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Update! Feb 2023

It’s been a while since there’s been a post here! I’m not sure how much I’m going to, but we’ll see! My site crashed last year and was down for a few months. Lost some posts. So, no time like the present to at least get things up to date a bit!

Here’s some art from the last bit, to show off where I’m at now!

  • A scrap metal bunker floats on a small island, above a sprawling badlands. There's balloon-shaped trees floating on their own islands around it, with a broken planet with a ring around it in the turquoise sky.
  • A tree leans over a cliff ledge with a spirally sky in the background, and little metal bunkers floating toward it. In the sea is a bunch of rocky outcroppings.
  • A giant, steam-powered walking village wanders through a desert on spindly legs. A rope ladder hangs from behind it. There are giant turquoise trees that look like snails growing in the background, which is a hazy, cloudy sky. Some giant yellow-shelled snails wander the foreground.
  • A bright white cyborg whale cruises through the water. It is powered by jet turbines, has a pair of metallic fins, a laser cannon mounted to its forehead, and circuitry accenting its eyes and fin.

I’ve been leaning into digitally-coloring my ink drawings and having a lot of fun with it. Something I’m especially proud of is how much better depth and texture I’m adding, as well as increasingly-expressive line art. I find that embracing the loose and controlled-chaos of my work is beneficial to what I want to achieve. Plus it’s fun!

The three digital illustrations here are from my Ominous Doom Planet, world. I’ve been exploring and expanding upon it more. It’s a great playground to see where my creativity takes me.

Some lore: Those floating scrap-metal bunker things are from a cult I’ve been referring to as the “Temple of Tetanus”. It’s delightfully bizarre, isn’t it? Anyway, my thought is they’re like these not-dead-not-alive cyborg types who aim to catalog things and discover the purpose of their existence. And it’s an absurd existence, at that.

They construct these metal bunkers that often are floated on a chunk of ground. What a cool way to travel! Especially since gravity is strange here, on the edge of reality.

Album art for an album called Otherworlds, by The Astronaut King and Jank Hambrams. It portrays a mountainous landscape with two spiky, scrap metal bunkers. There are small plateaus, fluffy yellow and turquoise trees, and a path leading toward a bunker in the distance.

Oh! I should mention: My buddy The Astronaut King and I have a new split album up for pre-order. It has my art, his awesome spaghetti-western-in-space guitar music, and my delightfully bizarre “madman electronica” on it.

Two musicians. Two distinct styles. Ten songs. Two tales set in the Otherworlds. All awesome. We each have a song released right now, with another one coming sometime soon! Go check it out. I’m certain y’all will love it!

Well, there’s a fun tidbit for y’all to muse over! I fully intend to upload some more sometime soon. Been busy busy busy!

January Art Thoughts

Hey friends! Figured I’d write up some thoughts I’m having on Twitter, and share some art I’ve done in the last little bit.

Here’s a tree I sketched out for my dad’s birthday recently, with some indigo paints a friend gifted me and some muddy-green ink I picked up that I really like.

Here’s some thoughts I posted to Twitter today, that I think are a nice bit of insight to keep me going:

I can’t remember who posted it, but I saw something like “artists need plenty of time to do nothing”, and honestly? For real. Making stuff, at least for me, requires a massive amount of focus and energy to channel things onto paper. That, on top of more typical life shit lol.

So with that in mind I feel better about not hammering stuff out like in an assembly line. And even if I was? Still would need proper rest time.

—

A healthy boundary I’m developing in regard to my ambitions, is “what I do and can do is good enough.” I see all this cool shit people make that I love the look of, and instead of having high expectations I just let myself make what I make and do a loose study if I’m so inclined.

I’m hitting a point where I’m fairly content with my level of skill and craft. I am playing around and figuring out what I wanna say, beyond making neat little vignettes to soothe my soul with. Biggest things seem to be “ha isn’t life fucking absurd” and “just gotta keep going.”

I think these speak for themselves, for the most part, but I’ll elaborate a bit just for my own sake, to get some more thoughts out.

A big thing I ran into for ages was having lofty ideals and ambitions, with no clear idea how to get there and limited energy just to brute force it. Even despite that, I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve done and the personal growth I’ve had.

My goal moving forward is self-fulfillment and sustainability. And remembering to live. Art isn’t just putting marks on a page. Music isn’t just hammering out some notes. A big part of it is in studying from life and studying craft — this includes not just learning to do the thing, but learning to say what I want with the thing.

Much of this is related to like, finding the light in the darkness. The world is a deeply chaotic, often unpleasant, but also beautiful place. Giving contrast to and bringing awareness to parts of it can really be enlightening and also sometimes encouraging, despite the deeply dark parts of reality.

Existence, this planet, the things we’ve got, us… it’s all an extremely unlikely thing in this infinite universe we live in. And there’s a lot to do if we’re going to keep existing, but that’s not the focus of this post.

