Here are some Baby Yoda sketches to start off the new year!
The way
Must draw every day. It is the way.
Baby Yoda with The Mandalorian
MuSicians
One thing I enjoy, like everyone else, is music when I’m driving or drawing, or working out. Here’s some of what I’ve done recently…
Noel and Liam Gallagher
Brian Ray
John Lennon 1980
Paul MCCartney and Ringo Starr
George Harrison
The Beatles!!
Life skEtches
One of my simplest pleasures is doing life sketches. Preferably from real life but sometimes from photos if something strikes me. To be fair, I don’t like drawings from photographs in general. I totally understand that many need this as a tool or is the only thing available, but I think any chance you can draw from real life is better. And if you do draw from a photograph, thinking about the lens you’re using, and for all that is right, don’t draw from selfies! 🙂
Break at Ruby’s Diner at Oceanside Pier in Cali, October 2019.
Artist, model, and friend Tricia Lapena modeling at a class at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Dec. 2019
What we lost
As December 8th rolls around I’m reminded again of the assassination of John Lennon. I’m in my 40s and even though we are nearly 4 decades on it’s still painful for me. It may seem silly to those who didn’t grow up listening to him, but he was so prolific, his existence shifted the arch of the world. But what makes his death painful to me still is what we didn’t hear from this legend. Taken in a completely senseless manner we’ve all been robbed of profound music never completed, never created, and we are worse for it.
But…what we do have is so amazing and profound I live and breathe his work as it echos in the background of my own artwork. From student to professional John Lennon’s work is interwoven in, his lyrics ring as my lines are created.
But still, one wonders What if? and reflects on what we lost…
Full thumbnails
Here are the five pages of thumbnails for an assignment I’m working on. My apologies for the oddly capitalized text as the Squarespace app isn’t quite perfect yet. 🙂
Just for context, each row of 5 images takes about an hour to draw. Later, each larger storyboard panel I’ll redraw will average about 15-20 minutes per panel.
More thUmBnails!
Some thumbnails for you to see. More to come!
Darn you instagram 😬
So instagram locked me out for an unknown reason. I’ve been super engaged but for whatever reason it seemed like spam to them which is unfortunate, feels like getting punished for using a platform. Anyway, I’ll be back at it in a week, so I’ll keep drawing in the meantime. Here’s what it looks like from my point of view…
Some thUmbnail boards
I often forget to post here as I hit Instagram almost daily. Here are some thumbnails I’m working on with the great StoryboardArt.org. I’ve seen so much progress since grad school, and am excited to get into the field. Will you be one of my first supporters?
BUsy frUitless dayS, but Changing soon!!
So since Lightbox I’ve been doing a lot of daily work and social media engagement. Mostly in Instagram. I’ve gone from just a couple hundred of followers to over 1,300 right now. And I’m gaining about a dozen a day which is so wonderful. I can’t imagine people wanting to see my work, so it’s been good. I need to be posting here which I must admit I often forget to do.
so the addition for today is 2 Lefties, which is my proposal for Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney to tour together, and being two Lefties I thought it’d be a fun name. Obviously I’m a small town fan with no influence, but I’ve struck up an online buddy-ship with Brian Ray, the legendary guitarist for Paul McCartney and Edda James. He had been kind to me and likes my stuff, so it’s neat that at least someone sees my work at that level.
2 Lefties, Paul and Ringo
Busy busy times
So the last month I’ve been working my administration side of my career. I’m the Associate Director of the Native American Program at a museum, and I spent weeks prepping for an art fair/market for a major powwow. It was a juried show and involved 20 artists, not the biggest, but it was a good start. And I worked on it, for the most part solo. Today I’m heading down to San Diego to a three day International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums. It should be fun, I’ve offered to volunteer for much of it so hopefully I’ll be able to network and get to know some good people. Artwork has slowed a bit since Pasenda. Mostly due to work, some due to exhaustion of driving 4300 miles in a week and a half. But I have my stuff for this trip and am ready to draw this week!
Morning coffee before the flight.
Made it to Lightboxexpo2019!!
After 2 days and nearly 1800 miles in my eleven year old Prius with 217k miles and no AAA I made it to Pasadena. It’s time to network and meet old friends. I don’t have any expectations but I’m hoping to walk away with a game plan and something more than just hope. I have 41 years of hope built up and it’s time to cash that in for opportunities.
En route to Lightbox expo 2019
Started my journey to Pasadena from Fargo today. It’s two full days, driving in my 2008 Toyota Prius with 216k miles so this should be interesting. Along the way I’m bringing along the collar of my Sadie who passed away last year. She loved riding in the Prius and would have loved this trip.
Daily drawings
One of the priorities for me in 2019 was to do daily drawings, mostly to warm up before my story boarding, but also to solidify my discipline. Drawing has never been a troublesome task for me, however being lazy and not doing it hasn’t helped my progress. I believe doing these daily drawings along with my storyboard work has proven to be my most improved year - draftsmanship-wise.
To see my work check out my Instagram account at @elevenjoe
Its been a minute, but ive been busy!
