Jei Usagi

I've finished Jei Usagi. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience. It's interesting what happens when you try speaking someone else's visual dialect...in this case, cartoon anthropomorphic animal samurai. Hope you like it!

Demonic Samurai Rabbit (and My Website)

I needed a break from another piece I was doing a while ago...actually I needed a break from my usual look and style. Somehow or other, I decided I wanted to do another piece for the Help the Sakais fundraiser.  I remembered a couple of years ago that Sakai released issue 101 with this startling cover:

I loved everything about this cover: it was unexpected to see Usagi possessed and even a casual reader would find  it startling (but hardcore readers knew exactly what was going on). It really uses Sakai's trademark skull of death icon, making it consummate Sakai. Finally, Tom Luth's colors are beautiful as always. I wanted to do my own homage to it.

I have yet to color the piece, but the ink drawing is on its way to North Hollywood as I type this. More exciting news on this front: Dark Horse has announced The Sakai Project, celebrating 30 years of Usagi Yojimbo. It's going to be a book of Usagi as interpreted by the greatest talents in comics. Although I'm not a comic book artist, it seems submissions are open to anyone, so I'm going to go for it. Deadline is February 20, so you'll see the finish soon!

And finally, I just wanted to announce that my website is updated. Check it out! It's my biggest website so far, containing much more art than I've ever put on my official site. That being said, the body of work is broken down into categories and easy to navigate. Hope you like it!

Month of Love: The #nofilter Valentine

Something a little different today:

I thought I'd jump on on the Month of Love challenge, run by the amazing Kristina Carroll.

The challenge is 'No Filter Love' ie: love after the feel good emotions and the high of young love has long disappeared. Indeed, the 'honeymoon' is so named due to the transient nature of a new couple's love, waxing and waning like the phases of the moon.

Now the cynical among us can use what I just said as a reason why marriages don't work and is a sham. Indeed I have known many with that mentality.

But in a way, I believe that the ephemeral nature of eros adds beauty and meaning to those couples who make love work. New love is great, but after it disappears, it leaves couples with nothing but their own free will and choice. Those couples who succeed in marriage simply refuse to give up on each other. Yes, warts and age spots and lines appear, but strong couples CHOOSE to make it work.

So for my drawing, I wanted to be able to show that even when a couple fight, they're still together. A wife may be mad at her husband, but she knows that the important word is that he is HER husband. A husband may find the wife irritating, but she's HIS wife. There is nothing on this earth that can change that. I force of will, tenacity, selflessness and consistent choice to love is a beauty to behold, and I pray with every fiber of my being that I will be able to live that life myself.

By the way, yes this is in ink. New for me. I'll explain why the change later.