The Sketchbook

I like Photoshop

2012-01-26T12:59:00.002-06:00

Just so you know I don't always think about cooking. I also think about doing half-assed scribbles in Photoshop. I have pontificated about my relationship to digital technology in past blogs and I intentionally played the luddite, because grouches are nearly always more fun than the shameless lovers of a form. Let's be honest, the Apple corporation's biggest product isn't their beautiful little phone or their Star Trek ready iPad. Their number one product is drooling fanboys (fangirls? does anybody use that term?). Which is as it should be. But drooling fanboys are not nearly as fun to talk to as the violent crusaders against all things Apple. The men and women who bought Android phones and tablets simply because they didn't have the apple logo on them. It's not that I have any horses in that race, I'm just saying the haters are more fun to listen to. That's all.

Now to my actual point. I like Photoshop, and if I were better at it I'd probably love it. It's a wonderful sandbox. A place where I can do a sketch without having to spend a half an hour cleaning my brushes, and rubbing paint out of my clothes, only to come back the next day to find the brushes as crusty as if I hadn't bothered to clean them and a bunch of paint spots on my clothes that I had ignored until I sat on the couch. Like the sketch above, it's a place to quickly apply color just for the fun of it. Good or bad, it cost me nothing. It also reminds me that I have a ways to go if I were to ever master the medium.

Yeah, I know, there's too little contrast and not enough quality brushwork, but screw it. It's a girl in a bikini wearing an oversized bear skull on her head. How serious do I need to be?

Art and Cooking - Pt. 3

2012-01-24T13:41:00.002-06:00

Community

I have known several good musicians whowere so uptight about the music they were making they could never getit out of the practice space. For some of these guys this went on foryears and, somehow, fantastically, their bandmates said – sure,we'll waste our time right along with you. They were hell bent onperfection, but honestly, perfection is shit – not including Bach,Beethoven and those guys. They were fucking perfect. I doubt itexists, especially in your own mind. We fixate on mistakes, blemishesand the things that went wrong, which is great if you're seriousabout getting better. This blog is about sketching after all. I thinkit's great when people practice their art, work on their skills andso on, but hiding it is no good, because that's not really what it'sfor. Art, like cooking, is about sharing.

Of course you have to eat to sustainyourself and a lot of times that means making food alone. It's thesame with a sketchbook. You just have to make something and you'renot going to take a painting or a printing press on the bus with you.But in the end, the highest purpose of art and food is sharing. Whyelse would we have restaurants and galleries? They are public spacesfor sharing food and art with friends and strangers. Art and food aresomething we explore as a community. It's where we gather tocelebrate and experience excellence – enjoy the skills that comewith time and mastery, whether it be a plate of food, a beautifulglass of wine or a brilliant painting or breathtaking sculpture.

It is in these public spaces that wealso come to be challenged, or are forced into being challenged –or not as the case may be. Whether the art be on a wall or in a bowl,people have an opportunity to open their minds or to close them. Howmany times have you been in gallery and the loudest voice is the oneto proclaim that something on the wall is not art (prefaced, ofcourse, by admitting they don't know shit about art)? How many timeshas this happened in a restaurant? Most people react to somethingunfamiliar as a challenge to their intellect. Abstract expressionismisn't art in the same way a beautifully composed amuse bouche isn'tfood. To some viewers/eaters it's a joke, and it's a joke beingplayed on them. But to hell with them if they can't take a joke, oropen their minds to a new experience without believing in some sortof conspiracy theory that is trying to make them look stupid ratherthan trying to break them out of those rigid shells they've willinglybuilt.

But both food and art have an appeal tothe senses and the intellect. They are both ways to categorize andorganize experience. They are both ways to distill, down to theessence, the riot of data that swirls around us in a tornado ofsensory input. The philosopher Horace said the purpose of art is “toinstruct and delight,” and if that's also not the purpose ofcooking (and food shows) then I have made a grave misjudgment. Fuckthat. It has also been suggested that art is a mating strategy. It'san attempt to impress the opposite sex with the capacity of one'sintellect – a strategy that's only going to impress a certainnumber of people, but they're the best ones, so we got that going forus. There is no way that cooking doesn't fit the exact same criteria,and in a much more obvious and direct way. How many otherwise averagefolks with some understanding of food and how to prepare it havegotten very “lucky” in every sense of the word? And thank god forour ancestors who invented fire. Where the people who could flextheir brains better than their muscles still stood a chance to passon some of their smart genes and intellectual strategies. Humanity'sproto-nerds, of which Gordon Ramsay is almost certainly a directdescendant/beneficiary.

I love food and art and I love sharingthem. Sketchbooks are a great and necessary tool but there'ssomething about putting it out there in the community. I love cookingfor family and friends for the same reasons – it's a challenge andan opportunity to share the challenge. The challenge and bechallenged – or something like that. Mostly it's aboutparticipating in this thing humans have called community, or society,in a way that celebrates our uniqueness at the same time. And, ifyou're good enough, you might just get laid, and what better reasonis there for doing any damn thing. Just ask a bower bird.

Art and Cooking, pt. 2

2012-01-18T11:47:00.001-06:00

A Fountain

Beyond the shared property of alchemy, art and cooking intersect in another important way for me: they getme out of my comfort zone. Both artforms are bottomless and I feel Iam a serious amateur of both. Despite my lifelong interest andpractice in art, every day I feel like I'm learning, even on thoserare occasions where I get to cash a check. Cooking for me is thesame – the more I know, the more I see how little I know. It's thesame reason I love to watch cooking shows. On the one hand I learnsomething about the art, on the other I get to see people, oftenprofessionals, working outside of their comfort zones. A feeling Itry to emulate in my own work.

A comfort zone is a funny thing.Knowing that I'll never be able to be perfect, sometimes it's easy toslip into old habits and drawing things that I am certain to get theresults I'm looking for. Of course, my brain, hands and tools oftenconspire to make the simplest tasks turn out badly. Food has asimilar, capricious nature. No matter how many times I make a goodomelet, notice I didn't say perfect, failure lurks around the corner.Impatience or a lack of focus can undo the simplest dish and thesimplest drawing. Grabbing a new recipe or technique helps me torefocus, drawing things that I'm normally bad at performs a similarfunction. I'm confident that I will make a perfect omelet at aboutthe same time I execute a flawless drawing. That is to say, never.

Failure is a great teacher, and I takelessons often. How do you improve if you never fail? Would you eventry? Adversity is a motivator for nearly everyone. Thankfully we'rean animal that can benefit from it, and learn from it. The stakes arerarely fatal. Both encourage improvisation and problem solving andwhile they are never perfect, their imperfection is often encouragingand even nourishing. The pretty good image makes you strive for thegood, and, hopefully, the great. Food, as well, is a striver's art –taking something merely good, coming to grips with what is off, andtrying to continue to elevate the dish.

A near constant mantra in the realm ofcooking shows is “develop flavors.” A dish should be complicatedwithout being fussy, robust without being flabby, and achieve asubtle harmony between subtle and powerful. Developing flavor mightas well be a mantra in art as well. A good drawing or painting isevery much as composed as a brilliant dish that comes out of abrilliant kitchen. Years and years of practice, and failure, goes onto every plate and into every work of art. Understanding balance andharmony of ingredients is analogous to understanding color theory andcomposition – interestingly, a homonym that is central to both foodand art share a common Latin root – pala.

The other mantra of cooking shows is,“you eat with your eyes.” If that's not also a definition of art,I'll burn my sketchbooks.

the wit of the staircase...

2012-01-17T10:43:00.000-06:00

L'esprit de l'escalier... a phrase Ihave come to understand as the flood of things you should have saidbut only occurred to you after you left the party, argument,interview etc. Leave it to the French to conjure the perfect phrasefor so common an experience. I had one of those moments after a jobinterview yesterday. The question was one of those that tried to tellthe interviewer something about yourself that's not represented bythe resume. It was something common, a good question when sussing outwhether a candidate has a modicum of passion and isn't reading froman internal script. It wasn't a gotcha question or one of thoseabstract to the point of irrelevance numbers. I was asked what I hadbeen interested in, passionate about lately. While my answer wasfine, I had a better one waiting... about two hours later.

I have been keen on cooking and cookingshows lately, and have come to understand how they relate to myinterests in art. At the time I went on about improvisation,flexibility and creative thinking. Not an embarrassing statement byany means, and certainly true, but I missed my target. Missedexpressing exactly what I find so compelling about food and art.Missed it with such a simple word: Alchemy.

Since moving in with my girlfriend and,especially, since I left my business, my desire to cook has pickedup. And watching shows like Chopped, Top Chef and Ramsay's KitchenNightmares (oddly enough, since it has very little to do with actualcooking) helps keep the fire stoked. Cooking and art share a similarethos – the transformation of raw materials into something that notonly sustains, but attempts to delight. The shows are transformativeas well, and while Chopped is literally about transforming a givenset of ingredients, Ramsay's show is about breaking down tired ideasand transforming people's relationships to food, by going back tobasic techniques and fresh ingredients. For me the upside of cookingis a cost savings, a daily purpose beyond sending resumes out intothe ether, and a thanks to my girl for continuing to put up with mybroke ass.

There are Anthropologists andSociobiologists who theorize that the invention of cookingtransformed our species. After all, Humans are the only animals onthe planet that cook their food and, not coincidentally I believe, weare the only animals that create art. Art, like cooking, is atransformational process. Taking the raw pigments from plants, thecharred remains of wood, and making them into pictures, is a similaralchemy. Both are creative acts that connect us to our core beingsand to those around us. Art and food are an act of sharing, ofparticipating in our uniquely humanness. They sustain us and delightus.

the line: the tyranny of technology - or some such nonsense

2012-01-13T11:00:00.001-06:00

A good friend of mine, an artist, dropped by my house a couple of weeks ago. The plan was just to hang out. We've gone out to drink, and draw, but I've been pretty house-bound due to financial considerations - the primary consideration is my current lack of a job. So he came over and saw my sketchbook out on the coffee table (I love sketching and coffee) with a brush and a bottle of ink sitting dutifully next to it, ready to plunge into action against the tyrant known as the blank page.