Okay, hello again. In January I started a new job as Associate Director of Native American Programs at the Plains Art Museum, the only accredited museum in North Dakota, and within a couple of hundred miles. I’ve been learning the ropes which honestly aren’t that complicated, it’s mostly been a matter of learning the culture of the museum. While exciting and fulfilling on a social level, it’s not why you’re probably reading this.
My heart of course is in storyboarding. It’s why I went to grad school, started this website. But alas after nearly two years I haven’t had my first job yet, and it’s from a lack of trying. One, I have a regular job. But two, I’ve been working on my abilities. I’ve signed up with StoryboardArt.org Story Artist Mentorship which has been a one year mentorship that has been amazing. I now look at my grad school thesis work (yes, the work on this website) and realize how far I’ve come. I’ve also committed myself to upping my social media output and up until right now realized I neglected including this website in that planning. What was I thinking?! Well, actually my mentor suggested I narrow down the focus of my website to just showing boards, and not an expanse of my work because it becomes confusing for the viewer, and they may wonder what I’m offering. And it’s a good point. But maybe I can somehow include my daily art uploads to this. I’ll figure something out.
So I’m excited to announce that I’m going to be at Lightbox Expo this week, but only as a visitor, not a guest artist. None the less I’ll be there to meet up with the StoryboardArt folks and see some of my Academy of Art grad friends. So it’ll be greats any suggests for my off time in Pasadena this weekend? Let me know! Hopefully there’ll be a lot more of these!!
-joe.
New Year, moving forward!
Murals 17 & 18 are completed. Currently enrolled in a storyboard workshop hosted by StoryboarsArt.org. I’m catching up on that work and will be posting to my website. Also too, my first book has been published and that will be on the website as well.
Thst all being said, I’ve been hired at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo ND as Associate Director of Native American Programing and will begin st the beginning of January 2019. So this is great. And if the plan goes right I will be the Director of he program at the beginning of 2020. So with that and my stories and Storyboarding I am doing very well. Much more to come.
Best to you and yours!
Joe.
Mural 17
So for the last four weeks I’ve been working on a mural with is currently titiled Mural 17. Not a creative name, but accurate. I’ll post some pictures to come.
The current mural is at Circle of Nations school in Wahpeton ND. It’s a Native American school where the kids live at for the school year.
Hope you enjoy the images!
LGBTQ Buffalo
Wambdi (Dakota for Eagle)
Crows
Morning Star
And many many more to come!
Bing! Bang! Bust!
Not everything goes to plan. In fact, in the military, we trained so that as soon as our plans went awry then we could get underway of carrying out the mission. Lately, things have not been going my way. A couple projects fell through, a sure bet business fell apart from an issue from way left field.
But I keep drawing. Keep hoping. Keep networking hoping that it will pay off. And it will! Right?
Yes.
I wrote a book!
So because there isn't enough to do I finally published a book. I wrote a science fiction book titled Eurocitia. An action adventure that follows a young man named Nathan Thomas who finds what he thinks is a prototype weapon from the future. Soon he is whisked away to a future where he has to prove himself in order to survive.
Well, that's the gist of the story. It's a story I initially wrote back when I was a teenager. Early on I realized I was far too young to be writing without the life experience necessary to write something compelling. So in April of 2000, I stopped while working on part 2, and decided to live life.
I returned to the story in 2014, then again when I finished grad school in December of 2017, and finished part one. A lot of re-writing, a lot of throwing out old 90s references and got back to the basics of storytelling. Part one is the intro to the world in which Nathan Thomas lives, it gets deep, dark, complicated. But it's a story of friendship, self-discovery, and resilience. It's a tough story but then again, so is life.
So if you can please go to Amazon.com and you can either order the paperback or view it on Amazon Kindle.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CKJ23NX
Opportunity....lost!
So I have a day job. I'm a residential director at a school, and it's a tough gig. Office politics yes, staffing issues, of course, but none of it's not so bad. It's good experience I say. But it takes up a lot of my time, valuable time that I wish I would be at my drawing board working towards this dream I have.
Now that I'm done with school I've signed up for an 8 week workshop from Storyboardart.org. I'm excited and ready for the huge challenge. And in the middle of all this I had an incident at my work where we had a tragedy. I've been guiding my staff as best I can but it's taken up so much more of my free time any time I have now I'm exhausted. A couple of weeks have gone by and I'm finally hitting my first video.
Then the opportunity presented itself. A company out of San Francisco emailed me wanting to know if I could work on a project for them. This was my first professional offer ever. I was estatic, I jumped up and down, and I was panicked. They wanted to know what my rates were. Well, I remember that a friend from grad school had posted some rates on social media and a few of us emailed her and said that maybe she should raise her rates a bit...they were extremely low. I thought about that, then googled "Storyboard rates" but couldn't find anything from after 2010. So I did what any ignorant but well meaning chump would do in this situation, and through a number out there that was within the range, though slightly under my currently salaried daily rate at my current job. And they ghosted.
So, through the guidance of my former department head at the Academy of Art University I purchased a well recommended book, and I'm educating myself once again. Well, speaking of education, back to listen to the great Sergio Pâez from storyboardart.org...