I guess my point is, keep going, keep doing the thing, appreciate it ’til we can’t. I dunno, this post got more existential than I anticipated. I hope y’all got something out of this post, too!

December Update

Hey friends! It’s been a while since I’ve shared anything new here. The work I did during the first half of the year really caught up with me and led me to have to slow down quite a bit. But I’ve still done some cool stuff! I’ll document some of it here.

I’ve done several paintings, but here’s the noteworthy ones that I have scans of.

Below is a quick landscape I did in preparation for a much larger commission I did for a friend. I rather like the weird, acid-yellow/green sky with the haunting blood-red moon. It’s ominous in a way I enjoy.

Below are some fun watercolor and ink trees I painted, as I was easing back into the medium after burning out on it for a bit after the afore-mentioned large commission I did. I had fun with these, and they’re the first ones I did using some “self-evolving” watercolors I bought, which granulate in interesting ways as they dry.

Below are some more trees I painted, using those self-evolving paints. I rather enjoy the granulation and hints at a background that they include.

Below is another painting I did, but this one was with the intent of doing a full-page painting again. I hadn’t quite had the energy to do so for a while, but I’m branching out again and I rather like this as a first attempt.

Beyond that, I did a little bit of music, but not a whole lot. I’m still figuring out what my values and desires for my music are, after releasing so much earlier this year. Any new, little pieces I did can be found at my SoundCloud, which you can find below. Here’s an embedded link of the newest one I’ve done.

Thank you for reading this post! I’ve been uploading stuff more regularly at my Patreon. If you wanna check that out, I’ll drop a link below:

https://www.patreon.com/jankhambrams

Prose – The Filthy One

I had the urge to write something gross, so I figured I’d lean into it and write it. First bit of finished flash fic in like… several months lol. I like the idea of a biomechanical vampire that feeds upon filth.

Content Note: Contains mentions of blood, disease, general gross industrial waste kinda shit

The Filthy One
By Anthony Jutz

The grimy, unfiltered mud on the air fills Bloat’s lungs, as he sips the soot-wasted water. The contamination floods his veins, the tubes and processors attached to his back pulsating angrily. It wouldn’t be long before he was ready.

His vision runs crimson, the industrial wasteland of the city below offering fresh prey. The humans he feeds upon may be vulnerable and weighted by the utter disease of this place, but the residue of factories and their byproducts gives him a strength of desolate, biological perversion. His fangs drip an odd sort of poison, a mixture of blood and disgust, all the better to sap his prey of strength.

Diving below, he tackles a stray human and drags them into the sewer, their screams deadened by his teeth clamping their throat shut. As with the others before, he buries them in the filth, to brew and stew until they are ripe and bloated, perfect for drinking from.

Another night’s good work achieved, Bloat inhales the fetid air and sighs. Time to rest.

May Update

Hey friends! Been ages since I’ve uploaded here, huh. Been busy! Been sick! Been working on all kindsa stuff, some of which I’ll share here.

  • Spooky, green tower reaching off the page with some foliage around it
  • Tower with smoky clouds going off the page, with an orange tree in the foreground
  • Sunset with green clouds and spiky, green plants
  • Trail in the woods with a red, spiky fae thrown in the middle
  • Simple illustration of a dead tree with a green banner flowing off it
  • Sunset sky with a tree floating on a flying island

Above’s slideshow is most of what I’ve done the past couple months, art-wise. I was knocked out for a couple weeks by some health stuff, so I was focused on that, but I’m glad to still have done some of the best paintings I’ve done in my life. Good times!

I’m going to leave this post as a short one. I like the idea of being more concise, to make room for more efforts, so we’ll see how that goes!

February Update

Hey friends! Been a while since I’ve shared an update here. Been keeping a fairly low-key presence online, which has been nice with how wild things have been these past couple months.

Below is a slideshow with a bunch of goofy character experiments I’ve done. It’s fun figuring out how lines and such play a role on defining a character’s personality and such.

  • Cartoon style dogs with human teeth, as well as some weird looking characters, including a vampire and a guy with bad hair
  • Cartoon drawing of an old guy with a pipe next to a fish version of him, with the text "Ol' Brimpy" on it
  • Three brush pen drawing postcards. The first depicts two cartoonish figures holding pint glasses, the first smoking and the second saying "CRUISIN 4 A BREW-SIN". The second depicts a cartoonish figure holding a small cylindrical figure with arms, legs, and an antennae. The third depicts the text "HAIR HANDS" and five faces or busts of cartoonish figures; two are bearded with long hair and glasses, the remaining three making creepy or unsettling faces.
  • Two cartoon drawings of a character. One with him yawning with the text "the best part of waking up is waking up", as well as one of him drinking soda with the text "do the doo"
  • A brush pen drawing postcard of three cartoonish figures. From left to right, the bust of a man, a man in a baseball cap and a shirt saying "egg", and a toilet with a face.
  • A brush pen drawing of two figures, a man with a trunk nose and another man with a top hat, monocle. and a watch

Below here is some landscapes I’ve poked around at. I had a moment of indecision in early January where I wanted to draw both trees and faces, so I figured “what the hell” and combined them. I hope you enjoy these!