My friend seemed genuinely puzzled to be confronted with such deliberately anachronistic tools such as a brush. I'm pretty sure he's still familiar with pencils. He's been giving her hell trying to hone his digital painting skills so I can see why he might not have a bottle of ink laying around (though I am surprised a bit that he doesn't have an old one lat has long since dried upo and turned to dust) but I don't know why he would be surprised that I would. I was a little hurt that he didn't know me and my Luddite ways better. Although over the past few months I get the feeling that he thinks I'm doing what he's doing. I am not.

Many of my heroes in the cartooning biz still use the old tools. Mignola, Ware, Clowes, the Hernandez brothers, Craig Thompson, Duncan Fegredo and even n00bz like Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba still put ink to paper. Shit, I'd bet at least 75% of artists in the field still use the old tools, the clumsy, outdated tools that don't have a ctrl+z function to erase all your mishaps (and they are numerous). Jaimie Hernandez is such a badass that he scoffs at the use of no-photo blue pencils, as if anyone who uses them has a fundamentally weak constitution and a poor grasp of their self-esteem. Hell, I'd bet 99% of all the great works of art in the comics field were created directly on paper, if the number is even that low. And there are a couple of good reasons why this is. At least for me.

For starters, I just like it. I like the direct feedback of putting a mark on a piece of paper. I like the sound of a pencil lead being pushed and pulled across the surface, the sound of the horsehair bush dusting the metric ton of eraser rubble from any given drawing. your mistakes still infuriatingly, tauntingly, visible. It keeps you on your toes, mate, and it keeps you humble. Oh so very humble. And then there's the ink. I love the mortal terror of this part so much, I have been known to use a dip-pen, a notoriously fickle medium for doing anything but messing up your drawings by dripping on them or lulling you into forgetting that everything takes ages to dry, so you turn your loveliest, most delicate line work into a fierce black smudge. No ctrl+z, no running back up the history menu to a place that was safe and dry. You plunge in, you give it hell, and you end up like a ships captain of old, going down with the old girl, time after time, after time.

Sounds bloody awful, right? Honestly, it's the best. Don't get me wrong, I like computers and fuckin' LOVE the ctrl+z function, just not all the time. Especially when I'm sketching and trying to generate ideas quickly. Working with a Wacom (not a Cintiq, mind you) in Photoshop is ponderous, fussy and, frankly, slow. Like trying to skim through Shakespeare, and not a comedy either. It encourages you to get bogged down in al lthe fabulous tool lurking at the edges of the screen. Tools that are wonderful, fascinating and fun, but really the opposite of a sketch. If anybody actually reads this and thinks I'm wrong, just keep it to yourself, you can explain what an idiot I am on your own blog. For my money, a pencil and a brush are fast and dead simple, two qualities you want in a sketch more than almost any others.

And the final reason, perhaps the most cynical, venal and self-serving of them all.... Money. Put simply, when you make a physical drawing, painting or whatnot, it's a one of a kind. As a one of a kind, it's something that is immediately rare and, therefore - very relatively speaking - valuable. Original, physical, comic pages sell from hundreds to thousands of dollars - especially covers - for artist that are still very much alive. Imagine... you get a page rate, you make money on the comic, then the trade, then, if you wish, you can sell the originals. You get paid at least 3 times for one drawing. Digital artists get the page rate, and the book sales, but there is no third market, because a digital painting is infinitely reproduceable, and more or less valuless to a collector of original art.. Unless the artists takes and makes a screenprint or some other physical piece (and no, printing it on a printer doesn't count as original because you can make identical copies thousands of times - millions, in fact) there isn't a market for art made on a computer.

Of course a scanner is important, but maybe I'll get into that in another post.

Of course, it all comes down to preference, and this is mine.

note: the above drawing was sketched with a Prismacoler "Col-erase," light-blue. Inked with Higgins "Eternal" black ink, the shadows are a diluted Dr. Ph. Martin's transparent water color, cerulean blue. You can contact me via facebook if you'd like to purchase it, or commission an original for yourself. Just sayin'.

Cheers!

unused sketch

2012-01-12T09:45:00.003-06:00

Aah, the perils of being a non-professional. A sketch I did for a local Roller Derby team that they didn't use. On the downside, I didn't get paid for all the back and forth I went through, on the upside, it goes here. Of course, I draw for free almost every day, so it's hard to complain about a sketchbook entry. Also, I like it.

resolved

2012-01-10T14:54:00.000-06:00

Thankfully, this blog was not a part of my New Years resolutions. I would hate to be a week into the new year and already behind. No deadline = no problems. This thing has sadly languished for the past year mostly because it feels meaningless. As far as I can tell, only spammers read it. I think I need to do some rethinking - which is something I'm definitely all over this New Year.

But this is what I drew this morning. It's a section of a sketchbook page done in my favorite pencil the Palomino HB, an undersketch in Prismacolor "Col-erase" light blue -- which you can't see because I didn't scan this in color.

new years eve blast

2012-01-03T14:01:00.002-06:00

Day three of the new year and I'm just getting around to this. I don't have much good to say about 2011 - except I survived and that I'm going to keep up with this. I feel it's confining but it's my job to change that.

Cheers!

draw what draws you

2011-12-01T11:29:00.001-06:00

Common. While I like his music, I find that he's a more fascinating person. He's a trickster figure, at least to me. He plays in the vernacular of Hip Hop and he also plays with that same vernacular. I became interested in this after seeing "Hell on Wheels."

The Iron Brigade. C'mon, if you don't love drawing robots and power armor... Well, anyway, I certainly do.

searching for the line

2011-11-29T23:31:00.001-06:00

The odd thing, the paradoxical, the quixotic, actually, about the desire to make comics, is how much time and effort goes into something that, if done properly, doesn't much get noticed. It's true about most art, I suppose. The thing that so entrances the creator, vexes the creator keeps them coming back for more is the attempt to perfect the invisible. By creator, I mean me, because I can't imagine anyone would put themselves through the grueling work of making a comic for any other reason. For a comics artists, the ones I love and admire the most anyway, that thrill, that elusive smoke, is the line.

I see it in other people's work - I glimpse it in mine as if out of the corner of the eye - that spark, or speck, that something that transforms the drawing from the representation of something into the thing itself. The push pull of the image from a line or lines into a picture and then back again. I am absolutely fascinated by the process, it's the thing that gets me turning pages in my sketchbooks and grabbing a pencil, a pen and, of course, the trusty eraser. That moment when that thing you've drawn looks out of the page at you and grabs at your face and tries to drag you in there too.

I get a similar kick out of cooking that I do from drawing. So much of the effort is learning and so much of it remains unseen. It's the attempt to find that perfect combination of lines, shadows, blacks and whites, in the same way you're trying to get the seasoning of dish just so, the look, taste and texture in some sort of harmony. You're attempting for a perfect balance, just enough salt, not too much crosshatching. I say attempting because you rarely quite get there. You just had to go and do something you've never done before, or you think you've got it, but you just want to see what happens.

For me, it's the excitement of almost getting it right. And, every once in a bit, there it is. Right fucking there.

draw what you love...

2011-11-08T15:50:00.002-06:00

Raymond Chandler.

A huge influence and an author who I return to frequently. I was reading an interview with Billy Wilder in which he was mentioned.

why keep a sketchbook...

2011-11-07T16:34:00.000-06:00

Sketchbooks are my religion, or at least my religious texts. I have filled dozens of them over the years and I get nervous when I reach the end of one and don't have another waiting. Some books have taken the better part of a year to finish, while others take months. In the absence of a professional body of work, the sketchbooks keep me focused and artistically in shape. But in all these years, I've never really thought about them in the same way I don't really think about socks. They're just always there. They are a fact of my existence. Until recently, I've never truly attempted to think or write about what their purpose, at least for me, is.

The most obvious reason for keeping a sketchbook is practice. The greatest athletes, musicians, actors, artists and any type of creative person practices. It's part of the DNA and the mantra of every good coach. Drawing is a skill, one that's consciously and constantly developed. Sure, some people probably have more raw talent, maybe their brains are wired differently, but the skills are developed with practice. I seriously doubt that, as a child, my drawings were better than anyone else's. I just wasn't interested in stopping there and, fortunately, I had enough people tell me my drawings were good that it kept me practicing. But if that were enough, I could draw on random bits of paper and toss them away. While it is about keeping the muscle memory, much in the same way musicians still run scales, it's also about more. People tell me all the time that they can't draw a stick-figure. Neither can I, not a better one anyway, because I never practice them. I never practice them, because there are no ideas there.

The idea is the key, everything else is just a tool. Jackson Pollack didn't just paint huge, pretty pictures (if you like that kind of thing... which I emphatically do) he used the canvas and the paint to communicate an idea, without which, there would be a lot more free space in museums and galleries. Da Vinci only made a handful of paintings, but he's a household name because of his ideas in his sketchbooks. To paraphrase Quentin Tarantino when asked about Peter Jackson's King Kong; "if it isn't about race, then it's just a movie about a giant monkey." Ideas are like butterflies in a high wind, and for me a sketchbook is the closest thing there is to a net. And by ideas, I mean anything. A scribble of a face, a character, a snippet of dialogue, an image that pops into my head, a recipe, a hastily drawn comic strip, a name, a title. Anything. If it's worth having a thought about, it's worth jotting down and keeping. You never know where the idea came from and where it might go. Without my sketchbook, it's guaranteed to go nowhere. People wonder where ideas come from and even the most creative person only has a theory. Maybe the answer is: where don't they come from? A sketchbook doesn't only contain ideas, it opens the doors to more of them.

