If you’d like to have a piece of Atlanta Jones artwork for yourself, head over here to see what I’m offering for commissions.

In the meantime, here’s a work-in-progress of a digital commission. It’s Flotsam and Jetsam from “The Little Mermaid”.

Since I follow Dave on Twitter and elsewhere, I’ve known of this project for some time and have been massively excited about it. Today, he finally posted the first trailer for the film, along with a new Kickstarter project to help fund its completion.

This film looks ah-mazing, featuring the likes of guys like Jim Davis (Garfield) and Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine). Any cartoonists and comics artists out there, I urge you to help this project along, however you can. I myself just pledged $50 towards it.

Check out the trailer, then go here to help out!

In an earlier post, I announced that I’d been asked to contribute a piece of artwork to the upcoming “Red Dot Auction“, a Chuck Jones Center for Creativity fund-raising event. That was exactly two months ago, and since the event is happening as I write this, I can finally talk about (and show) my actual piece.

Naturally, being asked to participate in this is a huge deal. Being born in the 70′s, Saturday morning cartoons were a lifestyle for a kid, especially one that wanted to be an artist. Even after I’d seen them all a hundred times, I’d still sit in front of our big console TV with a bowl of cereal watching the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. Once I was old enough to realize cartoons were actually drawn by people, Chuck Jones became one of my heroes. He still is.

Once the excitement wore off, the panic set in. Sheer, unadulterated terror. What was I going to do? What characters should I draw? What if I screw it up? Worse still, I hadn’t actually painted anything since high school. We’re talking 21 years, folks.

I gave a lot of thought to what I’d do, and while there was certainly no requirement to use Looney Tunes characters, I felt it was only appropriate, given it had Chuck’s name on it. I definitely have my favorite cartoons. Duck Amuck, Barber of Seville and What’s Opera Doc? spring to mind. But I’ve always loved Robin Hood Daffy. To this day, I still have to chuckle at Porky’s uncontrollable laughter. Seemed like a good subject for my painting.

I got my 10″x10″ stretched canvas in the mail, but I wasn’t ready to commit paint to it yet. So I made a trip to my favorite art store and got some supplies. Again, I haven’t painted in ages, so I had to buy all new stuff. Got an assortment of decent brushes, about a dozen tubes of gouache paint and a few other miscellaneous things. I also bought two more 10″ canvases to practice on (ruin) to get a feel for the paints. I’d always used oils before, but I’ve been wanting to use gouache for a while on my sketch cards, so it seemed like a good time to learn them.

After a bunch of photo research, I penciled out the whole drawing on paper, then scanned into Photoshop. From there, I bumped up the levels so that all the lines were extra thick and black. Then I printed that out to make my tracing image.

My drafting table has a glass top, and I have a flexible lamp mounted underneath it to simulate a large light box. I took the print and placed it underneath the canvas and used the light to trace the drawing lightly in pencil. My first pass at the painting was quite a learning experience. Even though gouache is a watercolor, it’s an opaque watercolor and went on a lot thicker than I’d anticipated. That said, the painting came out pretty well, all things considered.

So before I did my second painting, I read up on gouache a bit more and went through some tutorial videos. My mistake was not watering the paints down more. You can really lighten them up quite a bit, and they can be re-wetted and re-worked after they’re on the canvas. I did the painting for the second time, and felt like I was getting comfortable with the medium. But oddly, I kinda thought my first version was better.

Now it was go time. I was down to the “official” canvas. On this third try, everything seemed to go right. I was getting the hang of the paints and wasn’t as dark as the first two. I really wanted to emulate the look of a Looney Tunes background, so I didn’t want the colors too saturated.

Then came time to ink all the lines. On the first two paintings, I’d done this with a black brush pen. But for some reason, I felt confident enough to try inking this one with an actual brush. Maybe it was because I had a really good brush, but it went great. I’m definitely going to do more inking with a brush, maybe even on my new comic (more about that soon).

Once I felt like it was done, I made sure it was dry and repacked it for pick-up. I could only sign the back, as bidders won’t know who the artist is until they’ve bought the painting. For good measure, I also included one of my sketch cards with a penciled Bugs Bunny as a thank-you to whomever buys it. By the time I post this, the auction will be over, but I may not yet know if my painting even sold, much less for how much. I’ll post an update when I know more.

