The Case of the Missing Bananas

A gag gift for a friend - a portrait of Detective Chimp from DC comics:

Drink & Drawl

One of the artists I work with runs a local drink & draw group and I went for the first time this week. It was a lot of fun and I actually managed to get some drawing done:

I am Providence

I saw an interesting documentary about H.P. Lovecraft last week, so I thought I'd do something quick in a Cthulhian vein for Halloween this year:

My exposure to Lovecraft has mostly been through radio dramas adapted from his works rather than the original stories themselves and I didn't really know much about Lovecraft himself. He was a strange but interesting guy, which is what you'd expect from someone who specialized in stories of unspeakable tentacled horrors that lie dormant within the Earth.

His family tree went back to the founding families of Providence, RI where he lived all but a few years of his life. "I am Providence" is the epitaph on his tombstone, and R'Lyeh is the lost city built by his race of ancient space monsters, so that's where the epigram comes from.

Happy belated Halloween!

"What in tarnation!?"

Quick panel for an art jam at work:

Fantastic Ninety-Four

Jack Kirby would have been 94 today:

Devil or Dandy?

I'm not sure how I stumbled onto it, but I was reading about an urban legend from London in the early to mid 19th century, Spring-Heeled Jack. Depending on who was telling the story he was either an actual demon or just a dandy gentleman dressed in a devilish costume. In either case, he could jump over high walls and gates (hence the 'spring heels') mostly for the purpose of scaring lone travelers in the dark of night.

From the newspaper and magazine illustrations of the time its obvious that the artists had fun drawing him, each with their own twist on the character. I especially like the ones that make him look like a Victorian Batman prototype rather than a monster. I've always loved the hand drawn designs of periodicals from that time so I made my own Spring-Heeled Jack newspaper spread:

Nice Soup Strainer

While cleaning up the studio I found this little 7"x10" oil study from last year. I never could decide if I liked it or not - I guess that's why it was under a pile of papers:

Cardboard Conan

Conan sketch on part of a broken down Amazon box:

Hero or Scoundrel

Just a quick notebook sketch:

Love is in the Air

Kaw! Kaw!

2011: A Birth Odyssey

Got to see the first ultrasound images of my baby this morning:

Very wiggly, but also very healthy.

Under the Wire

It's been a very busy week between digging out from Snow-mageddon and putting in some extra hours on the game we're finishing up, but I still wanted to sneak in a quick drawing this week. I follow a blog that a group of comic book artists put together called Comic Twart (don't ask me what the name means) where they do weekly sketch challenges. One of their recent topics was minimalism - everyone drew a picture of a character trying to capture their essence with as little visual information as possible. I thought that would be perfect for a week where I'm very short on time, so here's minimalist Two-Face:

I could have pushed the minimalist aspect further, but I wanted to do at least a little rendering.

Dusty

Even though I'm really busy at the moment, I'm trying to get back into the habit of regular drawing and posting. I'm going to try some sketch challenges just to get the ball rolling. Illustration Friday's theme of the week was 'dusty':

This one took about 2 lunches to finish.

Keepin' it Loose

I decided to keep this guy loose and sketchy so I can move onto other things:

We now resume our scheduled programming...

I hadn't realized just how long it had been since I had posted anything here - sorry about that. The end of last year was very hectic and stressful and kept me from working on very much 'fun' art. Things are looking up on many fronts though, including a new job.

I've been getting adjusted to working on a Cintiq art tablet, which is kind of like a giant iPad, so I've been messing around with it during lunch trying to get my bearing. Nothing spectacular, just some quick doodles, including this one:

Not much to look at yet, but hopefully, I can keep plugging away on this one - I think its got some potential.

Software Roulette

Just messing around switching between Painter & Photoshop for a quick doodle:

Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You

I wish...

