moving on to more design work for the various locations in the story, the other characters, props and things.  In my copious “spare time” of course.  Enjoy!

Larger version can be found here.

It seems whenever you come to a point in life where you have to make decisions, whether they’re BIG decisions or little ones, you inevitably find yourself drawing some sort of lines. These aren’t lines on paper, but rather metaphorical lines that you’re drawing into those spaces in your life between the old and the new, or the stressful and relaxing. My own lines have been sort of zig zagging every which way for a few months now, in ways that required me to really focus and find a way to draw straight lines, but I think after a lot of struggling, I finally found a good ruler to use in the short term, and hopefully after a short period of time I’ll be able to set it down again and get back to some freehand drawing

The transition back into the working world is going moderately well so far. It’s a job that I know I can do, and I’m not running into anything that is really mind bending and causing me problems yet, so that’s a huge plus. It’s also nice to be able to put in my hours, and LEAVE when it’s done. Hoping I can get all the hours I want when football season rolls around soon, but that’s still kind of up in the air right now. I know I’ll be able to get game days and at least one practice day off, but hopefully I can get things worked around the other practice and stuff. we’ll see. It’s going good as I said, and it’s going to be nice to have steady money coming in again for a change.

I wanted to wait until after the weekend of the 4th to really get moving on stuff again, but I may have to man up and just start DOING things again before then. So much to get started on here. I’m going to really start moving on my creator owned project here, as well as some other things with DJ Coffman. Working on a cool pitch now with writer/creator Eric Hobbs. It’s a great little story, weaving elements from various sources like Neverland, Oz and others into a gigantic, all ages, adventure that looks to be something very special. Artist Derrick Fish is doing some absolutely amazing work on this so far. Some of you might know Derrick from his webcomic work on Dandy and Company. I’ve been reading that forever, and was excited to see his name and his work on this project and get a chance to work with him. We’re doing some really great work together, can’t wait to show some of it later.

As for my own project, I’m going to share some new stuff soon from that. However I’m NOT going to be sharing the name again any time soon. Needless to say, in the last week, I went to see if the domain name I wanted was available for it, and it was. This morning, it’s been registered and has some template thing installed on it and mysteriously has no contact information, no links, no content, but a header and a flaky looking “this belongs to me” tagline. Probably a coincidence, but in a day and age where people just scoop up domains for things left and right in hopes of selling them off, it just as well could be someone hoping that I’ll shell out money for a name I was going to build an IP around.

On the homefront, things are great. We’re getting a lot of little things around the house and yard done that we’ve been meaning to, and enjoying spending time just hanging out this summer so far. Not going to baseball/softball 5 nights a week and weekends is a HUGE bonus as well. Leaves you with a lot of free time in the evenings that’s for sure. Just in the last 3 days, I’ve put in a screen door in the garage that my wife has wanted for 3 years (evidently so I can now hear the speakers from the garage stereo better, which I guess is partly true) put landscape lighting around the water garden/pond by the patio with the wife, finished laying a natural stone wall on the backside of the burm by the pond, and trimmed all the grass in the front yard. that doesn’t even take into account the consumption of extra greasy and crispy onion rings, the graduation party with a live band, playing Lego Batman on the pS3 with my son, sleeping in late on Sunday, having friends over for a 4th of July PRE party, party on Saturday night etc….. so life is definitely good. The only thing I could complain about is that I’m still owed a lot of money from one comic publisher, but really…if that’s the worst thing going on in my life, I’m lucky. I’m sure that situation will be resolved one way or another, hopefully in the next several weeks or in the next month. It needs to be resolved so I can get on with my life. Something I’m making an effort at doing. And while things are hectic, it’s a good hectic now, and I’m enjoying it.

So I’m going to get working on some things that I feel good about now, and hopefully….set that ruler aside and find time to start drawing some of my own lines.

redesign of the site and blog happened at a good time. I’m swamped right now. Working on editing and designing TWO graphic novels, both over 100 pages long, potentially coloring some interesting new projects, doing a few commissions, and working on my own creator owned project more here. Still, I’m getting a lot done this week, and am scheduling work for June. So if you need a colorist for your comic, a digital painter or concept artist for an upcoming project feel free to get in touch. We’ve been making due here somehow, but it would be nice to line up enough paying gigs for the entire summer, that’s for sure. The search for a day job is going absolutely nowhere right now, so that would be one less thing to worry about.

Can’t wait to start getting actual pages done for the Rift in Time project. The script is really writing itself and I’m having a blast with it. Very fulfilling, and it’s going to be a great all ages kind of project, very visually appealing, fresh and fun I think. A distinct animated kind of Don Bluth look to it all as well.

back to work here, just taking a short break to fill the void with a progress report.