And when I'm talking ideas, I don't just mean good ideas because, frankly, what is that? There is no litmus test for a good idea. Art is a lot like science in this way. You don't know what is going to stick until you try it. In that sense, a sketchbook is a record of failure. Not capitol "f," hang your head in shame Failure, but glorious failure. Like science, the only bad result is one that doesn't produce data. A bad drawing is only bad if you don't learn something. Keeping your failures in a neat package alongside the successes that came from them keeps you humble, keeps you striving and reminds you why you're doing all this in the first place; because you love it. The best athletes in the world are never at 100%, why would you expect to be? But they learn from their mistakes and that is the very idea of a sketchbook. It's about practicing, for sure, but it's mostly about practicing failure. Because, honestly, if you're not failing, you're not trying, and if you're tossing your failures in the wastebasket, then you're failing for nothing.

Lastly, and briefly, it's about accomplishing something. Unless you make art for a living you don't have a lot to show for all the work you do (although I doubt there's a professional artist that doesn't fill sketchbook after sketchbook). It's nice to see the fruits of years of labor, of ideas, of trials and errors and the occasionally brilliant, in a pile that reaches up to your waist. It's a well that never runs dry.

why I don't read superhero comics...

2011-11-03T11:50:00.000-06:00

...much.

For me, superhero comics are a lot like cantaloupe or honeydew melons; every once in a while I'll go back and try them just to see if I still don't like them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping for that outcome - a side of fruit would be a lot less insulting, for example - and I try to be honest and fair, but it usually doesn't work out.

On the occasion of DC's New 52, a relaunch of many of their major titles, I thought I'd take another bite of the melon.

This leads me to the first problem: Continuity. Both of the major companies, DC and Marvel, will occasionally decide to re-order their respective universes with huge cross-book tie-ins or re launch a book - as is the case here - starting from #1. As someone who has always been a casual reader, to know I can't simply follow a book (or three) I like without having to eventually deal with a massive story whose plot threads run through dozens of titles, keeps me from getting involved at all. Imagine if they did this on television. Suddenly, rather than just watching your favorite sitcom on NBC, you had to watch ALL of them to understand what was going on. You'd be pissed. Now add the fact that with comics you have to BUY them.

In this same vein, if a book is popular, the powers that be will spin off as many titles as they can get away with. How many Batman, Spider-Man or X-men comics do we need? For me, having multiple titles, even if they're all good, is worse than having just one. It dilutes the gene-pool, so to speak, and is such a blatant cash grab that it keeps me from even looking at a title no matter how iconic, no matter what the quality.

And that's another of my gripes; the quality of superhero books is wildly uneven. I'm not talking overall "goodness" here (I'll get to that next), but theme, tone and consistency. Artists and writers are not all created equal. As an artist and a writer, I get that. The problem is that so many of these artists and writers come and go on the same book fairly frequently. I fully understand that nobody wants to write and draw one book for their entire lives, and even if they did, some books have been going on for so long that death or old age would eventually force a change. These changes can be, and often are, drastic. While this can be refreshing or, even, invigorating, it can also be off-putting. Allow me to abuse my television reference further. Imagine if Friends, every season or so, went from being a sitcom, to being a chamber drama, to being a sci-fi melodrama and so on. Then imagine the show getting re-cast mid season. When George Clooney and Brad Pitt come in to play Ross and Joey, great. Unfortunately, next season they're going to played by Ernie and Burt. Then suppose this is happening on five different versions of Friends e.g. Ultimate Friends, the Uncanny Friends, Super Friends, Friends Incorporated, etc....

Then there is simply "godness;" good writing, good art, compelling storylines and so on. Notice I didn't say "greatness," though there is that, but a baseline quality. As far as DC's New 52 is concerned, for all the quantity on display, for all the talk of reinvigorating their lineup and bringing new readers into the fold, there's very little that's actually any good. In fact, a lot of it is, frankly, retarded. Not "retarded" in the Special Olympics sense but in the "I still play D&D in my parent's basement" sense. In a word, it's juvenile. Sure, the books are rated for teenagers, but the characters are generally supposed to be adults and the writers and artists are definitely adults, but their view of the world, even a world full of superpowered people in tights, is stunted.

While this is supposed to be a "reboot," the books themselves haven't changed a bit or, if they have changed, it's often regressive. The violence on display is extreme, and the sexuality is puerile. I'm all for sex and violence, hell, in High School, I had a subscription to Heavy Metal at the same time I was devouring X-Men, and I still remain a fan of DC's Vertigo line which is geared for adults. The difference with the New 52 is that the sex and violence are stupid. If you keep up with comics at all, there was a big dust-up recently about a frank sexual encounter between Batman and Catwoman (even typing that sentence gives me pause). Nobody is complaining about the fact that they hooked up - they are adults - it was the way it was depicted that drew fire. It was pornographic. It wasn't "hardcore" in that sense, but it was juvenile and lacked any sense of artistry. It was late night cable.

Sadly, this is common. One entire book takes place in a strip club for seemingly no reason at all except to show off some decent good-girl art which is further ruined by page after page of useless exposition. Another features a scantily clad demoness (poorly drawn at that) who kills an entire plane-load of people for incoherent reasons (the book was called "Resurrection Man" and I couldn't finish it). Within the first few pages of Wonder Woman, of all things, there's a horse decapitation that would have been extreme in a Vertigo title. An entire fishing village is slaughtered in issue #1 of Aquaman for god's sake. The only difference between these books and their "adult" Vertigo line is a lack of swearing, nudity and a rudimentary sense of cohesiveness. Stuff just happens, except when people are talking.

The New 52 is regressive in other ways. Rather than move forward, the folks at DC seem to be longing for the halcyon days of the 90s when many of their books were achieving blockbuster sales. Many of the books feel as if they've just been re-issued from that decade. And not the good stuff either. There's a talkiness to a lot of the titles that seem to be striving for the witty verisimilitude of Quentin Tarantino but deliver the leaden logorreah of Kevin Smith. Despite decades and decades of great comic art, some of the stuff on display looks like bad tracing of bad comics. Hell, they even brought Rob Liefeld back, an artist once considered a young turk, who, in retrospect, was a hack at best and who seems not to have improved AT ALL. One can't help but get the feeling that they've been stuck in a ghetto of their own making for so long that they're starting to feed on their own trash.

While the best comics strive for true artistry, I certainly don't demand that every book be The Watchmen or Akira or Maus but I do expect to be entertained, in the same way that I don't expect every movie to be Citizen Kane, but you're going to have to do better than Transformers 3. I don't think every superhero book is bad, far from it. I am saying that, for me, there are far too many obstacles that get in the way of me ever becoming a regular reader again. There simply too many good, even great, comics that I haven't read yet for me to spend more than a cursory amount of time, let alone money, in a genre and an industry that seems hell-bent on not growing up. Why would I waste my time on a cantaloupe when there's pineapple right next to it?

long absence

2011-09-13T08:48:00.000-05:00

Wow, it has been a long time since I put this blog to any use. My computer has been in and out of the shop thanks to the fact that I have been really broke. Plus, I think I just got bored posting random items from my sketchbooks. There hasn't been a lot of activity on that front until recently either.

Since the last post, the River Horse has been closed, re-opened in late December 2010 and in late July I quit. In the meantime I literally didn't make any money until March, and then, when I was getting paid, it was a pittance. I kept with the notion that I was taking one for the team. As long as we were making progress, the promise of money was always just around the corner. By June it was clear that we were never going to reach that corner, and I was losing more than money. I was losing the thing that I had put a lot of blood and sweat and time into. It felt like failure to walk away. It felt like failure to stay.

I was a terrible accountant, but I was a good manager. I had good people, and I was trying so hard to keep up appearances that I didn't have time to do much else. When I closed last September I was in debt to the point that I simply couldn't continue. I found a partner, we raised some money and we got the River Horse open again. It felt good, even if we were living on a shoestring. The place was clean, had some new features and we just had to wait out the Winter doldrums. They passed but we were still limping along. the progress was incremental, but I felt okay about going into work every day even if the pay sucked. Again, that corner.

My partner brought on an investor sometime around May - I can't remember the exact time. We needed the extra cash to finish some projects and pay down some neglected debt from the three month we were closed. I knew the guy so I didn't think much of it. We needed the money, and the new investor insisted he wanted nothing to do with day to day operations. Perfect. Except the opposite turned out to be true. The new investor started to meddle in everything, and it became abundantly clear that he had no idea how to run a bar. Worse, everything he did was a step in the wrong direction.

Apart from diligent accounting and inventory management - which my partner was supposedly going to bring to the table - a bar runs on intangibles. It runs on atmosphere and the good-will of the customers. They have to feel welcome and they need to feel a sense of trust and some sort of connection. Within weeks of bringing the new investor on these things began to quickly erode. We were making some big changes, but that wasn't the problem. A bar needs to change and adapt or it gets stale. The problem was that with the changes, we shed our core values. Bartenders were fired willy-nilly, over perceived slights and personality conflicts. The new investor was, literally, crazy and my partner was AWOL. They demanded respect that they never bothered to earn. I was stuck in the middle. Having no say in the decisions while, at the same time, having to deal with them. I had as much say in the direction of the business as a figurehead has in the direction of a boat.

In some ways, I was glad to be out of the loop. At least I could say that it wasn't me fucking up. But it was me, because I was stressed out and burned out and I really didn't care. The shitty decisions were making my life miserable, and I was barely being paid for my time and effort. I could have argued but it was pointless, so I just tried to bring as much normalcy and continuity as I could. It wasn't enough. I was still losing sleep and I had no refuge. My creative outlets were dry; I was barely drawing, not writing at all, and it took all my energy to leave the crap at the bar behind when I was at home with my girlfriend. The hours were long and unrewarding.