  • Postcard of a watercolor and brush pen illustration in bold, earthy tones. In the foreground is a mature deciduous tree, with a face on the trunk featuring a bulbous nose. In the background is a grassy landscape including rocks, clouds, and birds.
  • Six small brush pen drawings of trees and stumps with faces. One looks stoic, another really goofy, the third aloof, one rather bulbous, another looking smug, and the final one having an aggressive snarl.
  • A quick postcard-sized brush pen sketch of trees and rocks in a field
  • Three brush pen drawings, one post-card sized and the other two trading card sized. All depict trees with a face with either stoic or aloof expressions, with clouds and rocks visible.

Other than this, I’ve just been making a point to do more self-care. It’s nice.

Take care!

December Update + The Machine Awakens Released!

Hey friends! It’s been a while since I’ve checked or updated this blog. Most of my goings-on are on my Patreon lately. But, I’ve been pretty busy and I’ll get into a bit of what I’ve been up to here. There’s nothing quite like having a personal website to call home.

First of all: I made and released my first ever album, called The Machine Awakens! I participated in National Solo Album Month (NaSoAlMo) in November and found that a deadline (plus better mental health) actually does help a fair bit. It’s about putting something out in the world, not aiming for perfection. Perfectionism just seems like another form of vague idealism that doesn’t give me a real goal. So, better to just hammer something out!

Here’s a link to the album on Bandcamp! I’m proud of how it came out. My last couple years of practicing and poking around have paid off. I’m planning on releasing a bunch of loose songs I have from the past couple years at some point, too.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=259838593 size=large bgcol=333333 linkcol=2ebd35 tracklist=false artwork=small]

Here’s a link to the album on Soundcloud too, in case you’d rather listen there since there’s no play limit.

On the art front, I’ve been keeping it pretty low-key. I’ve had some (routine and not-scary) medical stuff going on that’s taken a lot of focus. It seems to be getting better now though, so we’ll see how things go from here.

I did do a bunch of tiny paintings and such though!

[Image Descriptions: Top left is a rocky desert scene with flowering plants. Top middle is a butte with a cloudy skyscape. Top right is three buttes with a clear skyscape that contains a bright sun. Bottom left is more cloudy desert. Bottom middle is a foreground of rocks and trees with a giant sun behind it. Bottom right is four brush pen trees ketches of both leafy and bare trees with rocks at their base.]

Through October and November, I did some Inktense and colored pencil sketch, some brush pen stuff from imagination… mostly just tiny experiments that the sketch card tier patrons I have might like.

This month, December, I plan on doing more brush pen experiments. I want to work up to doing a larger illustration or two in prep for a commission I have. It’s kinda nice just poking away at things and having the goal of finishing something to keep me on task.

Anyway, that’s it for this time. I hope y’all have a wonderful holiday season and rest of the year!

Summer Art Update

Hey friends! It’s been *several* months since my latest update here. I’ve been doing a bunch of sketching and music, but most of that’s ended up over on Patreon (behind a 3-day delay between sharing and being public).

Anyway, here’s some art!

As you can see, I’ve been developing much more confidence and competence in my line work and painting now that I’ve gotten back into watercolors! I’ve found my happiness in it, at long last.

Anyway, that’s all for now! I’ll try to be better about updating this page more frequently in the future.

February Art Update

Good lord, it’s been like four months since I’ve posted here. Been a wild start to the year so far with some great personal growth amidst a bit of turmoil and frustration. But hey, growth doesn’t have to be pretty.

Without further ado, here’s some of the art I’ve been up to!

  • Mountain chateau sketch I did for a friend
  • Mountainside greenhouse and farm I did for a friend
  • Study of a fish from Mario and my character Gorbold Trashman in a similar style, saying “cool” in Japanese
  • Couple sketches mostly from imagination, of rocky terrain and a tree
  • Study of a character drawing by A. Shipwright, and a rock I drew from imagination

Above are all sketches I did this year. I’m quite pleased with them all, and can tell I’ve made some good progress, artistically.

  • Study of an island covered in trees and such
  • Drawing of a man walking through a marshy, rock-filled area
  • Rolling, rocky hills with a creek in the middle of them
  • Couple artist trading card drawings of waterfalls and cliffs

Above are a bunch of studies and gifts I made in December, with some Copic markers I got. I’m not sure I’ll use the markers a whole lot in the future as their ink tends to fade pretty quickly, but they’re nice and quick for getting ideas out.

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