Spidey and the Goblin in quick color.

All color done in about 2.5 hours. Enjoy.

Spree 2009

The shirts are done and ready to go for Spree Touring's 2009 events the Brute and Escape the Farm. This year we upped the ante and are making 3 color t-shirts which gave some room for more pop. There will most likely be full color illustrations to follow. Just too much fun to skip. If you're in the WI area or willing to travel be sure to sign up for the rides.

Merry Christmas!

Santa, Herschel the Menorahndeer, and flying baby Jesus wish you all fun and festivities galore this holiday season (as do I).

A bit of Spidey Fun.

Just trying to loosen up last friday and this came out. Colors maybe to follow.

Spree Touring 2009

Don over at Spree Touring asked me to reprise my role as illustrator for the 2009 rides and I was happy to say yes as I had a blast with them last year. Without further ado, here are the B&W versions with color soon to follow.

Proof that I'm working

So despite my lack of posts lately I felt the need to keep people aware that actual work happens AND that new work will soon be posted. With that in mind... BEHOLD!!! My desk. Note the inky water and mass clutter. The piece under the lamp is one of the 2009 illustrations for Spree Touring. The cow is back. I think last year's piece had more hidden treasure value but this year's has more of a dynamic pop. But we'll see once it's done and some feedback filters back this way. I hope to tackle the Brute tomorrow and then see about getting everything scanned so I can start the color work.



So look for new work in the next week or so.

Girls Golden Choir

***update... They opted to go with the black t-shirt over the green. I agree. The file is now in the hands of the screen printers and I must move on with other things. But I look forward to seeing the finished product.***



So a new T-shirt design for the Start High School music department. The original drawing was too off center and clumpy that I rebuilt and redrew it in Adobe Illustrator. Keep in mind that all the yellows will be printed in metallic gold on the actual shirts. Included for viewing pleasure are the shirt color tests I did for giggles. I realize the school color are green and gold, but I really like the red and blue shirts. Go figure.

PANOPTICON

This Sunday, October 26th the six page story will be up on Split Lip.
A big thanks to Sam Costello for bringing me on for a stint as artist on his series of horror comics. It was a rewarding experience, and has resulted in what is easily some of my best work to date. So be sure to log on Sunday and check it out.

Never quite sure where to post some things.

This was done due to a far too crappy header over on Finger Twitchings, but the full color version seems too refined to post the full version among it's scribbly brethren. So here it is in all it's insane glory. Still not sure if I like the B&W pen sketch better than the full color. Maybe the color just takes it too nutty. The entire piece uses two hues with a wide array of saturation and brightness values so it feels like full color even though it is conceptually only the two. ... it made sense to me at the time.

Also, for those who enjoyed this past year's cycling illustrations for Spree Touring, I am officially doing the 2009 ride promotions so look for those in the coming months. It's down to two rides as the Kicker just didn't catch on despite positive feedback on the illustration. Maybe this year I'll actually join in on the rides and log some miles.

Fallcon

The weekend is over and after two days of self-promotion, a wedding of comic book fans, a steak dinner and plenty of quirky moments I'm ready for some food and a good night's sleep. But first it seems only fair to share a bit of the experience with those not in attendance. The sketches are, of course, posted on Finger Twitchings. I still have plenty of the Monster card packs so if anyone is interested in obtaining a set ($5 + S&H ), drop me a line and we can work out the details. Perfect for Halloween.

FALLCON is only ONE more day away!!!

And I'm rushing about in the hopes of getting things squared away in time. It's madness. Madness!!! Anyways, while weeding through pages and materials to decide what needs to be kept and what should be added to the sales bin, and how much to charge I came across this nice little ink drawing of a fishing reel. Most of the time I can only see the things that I do wrong, but every once in awhile I get a reminder that I can draw fairly well. This is one of those times. Thank you fishing reel.



On a sad note, the congress and senate who apparently don't have enough to do with trying to fix the economy have rushed through new copyright legislation that has a negative impact on the careers of artists and opens up a vast potential for corporate abuse. For some reason the combination of potential corporate abuse with damage to the working class reminds me of something. Vaguely familiar. Weird.

I initially touched on this topic over at Finger Twitchings, but since then the powers that be went ahead and hot-lined the legislation while no one was looking. How this has escaped the attention of the press is beyond me. It changes the standards by which an artist is able to retain the copyright over their own work making it easier for companies to seize and use work without fair compensation while also setting up the possibility that an artist would have to pay money to own their creations. Let me restate that: an artist would have to pay a registry in order to retain ownership of their own work. It's absurd. It also allows companies that steal work, if caught, to determine the fair market value when compensating the artist. I'm beginning to think we need to vote out and replace every sitting congressman and senator in the next election so that hopefully the new staffing will remember that they're supposed to work for us. The whole thing is disgusting.

To anyone who reads this and wants to do something, write your congressman / congresswoman and senator. Be heard. Educate yourselves on candidates and use your vote to hire better staffing.

Toothpick Dude.

I took on a rush job yesterday and have been pulling the all-nighter to get it squared away. I'm waiting for pools of ink to dry so in order to stay a bit loose and to keep from falling asleep I did this quick brush sketch over blue line roughs in about 10 minutes. Yawn. He looks to me like a guy one beer away from a bar fight. I bet his favorite movie is Cobra.

Oh... and I suppose I can post the actual work I was doing. Log cabins for a logo.

Dust to Dust is now... well... dust.

So many of you may be aware that I have been working on a book for Moonstone comics. It has been a long process. Thousands upon thousands of dollars of work all for the publishing credit. Well... due to insufficient orders it has come to my attention that the book will not see print. Ah. Hurm. Unpleasant.

