The Tempest is probably my favorite Shakespeare play. My concept for this one was that Prospero’s skin looks like stone or tree bark at the start of the play (seen here), as if his magic is turning him into a part of the island itself. But then, as Ferdinand and Miranda’s love begins to melt his vengeful heart, he starts to look more and more human again. 

This started out as a sketch for a story I’m writing, just to keep some things straight in my head. But I started to like it so much, I decided to work it into a final piece. 

I’ve been in love with the Chinese epic poem, Journey To The West, ever since I discovered it. Monkeys have always been a prevalent motif in my illustration work, and they don’t get much cooler than the Monkey King. I’ve been working on this piece on-and-off for a long time now. I posted the first sketch of it on this tumblr back in November. 

Moby Dick has been on my bookshelf for years. I have no idea where it came from, I know I never bought it myself. Earlier this year I found myself in need of something new to read on the subway, so I decided Moby Dick will do as well as anything else. The parts where you’re actually reading a story are really good. He might have edited himself a little more when he came to writing about the symbolism behind the color white, or the lists of all his favorite drawings of whales that he’s ever seen, or one of the three chapters (so far) about Jonah and the whale. But I guess that’s what happens when you’re paid by the word.

Ahab is a pretty interesting character. But like most people, I think he might be a little more charismatic if he were a cat. 

I felt like I needed more character design in my portfolio. So I asked myself: what would be a good character to draw? The answer was so obvious, the Monkey King! 

Have you guys ever read/seen/watched any of the multitudinous retellings of this story? If you’ve ever seen Dragon Ball, then the answer is “sort of.” The original Dragon Ball series is very loosely based on this ancient Chinese epic poem, in that both of the main characters fly on clouds, have a stick that changes sizes, and hang out with a pig.

A piece I made for the Mega Man Tribute Project. I got Star Man from Mega Man V. The first thing I thought of, other than a very “glam” evil robot of course, was the song by the same name from the Ziggy Stardust album. So I decided to take this in a David Bowie direction. “An evil David Bowie space robot, who also has kind of a crappy weapon and is easy to beat” is what I was trying to capture. 

Oh wow, I was looking through some of my old files and I came across this old gem. This is a comic I made in mid-2011 for the Story Collider. The comic is based on an autobiographical story by David Dickerson, told at one of Story Collider’s live events in Brooklyn. I was actually at the show where it was recorded, and I loved this story. I’m pretty sure if you listen closely to the podcast you can hear me laughing hysterically in the background. So when they approached me to illustrate one of their podcasts this was the one I jumped on. 

This was also the very last thing I ever made on my Wacom Intuos 4, before buying my Cintiq. It’s shocking how much the Cintiq changed the way I draw. 

You can read the full six-page comic on the Story Collider website. 

Merry Christmas! I made this card for Christmas 2010. It’s kind of weird looking at it now. Sometimes you hear artists say of their old work “I don’t draw that way anymore.” That’s not how I feel about this, I just feel like I have so much more practice now than I did then. 

If you don’t know who the Krampus is, I highly recommend looking him up. It’s quite… actually, I don’t know what word to use to describe him. 

A Halloween-y image for you, just a few days late for Halloween. But Halloween was cancelled here in Brooklyn, so who’s keeping track anymore? This is the first in a new character series I’m starting to keep myself active. This is just a personal challenge: my goal is to make one original drawing of a classic trope each week. This week is a witch, next week I might draw a cowboy, the next week maybe a vampire, the week after that a space man, on and on until I run out of ideas. This seemed like a very attainable goal when I thought it up a few weeks ago, but then I had a freelance project kick into overdrive, and now suddenly I don’t seem to have any time to work on it. So the character series will update whenever I can manage, but I’m still hoping for weekly. 

(Source: joewierenga.deviantart.com)

The second in my series on color and digital painting techniques. I could have sat with this one forever, maybe, adding here, subtracting there. As a perfectionist with OCD tendencies, that would have been well within my capacity. But I’m not sure it would have made a difference, really. Sometimes it’s better to get it out there and take what you’ve learned on to the next task. 

I recently made a cover illustration for the Story Collider online magazine. The subject was death. Did you know that when you do a Google image search for “deadly nightshade,” most of the flowers that come up are actually woody nightshade? Because I sure didn’t! Fortunately, that’s one lesson I walked away with after art school. Always double-check your photo reference, because someone out there is going to know the difference.

I’m starting a series to develop my familiarity with color in my illustration work. I feel the most at home with my pieces during the first stages where I’m making the line drawing. Working out the composition and the anatomy, capturing the action and the emotion… all of that is what I enjoy the most. And then comes time to finish the piece, and I sometimes feel a little lost.

It’s my own fault. I spent the first 18 years of my life doing nothing but pencil drawings. Linework is all I ever practiced in.

In this one I worked up the skin, boots and umbrella, but I somehow like it better with the coat and leggings left the same color as the background, with just some simple touches to indicate volume. What do you guys think?

A concept drawing of a fantasy world. My friends and I went camping in Maine this summer at the foot of Mt. Katahdin, and this is loosely based on the view we had from our campsite. Also inspired by the work of Hiroshi Yoshida. That guy is awesome. 

That castle at the top of the mountain must be huge. Almost the size of an entire city. It was built by an immortal hermit because he had nothing better to do for a couple thousand years. Then people from the foot of the mountain started wanting to live in the castle so they started to move up the mountain, which drove away the immortal man who only wanted to toil in solitude. No one lives there anymore, because it is so difficult to get water up there.

A bit of concept art for you. Things in space always have such a utilitarian appearance. All geometric shapes and exposed piping. Bo-o-o-o-oring. Buildings on Earth have been made with fancy details all over their facades for centuries. Why doesn’t anyone ever put relief sculpture on a fuselage?

I was looking through the works of Jean Giraud, known by the pen name  “Moebius” in the sci fi world, and I was inspired to design this city in space. The residential central dome houses roughly the population of New York City, though majority of the business is done in the head. Life support is all housed in the nude at the ventral end of the station, but of course since the designers valued form over function, there are numerous bottlenecks and design flaws. It really isn’t very efficient, but boy is life there lavish.

(Source: joewierenga.com)

This was an illustration for an article in the Story Collider Magazine. The theme that jumped out at me was “life as a clockwork mechanism,” although they wanted me to avoid using the human figure so it wouldn’t become morbid. Probably the right decision.