It took a couple moths for me to realize I was going nowhere fast. I was running in place. So with the love and support of my girlfriend I quit. I gave my notice and put my legacy in the hands of people I had no faith in. The one person I did trust to carry on left within a week of my quitting - for may of the same reasons and many crazier ones.

If I thought I was broke before, I am more broke now, but I sleep at night and I think some of my hair has grown back. I am writing again and drawing with a purpose again, so this joblessness hasn't been without its upside. Hell, I haven't done a blog post in the better part of a year.

So here's to the future.

"inking" in ink

2010-11-18T16:15:00.003-06:00

Same image inked with a brush pen. For quick turnaround, nothing beats the Pentel Brush Pen. I love my sable brushes for the line quality, but the process of constantly dipping the brushes and blotting and waiting for the shit to dry is time consuming. Fun though. Of course, the pencil drawing now only exists on my hard drive, but that's the way it goes.

"inking" in photoshop

2010-11-18T13:13:00.002-06:00

I did a pencil drawing last night while watching Alien3 (a film which gets a lot less respect than it's due). A good friend of mine has been nagging me to start doodling in Photoshop, so I thought, what the hell, and inked the scanned drawing. The differences between this one and the drawing in the previous post are obvious, but mostly due to my experience with the brush pen and my relative lack of it with Photoshop. The PS image is nice enough and once I overcome the learning curve it could be great.

That said, while I like the looseness of PS and the fact that the pencil drawing remains as is, the lack of direct feedback between the brush and the paper, is a negative. The Wacom tablet is a beautiful tool, but it has it's drawbacks. The texture is way too smooth, and it's really strange not to be looking at the tool you are inking with. Issue one is easily corrected with a sheet of paper placed over the tablet, but the disconnect has no corrective.

I don't plan on abandoning Photoshop - I love it for coloring - but for crisp inking, I think I'll stick with my Windsor & Newton sables and my Tachikawa G-Pen.

found image

2010-11-17T13:31:00.002-06:00

I think this is the one. I was never quite happy with the character designs, especially the hair. This I like, a strong face, a haircut that seems appropriate for traveling the wastelands, and the tattoo.

drawing is writing

2010-11-12T09:27:00.006-06:00

I was listening to NPR yesterday - big surprise - and the cartoonist Lynda Barry was on, talking about her latest work and the way she does it. If I remember correctly, she hit a wall writing her comic and then drawing it, but when she went back and just did both at the same time it opened up a new world for her. While I'm not the biggest fan of Barry's work, the idea hit me like a flash: Drawing is writing. She nailed it. I remember having a similar moment when I first met Craig Thompson while he was working on Blankets. No script, just rough pages. Then, it didn't stick because it seemed like a lot of extra work.

Since I consider myself both a writer and an artist (using the terms loosely) these things have always been in conflict in my work. I tried just riffing last night and I'm pretty happy and I find the ideas continuing to flow. It also allows me to instantly correct (below).

While I am continuing with the character from the previous posts, placing her in context has allowed me to see her transform in front of my eyes.

From page 2. The character is confronted by a creature emerging from the sand. It popped into my head that she needs spring-loaded knives, a la Travis Bickle. I also needed more space than the original panel to get the mechanics right. I like this sketch, but the movement was wrong for the knives I had envisioned, so I adjusted it in a second sketch.

This is much closer to what I'm getting at, and now I can crop the sketch to fit the panel I'm envisioning.

character builder

2010-11-12T09:01:00.004-06:00

Been working up a character design sheet for a comic I've had in my head for awhile now. She's appeared in a previous post, but the overall idea wasn't quite right. Above are the refined sketches. I'm trying to find a good silhouette.

The first bit - coming up with a variety of expressions, trying to push the design.

A sedate view. Boring actually.

Another pose. Just starting to find the silhouette and overall forms.

A sketch from Canepa and Barbucci's Sky Doll. Heavily manga influenced, but a great face that would be a breeze to repeat and vary. Contrary to popular opinion (or not, I have no idea about these things) drawing huge eyes only looks like an easy cheat. It's hard to go big and maintain a good balance. These guys do it well.

a jaw squared

2010-11-08T11:15:00.003-06:00

Square jawed women are a rare thing in comics. Probably because it's hard not to come off looking like Thor with breasts. I thought I'd give it a shot this morning with a scribble. I wanted to be sure that while the jawline was squared, it wasn't too large. I also wanted to leverage her femininity with a slightly elongated neck.
Here I simply flipped the image to check for overall structural stability.

2010-10-31T15:34:00.002-06:00

Drawing from a photograph is a pain. Drawing an owl from a photograph is an even bigger pain. When their wings are pulled into their bodies, they look like a mass of feathers.

Here, I'm trying to make something dimensional out of that mess. It's an idea for a mechanical owl that's meant for a tattoo. My task is to make the thing look like metal without creating something that's going to set the tattoo artist up to fail. It's been a long process of drawing, taking a break until an idea hits, and hammering it all together. I wanted to have a record of it in this state.

a pen sketch

2010-10-26T10:40:00.001-05:00

Didi this a couple days ago just to stay in the game, so to speak.

holy shit! it only took me months to do this

2010-10-11T10:54:00.005-05:00

I finished this last week and I'm not sure why it took me so long to post. And no, it didn't take me months to do this, it only took months to get around to doing this. The finished cover for Holy Shit! 7" split. The background details were based on photographs I took downtown.

side 2... look at me go

2010-10-01T13:51:00.003-05:00

Refining the pencils for the other side (the first side?) of a 7" record sleeve. Built the figures from skeletal outlines to fit them properly into a background that was established in the first drawing. Basically, I couldn't scale the background to the figures, so I had to do this the hard way. My eraser is getting a workout.

warmup

2010-09-30T11:33:00.003-05:00

Another ball-point sketch to get me flowing for the day and to burn off the coffee jitters.

lost time

2010-09-30T10:33:00.004-05:00

Haha... My third post in 20 minutes! Okay, I had a productive couple of days. My bar is closed for a bit, so I need to do something other than start drinking at 11 am. My friend Al gave me a couple of fine ball-point pens to draw with. He's a big fan, but I have let them sit for months. I broke them out yesterday. I like 'em. My plans are to do more shading because Microns and my Brush Pen are only good for lines and cross-hatching.

I do tattoos

2010-09-30T10:17:00.004-05:00

My friend Sara requested this image specifically. I did the sketch on a napkin (below) but it wasn't gory enough, apparently.

pest band finished!

2010-09-30T10:14:00.002-05:00

Wow - puttered on this one for months.

first pass

2010-06-16T14:49:00.003-05:00

Initial bit of sketching for the Your Pest Band 7". Technically this is my second pass because I initially drew the woman too low. For me this is the scariest part. Even though I had an initial concept, things are gained and lost in the re-draw. Some artists will use their initial sketch, sized and then worked over from above a light box. Not having a large enough light box is one problem I have, but I also like the process of starting from scratch. More practice and more room for play.

rza

2010-06-15T10:38:00.006-05:00

On the radio is a guy who wrote a book about the destructiveness of mainstream hip hop. My first thought for today's sketch was The RZA. While the Wu Tang Clan rapped about ghetto culture with all its violence, misogyny and the culture of drug dealing, there was always something more going on under the surface of the music. There was a sense of playfulness and ironic distance, not to mention some genuine nerdiness. They played the role of court jesters, and cultural commentators. And some of the music they make is among the freshest around.

A second sketch in my attempt to make up for missing Sunday (Locust St. Fest) and yesterday (cleanup, plus hangover).

a little late

2010-06-13T00:35:00.004-05:00

Ha! Yes, it's technically Sunday, but I started all this before midnight, and the only reason it's so late is I got a little messed up watching the World Cup. I wasn't capable of drawing reasonably well until an hour or so ago.

girl friday

2010-06-11T14:14:00.002-05:00

A scribble for a pilot girl.

swing pusher

2010-06-10T11:21:00.003-05:00

A sketch from memory. A woman pushing her child in a swing as seen from behind. I didn't get more than a glance so I skipped the feet. Day 3, sketch 3.

another head

2010-06-09T14:54:00.003-05:00

Day two, sketch two. Actually, this is a bit more than a sketch. The goal here was to build with line and shape.

tidbit

2010-06-08T13:35:00.005-05:00

There's no reason why I shouldn't be rocking a sketch everyday. Here's today's, a simple figure study.

Decided to work out the face in close up.

bay view in bloom

2010-06-03T08:43:00.003-05:00

By the end of coloring I always have a few tricks I didn't have from the beginning. Then, I wait a long time before doing this again and all but a few of the tricks vanish from my mind. On the other hand, if I ever got anything prefect I would perish from the Earth. Probably.

what happens at 4am

2010-05-27T11:42:00.003-05:00

Woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep. This popped into my head as an idea for a sleeve for a split 7". I'd already done the image for the Holy Shit! side and this presented itself as the opposite side for a band from Japan called Your Pest Band. The wee hours are often sadly slept through, so I try to grab what I can. Unfortunately, the whole page doesn't fit on the scanner bed, so this is somewhat abbreviated.

bay view final ink

2010-05-26T13:03:00.002-05:00

If the above pic doesn't look too much different from the previous post, you're right. The final inks are going to get colored via photoshop, so I was concentrating on depth through line use, and trying to balance the composition as much as possible before color layers are applied.

progress

2010-05-26T08:55:00.003-05:00

I have always liked the way the ink and pencils interact before I start laying in my heavy black lines and shadows. There is often a twinge of regret as I apply the eraser, so I thought I'd keep this one. Virtually, at least.

bay view banner a very rough sketch

2010-05-24T12:49:00.003-05:00

A very rough sketch for a banner for an upcoming ad page. Yeah the truck is pathetic, but it's just to get a sense of the overall composition. It will be fixed.

the view from bay view

2010-05-18T11:01:00.003-05:00

I have been tasked to do another banner for an ad page for the Shepherd Express. I love the Bay View neighborhood but was genuinely unsure how to represent it. Riverwest was easier because I live here. I wanted to keep a general theme (a woman, in profile, outdoors etc.) without being redundant, or copping out. I also wanted to use the Hoan bridge as a design element - it's just a scribble in the background above.
This is a small thumbnail moving the Bay View and placing the bridge in the general context.
I wanted to get a little more detail and personality on the motorcycling gal.

