Sometimes you just want to draw Batman.

I really liked these colors by Dylan McCrae, so I stole them from his site.

I've been thinking about Vulcans because I'm dressing as Spock for Halloween. This is a painting with a "Rake" brush I found online. It's very similar to a brush in Corel Painter.

I'm having fun doing these sketches and digitally painting them. Maybe I should see how I can match this to my usual style.

Drew a Ninja Elf today. Is the color stuff with the lines too much?

I decided to try painting a sketch I drew today. In some ways I love how it turned out, and in other ways I think it's just weird.

And thanks to Melanie Matthews for sending me some brushes to try out and suggesting one of the photoshop default ones.

I plan on dressing up as Spock for Halloween so I've been thinking a little about Vulcans. I usually draw with a lead holder using non-photo blue "lead". I do this because I draw really hard and so I can ink or pencil over it and remove the blue in photoshop. Today I decided to use a darker blue pencil I have sitting around. I kind of liked it. Also, this guy might be related to Mic Jagger.

So this might be a little long and random. In September, Madman Atomic Comics #17 was released. Click the image to buy it.

Well a while back I did a Madman Commission for Simon Miller. (Click his name for his Original Comic Art Shop website). He is connected with everyone involved in creating Madman and offered to send them a copy of the commission I did. I thought that was cool but forgot about it. It turns out that my commission is one of the pin-ups printed in the back of issue #17!


(I look scuzzy in the pic because I need a shave and a haircut, but I'm happy)!
Looking at my artwork printed next to some amazing artists, not to mention Mike Allred, has shown me how I can improve on my inking and details. I'm especially into the pin-ups by Rafael Grampá and Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá.

In other Mike Laughead news. I have a Twitter account now. You can follow me under the username mikelaughead. Very original!

I recently visited Iowa for a friend's baptism. While there I got to meet Phil Hester who is an awesome guy. If you ever see him at a convention, say hi and talk to him about being from the midwest.

While I was in Iowa, my nephew Bob showed me this abstract art pen drawing he did. Bob just started middle school and is on his way to becoming a great artist.


I haven't been doing much artwork that I can post on my blog recently, but I'm posting a sneak peek of my current big project. It's a children's book about a little hippo girl that goes with her mom to buy her first pair of shoes. I'll post more when it's further along.



Finally, here is a poster I just finished yesterday. This is the art minus the type that will be used to promote GamingForCause.com. I was so happy to just mess around on this as a break from working on kid's books. The colors seem to have the "growth" feel that I was going for.

Thanks for reading, or just looking at the images like I sometimes do.

In my last entry I posted the covers to some easy reader books I did earlier this year. I realized that unlike before, I haven't posted much of the work I've done this year because I've had bigger/longer assignments. This is the first of a few that I'll be able to post. The following is an image of 4 pages, each from one of the first 4 Robot & Rico books.


I thought I would post the small PDFs of the books so you guys could all see them and hopefully I could get some advice on which spreads/pages are the best for my portfolio. I've asked some of you before, but I'm still considering.
Book 1 PDF | Book 2 PDF | Book 3 PDF | Book 4 PDF

You can buy the books here:
Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, Book 4. Or you can check on Amazon.

I'm working on the next 4 books right now. I'm especially proud of how the sledding one turned out. I can't wait to show you guys!

I've been busy on a few projects recently. The biggest one being the Robot & Rico picture books.

These are the covers to the first 4 books, I'm currently working on the next 4 of them. These are beginning reader books geared towards boys. Robot & Rico are friends that do fun stuff together and run into a few problems along the way.

Hopefully I'll be able to post some spreads from these books soon.

Score this design: "Butterfly Star!," to help it get printed on Threadless!