At any rate, while there was a lot of stress involved, I’m so glad I had the opportunity to do this. Sometimes there’s nothing like a project with a real deadline to get you motivated and trying new things. I’m now wanting to do more with paints, and I definitely will be doing more brush inking.

And by the way, if there’s any interest, I may put one or both of my “practice” canvases up for sale. Will post an update on that as well.

Also, if you want to see all the other submissions to the auction, they’re listed here.

Normally, I’m pretty quick to post about projects I’m working on, especially if they’re really cool. But right now I’m working on something I haven’t really mentioned much.

I’m now designing and developing a new website for the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity! I probably don’t need to explain what a monumental deal this is, but if you (gasp) aren’t sure who Chuck Jones is, stop reading this and go here.

How I got here is an interesting road. In Late 2009, I entered an art contest on Brickfish that was sponsored by Chuck Jones Galleries. The idea behind the contest was to “show your memories with your favorite Chuck Jones characters”. Meaning, post a photo and say something about Chuck and your favorite character, whether it be Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. Grand prize was $1,000 cash, $5,000 to spend on Chuck Jones art and a trip to a VIP event at the gallery in San Diego.

While almost all other contestants made postings with the stock photography and backgrounds provided, I submitted a totally original piece of artwork. I may have been the only one to do so. After 3 or so very painful months of waiting, I finally got notification that I’d gotten runner up! This meant $250 in cash and a $2,500 credit towards Chuck Jones original art. I was beside myself.

I spent the $250 on mostly art software and supplies. The original art part took almost another year of back-and-forth with my main contact at the gallery, which, by the way is Craig Kausen, Chuck’s grandson. I really wanted to take my time with my selection, and I wanted a piece drawn by Chuck’s own hand. Even if I had to spend the entire amount on one piece. Finally, I chose an amazing pencil sketch featuring Bugs giving his nephew a piggy-back ride. I had enough left over to buy a canvas print as well.

Once I received them, I immediately framed the sketch with museum-quality glass. I hope to one day pass this piece down to my daughter, and more importantly, teach her why it’s so important.

At any rate, throughout this process, I corresponded with Craig probably a couple dozen times. At one point he asked, “You mentioned you build websites, right?” “Yep, for fifteen years,” I responded. This started a conversation about how they needed a new site for the Center for Creativity and, ultimately, for chuckjones.com itself.

So after a few more conversations, I got the job! I’m currently in the design and pre-production stage and things are (I think) going very well. Craig and everyone within the Chuck Jones organization have been nothing but great to work with on all fronts.

So there you go. I’m working on an OFFICIAL Chuck Jones project, and I can hardly contain how excited I am about that. I’ll be posting updates as I can, but I’m going to be heads-down getting everything built.

Called the “Red Dot Auction”, it’s the center’s 2011 Spring fundraiser, and will feature 50 artists. Each artist receives a 10″x10″ stretched canvas, and submits his/her work with only signatures on the back. Bidding on each piece starts at $100, and nobody knows who the artist is until the auction is over.

According to ChuckJones.com, “You may go home with a world-famous artist’s work or one of an emerging artist”. I’d like to think I’m somewhere in the middle

I won’t be able to post the actual artwork until after the auction, but I’ll be updating as things develop.

They just launched a new website, and are using my avatars for staff bios, which is awesome.

If you’re not familiar with Appcoast, you’re surely familiar with their clients and/or used their products. They specialize in Firefox add-ons and made the extensions for DIGG, eBay, Yahoo, Delicious and more.

Working with them was an absolute joy, and I’m glad they were satisfied enough with my work to feature it so prominently.

Dr. Hans Reinhardt and Maximilian from Disney’s 1979 sci-fi movie, “The Black Hole”.

This was done in tribute to John Barry, who composed the amazing score from the film.

Drawn on 3.5″x2.5″ bristol, with Micron pens and Prismacolor markers and white gel pen.

This card is for sale

The stylish villain from Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”, Maleficent.

This card has some issues, mainly my need to learn better how marker colors mix together. But overall I’m fairly happy with it.

This card for sale

This card is also for sale here.

Drawn on 3.5″x2.5″ bristol, with Micron pens and Prismacolor markers. All cards come in heavy vinyl protective sleeves.

With any luck I’ll be starting to take card commissions very soon. I’ll post details here and on Deviant Art, etc.