I have put the pages out of sight but am still tempted to make a fire out of them. I do so solemnly swear to invite you all to the festivities should they meet a fiery demise. Otherwise they'll make their way into the sell pile.

The sunny side is that I can now move on to new and promising projects filled with robots, elves and miscellaneous silliness.

I received my confirmation of table space at this year's Fallcon. I was there last year helping to promote a book I had done some illustrations for as well as selling posters and such and had a great time. I had some unpleasant experiences at prior conventions but the folks at MCBA put on a terrific show and gave me a reason to look forward to future conventions. I really can't say enough good things about them.



So in preparation I'll be putting together prints of some of the illustrations I have here and on my gallery, as well as sets of the monster cards seen on the previous posts. I'll post more details as the convention draws near but make sure to keep October 4th and 5th open for all the comicy goodness.

Monsters galore.

So I decided to give cards to those who 1) complete their finals and 2) do a good job.

Here they are:

As was the case with crappy Batman, this dragon sketchcard was born from the teen class in progress. I've been making pieces as give-aways to students who impress me. This was today's but now the temptation is to a whole set of them so every student gets one. Mixed emotions abound as some of them are working hard but others... well... not so much. So is it better to give gifts to the undeserving, give nothing to anyone, or only give to those few who rose to the challenge and single out those who did not?

I'll probably make a number of others while the decision-making transpires.

Inking demo gone horribly awry.

Currently, I am teaching a teen comic class and today we dealt with lettering and inking. I had rough penciled a Batman and Robin to use as something to show some inking basics and the darn thing just kept growing. Layers of ink, white out and watercolor later and this monstrosity was born.

* this is no longer an excerpt.

Dinner is served.

For once I'm showing a bit of my life instead of my work. In particular, tonight's dinner. I bought some cheap thin steaks and pan cooked them with some yellow pepper in a bit of olive oil, lime juice and cumin until the peppers started to caramelize. Served with red beans and rice it became a nice mix of warm and sour with a hint of sweet. 

It tastes way better than it looks. 

Bon Appetit! 

Ridonkulous

So as I wrap up a few projects, I'm looking forward and eager to start a large self-directed book. Here are some of the character sketches. Yes, it is a winged unicorn.... and yes it's on a rainbow. All I can say in my defense is that I plan to do for elves what I did for squirrels and the Amish. It will be wrong and silly and entirely absurd.

.On the more normal side, I was at Wizard World Chicago this past weekend and did a drawing of spiderman to help pass the time

More color sketching

So another Daredevil surfaced as a quick warm up to the main event drawing of my yesterday. Started out as a 2b lead rendering, then I added some red watercolor, went over some areas with a brush pen (which was odd due to the ink rewetting the watercolor), then I dropped in the background, scanned it and slapped down some digital color and perhaps a bit too much blur.
And now it is here. Whee.

The quest continues

Since the previous sketches didn't seem quite on point with what I'm submitting to do I opted to make a template and tried working closer to size and speed. I cranked through two sheets very quickly, sent them off, and crossed my fingers. It makes drawing much harder. My personal faves are: Ghost Rider, Dr. Octopus, Dr. Sun (I don't think he's a real doctor), and Lockjaw.

Feel free to drop suggestions for characters you'd like to see me draw in the post comments and I'll see what I can do. I'm also open to doing commissions. Until next time.

Fun with sketching.

To understand fully I encourage you to check out Finger Twitchings for the first installment. Mostly I'm tired of typing out the explanation.

With that said, here's the second piece, posted here due to it's slightly more refined nature. For those with no idea who the kids are, they are one half of Power Pack (four siblings given super powers by a dying alien). Hopefully people will enjoy it as I enjoyed making it.

Until next time I wish you all magical powers by way of space horse.

joelvollmer.com

So the bigger gallery website is gone. It was expensive and seemed ineffectual based on both feedback and the stats I was getting through analytics. So until I figure out a new way to post a gallery (maybe a third blog?) it'll just be this site fore more finished pieces and Finger Twitchings for all the chicken scratch.
I'm always open to suggestions and ideas so if anyone has an idea for how I can set up a decent web gallery feel free to let me know. Until next time, I'll leave you with a piece done for a pitch.

I've just realized...

Thanks to a job opportunity, it has become apparent that I haven't really posted samples of lettering anywhere. So I guess that situation must be rectified. So first up are some pages from a project I'm doing written by the awesome Eric Schuster (see link) called,
The Greatest Show on Earth.



Next up, a year or so ago the talented Kyle Frink was in a bit of a bind and needed someone to letter a 22 page comic, called Safe Haven, in a few days so I jumped in with both feet. Little did I know that the script was crazy text heavy and Kyle, having never really lettered work before, had not left adequate room. It was a challenge as well as surprisingly fun. Kyle later inked 22 pages for me and the galactic karma balance was restored.

Finger Twitchings.

I've been meaning to post some of my sketchbook work for a while now, but they're so rough it seems wrong to put them next to the more finished work presented here. Result? A second blog! Finger Twitchings will be the home for all the chicken-scratch and garbled scribbles that happen at the very beginning of just about everything I do.

Hopefully, this will be fun for all concerned. Enjoy!

Ant Man and the Wasp

So the aforementioned inked page was given over to the folks at the Oconocon to help raise money for the Wisconsin Children's Hospital and now the colors are finally done. The photoshop file worked out to fifteen layers so it took a little while to piecemeal it together. Enjoy.

A huge Thanks to everyone...

who helped out by signing into Threadless and scoring the shirt design.
The comments left were all pretty positive, and the shirt was scored by a total of 1558 people so all in all I'd say it went well.
Thanks again.