A variation, trying to simplify and up the cartooniness.

every day I learn to draw again

2010-04-08T11:02:00.004-05:00

I can't tell you how many times I've felt that I've never known how to draw. Those are the best days. The days you shelve your habits, good and bad, and try to find some new territory.

Never one for excessive planning, I have seen the light with regards to thumbnails thanks to a great little book The Skillful Huntsman. My good friend Al, who I've mentioned a number of times, hooked me up with the PDF. Doing thumbs and roughs has always been stressed, but it wasn't until this book that I absolutely saw why. Essentially, you do a lot of them to clear out the cobwebs and hopefully surprise yourself with something fresh.

Most of these are between two and three inches tall. The first page they're a bit closer to three inches, but the size made them less spontaneous. The ones above are about two inches, give or take, which forces me to just think about basic shapes and forms, leaving the details for down the road. I could do many more.

Now I just need to get better at this - but that comes with practice.

a stew

2010-03-25T12:43:00.003-06:00

Here's an attempt at "building from the inside out." That is, starting with the underlying skeletal structure (a very rough version) then building the fleshy bits on top. I wanted to do a pinup because the pose was a challenge and drawing women is fun, especially if they don't have many clothes on.
Still playing with the Ball and Plane construction of the face. This is my version of Robin Hood who not only challenges the financial structure of society but also the social one. I'd imagine a female bandit would have been a radical idea in that age, and in any age for that matter. This was scribbled on the bar last night.

The original sketch of Robyn Hood. I like the composition however flawed the foreshortening. I also felt that any self respecting bandit would hide their face.

last night

2010-03-24T07:47:00.002-06:00

I made her while bored at the bar waiting for customers to show. This is again inspired by Andy Loomis and a blog that I found on the Drawn! blog by Tonci Zonjic. Totally brilliant. I am considering giving her a red shirt.

Still with the Loomis, but I like the scribbled quality so much this one ends here... I think.

god bless Andrew Loomis

2010-03-22T14:30:00.005-06:00

Drawing from photos is often a bit tricky for me. My friend Al just introduced me to a link to some great tutorials by Andrew Loomis. I banged this one out in a few minutes.

And the ink done with my Pentel brush pen.

BANGzoom #1

2010-03-17T14:34:00.003-06:00

Ha, I did it.

robot and bear

2010-03-08T14:52:00.003-06:00

I have been wanting to do a webcomic for awhile but have somehow failed to find characters that I wanted to use. Despite the fact that I draw panda heads on everything, and fill pages of sketchbooks with robots it never occurred to me to put them together in a comic. That changed over the weekend. Here are the first sketches of the first characters that will appear weekly.

murakami in shadow

2010-03-01T13:42:00.003-06:00

Based on my thorough enjoyment of Michael Cho's sketchbook and "Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!" I thought I'd make a quick portrait of one of my favorite authors Haruki Murakami.

hollywood crush

2010-03-01T09:23:00.004-06:00

Elizabeth Pena
I don't remember the first time I saw Elizabeth Pena (sorry about the Americanized spelling), but I have always had a crush on her - Lone Star is one of my favorite things she's done. Her face always has a hint of sadness about it, and her voice is dreamy. She has a down-home sultriness that is at once common and exotic. I did this drawing from memory, having tried unsuccessfully to capture her likeness from a photograph, so you'll have to excuse the inaccuracy. It does manage to feel right to me.
Here is one of the sketches I attempted from a photo; not a great likeness but a nice enough sketch to post. I have always had a difficult time drawing from photos - I was going to attempt something more akin to caricature but went with something a little more straight. Perhaps I am too risk-averse.

cartooning through the ages

2010-02-25T15:51:00.005-06:00

Inspired by a post on a blog I hadn't seen before I came up with this doodle last night. I scanned both the pencil and the ink, because as much as I love to ink a drawing, I don't like to lose the pencils. Thanks to scanning I don't have to.

fun with color

2010-02-03T15:29:00.003-06:00

Here's a drawing I colored for fun. The point was to get me used to the layering system that I tried for the first time on the Riverwest banner. I wanted to keep the colors simple and sharp with a minimum of shading - something I wasn't entirely happy with on the banner.

charicaturing women

2010-01-31T16:19:00.008-06:00

One of the hardest gaps in drawing to straddle (at least for me) is pushing the features of women to the point where they're distinctive and yet remain attractive - if that is indeed the goal of a drawing. There's nothing worse than churning out scores of generic looking, "pretty" types with a variation in hair or something equally bland.The great Jack Kirby was often criticized for having women that looked essentially like men with lipstick and a woman's hairdo that looks more like a horrible wig.
Sorry, Jack, but that's some jaw she's got there, and this ain't the worst I've seen just the first one I grabbed off the internets.

Okay, I'm not seriously comparing myself to Kirby. Whatever his shortcomings were, his strengths were far beyond what I can pull off. I'm just to making a point.

Here is basically the same girl (rather a same theme to be more accurate) drawn in two different ways. While I like the girl on top she's more generic than the girl on the bottom and, frankly, much less visually compelling. While the more caricatured version wouldn't be right for everything, as a pure exercise she is more interesting.

Trying to get away from the typical button nose here. So many women are drawn with a tiny nub of a nose or merely two nostrils -I've done it, just scroll down. I've always liked a good solid nose, but making 'em solid and still keeping it on this side of a Basil Wolverton is tricky. I'm still learning. Yes I inked over the big woman's nipples but they looked funny and, besides, this is a family friendly operation. Most of the time. The small pencil scribble of the big woman shows how small changes can really bring a drawing down.

I'm a fan of Anime and I think the Japanese have got it right for the most part, though I do hate it when American artists ape the style. That said, it isn't for me. While I appreciate the too-big eyes, the teeny noses and the chins that taper to perfection, getting the proportions right isn't easy for me. Especially those giant eyes which, in this example are too mismatched to work.

Here's something more akin to what I'm going for, biggish nose (not too much so) and eyes that are big enough to be expressive and small enough not to look foolish.

If you've read this far maybe you've guessed that this was more or less an image dump. I'll leave it here, with a girl that I think is mostly right, minus the unfinished arms, of course.

Riverwest Banner

2010-01-28T14:11:00.003-06:00

A new banner for the forthcoming Shepherd Express ad page for our lovely neighborhood. Coloring in Photoshop always presents challenges simply because the choices are endless. I tried to keep it simple, but there's so much to do it's hard to know when to quit.

pneumatic

2009-08-17T11:16:00.004-05:00

I just finished re-reading Metropol by Ted McKeever this weekend and it remains one of my favorite comics of all time. In a way, it inspired this drawing although his stuff is much, much grittier. I wanted to take the notion of the "pneumatic" woman and gave it a somewhat literal twist.

a robot walks into a bar....

2009-08-16T10:57:00.004-05:00

The caption is something like "That's so interesting..." but I don't quite remember what I was going for. Most likely it's an excuse to draw a robot and a pretty girl (not like you need excuses to do that) but at the time, whatever I was thinking was funny- at least to me.

Punx not ded

2009-08-16T09:55:00.004-05:00

This is a scan for a flier that, sadly, went unused because the show was canceled. It was fun so the effort wasn't wasted. Besides, I wasn't getting paid anyway.

I was attempting to mix scales so that the figures would pop out of the minivan, rather than get lost in the composition. Unfortunately, the minivan now feels a bit like a compact car. Not quite the commentary on folks of my generation still listening to and playing punk rock, but it works well enough.
In the course of working on final dimensions I realized that my original drawing was off, size wise, so I had to modify the image to work in the tabloid format. My solution was to draw the kids, scan and size them to match the original. Not an elegant solution but it maintained the sense of humor I was going for.

new poster

2009-07-05T08:52:00.009-05:00

Another poster for the Brewcity Bruisers roller derby team. I couldn't resist running with a theme from Love and Rockets - our heroines in a police lineup. I thought it would be a perfect fit for the outlaw/cuteypie image of roller derby. Above is the initial sketch.

Step two, the refined drawing, is always bittersweet. I end up with a nicer product, I gain a lot in terms of neatness, details and other accidental/experimental elements but I lose a bit of freshness and spontaneity.I like the colored version. It's all a bit arbitrary, but I went with generic colors eyedropped off photos of the various teams. I'm a bit rusty on coloring in Photoshop since my recent move plunged my already chaotic existence even deeper into chaos. I need to scan some sketches and experiment.

The almost final version without a couple logos and some missing info but you get the picture.

the crying messiah

2009-04-21T10:42:00.003-05:00

While watching a show called Hitler and the Occult, I sketched out this image. The first was the man standing, inspired by the guy who was all into the occult who essentially gave Hitler the idea that he was the messiah. Then the fat man as the messiah sprang up and I couldn't help but think of Glenn Beck so I added tears. While I haven't been looking for a character like this, I think he'll come in handy for the comic I'm putting together for next year's Stumptown Comics fest. How can you go wrong equating Glenn Beck and Hitler? You can't.

barbarians at the gates

2009-04-20T13:53:00.004-05:00

Between reading Frank Thorne's Ghita of Alizarr and Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun series, my thoughts naturally turn to swordplay and barbarian babes. Unfortunately, these are things I'm not particularly good at. The picture above is a great example. The pencil sketch is an attempt at a bad-ass barbarian, but she looks more like a bad mannequin than a slayer of men. The women on the left are an attempt to make the women appear to be made out of other than plastic and or fiberglass.

