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:

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:

Hero or Scoundrel

Just a quick notebook sketch:

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.

Coming Soon to a Cinema Near You

I wish...

Happy Halloween!

I managed to squeeze in a little sketch during lunch yesterday so that I could actually post something new for Halloween. I haven't drawn in my poor man's Mike Mignola style in a long time, so it was fun to tap into that for a bit:


Have a horrifically happy Halloween and don't eat too much candy!

Funny but true

I realized I haven't posted anything in a while which is ironic since I've been very busy with a lot of different art projects. One of which is this Fear Agent pin-up I've been chipping away at during lunch. I wasn't going to post it until I inked it, but what the Don Heck.

A few weeks ago I was at the 2nd annual Windy City ComicCon and went out to dinner with a group that included Tony Moore, artist on lots of cool stuff but probably best known for his work on Fear Agent with writer Rick Remender. I've always liked Fear Agent - it's right up my retro alley - but I had never drawn Heath Huston or anything else from it, so that's where this sketch comes in:

More Doodlin's

More notebook sketches in a western vein:

Artchives 3

I've been putting in a lot of hours on a project for work, but I'm in the home stretch - just in time for my wife & I to go visit some friends over the long holiday weekend. Here's one last batch of old miscellany before I try to get back to a normal schedule.

These first three were for a story that I tried to get off the ground for a long time, but got away from me. Maybe someday I can go back to it with fresh eyes:




This one was for a pitch someone was putting together for a horror themed multimedia site, this character was going to be the host, in a simlar vein to Svengooli (get it? vein? horror?):


These last three were character designs for a video game about mobsters in space:

Operator 5

I've been reading a book about the history of the pulp novels - it's got chapters on all of the usual characters, like The Shadow and Doc Savage, but it also talks about some of the forgotten heroes. Most of them are forgotten because they were either cheap knock-offs or just plain schlock, but a few sounded pretty interesting, like Operator 5.

The premise of the stories is that an invading army rolls through the US in the early 30's and locks the country down under martial rule. The military is destroyed, the government is dissolved (the president shoots himself), and the only hope for salvation is a small band of freedom fighters led by Operator 5, the last remaining government agent.

Like a lot of the pulps, these stories were a weird mish-mash of current events, future speculation and crazy sci-fi which lead to some very strange ideas and imagery. Operator 5, the wholesome hero, wore the death's head skull as his symbol (pre-dating the SS), blew up buildings and bridges and regularly used his girlfriend as bait for enemy. I guess they didn't call it hard boiled action for nothing:

Keeping Things Under Wraps

I'm still working on the beginnings of a graphic novel, slowly but surely, but I've decided to keep it under wraps for a while. I'm wrestling with the story right now, with art as a secondary concern, and with things changing from day to day (for the better I hope) I think it's counterproductive to start showing anything more yet. Just a last few doodles for now:

Recharging the Batteries

I haven't been doing much drawing for fun lately, so I looked around online for some sketch challenges to try. James Gurney, of Dinotopia fame, posts a random phrase from old sci-fi books every week on his blog as an exercise for his readers to illustrate. This week's quote was, "the old man felt a tendril of anger rising." My quick take on it:

The sketches don't have to be drawn in any sort of genre style, but I'm a sucker for old pulpy sci-fi.

Portrait of a Bastard

Still trying to get a handle on this character I've been working on. I'm trying to give him the Romanesque nose, big cheek bones and sullen eyes of Charlton Heston without having to resort to constant use of photo reference. I want him to have that same mix of broad shouldered heroism and haughty indignation that Heston had in his prime:


I was actually looking at a photo of Humphrey Bogart for the lighting, but trying to apply it to this face:

William Bastard of the 8th Hussars

Lt. Wm. Bastard of the 8th Hussars shortly before the battle of Balaklava, better known as the "Charge of the Light Brigade":


He disappeared during the battle, and no body was ever found.

The True Measure of Power

Last year, I started working on a short story, mostly as a writing exercise. Working on it in my free time taught me a few things about doing any future comics work:

1) Although writing the story in prose as opposed to a script felt more natural, the length of the story got away from me. What was supposed to be a 5 page story turned into a 9 page story.

2) Scanning in my thumbnails and doing a rough pass at lettering before I started penciling was probably the smartest thing I did. I was able to refine & edit the text within the actual pages and lay it out so that it worked with the art rather than being dropped in later as an afterthought.

3) Working in the traditional way of penciling, then inking, then coloring isn't going to work for me. It feels like I'm doing the work four times rather than building up all of the elements together. I felt like it was going to take forever and I lost my motivation to work on it.

I'm working on ways to build up a page all at once making the most out of digital short cuts. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I don't see myself getting much work done otherwise the traditional way, especially something in a longer format, like a graphic novel.

I hate not doing things the 'right' way, but I'm more interested in telling a story at this point than worrying about the original art. I think it'll be more satisfying to have a finished graphic novel on my shelf than a stack of half drawn pages.

This story isn't anything earth shattering - just straight forward action, but I thought it worked out alright, so I'm posting it here in pencil form with the rough lettering added:

Lord Bastard

A quick & loose concept sketch after all that Photoshoppery:

From the Scrap Heap of Time

Early mechanical soldier prototype made by Gage Industries for the U.S. government - never deployed in the field. Found to be too temperamental and afraid of loud noise. Nick-named Lester Leadbelly by the scientists who built him:

Mustache of Power

Thaddeus Gage, super-science adviser to both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as industrialist, adventurer, and dirigible pilot :

Man of Science...

...Man of Action: