Tobywan

About Tobywan

My brain makes me draw stuff that isn't there, and this is where I put it.

Gallery Update: One Last Mother’s Day Card…and something special…

Alright, before we get too much further out from Mother’s Day 2015, I wanted to post up the card I made for my sister-in-law and my brother, who are expecting their first child soon. They’ll make great parents, with or without any assistance or advice from Plunger Monkey. Doing custom, personalized, hand drawn cards is usually my way of saying how important people are to me, or how happy I am for something that’s going on in their lives. I’m not sure if everyone notices, but the box on the front of the card appears to say “baby supplies”, but

Gallery Update: Willy McEyeballs

So tonight was our oldest son’s 6th grade band concert. I tend to get antsy at these because there’s so many people. I’ve been thinking lately that I need to do more sketch book sketching anyway, so I grabbed a fresh moleskin sketch book and mechanical pencil to give me something to do while listening to the band and to take my mind off the throngs of people.

moleskin I used to carry a moleskin all the time, but I found it cumbersome. I need more pockets. I was excited to be able to

Gallery Update: Mother’s Day Mega Update

Happy belated Mother’s Day! I’m either one or two days late, depending on how much longer this monster site update actually takes. We traveled to see family for the actual holiday, and the inescapable mundanities of life kept me from working in the studio, and getting to this update, until everyone else was in bed for the night. I also lost a chunk of the day to actually tracking down all the art I needed to photograph for this post. Speaking of this post…on to the actual post! (WARNING: this is going to be a longish one with lots of

Gallery Update: Sketchbook Archaeology

I was flipping through an old, hardly used sketch book yesterday and stumbled upon some drawings from 2009ish that I really liked (well, as much as I ever like any of my own art, I tend to be very self-critical). This featured image here is a Crab Raccoon…if you couldn’t tell. My friend Jorj had mentioned that one of his daughters always mispronounced “crab rangoons” as “crab raccoons”, so we decided we had to draw it. This was my vision of such a critter. It was relatively quick, but lots of fun at the time as this was towards the

Studio Stuff: Comics Comics Comics Comics…

Happy Star Wars Day!

Star-Wars-front-cover One of many scores I made during a Free Comic Book Day sale. Star-Wars-back-cover This hard cover contains issues 1-44, plus an annual from Marvel’s original Star Wars run. I actually own a copy of issue #1, but have never read anything beyond it, so I’m looking forward to this classic. I was a fan of the Dark Horse runs of various Star Wars Expanded Universe titles, but it’s kind of interesting that SW is now back at Marvel via the

Gallery Update, Undeserved Presents, and Randomness

Kapwing!

Vinland-saga-book-3 I now have one…two…THREE Vinland Saga collections! Hahaha!

What can I say? My wife’s good. She either loves me or she’s trying to bribe me to do something (like finish the master bathroom…). Or both. Totally undeserved and unexpected, but yay nonetheless.

Anywho, I spent yesterday working on a “shout out” to be included in my middle son’s yearbook. He’s a fourth grader, which means he’ll be graduating and moving on to the middle school (where have the years gone?). Parents of fourth graders get to include a custom message in the printing

Studio Stuff/Influences: Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura

Well, the monkeys are back in school, so I’m back in the studio! How little time I managed to get in here last week during their vacation has me a little concerned about what summer will be like, but I’ll deal with that when that happens, just like every summer (though now I have a website to maintain and keep current, along with my personal goals). Maybe I’ll have to spend my night owl time in here rather than trying to relax and make myself fall asleep, cuz really, who needs sleep? I did spend a little time at my

Studio Stuff/Influences: Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA

The kids are on vacation this week, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stick to my regular update schedule. I’m also trying to use the time to tackle some house projects, so even my studio time might suffer.  However, I will give y’all at least this one Studio Stuff update to tide you over.

Akira-dvd Two thumbs up, even. Waaaaaay up.

Sometime back in the early 90s, my dad took me (and probably my brother, I can’t quite remember on this specific excursion) to a comic book convention (I think in

Gallery Update: Plunger Monkey Against Cancer

This might be a slightly awkwardly crafted blog entry, as I’ll be talking about one of my dear friends and her battle with cancer. I won’t reveal names out of respect for her and her family’s privacy, but my friend just passed the half way point of her chemotherapy treatments, so I thought maybe this would be an appropriate time to make this post and to share the image I made for her.

Toby-Gray-PMD-for-Cat Plunger Monkey knows cancer doesn’t stand a chance.

This is an image I created for my dear friend who is

Gallery Update/Current Projects: The Evolution of Ostogri

I don’t have any new art to post at the moment, though I have been generating some. I’ve been plugging away at those t-shirt designs (all the while learning cool new Photoshop tricks to stream line things), which I hope to have done…sometime. I’m looking forward to having a good smattering of designs for sale and art I can add to the gallery here. I’ve spent some time working on a logo for a youth leadership program my cousin and his wife are heavily involved in. It was very different from what I normally do, but another opportunity to learn

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