Sketch A Day #12 - Adam Hughes Tonal Study

Found a great Captain Marvel piece by Adam Hughes on the web, and wanted to do a version with some of the similar tones on the toned paper to see how it would work. This uses both cool grey Copic markers and warm grey Copic markers on tonal paper with pencil, india ink and PH Martins white ink. While not entirely successful, this was an interesting experiment. thanks Adam for all the advice on working wet on wet with the Copic markers.

And please note that I believe Adam's piece to be infinitely better than mine, in both design and execution. He's a master at this stuff, so its just nice to have someone so solid in this type of work to look after for some ideas.

Sketch A Day #11 - Nude Figure Study

another figure sketch on the toned paper. still working out ways to play with the midtones, but I've not really done one to my satisfaction yet. Second half of this sketch done with my cat Voldemort curled up on my lap and occasionally pawing at the sketchbook.

I do NOT recommend this for beginners.

toned paper, Mirado Black Warrior HB, Generals White Charcoal pencil

Sketch A Day #10 - Miscellaneous Stuff while Watching End of the World

I love Simon Pegg.

Sketch A Day #9 - Miscellaneous Stuff

... drawn in a car while waiting for my daughter. Drawing by car light and with a steering wheel in the way is harder than i thought!

In Which I Describe the Comics Business

I had to try to describe the comics business to someone today, to someone who was a fan, but was not an artist, who had no inclinations to be an artist, and would likely never have to work with an editor. And it was difficult. Not because he wasn’t an intelligent individual, but because almost didn’t want to disabuse him of the notion of how comics were created.

I almost wanted to enable him to live in the fantasy.

After all that’s why we read comics, right? To be able to live in the fantasy world for a while, to imagine that we’re Iron Man or Captain Marvel or Thor or whoever, and try to make the same good choices that they’ve made.

In the end, however, I asked him what he did for a living. He was a chemist he said. I asked him if, once he got in the job, it was filled with the same stupid office politics that all jobs had. He shook his head yes. And I replied, yeah, comics are like that too.

And it makes me sad, to see how many people of my generation have been hurt by comics, by a business that spits people out like a meat grinder on “high”. I’m thinking of multiple suicides over the last decade, so many lost along the highway, and all for a four color printed fantasy that seems to take over our minds somehow when we’re young and won’t release us as we get older.            

I used to feel sad when I realized that the vast majority of the people around me didn’t know what they wanted to do when they “grew up”. How could they not have the interest, the passion in something? How could the not be consumed by the overwhelming love of something, that something that they could carry forward into the world, into their life in a way? Do what you love the money will come is the bumper stick philosophy, but sometimes trite becomes true.

Now I wonder if I had it backwards. If that passion is an addiction or an obsession that rules us, making us make choices against our best judgment. After all, no one would trust a drug addict to make that best choices in their own lives, perhaps its time to admit that we dreamers (as Will Eisner called us) live for too long with our head in the clouds, and that we’re not always the best advocates for being released on our own recognizance.

I’ve been reading  “Woodwork”, the hardcover Wally Wood exhibition book that does such a brilliant job of showcasing the work of one of the most brilliant shooting stars in American illustration of the last century, and making the case that we simply don’t, in any way, value the work, dedication, vision that it takes to produce work of that quality. And so, it asks us, in its own between the lines kind of way, why would any of us want to dedicate ourselves to that sort of life? To learning that kind of skill and spending the hours that it would take to perfect that level of craft? Because it seems, when all is said and done (and there has been a lot of ink spilled over the rise and fall of comics prodigal son, a man of such skill in every area that he, like Jack Cole, could excel in literally every arena in which he was asked to work) that there is little or no reward until you’re over the rainbow. Woody would never see it in his lifetime. And yet, the work endures. People who see it full size continue to be blown away by what Wally did with a brush and some duo-tone board.

Is the work enough?

For the vast majority of us, yes, the work has to be enough. 

Sketch A Day #8 - Comtemplation

toned paper, HB graphite, Generals White Charcoal

Sketch A Day #7 - Stuff on a Legal Pad

... drawn with a dull number #2 pencil that i found in someone's misc drawer.

Sketchs drawn out in Bolinas Ca, while visiting friends and hanging around the living room as the sun set over the water. Found a legal pad and an ancient Ticonderoga pencil and drew a bit. Then is was time for artichoke pasta and salad. Lovely evening.

And, again, is there anything here that i love? No, but then i promised to show the good with the bad, and this is bad. so be it, on to others.

Sketch A Day #6 - Miscellaneous Stuff

Lots o' little stuff here, wasn't using the white charcoal on this page. Started drawing with my little mechanical pentel, a holdover that I used for years, and it looked really nice of the toned paper. Next thing i knew, i had a bunch of little sketches on the page.

HB graphite on toned paper

Sketch A Day #5 - Channeling the Inner Klimt

the title says what it means. or, perhaps, a little Egon Schiele.

We Interrupt This Post: Galactus by Sienkiewicz

yes, I'll say it again, Galactus by Sienkiewicz.

Nuff Said.

Michael Jantze's Norm!

The great Michael Jantze gave me the gift of an original Norm strip yesterday, and its a beaut. I'm even featured in the last panel in the black t-shirt. My wife and kids think that he absolutely captured me and I'm enclined to agree with them. To see the strip up close, go here! If the jam section has enough room at the back of the newest Norm Graphic Novel I may have a piece in there as well. I wait with baited breath.

You can follow the adventures of The Norm on Youtube at the jantze Studios link as well. Lots of archived material to work your way through!

Sketch A Day #4 - Woman's Face in Shadow

A new sketch on the very lovely tanned paper.