In close up you can see my experimenting with a different approach to drawing the mouth. The nipples are a work in progress.

This is the first pair I drew after the pencil sketch and while I think she's fleshier, I had to move her eye in photoshop so as not to appear wall-eyed. The original is in the top picture.

Here I am getting to my Playboy roots. I saw my first naked woman in a Playboy and it has forever warped my thinking. Here's a sketch of Azizi Johari from a picture I found on the web. She had an amazing body but her face was a strange mix that I didn't bother to try to capture here.

J.G. Ballard is dead

2009-04-20T11:14:00.002-05:00

I was scribbling on this last night while watching The Big Lebowski. That's just a fact and is in no way intended to imply causality. I was also penning this in the moments before I read that one of my favorite authors, J.G. Ballard, had died. While I would be hesitant to imply causality, I can't help but want to make the connection between what I do and being a fan of Science Fiction in general and Ballard specifically.

These days, sci-fi authors love to gripe about how our modern world resembles fiction more than their writing does. They decry how impossible it is to conceive of anything as strange and convoluted as our tech-saturated society and culture. Fuck that. Ballard's Sci-Fi was the fiction of five minutes from now. His work wasn't about black holes or space travel, but about the way the world we live in offers up infinite possibilities in the way we see it. It was about High Rises, Car Parks, and our sexualized relationships with our cars. An empty swimming pool was a portal across dimensions, disused t.v. antennae a harbinger of doom. He saw the surrealism in what we take for granted every day. In may ways his work more resembles John Barth and Robert Coover, or William S. Burroughs for that matter, than it does Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov or any of the sci-fi giants that were his mentors and contemporaries.

His great works were behind him in many ways, but it is still sad to see one of the all-time greats pass away. Thankfully, his books will still open the portals across dimensions.

2009-03-29T19:13:00.003-06:00

I am having a problem with the sexiness factor. There's something just off about her face. Not bad, just off and not what I was trying to achieve.

morning sketch

2009-03-23T11:08:00.002-06:00

At breakfast this morning I decided to sketch a couple sitting in front of a large window. I hadn't done this kind of sketching in a long time and I am definitely rusty.

the mix tape is dead

2009-03-17T07:59:00.005-06:00

If I lack an arrow in my quiver (Let's pretend there's just one missing) it's my reluctance to use a lot of black. I generally say to myself that I'll fill them in later, but in a sketchbook, really, there is no later. This is an attempt at a remedy and, if anything, I still think some of the fill is a bit timid. On the other hand, I really like the results. The silhouette effect makes the figure much more solid and heavy than lines alone could. I will post this again with color if I get around to it.

Comic artists tend to pencil in the blacks or, if they're a big area, mark them with an X. I tend not to do that so much as I indicate shading and wing it when I ink. Here, I fully shaded the black areas which is a departure for me because patience is not one of my virtues.

Picture Book pages (part 2)

2009-03-08T11:15:00.006-06:00

The irony, of course, is that after I finish the roughs, I find a fantastic template for laying out picture books.

Here, I'm still working on the layout and pacing of the images and working them into an overall composition, which will be revised as I go forth thanks to the dummy I linked to above.

Getting the feel of it, the movement of the rocket through space and creating visual momentum.

Not quite right yet, but with editing this thing down to 32 pages maybe I can find a compromise.

This looks a bit more like a storyboard than a picture book right now.

I like this. Good sequential storytelling and kinetic visuals I think will engage kids well.

Obama Lends a Helping Hand to America's Banks

2009-03-05T09:50:00.003-06:00

Largely inspired by Looney Tunes gags where dynamite appears from nowhere.

My Kids Book Roughs post 1

2009-03-02T12:16:00.005-06:00

This is what I've been noodling around on for the last six months. Rough sketches for a picture book.

I've inteded for it to be a picture book, comic hybrid since both mediums are dear to me and I like the storytelling potential of sequential images versus iconic single images.

The images can unfold more cinematically as with this zoom like panel arrangement.

These were all composed in a sketchbook then xeroxed which is why they look a bit blown out.

This is a splash page - an image intended to span two pages. As you can see in various panels I'm playing with the look of my protagonist, Lydia which is the fun thing about rough layouts. I would do several thumbnails and pick the most likely one to work.

I will post the rest in the upcoming days.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-16T10:45:00.001-06:00

Hollywood Hate Drawing

2009-02-09T11:25:00.002-06:00

As I was watching Alice in Wonderland with Isabella last night I had a tiny epiphany. The primary art of animation (2D anyway) drawing, is more or less persona non grata as far as Hollywood is concerned, and American animation is mostly pathetic as a result.

This became painfully obviously watching the previews for another animated feature about a bunch of poorly drawn cows having an adventure (Roseanne Barr and Jennifer Tilly were the voices I recognized). I flashed back to the 2D Disney films of the last 20 years and with one exception they are ugly and uninspired. So is their 3D stuff, but that's another story.

The one exception to the rule is Lilo and Stitch, by Chris Sanders, and what separates this film is that this was about the last American animated film where the directors and animators were able to flex their drawing chops and get back to the old school. Sadly, despite the fact that the film was a success, it won't happen again.

What passes for American animation these days is the brutally ugly dreck on Adult Swim, the cutout "art" of South Park,the generally uninspired kids animation (which is about 90-% computer generated as it is) and the house that make all the superhero 'toons which look identical, oversimplified, and not particularly attractive. Oh and the John K (Ren and Stimpy) squash and stretch gross-out variety.

Yet, while Hollywood ignores drawing, it's clear that there is an audience for 2D animation. It just all comes from Japan, and it's pretty much all of a stripe that Hollywood types think will sell - that is, the most routine, cliched Anime that barely reflects the breadth and depth of animation in Japan.

The Japanese love drawing - Ukio-e (woodblock printing) has cast a a shadow over their entire culture which makes Anime and Manga not only viable as an art form but extremely popular. Americans could generally give a shit about art and it shows in theaters and on t.v.

While I desperately love Pixar stuff and Henry Selick's stop-motion work, I miss the good old fashioned drawing that makes early Disney films and, especially, Warner Brother's so amazing and inspiring. While I am thankful that this material is on DVD and archives keep popping up, I'm saddened that the American animation scene will probably never feature good drawing at its center again.

Little Triggers

2009-02-06T10:35:00.002-06:00

It's often the little things that have the largest effects, the "a-ha" moments are about the small stuff these days. Both of these were penned last night, the one on the left at about 9pm (before my shift) the second one when I got home (2:30am). The one ont he right was of a girl at the bar that I drew from memory.

A Humble Return

2009-02-05T17:13:00.005-06:00

I have gone through three quarters of a sketchbook since the last post and I have no idea why I wasn't posting, but I wasn't. I have been working on some stuff that I can't post, but mostly it's laziness and a lack of finished material. I have been making sketches on 3x5 cards that I'll be turning into cartoons like the one above. Who knows, I may publish the original just for fun.

I posted this to my facebook page with the option to write a caption. I wrote one myself, but I thought it might be fun. I love space-girls!

2008-09-08T10:48:00.005-05:00

Aah the waning days of summer when thoughts once again return to sketching. Alas, once again I have not squeezed all the juice from Summer and one day should stop trying. Let's face it, most of Summer is spent with some sort of an adult beverage in hand and Labor day is just a long weekend for that final bender. Back to the great indoors!

These sorts of drawing generally spring to mind while watching old movies or Warner Bros. cartoons. I really love his feet.

I'm always making sketches for paintings and this is one. I've been looking for the right angle for a series and rather than plunge right in - which I should do - I noodle around waiting for the inspiration. Guess what. I'm still waiting.

Robots in Paris

2008-07-10T12:19:00.006-05:00

Robots are a blast to draw. When you get them right. This one is halfway there. His body is based on a bathysphere which I have been fascinated with since I was a kid watching sci-fi movies on lazy Sunday afternoons. The arms and feet - by feet I mean rolling sphere - are somewhere not quite right and not quite wrong. The ball is inspired by the Segue scooter, which is butt ugly but an amazing piece of technology. The hands are toolkits - which can be swapped out with a Gatling gun.

I have been a fan of Gene Kelly since I first saw Singing in the Rain. Saturday night I was home recovering from the Independence Day drink- a-thon and watching another great Kelly film An American in Paris. There was a scene with him at a cafe mooning over Leslie Caron and I tried to capture his profile. I failed, but I still like the picture.

Here is the beautiful Leslie Caron from the same film, and one near miss. She has these enormous teeth which makes her hard to draw because they make her face a little off. One of the reasons I like drawing from the television is that you get to understand the figure in the round - somewhat. Drawing from a photograph is surprisingly difficult (at least for me) because of the flatness. It's easier for me to turn a 3-d object into a 2-d drawing than is is to go 2-d to 2-d. She's also an amazing dancer with incredible legs. I tried to draw her dancing but she moved to damn much.

Scully

2008-06-24T11:43:00.004-05:00

My first post in a long time. I've been writing a lot now and drawing has been relegated to really quick sketches and work on the kids book which is extremely rough and extremely sporadic. A companion piece to the Saint Mulder post, this was inspired by watching the first X-files episode "Deep Throat" on SciFi last night. This is first season Dana Scully. I've always loved Gillian Anderson's permanent pout and her vaguely sad eyes.

brew city bruisers flier

2008-05-08T10:16:00.004-05:00

I have been writing and doing rough sketches for a children's book I've had knocking around in my head. I haven't been posting those because they still feel private and very unfinished. Thankfully, I was contacted by our lovely roller derby league to make a flier. It's a freebie, but hopefully I'll get to reuse the image to make a silkscreen poster that I can sell for some dough. I'm still learning how to color with Photoshop, if you can't tell.

page one

2008-04-21T21:50:00.004-05:00

I have just completed the manuscript for a kid's book and have been having the damnedest time with the first page of drawings. I had a bit of a breakthrough tonight. Let's hope this continues.

sometimes I can draw

2008-04-08T00:31:00.002-05:00

I tried watching "Little Women" (1933) tonight, starring the great Katherine Hepburn. While I have no doubt as to the quality of the production, I couldn't stomach it. To salvage the experience I tried to get a caricature of Kate, but couldn't muster the enthusiasm or any kind of scribble that didn't look like a dood. Instead, I took her hairstyle and did my own sketch. In the process I discovered I can occasionally draw well.