Watch live video from jembury’s channel on Justin.tv

I know, I know, it’s almost a week late. I’ve been extremely busy, which is of course a good thing in these troubled times. I had to go back and actually check the blog from last year here to revisit my goals I had set for 2008, and to recap them a little bit. Funnily enough, I sort of KNEW from the start that they would be hard to accomplish because life is in flux so much of the time, however I think I came away from the year having done just that. I’m going to just update my last year goals first here.

2008 goals revisited.

1- Find more time to create art for just me. CHECK.

2- Finish losing the weight I wanted to lose last year. I lost 15 lbs in 2007, I have about 10 more lbs to lose to get to where I wanted to be in 2008. CHECK. (although I seemed to gain quite a bit back between Thanksgiving and New Years )

3- Become a better digital painter. CHECK!

4- Learn a new software program. HALF-CHECK. picking up on Vue 6 somewhwat.

5- Paint the elvish script around the decorative ceiling shelf in our living room for my wife, and include a large celtic/elvish design motif painted on the ceiling for her. FAIL. we put off painting the living room until this year. so it’s not exactly a fail I guess.

6- I have a comic coloring related goal I don’t want to mention really. CHECK.

7- Make more connections. CHECK.

8- I want to start to step back a bit and give my kids more freedom. CHECK.

9- Relax more. HALF CHECK.

10- Become a better person. Don’t get me wrong, regardless of the few people out there that may think I’m a jerk, I’m really a good person. There are certain things I want to work on though for sure. I think we probably ALL have this goal somewhere deep down, for some it might be buried in their sub-conscious, but the bottomline is just being the best person you can be. A better dad, a better husband, a better friend, a better brother, a better son, a better artist, a better citizen….that’s a lot of hats for any of us to where, and yet finding the BALANCE is the key. CHECK.

2008 in review.

Now on to the recap. Talk about a crazy year. Work was erratic, which was complicated by an erratic financial situation as well. Through it all though, I accomplished more work wise, and had my best year financially as a freelancer. SOMEHOW. So in retrospect, I’m not going to complain about any of the problems that arose, as they were overcome through good fortune, grace, and perseverance.

This was the LAST year that I coach for 6-7 months out of the year though. I think I’ve decided that I’m scaling back the coaching to JUST my sons football team for the next 2 years, and then I’ll be done likely as not. That proved to be quite an added amount of stress trying to juggle all of that responsibility on top of the hectic and sometimes crazy deadlines of a freelance career. There were times that I was completely worn out looking back. Thankfully enough football coaching came last and was high energy enough to keep me going until the end.

The kids have taken huge strides this year in finding their own independence and discovering what they’re made of. My daughter is going through a lot of adversities and what not as she navigates the waters of middle school but is managing fairly well thus far. She really enjoyed playing on the MS volleyball team and the competition, and the team had a great year. She’s just now starting basketball and is loving it, I think

My son had a really good year of baseball and the team did really well. This was also the first year that we decided to get him into football. He’s been bugging for a couple years now and the timing seemed to be right, in addition to the fact that I was asked to help coach his team. I think there was an adjustment period at first, but it was definitely something he enjoyed. He learned a LOT about himself, and I learned quite a bit about him as well from the entire experience. He seems to welcome the challenges and responsibilities that come with playing quarterback, and he’s determined to make himself the absolute best player that he can. He’s already started his off season conditioning for NEXT year, and if the kid wants to go outside and throw a ball at targets when it’s 5 degrees outside, I can respect the heck out of that sort of commitment and determination. It will lead you down all the right sorts of roads in life.

My wife and I enjoyed our FIRST anniversary away all by ourselves in 12 years this year as well. Needless to say, we don’t get enough time with just the two of us when we’re running around everywhere, but it was nice to spend time together for a change without having to be anywhere at a certain time, or do anything in particular for a while. It’s amazing still, that we can both work from home and not end up at each others throats all the time Honestly though, we are both extremely fortunate in today’s job market to be able to have that kind of luxury. It’s one of the incentives for working hard all the time I think in some ways. I would go get a real job in the outside world again if I really had to, and I’ve been pretty damn close to having to over the years, but it’s hard to imagine having a better job than I do right now.

In general, we just really kept ourselves busy, tried to handle all the obstacles that came our way, and enjoyed our time together with family and friends. So a big shout out to all of those friends and family that we enjoyed spending time with this year. You helped us get through a topsy-turvy year whether you realized it at the time or not. We don’t have anything to REALLY worry about, and our lives continue to be filled with nothing but AWESOME for the most part.

