Monday, October 10, 2011

Polishing a Turd

This one comes as a bit of a revamp of an older drawing:
I expanded it mainly for the purpose of adding to the disastrous etching that I finished, then hated and spent two days scraping out:
I decided to abandon it and let the corrosion take it. The facial expressions were terrible and the picture itself is kinda thin on it's own so I expanded on the idea and I think it looks much better now and the concept is much stronger. Upon completion, I watched the entire Twin Peaks gold box set and I think I created some alternate version of the black lodge:
I recently received some feedback on my work (that I didn't really ask for) and it seemed the general consensus was that the size of my work was holding me back. Those of you who have gone to art school will recognize a series of cliches: "make it really big", "Do, like, a hundred of these", and the ever popular, "Good direction, think about adding/subtracting color". They are very similar to the end of the game cliches you get form every ballplayer not named Brian Wilson. They seldom mean anything but these folks are paid to say something so that's the stock the pick from. My graduate professor was a bit different, because he was either smarter than those teachers, or he actually gave a shit what happened to his students. He always broached the "bigger is better" argument with reasonable qualifiers: The content of the work should require a larger size, a question of substance not form. I may be being a little too hard on my reviewers, that could be exactly what they meant. Well, message received I'm working larger:


It's measuring in at an awkward 12" x 36". On copper, with Dutch Mordant. In a side rant-Fuck Ferric Chloride. I understand the need for less toxicity but it completely negates the advantage of using the way more expensive copper plates: the length and clarity of the bite. The non-toxic way of etching just doesn't work, the results are inferior. You may live longer but if all your work sucks who cares?

Monday, September 26, 2011

Johnny Craig and some bits O' sketching


Finally working on some new stuff after two and a half months full of moving and work nonsense. This is going to be part of another composition, and from a completely different perspective angle, but I needed to do some stuff to knock the rust off. This is what it looked like the first time:


It's kinda funny, but also just looks wrong for what I intend to do, so I redrew the face:

When this one is done it will probably be one of those things where Chad Woody and I laugh maniacally and everyone else is filled with horror and revulsion.

Meanwhile. . .


Johnny Craig was one of the best artists of the EC Comics of the fifties. Compositionally he was without peer, unfortunately those skills also led to the near downfall of an entire industry.




They may be in bad taste but they are also fucking great. You can read more about the whole sordid 1950's "War on Comics" here or in The Ten Cent Plague. It's been covered far and wide so I'll not reiterate. He was a good, verging on great draftsman. You can lose yourself in his work pretty easily but it doesn't have the same visual flourish of say Wally Wood or Alex Raymond. I'll stop talking and just let you peruse what is regarded as one of his masterworks, The Sewer.










Good stuff. I apologize to all the hipsters who accidentally got this page searching for that douche twat of a singer.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

"Fan Art" and computer art


One day the discussion in class turned to fan art. One of my students was happy that a fan sent him a sketch of the characters in his online comic strip (which you can see here) One of his classmates, a young lady named Alex, turned and demanded that I do some fan art for her. I asked, "Am I a fan of you, or your work?" She cockily replied, "Um, Both" At which point, I invented an entire mythology based around the assumption that she was a hermaphrodite that I grew in a test tube and then unleashed on an unsuspecting public (to this day I still try to convince strangers she is half-man).

I'm kind of in love with old 50's horror and science fiction comics. The draftsmanship of those comics dwarfs most comics today (with the exception of Europe). I thought I would do a homage to those old covers and practice some Photoshop painting. The biggest obstacle to this kind of work (for me) is always the mental aspect. You're painting, but not painting and you have to let go and realize that no matter how you approach it, digital will always look digital so exploit it for what it's worth. It was fun, but I'm not trading in traditional methods anytime soon. doing digital under-paintings and then glazing and painting over the top seems like an interesting idea I'm gonna play with in the future.

I've found many interesting websites in the weeks that I have been trapped doing committee work so I thought I would lay 'em out for you:

The Horrors of it All- Painstakingly scanned old-time horror comics.

Pappy's Golden Age Blogzine- He likes Bill Everett and Bob Powell as much as I do.

Jack Kirby double page spreads- Unbeatable quality

Golden Age Comic Book Stories- Old Illustrators and comics

Airtight Garage- big online collection of Moebius work, very nice because with a few exceptions, very little of this stuff is available in English

Enjoy

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Escalation of Hostility


When the time comes and the brains behind the muscle get what they fucking deserve.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Seven Deadly Dwarves

I originally drew this as a submission for a now defunct web imprint for Time/Warner. needless to say they were less than thrilled with the comedy stylings of myself and Mr. Chad Woody (the writer and letterer). Most people find it completely horrifying and I still think its pretty damn funny, but keep in mind we are the men who laughed uncontrollably while watching the Human Centipede.









Wednesday, March 16, 2011

What America means to me. . .


In the words of David Fuentes, "America is the best worst place in the world. It's like living in Candyland, but you have diabetes.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Babies

At the Request of Chad Woody:


I hear and obey, puppetmaster.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Escalation of Hostility


"Sometimes people get exactly what they have coming to them, it's just a question of intensity and duration"

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

HEY KIDS! (crappy) COMICS!

I imagine some people reading this will be way too young to remember the old comic book spinner rack with "Hey Kids! Comics!" on it, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I did the following minicomics almost fifteen years ago and I guess I still think they have some rude, oafish charm. The title of the strip was "Los Ninos Enojado Borrachio Muerte" or The Angry Drunken Dead Children. I could never really think of anything else for these little creeps to do past the four initial stories I drew, so it died pretty quickly. I'm including the two passable ones, and hopefully if I ever said anything bad about your work you feel better about how crappy this is (unless you're on the fox news channel then I don't apologize, you can still eat a whole bag of dicks).