2008-04-05T14:52:00.006-06:00

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,	5
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Some Robert Frost in Harper's Dec. 1920.

April is National Poetry Month.

This is my first post since my girlfriend moved out. I have seriously lacked the ambition to sketch anything. The house was all torn up and psychologically handling the move out/break up without drinking myself to death was as much as I could handle. The creative well was stopped up good. I'm getting back to it slowly. I've had some fresh ideas that I'd like to share but don't feel just right about it yet. So I'll post some dalliances just for the practice.

Trying to broaden character abilities, playing around with sizes and shapes.

Most of my books are like this - 80% scribbling. But it's the process that is the reward and the successes are simply icing. Falling upwards is what you do the rest of the time.

caricature

2008-02-26T10:47:00.005-06:00

The X-Files was one of my favorite shows. For almost it's entire run, I didn't get to see it because I worked at the Art Museum on those nights. Now, I am content to still be surprised by a few re-runs. Here's Mulder with a flying saucer for a halo. St. Mulder if you will. I wish I had done this 10 years ago when It would have been relevant. Scully is going to be tougher.

I did this while watching Creepshow which explains why Ted looks so young. I'm not well versed in caricature as of yet - notice the question mark. It's funny because the more I tried to tighten up the drawing the farther afield I got. I quit while the resemblance was still in place. I'm much happier with the Mulder, but this is a part of my development.

the assignment

2008-02-24T08:47:00.006-06:00

My good friend, and excellent artist, Al and I have been trying to pursue ways that lead out of our individual tendencies to slack on portfolio-type stuff. I've been rock solid filling sketchbooks but less so when it comes to creating "finished" pieces. Al's solution: use an editorial model. That is to say, throw a subject out there and draw it. This week: An armored warrior battling enemies.

My first impulse was to stay away from armor in the medieval sense, opting for something more akin to stormtrooper armor and blasters in stead of swords, leading to this....

Our trooper battling oncoming hordes of lobstermen with the aid of her trusty robot sidekick. While I like the concept and plan to finish it, it felt a bit like cheating on this assignment. Had this been a real job I wouldn't have the latitude I took. It was back to ye olde drawing boarde.
I started sketching yesterday and finally found the solution. I keep the girl, drop the blasters and sheathe her in my variant of samurai armor. Of course, my concept is shot to hell and the deadline is today (I wasn't going to make it anyway). But I did create armor that I really like - a thing I've been taking shots at now for some time and rarely succeeding. Since I'm not being paid, I'm not stressing, and these will make excellent portfolio pieces once I finish them.

ars est celare artum

2008-02-13T10:47:00.005-06:00

One of the things I want to accomplish with this blog is to expose my processes. I find this information by other artists to be fascinating, invaluable and somewhat rare. I have changed the subhead of the post to reflect this interest. I ripped the quote from one of my favorite blogs of this stripe: Gurney Journey. James Gurney is the creator of the Dinotopia series of books and is a wonderful painting instructor. If you want to learn how to paint, this is for you.

Here's a fine example of what I'm talking about. This sketch evolved over hours of drawing, erasing, redrawing, to a frightening degree. I wanted to post the sketch before I ink it and erase all traces of my considerable effort, thereby providing you, dear reader, with the illusion that I am supremely talented and full of inspiration.
Here's a document of more effort. I'm still trying to get the cuteness back into my drawings. She's not bad, but her face is expressionless - perhaps a reflection of my ambivalence about this drawing? You see what I mean about erasing. She was a mass of scribbles at one point. This was inspired by watching Lilo & Stitch with my daughter.

Here's a scribble that turned into something more. When I finished it I realized that her hair has an obvious "s" shape and that maybe I could create an alphabet using faces and hair. Stay tuned to see if this is just another idea that'll fizzle.

why the banjo?

2008-02-03T00:47:00.001-06:00

This has been a hectic week to say the least. This sketchbook has been a chronicle of struggle. I'll spare you the details, but the drawings reflect said struggle. Or not... I have no idea. That scribble of the guy is supposed to be John Carradine - father of John and David - who starred in about 60 thousand B movies. I got one of those DVD sets that crams 50 movies onto about 10 disks. So far they've all lived up to my expectations and more. They are an amazement and a delight. I have no idea why movies like "The Incredible Petrified World," "The Atomic Brain," or "Killers From Space" exist, but some incredible visionary somewhere decided to put them on DVD. I am vexed about drawing a female robot. The things that make a woman fun to draw; lips, eyes, curves, seem to have no purpose on a robot.

I am having the worst time drawing pretty women.

cleaning part 2

2008-01-24T18:02:00.001-06:00

It's funny, thought I was having technical problems on the earlier post, but it was a meatware issue all along. I'd go into detail but stupid requires very little explanation.

I drew this after I found out a person I'd known committed suicide. I just couldn't get my mind around it and ended up talking in circles. This was a way to put something out there.... Requiescat in Pace M_____.
On a lighter note. Here's a jetpack gal minus the jetpack. I just couldn't get the right feel for the thing so I did the next best thing: I erased it. Hooray for erasers.
This one should be in the New Yorker, but I have an aversion to rejection, so If a cartoon editor reads this I can take out the word balloons and add a skunk sitting next to the guy at the bar. Or maybe a porcupine. Or a robot. I'm flexible.

cleaning out the closet

2008-01-24T17:41:00.000-06:00

Okay, a sketchbook bears very little resemblance to a closet, nor am I in actuality cleaning anything "out." I am, however, just going to post a bunch of random stuff sitting in my books or on my hard drive. So there.
I think I mentioned earlier that I had worked on a pitchbook for an ad agency to pitch to Scion. Here's a couple of the images. Still in black and white. They were colored in house because I honestly wasn't sure my computer coloring skills were fast enough at the time. I was probably correct.
This is just a bunch of goofing. Her hair is just me playing with that new pen, dood is a stray thought.

2008-01-21T23:50:00.000-06:00

Wow it feels like it's been a log time since I've posted but things are hectic as usual. This is an image I put together for a flier for the River Horse's 5th birthday. The bottom half is pen and ink while the top was dashed out in photoshop. He's a bit of a departure in many ways. I find myself looking at it as if it were someone else's drawing, if that makes any sense. It's a rare piece that doesn't have some glaring fault in it. This is as close as I've gotten. I leave the clouds in to remind me that there's much improving to be done.

Here's a mermaid I drew because my daughter wanted me to. I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with hands. She's fairly solid in general, but I used to be able to draw women better. It's strange how things shift over a life of scribbling. One day you're nailing the hands but all of a sudden you can't draw hair to save your life. But that's the point, plugging away, trying to improve without setting yourself back. I feel in some way my cartooning is developing and growing more formidable.

Finding Lydia

2008-01-03T10:35:00.001-06:00

When you're putting together a book, you have a unique burden and challenge. You get to be both God and Darwin. God, in the sense that you're creating a thing that doesn't exist out of blank pieces of paper. Darwin, in that you get to be a witness to the evolution of characters occasionally against your will, but mostly as a variation of natural selection.

One has to start with a basic concept. In my case it is a 14 year-old girl named Lydia Coppersmith. My first challenge is creating a girl who looks convincingly 14. Since my own daughter is only 4, I have to extrapolate. In this case I was trying to get her face and added the peace sign you see in so many manga. It's a bit of a wink to the art form, but I think it's something that makes the young characters seem young. While I like the drawing, Lydia seems too mature, physically.

In this series we see a moment of evolution at work. At some point in the story, Lydia will lose a hand. I drew the face on the left after that on the right and I think I have something I really like. She is young and is forced to be serious. She has to be serious a lot earlier on in the story, but I think I'm beginning to capture a hint of the gravitas she needs. The Lydia at the top is my most fully formed.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-25T10:46:00.000-06:00

new toy

2007-12-05T15:32:00.000-06:00

If I am at all like other artists, new tools/toys are always exciting. On the one hand, I hope they actually make my life and work easier. On the other hand, I should be whittling down my substantial stash to a more manageable level. Therefore, when a new tool actually makes the cut, it is a great day. Today's new tool is the Pentel Pocket Brush aka The Brush Pen.

pentel-brush-pen.jpg (JPEG Image, 600x78 pixels)

Unlike most brush pens like the Pigma or the Copic, this baby is truly flexible and doesn't fray with regular use. In fact, a friend of mine really smashed it around - to my horror - and the pen tip held fast. The ink is super black and waterproof, which is good for someone who drinks as much coffee as I do. The fact that it comes with four cartridges says something about the pen's durability. I've rarely had a Micron or Copic tip last as long as the ink. And it's easy to clean if you make the mistake of not using it for a stretch.

So far, the drawings are coming out well. If there is any problem with the above drawing is it entirely mine.

The pen wasn't exactly cheap but in the few days that I've been using it, I haven't felt ripped off for one second.

robot battle

2007-11-29T11:27:00.000-06:00

Here is my unaltered scan for a flier I'm working on. Done with a dip pen, a brush - both using Speedball Super Black ink - and a marker. The house on the left was mostly done with a dip pen, which explains all the spots. For the house on the right I used a Staedtler pigma liner pen - which is very similar to the Microns and the Copic multiliner. By the way, there's very few things in the world as satisfying as drawing robots fighting. I imagine the designers if Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots had a total blast.