Still Short on Time

I've got a few sketches I've been chipping away at, including this one:

Samurai Slap Chop

Busy week - just a quick doodle:

Rockin' the Eye Patch Since 1965

I should be doing stuff for work tonight, but I'm burned out, so I drew a quick Nick Fury instead:

Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy

When I was checking the listings on TCM and saw this title, I knew I had to record it. Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy is a terrible 50's grade Z scifi movie from Mexico about a mad scientist who builds a "human robot" to fight an Aztec mummy so that he can steal the ancient treasure that the mummy guards. The robot and the mummy were a sad looking mish mash of cardboard and playdoh, but the actors in the movie were a lot of fun to watch.

The hero (I think he's doing the Mexican version of 'Blue Steel'):

His fidgety egghead sidekick (his giant glasses should have gotten the screen credit):

The mad scientist (he looks more jolly than mad):

His fidgety scarfaced henchman (a little moisturizer should take care of that):

Two Fists of Freedom

I started this over the long 4th of July weekend and finally had a chance to finish it up:

A Big Loss for Cleveland

No, I'm not talking about some dumb basketball player - I'm talking about Harvey Pekar who passed away a few days ago.

He Blinded Me with Science

Friday was the birthday of Nikola Tesla - fellow Serb, inventor, super scientist, and possibly superhero, if you believe the comic books :)

Call Me Ishmael...

I recorded the 1956 John Huston/Gregory Peck version of Moby Dick that was on TCM last week and watched it clandestinely since my wife hates the book and wasn't too interested in watching the movie. I don't remember much about the book from reading it in high school, so I'll respect her opinion, but I do like the movie.

Huston created a fantastic looking film with a limited budget as well as the limited effects technology of the day. He also put together a great cast. Although Peck got flack at the time for being too young and handsome to play Ahab, I thought he did a great job, especially in the finale when he faces the whale. Other actors may have played the part more broadly, but few could have brought more conviction to it. Friedrich von Ledebur, who played Queequeg, had an amazing face that, like Woody Strode's, looked like it was carved from marble. On top of all that, you had Orson Welles in the small part of Father Mapple, delivering a fiery sermon from a pulpit that looked like a ship's prow.

Now I'm going to have to re-read the book, dammit.

Fragments

Fragments, a charity comic book anthology for humanitarian aid that I contributed to a while back, is out now. It's available for order here, through comiXpress.

The story I contributed was originally posted here.

Check it out if you're interested.

El Borak

I just started reading a collection of some of Robert E.Howard's lesser known adventure stories, El Borak and Other Desert Adventure Tales. El Borak is the name the locals gave to the hero of the majority of the stories, Francis Xavier Gordon, a Texas gunslinger who finds himself in the wilds of Afghanistan.

So far, the stories are very good. I had always avoided Howard's 'lesser' works, assuming they weren't as good as the Conan or Solomon Kane stories, but his writing is actually very consistent in quality. I think a lot of his creations fell by the wayside since they were based on standard pulp tropes (explorers, sailors, boxers, cowboys, etc.) that are considered dated by today's standards, and not because they were poorly written.

Pug

I've been busy lately, so not much to post. Here's something from my notebook for an idea that's been rolling around in my head:

Another Empty Drawing Board

Al Williamson, another legend of comics illustration (and long time friend of Frank Frazetta) passed away this week. Although not a household name like Frazetta, Williamson was one of the monster talents of comics, carrying on the tradition of lush, elegant brushwork from the Golden Age of comic strips. Although Al was American, he spent his childhood in Columbia and his main link to American culture was the Flash Gordon strip drawn by Alex Raymond, who became Williamson's artistic compass.

In the 50's, he started his comics career as part of the legendary bullpen of artists at EC comics alongside Frazetta, Wally Wood, Roy Krenkel and the rest. When the comics industry imploded in the wake of the Wertham witch hunt he moved over to drawing comic strips and got to work on two of Alex Raymond's creations - first Rip Kirby, then his beloved Flash Gordon. As the market for adventure strips dried up in the 70's, he moved back into comics drawing memorable adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Bladerunner.

Eventually, he settled into inking, which he found to be less time consuming and gave him the chance to mentor up and coming artists. It wasn't until recently that he completely retired from working.

I highly recommend the recent Flesk Publications retrospective of Williamson's Flash Gordon work.