So here is the deal. I hate the sketchbooks section of the art magazines. Do you know why? Because the sketchbook is the place that you can make mistakes, take chances, screw up and its OK. By cherry picking the best of the Adam Hughes sketchbook, or the Kevin Nowlan sketchbook, what we end up with is even doubly defeating to artists like myself.

Because what it says to us is, "Not only is their finished work better than yours, but their sketches are practically flawless." Not fair, not fair at all. So the deal is, for the next year, I'll show you all the sketchbook pages, warts and all, and i won't hide even the stuff that I'm utterly embarrassed by.

Thats the sketch a day manifesto here.

Today's sketch (well, actually from last night) has its problems.

Sketch A Day #3 - Nude Figure Study

More toned paper, gonna be working this sketch pad for a while. A figure study of a nude, draped over what looks to be a medium sized ottoman. Artistic, and very comfortable looking pose.

Generals Charcoal White pencil, Ritmo Charcoal HB pencil, Strathmore Toned Tan 400 series

Sketch A Day #2 - Female Head on Toned Paper

working on freeing myself from the same materials i've always used, so moving to do some sketches on toned paper, and using that as a midtone, is just one way to do it.

also using white and black charcoal pencils to work against the grain of the paper. Should be interesting. Could be terrible. You'll have to let me know. My critical filter will be up, probably higher than yours.

A female head, study in contrasts, not bad, not great. Page 1 of this sketchbook.

Sketch A Day #1 - The Sandman

Getting back to it, and going to try to do the sketch a day thing... we'll see how long a slow artist like myself can keep this up.

This Sandman is india ink on bristol, a little PH Martin's white on top, and zip-a-tone via photoshop. Enjoy!

This is an inking of a sketch started a while ago, and inspired by my visit to the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco to see The Sandman retrospective, and hear Mike Dringenberg talk about the work. I've not seen Mike in about 15  years, so it was nice to go and see him.

More on that later!

Video: A Visit to the Kirby Museum

a quick video of a visit to the Kirby Muesum on the lower west side. Wish i was in New York to go...

https://showyou.com/v/y-IDdcf_Tm33k/we-visited-the-jack-kirby-museum?c=tech

You Must Go: The Jack Kirby Museum Opens for One Week in NYC!

The Jack Kirby Museum opens TODAY for one trial week:

Monday, November 4–Sunday, November 10th
178 Delancey Street, New York City
Admission is FREE; suggested donation $2 for adults

It looks like it’s open 12pm-7pm most days, but check www.kirbymuseum.org for details. There’s an opening reception Monday night at 7pm.

The Return of the Sandman: Revising the Revisions

As difficult as it may be to do so, try to return to the halycon days of 1989, when the Rob Liefields and Jim Lees of the world were starting to push superhero comics into a new artistic paradigm, and when how novel the concept of finding anyone to actually follow up Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing would be. And a sweet little goth book showed up on the stands with some very interesting covers. And it was really anything but sweet.

Years later, and one great revolution of Vertigo later, with millions of copies in print in tons of different permutations, Sandman started to actually look quaint. And a bit coy in places. At least to some. While I'm unable to find the link now, somewhere around 2007, a comics roundtable came together, of reviewers that i generally respected even if I didn't always agree with, to reassess Gaiman's Sandman. The result was a beatdown that made Liefield's New Mutants look fairly good by comparison. I thought that they were spectacularly wrong. While not faultless, Sandman was brave and bold and interesting and managed to pull off way more than it didn't, and slagging off the series showed more than a little of the biases of the reviewers more so than it did the faults of the series. One quote I remember was, "With some distance, the whole series is looking slightly embarassing."

In 1990 I moved in with a girl who had never read comics before, so i gave her a stack of material that she promised to read. A mix of stuff i personally enjoyed, including the just published Doll's House collection. The rest of the comics she could have cared less about. the Doll's House? She came back demanding more. The collection she'd already loaned out to a girlfriend, who would loan it out to more friends. It was the perfect collection of horror and drama and fantasy and sex and otherworldliness to hit a whole chunk of females directly in the head. She didn't become a comic fan, but she did become a Sandman fan.

I hated to tell her that there wasn't, right then, a whole lot more.

The guardian has a nice write up, with spoilers for the just released Sandman Overture, as well, and it always sounds like those music beat writers who can tell you exactly where and when they first heard Hendrix/Sex Pistols/Nirvana. It was profoundly different, it was moving, and it changed everything.

So for all the reviewers who look back, and with the somewhat brilliant and snarky hindsight of 2007 or 2013, and find the adventures of Rose Walker, or the giddy introduction of Death (holding an infant who died in its crib slightly plaintifly asking, "Is that all there is?"), or the brilliant little bits of the city who slept and dreamed away its citizens, slightly cloying. Please note that there are far more of us who were moved and touched by the beauty of the series than will ever be embarassed by it. And while none of us were clamoring for the prequel, the fact that it exists as drawn by the very best artist working in comics in the last couple of years, is a testament to the fact that neil must have a story that wanted to be told, as opposed to a check that he wanted to cash.

And I can't wait to read it.

Follow the Work in Progress on Instagram

Got back from APE 2013 and ready to get back to work! in fact, I'm utterly psyched to be at my board again, the quality of work was so much higher at this year's show. Great, great stuff.

I'm always putting pics up of work on progress on Instagram as well under the username "Cultural_Lamprey" so go and follow to see the new work as it happens! Of course I will always hashtag #comics #art #thecarnival #comicbooks #pencils #inks as well.

Sneak Peek: Wraparound Cover for The Carnival #2

Finished the new cover for what will be the second Carnival story, and wanted everyone to get a peak at it without trade dress and tones... just pure black and white! A wraparound cover to make things interesting.