On to 2009…

So as the New Year gets underway, I have some of the same goals I had as last year. I’d like to lose another 10 lbs, 15 if I’m lucky, that would put me at the “perfect” weight. Plenty of things to get done around the house obviously, when isn’t there. I’d like to really work on the RELAXING bit more I think too Finding more time for my own artwork, and really get at least one of my own projects off the ground this year, regardless of setbacks. Aside from all of those things, after having spent 2 years coloring comics for a living now, I’d really like to land some work at DC or Marvel I think. Something related to, or including Batman is my goal. It may not happen, but looking back on my past goals the last 5 years, there is very little that I have NOT accomplished if I have set a goal to do something. So I figure I’ll get that out there in the Universe somewhere and see what happens.

Okay, wrapping up almost a complete day off from actual work here, and it’s time to put on the Dad costume and go do some running kids around now.

forgive the spelling mistakes today. just finished an all nighter, literally, and I could care less about how many spelling errors I make right now.

just wrapped up colors for Beyond Wonderland #4 with Nei Ruffino, Garry Henderson, and Blond (who came on at the last minute to save all our butts) The issue is made of complete AWESOME in my opinion, Dan Leister did an amazing job on the art for the book.

Put on a pot of coffee for my wife who’s waking up in about 5 minutes now, thinking of cooking a huge breakfast, and then crashing till the afternoon once these high rez files finish uploading. I probably won’t take off the entire day today, I’ll squeeze in another page or so I think likely as not. Strangely, not too tired right now, so if I can’t fall asleep I may just stay up all day and dork around.

this week, have to get the rest of our xmas shopping done, for the kids. I have a couple things left to get my wife, but I think we’re planning on heading into town on Friday to do shopping. then I’ll probably take the kids either Saturday or Sunday to pick up gifts for her.

It’s pretty apparent that I’m jumping all over the place right now too. It’s been really refreshing to have so much work lately, regardless of how busy it seems I am. I’d much rather be swamped right now, than be out of a job like so many other people. I think I’m doing some good work too, at least it seems that way to me I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been cranking out, and I’ve been cranking out a LOT of stuff. The first issue of my Dabel Bros. comic, Take A Chance is out this month. Can’t wait to get a copy of that and check it out, the art is fantastic, and I love the concept of the story (and the writing)

K, I’m losing it, it’s time to wrap things up, and get something to eat here, I’m starving!!!!!!

I’m groggy this morning. I have a bit of a headache as well, which doesn’t mix with being groggy very well at all. The good thing is, that I don’t have to go anywhere today to get to work. The roads are a mess my wife informed me after dropping the kids off at school. So once I imbibe enough coffee this morning to actually start functioning I’ll be set.

Flipping through a book I just sold on ebay as I was getting it ready to mail out, I came across a great little quote by Normal Rockwell. It went something like this, “Painting is like throwing a ball against a wall, it never comes back to you as hard as you throw it. So throw it hard!” Such sage like advice there.

Colored the cover for issue 4 of my Dabel Bros./Del Rey book Take a Chance yesterday, in addition to more pages from the Grimm Fairy Tales Annual. Superheroes and fantasy in the same day, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than that I’m hoping to get a great deal of stuff accomplished today as well, since I was planning on taking all day Thanksgiving off. Which means I have to work that much harder before and after to make up for that of course.

I’m trying to ignore the news lately, as it manages to frustrate, depress, and anger me all at once. Hard to escape that sort of real life stuff though. What would help is if checks would come in the mail on a more regular basis. Speaking of just such a thing, there SHOULD be a rather sizable check in the mail today, which would make me happy. So I’m hoping when I walk the 100 feet down the driveway through the snow to the mailbox, there’s actually a check in there. Because freezing your giblets off to get the mail, and having it not contain anything to warm you up like money (or the new Victoria Secret’s catalog) feels like a waste, you know?

Alright, not a whole lot else on my mind, it’s sort of cluttered still a bit, and as I said, groggy. I may have to make a second pot of coffee today after I get around here. It just feels like a 2 pot of coffee sort of day today.

Finished up this sketch card of Batman while watching election returns the other night. About a half hour, done mostly in watercolor, with some ink, black prisma marker and a bit of colored pencil. You can follow the link below to the ebay store and bid on it if you’re interested. Hoping to get a few more sketch cards done this week yet, but I’ve got a cover to finish for Zenescope and a 10 page short due before next Friday, in addition to some color studies and some submission pages. Going to be another busy weekend!

Batman sketch card now on ebay!

Spiderman has always been one of my favorite superheroes. Just completed a mixed media sketch card that’s up on ebay now for sale. Check it out!!!
Spiderman Sketch Card on ebay!

More goodies to come this week yet too!