José-Luis Olivares

El Jefe: homebrewed Hefeweizen

Jose — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:53:57 +0000

Jon’s new homebrew, El Jefe, is a slightly strong Hefeweizen with notes of cherry and banana that’s utterly delicious. Stop by our place and try a bottle!

I had a great time creating the logo for the beer. El jefe means “the chief” in Spanish, and so I created the image of a cute Indian chief wearing a headdress of wheat and a lemon wedge. As you can see, the logo’s colors are reminiscent of the color of the beer.

At first we wanted to put a sticker on the beer but figured the condensation would ruin any sort of home-printed sticker. Rather than spend a ton of money printing heavy-duty stickers, we found inspiration at Bob Slate Stationary and these cool old-school price tags!

Under the cut, I’ll explain how I created the logo using the print gocco.

The print gocco is a Japanese screen-printing device that’s super-easy to use. I bought one while living in Japan and have used it to create hand-made picture books and Christmas post cards. It’s a little expensive in that you have to buy specialty bulbs, screens, and inks, but the ease-of-use can make up for the price. I was able to print 50 logos in one night!

After burning the screen using the Print Gocco’s cool exploding yellow light bulbs, I started aligning the price tags and screen-printed the color yellow:

You can see I used a strip of white paper to help align the price tags. Luckily I was able to fit both images, the yellow and the orange, onto a single screen. After printing all the yellow on the tags, I began printing the color orange:

voilà! The process was fairly easy in the long-run with only a few alignment errors. Now we have about 50 bottles of yummy Hefeweizen beer to drink!

Hurricane Baby

Jose — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:47:07 +0000

Right now I’m working on a new comic called Hurricane Baby for an anthology put together by wunderdude Joe Lambert. Hurricane Baby starts off with the lines “In the middle of America, Superman and Storm are having a baby,” and, oh no!, it ends up being an ever-growing hurricane.
The way I work, I always collect my roughs into a comic book I can hold in my hands. So for this one, I did my thumbnails on note cards that I scanned into Photoshop, and then used my Wacom tablet to create panel borders and redraw some areas. I print out the pages, staple them into a book, and then go back and edit:

You can tell I keep it a bit messy! At this point, I didn’t know exactly how I wanted the final art to look, but as I rummaged through my art supplies I found the goods: a blue Prismacolor pencil, a Kuretake brush pen, a stick of graphite, and digital screen tone:
I’m working on the final art for all of the 12 pages at the moment. It’s silly and lots of fun!

American Sign Language Online

Jose — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:49:47 +0000

Back when I was working as a teacher assistant at UT, I created the illustrations for an American Sign Language course website. These were created using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Hop around the website to see over 100 illustrations and watch videos teaching you basic ASL!

Another Lovely

Jose — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:46:57 +0000

How odd, one of my old, old comics is up for sale at Poopsheet Foundation!

I drew this while going to school in Austin, 2000 or 2001, at a time where I was focused on creating comics with, you know, characters. It’s been so long since I’ve drawn a conversation in comics! These folks are sitting at Spiderhouse Cafe, for all you Austinites. So I’d draw something, paste it up at Kinkos, leave comics at Spiderhouse and at Sound Exchange—I don’t think I even have a copy of this one anymore. This is one of the first mini-comics I made to give out. I probably wouldn’t have started doing comics if it weren’t for zinesters Ben Snakepit and Jeff Lewis, who would leave free copies of their comics around Austin.

PF2 Review

Jose — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:48:25 +0000

Thanks to Rob Clough for the recent review of Polite Fiction 2. You can read a story from PF2 called Tree Island Birds here.

“Olivares’ comics have a visceral quality that’s an exemplar of the mark-making school of comics. That said, he’s fully embraced the temporal and narrative aspects of comics, fusing them with a vividly crude line that creates a remarkable immediacy of experience.”

I have about 5 copies still for sale, good porch-reading material.

Different Place

Jose — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:18:23 +0000

Moved away from White River Junction and I’m now living in Medford, Mass., near Boston! Actually in Texas right now, visiting nieces and nephews.

Thanks to Penina for taking photos at the going-away party. The theme, of course, was Mexican Christmas. Pictured with wonderful roomies Betsey and Nick!

Rainbow Road

Jose — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:08:29 +0000

Bepo sketch

Jose — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:01:36 +0000

Red Graph Totem Post

Jose — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:38:05 +0000

I drew these images over the course of a few days, worried because I didn’t draw anything one weekend. “Have I already forgotten how to draw?” Grab 3 Crayola markers and Japanese graph paper—make a squiggle and scribble a square. Convert it to a gif and give it to the web. Are we remembering or forgetting how to draw?

Blog Post: a doodledump of a recent sketchbook

Jose — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:24:57 +0000

When your mind wanders, think of something to post online, and let your pen wander too.