Here's the drawing colored in Photoshop and sized for printing. I added text in Illustrator, but the colors shifted a bit. I'm not going to bore you wit the final poster. Come to Milwaukee and see for yourself.
Here's the original sketch. One of the few times the original idea survives with minor modifications. An a lot of refining. I tend to worry that a final drawing will become too static compared to the sketch. I'm fairly happy about this one. The finished product, while a bit less fluid, retains some flexibility. The robots don't feel like statues.

khyper bedouin

2007-11-13T16:47:00.002-06:00

So much for posting everyday. Anyhow here's the latest. The pencil drawing has been sitting in my sketchbook for a week or two now, but I inked it last night. Another stray blotch that I didn't bother to fix in photoshop. I also left the pencil lines in for fun. Maybe I'll color it for a later post. Found the model here. I'm afraid I didn't do her justice, she is a steampunk goddess.

blowin bubbles

2007-11-07T08:22:00.001-06:00

Here's an image I had inexplicably labored over. Unfortunately I don't have scans of the agonizing process of penciling. It's an image I'm planning on putting on the back of a business card after I color it. Since I'm planning on isolating the figure I didn't bother to clean up all the pencil scribbles.

consider the hair dryer

2007-11-06T12:33:00.001-06:00

I certainly didn't. These are the pitfalls of getting cocky and. because the image was in my sketchbook, I didn't bother to treat it with much reverence. I knew I should wait to erase, but it looked dry. Also, working in the dark helped create the blob at the top of the page. On the upside, it's not ruined and it's not as if I'd spent days on it anyway. And it's a learning moment.

I have a little sketchbook in my back pocket. It's mostly for lists and whatnot, but drawings eventually get in there. I love drawings that break across the gutter of the book. Done with a ballpoint pen. They don't drip, but they aren't nearly as expressive.

catching up

2007-11-05T10:31:00.001-06:00

Yikes! It's been awhile since I did this. I think I'm going to get one post in every day (yeah right) with new sketches or old stuff if necessary. Here goes...

Here's a perspective ditty for the portfolio for the job. Perspective drawing is one of those things that I want to do - need to do in order to learn - but find it vaguely bewildering. Not to mention daunting for someone who can't post to their blog more than once a month.

Here's a drawing and the final color ad for the Onion. I've gotten better at coloring with photoshop, but I like this for it's simplicity.

more older stuff

2007-10-09T10:49:00.002-05:00

These are just a few of the other things I sent from older sketch books. This is another version of an earlier post. A concept sketch around a story I'm continually refining. Connected to the yellow pages of earlier posts.

Getting a little variety as far as style and content. I draw people and creatures the most, although I'm getting more into machines. When you draw as a hobby you find a lot of blind spots in the work. Putting together a quick portfolio and trying to fill in the gaps here taught me - is teaching me - a lot.

Color is something I don't do a lot, especially on computer. The thinking was/is that it's hard enough to get good in a single medium, especially when you've got a day job.

A old drawing - the wine label says 2001. An example of a crowd scene, and an interesting look at what has changed in my style and what has remained and how all this crap evolves.

I had no intention of sending this one in, but girlfriend said I should. It's prettier than stuff I tend to draw so i think she was right, but still, who hasn't seen a ton of this stuff?

ersatz portfolio

2007-10-08T23:56:00.000-05:00

The rest of the drawings are me winging it. I felt really clumsy. Determined, but clumsy.

This was originally for the pitch, but the idea was scrapped. Drawing portraits from photos is difficult for me.

This was clumsy. Notice the "fat cap" on the aerosol can? Now that's urban. Leave a comment if you need an explanation. Heck, if anyone is reading this leave a comment for fun.

Then I went through the sketchbooks. This was a couple years old. A brush pen experiment that I'm quite fond of. Shakespeare was all about the robots.

pitching

2007-10-08T23:32:00.001-05:00

This is, roughly, where it begins. A few weeks ago I got a call from an old girlfriend, with whom I am still in contact with. Most, sadly, have left the building.... Anyhow, she emails that her ad agency is looking for illustrations for a pitch. They'd already rejected some illustrators, but they'd like to see my stuff. I don't have anything that looks like a portfolio, seriously. So I get some ideas about what they're looking for - "urban." Yipes.

I live in a reasonably big city- Milwaukee - so I know what "urban" is and I also know it's completely elusive. I was sweating, knowing that the closer i tried to get the worse it would be, so I just said the hell with it and showed them what I did.

This was one of the first drawings I did. I snagged the portrait out of a magazine.

character generator

2007-08-29T09:53:00.001-05:00

In a graphical medium one tries to establish a visual shorthand - without, hopefully, being blisteringly obvious. Is 'graphical medium' ... oh what the hell, it's my blog. This is my villain as of now. I'm not sure how I feel about the dreads, I like the rendering, but I'm worried that it's obvious, and not conveying the greasiness that I want. But I like his sharp face which will contrast with those of the father and daughter.

This is Lucius Coppersmith, the father in the story for which I've posted a couple of rough sketches previously. He's not perfected yet, but this is pretty much the final template. Going for an Amish thing which provides the shorthand I want: hardworking, simple, kind - all features that the villain will exploit, and which the reader will be able to identify with. Another aspect I'm trying to channel here is a sense of clannishness, which the Amish/Mennonites also represent and which is important to the feudalist world I'm trying to hint at.

This is the original sketch for my villain and the basis for the current one. Sketches are essentially the same with the exception of the hairstyle. The eyes are shiftier here too, which I'm on the fence about. Seriously, every villain has shifty eyes. I think that's what made Clint Eastwood such a fascinating western hero, in that he also looked a bit the bad guy. In fact his characters were generally anti-heroes, or at best deeply flawed, with some unsavory characteristics. A look I'm going for here. I don't want my bad guy to be purely that.

A technical note: these are done in a sketchbook and were inked with a Tachikawa 'spoon' pen and Higgins Super Black ink. I've been alternating between spoon nibs and 'g-pens.' The spoon pens give a thinner but more graceful line while the g-pen holds more ink and allows for more line variety. They are beautiful pens. Anybody serious about using a dip pen needs to use a Japanese nib, they are the only manufacturers serious about quality these days. I got mine at Wet Paint.

i want your skull

2007-08-28T11:15:00.001-05:00

Here's a dandy little skull I did for a design to be painted on the wall of the bar. Clearly it's a day of the dead theme. I based it on a plate that I found searching google images. Ink on paper with color added by photoshop.

Rough layouts

2007-08-19T11:08:00.001-05:00

I've always had a hard time getting started on a comic. I'll either get bogged down in the writing or I'll start trying to do roughs similar to this, but with no script. Now, I'm trying to work in parallel, that is, I write and draw at the same time, but they don't affect each other directly. Each one hints at the other.

Also, the medium has changed. This was drawn on a large index card - 5" x 8" rather than scrap paper. Of course, this new method doesn't increase the length of a day, but it saves time in that the cards are quickly formatted. I'm also interested in the horizontal composition thanks to the likes of Terry and The Pirates and Flash Gordon. Collections of old newspaper strips are formatted horizontally, for the most part, which is useful for me because I've always been drawn to a more cinematic aspect ratio for comics. It's much easier, and more interesting, for me to draw horizontally, like the wide angle of a movie, than vertically which is how most comics are laid out.

Of course, all these are probably just more excuses for my inability to embark on an actual project. I just swamp myself in theories and objections until it's too late. Fear is the mind-killer, and I think I've always been afraid that if I start a comic, I'll realize that I suck.

Anyhow, here's a couple more (I'll spare you the sucky ones.)

In case you haven't noticed, visually I'm trying to channel Moebius through a quasi sci-fi western trope, mixed liberally with Dune and Jidaigeki cinema. The plot is very loosely based on Charles Portis' True Grit.

I've also been catching up with Alex Toth, not that I am anywhere near his league. His compositions are an unbelievable guide. Unfortunately, I'm getting a very late start. Toth had twenty years in the business when he was my age.

Scribbles

2007-08-19T00:13:00.001-05:00

Ideas are often not elegant - and sometimes not remotely pretty. But it's the ideas that count and the image can be refined.

I took about a month where I wasn't drawing. Finally, I picked up a pencil in San Diego when we went to the Comics Con. It was early in the morning and S_ was sleeping. I had gone to the 7-11 and got some crummy coffee and a donut with pink frosting and jimmies - a la Homer Simpson. I had a brand new deluxe, hardcover, copy of Caniff's Terry and the Pirates that I'd gotten at the con and had been devouring it all morning. It was the genesis of a project that had been knocking around in my head for some time. It's actually an amalgam of almost every idea I've ever had. Inspired by Terry I began to draw again.

Ordinarily, I find something like Terry intimidating. I seem to have gotten past all that. The book has become an inspiration for me as it has for many other folk I admire.

The above sketch is not that first sketch after my break - it does look it - but my latest. And it is one hell of a mess.

I'll be posting some newer stuff that will, for the most part, relate to the new project. I just got a new drawing table and I'm itchin' to go.

Transylvania 6-5-oh-hell-no

2007-06-12T16:32:00.001-05:00

Aah, summer in Milwaukee where the only thing that ever gets done on time is liver damage. It is almost impossible to keep a regular schedule when the weather gets warm around here. It's like an infection of "gotta-do-everything-outside-with-a-beer-in-my-hand" mentality, and I cannot claim to have a healthy immune system.

But Friday did find me inside and watching, if you can't guess from the title of the post: Transylvania 6-5000, a film that sports an unholy number of apologists on IMDB. It's one of those strange films that isn't bad enough to be campy and not campy enough to be funny it just sorta sits there grabbing an occasional chuckle. It's simply an amusing, anachronistic time-waster in every sense of the word. It did inspire this caricature so it wasn't a total loss.

Trying my hands at this and political cartooning right now. Political shit is funny because as soon as I draw it it feels like old news. Inking it seems ridiculous, but a portfolio piece is a portfolio piece.