the art of Will Terrell

I love the Chinese Kitchen restaurant in Lubbock.  I eat there at least once a month.   The food is great, but the staff are all characters.  This guy in particular cracks me up.  He’s always smiling, and you can tell he really loves his job.  He doesn’t speak english well, but as soon as that Hibachi is done he yells out “Hibachi READYY!!”  The best is when the customer has no idea what he’s saying, so he repeats it four or five times.

My wife Amber and I sketch people every where we go.  Its a lot of fun, but its also great training.  I am always trying to capture the way that a person walks, stands, sits, or carries themselves.  It makes it a lot easier when I’m drawing pages or illustrations, to draw from experience, than to try to figure it out from my own head.  Here’s a handful of the sketches from this month.  The top sheet is from Taco Villa, the middle is from Barnes and Noble, and the bottom is from Market Street grocery store.  Its rare that people actually notice me drawing them, but not uncommon for other people to see what I’m doing and come over to take a look.  I’m always amazed at how excited they get at seeing people being drawn.  No matter what race, or culture.  Everyone loves art.

The Graphic novel project that I’m working on right now (that I posted one of the covers for yesterday) was picked up in an article in USA today. I am working on the sequel text book about Franchising Entrepreneurship.  Here’s the link to USA TODAY if you want to check it out.

I really liked this quote from the article, its kind of the reason I wanted to get into comics, I knew it could be more than just entertainment…

“As you start reading it, you start thinking, ‘Can I take this seriously?’ But as you get involved you realize there’s more to it than just entertainment,” Dunn said. “There’s a lot of didactic information, and from my vantage point it was more memorable and unique because you could identify the information with specific characters.”

I am working on a new project these days.  I am illustrating a 200 page graphic novel for a text book company.  The book is called Tales of Garcon and its a story that illustrates the pitfalls and opportunities of franchising in business.  Its a fun story, and I like the characters a lot.  Its been a lot of work so far.  In July I penciled, inked and lettered the first 32 page chapter, and my wonderful, talented wife laid down the shading on it as well.  32 pages in a month is a lot.  I’ve never done that before.  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.  But I am enjoying the challenge.

This is the cover for the first chapter.  I will be posting some pages before too long.

I was in Houston a while back as a guest at Comicapalooza.  I really enjoyed the show, but I especially enjoyed hanging out with old friends.  Some of my buddies wanted to go to this hole in the wall cowboy bar to meet a girl.  I ended up sketching some of the wildlife.  This guy was hilarious.  I don’t think he actually had a mom tattoo, but he was showing it off like that.  He loved the sketch too and bought us a round of drinks.  Thats why I love cowboy bars, I can sketch a couple of hours and walk out with a couple hundred bucks in tips and full of beer.  Plus, you get the privilege of meeting characters in real life.

Everytime I finish a sketchbook, I like to do a little painting on the cover.  In this case, its the character Anna from an old, old story of mine.  If you’ve followed my work for any number of years, you’ve probably seen her before.  I am happy with how this turned out.  It was done with white and black airbrush paints pretty quickly and loosely.  About 20 minutes.  I have been doing a lot of digital painting, and digital drawing lately, and for some reason, having that kind of control is helping me to see the painting process a lot differently.  It makes me want to try a lot more painting.  I’ll have to see if I can squeeze it into my schedule.

I love my wife!  She’s pretty amazing.  And after being single for a very, very long time, it has been such a welcome change to share my life with someone as incredible as her.  She is a cartoonist as well, we make comics together for a living, and in our free time we watch cartoons and draw.  I am blessed.  We got married at the end of May, and things got busy very quickly.  I’ve got several big projects in the works, some of which I’ll be posting about here soon.  Its kept us very busy, with myself working sometimes 60 hours a week.  I can’t complain though.  This is the life I’ve always wanted to live.

I’ll be posting a lot more this month, but to start things out, heres a few images from our wedding.  And the cartoon (of course) directions to our wedding.

I always like seeing where other artists work, what kind of setup they have, and what kind of space they’re using.  A few weeks ago I got around to taking photos of my workspace.  I share a studio space with a couple of other artists, and of course my wife.  We’re in one of the top floors of the tallest building in Lubbock.  Its got really nice views, and gorgeous sunsets.  I figured, if I’ve got to work some place every single day.  I might as well enjoy the view.

This is my desk and tool setup.  I use everything from airbrush to pen and ink.  And the drawing desk has a giant light table built into it.

My wife took a picture of me meeting Jeff Smith at Comic-Con last year.  I’m so glad she got the photo, cause the whole encounter was just a blur.  She framed the photo for me to put next to my desk so I’d always be inspired.  She’s pretty awesome.

And West Texas sunsets from my drawing desk.  Amazing…

If you’re an artist, what Kind of studio space do you work in?

-Will