Brian Moore's Sketchblog

A page from a new comic I'm working on.

More work related to Kleinerblauteufel.

Trying out some painted comic book work for KBT. It's a very, uh, rosy morning, I guess.

A sketch to try and finalize some character designs.

I've always loved lighting situations like this, with moving rectangles of light passing between buildings and carving the street up into light and dark zones. Forboding enough for Halloween?

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This is my entry for a contest on another website.
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Occasionally I break out my Kitchen Sink Press reprints of Will Eisner's The Spirit comics and marvel at the artwork. I love the Spirit's "superhero costume": a baggy 1940's suit, a tied-on mask, and gloves that don't really look big enough to cover his huge mitts.

The ink studies below are from the 1949 story "Slow Boat to Shanghai". Lookit all those crazy wrinkles. Of course, this is my cruddy copy; the original art is much more lively and solid. The character to the right is Bulkhead, a Popeye-esque thug that appeared in the story.

To the right is a study from the wonderful work of Drew Weing, who often works in a classic "bigfoot"-influenced cartoon style. Check out his main site and his beautifully drawn series Set to Sea.

And the bottom two characters are strictly my doodles. Ho hum.

Too much work, too little time for fun things ... like this!

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Pen and ink.
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A sketch from a few years (sigh ... already?) ago, and one of more recent vintage. I think the first sketch is inspired by Moose Malloy from Chandler's Farewell My Lovely. Moose is a rather formidable guy, described as "not larger than a beer truck", and wearing a suit with golf balls for buttons. Now that's fashion.

The gentleman on the right is a more refined sort, who has perhaps just heard that, sorry sir, we're out of Corbel. Also the letter opener was found to have your prints on it; whoever was in the cage dangling over the Electrified Lamprey Pool, isn't there now; and the Beast-Men have just wandered into the ballroom and glimpsed the buffet table. Will there be anything else, sir?
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More watercolor doodling.

I had a grand day out on Saturday which included a trip to the paper counter at Pearl Art Supply, so here's a new watercolor sketch to kick the tires. It's Winsor & Newton hot-pressed 140lb., which may be my new fave paper. Shown here is Shaenon Garrity's Helen Narbon, who has apparently forgotten that she left a Hot Pocket in her fusion-powered microwave oven. Well, either Dave or Artie will clean up the mess.

And here's an earlier attempt at Helen, painted in gouache.

(It would take me too long to do 40 Helens, sorry ...)

Here's a test painting for a recent illustration gig. Lately I've been playing with having large areas of black ink in my watercolors - it makes a nice graphic contrast that I can build the painting around. (Which artist was it that called black "the prince of colors"?)

And here's a slight re-design of Micki from Smithson. I'm still playing with the features of most of the characters, trying to tighten up their designs. Micki looks a little angry here, but I kind of like her revamped hairstyle.

Without exactly intending to do so, I've started a new webcomic called (appropriately enough) Unintentional. (The previous sketchblog entry was the first panel of the story proper.) It updates Monday through Friday on WebComicsNation. Now's your chance to get in on the ground floor of the story, which so far features a guy in an old-fashioned swimsuit, a severed head, and a strange, steampunked-out roadster.

Gemma finally gets her close-up in Smithson.

More research work for the Unintentional revamp. Based on a photo taken at Alcatraz!

Here's the cover of the minicomic I brought with me to this year's SPX. It was a great show, I had a lot of fun!

The comic excerpted in the mini will, as soon as I can get it rolling, appear online. Look for news and updates on my newly-redesigned site, BrianMooreDraws.com.

Here's a color panel from my upcoming webcomic. (Watch this page for news and updates.)

What my days have been like lately.

I needed to do some clothing research for "The Sweetened By-and-By", and what better place to do that than by drawing from stills of Double Indemnity? (The first set is from another movie, I can't remember which.)

I go back and forth about painting areas of pure black ink in my comics. Until recently I'd go for a very dark blue or purple instead, in an effort to keep everything saturated with color. But I like how this came out.

What happens in the final panel?????

More ink and watercolor experiments.