Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas


Merry X-mas to all. Below is one of the gifts I made this year.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Night of the Long Wood

Tonight I braved the frigid conditions and treked along with Echo, Kelly who are both students at DCAD and Kelly's husband Scott to Longwood Gardens in Kenneth Square PA, about a 30 minute ride from my house.

They put on a annual Christmas light show that is really cool. As we toured the grounds, Kelly and I snapped Pics, Echo did sketches and we drank cocco that I brought along in a thermous to help cut the chill. We also ate at the resturant/cafe on the grounds which we pretty good, if a bit pricey.

Kelly brought some cool colored flash lights along that we used to take some cool, creepy pics. It was a great time and a lot of fun dispite Jack Frost nipping at my hands since I forgot my gloves.















Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Last Figure Class

Last week was the last open figure class of the semester.
Echo and I attended and that was about it, everyone else bailed. Echo suggested trying washes, so we both did, you can see her's on her blog
These were all done direct without underdawing for the most part with a No.8 flat, except the last one I did, where I penciled in the rough figure first. I tossed in a drawing from a few weeks back as well.







On the last day of class a bunch of the students and I drove over to celebrate the end of the semester at the local sushhi spot, Tokyo Sushi.






All the little ducks have flown home for winter break, but they will return in January and we'll begin it all over again.

DOLL & CREATURE PREVIEW



A preview and interview with writer Rick Remender is up on Newsarama covering DOLL AND CREATURE which is being re-issued in color by Image. I inked the book over my pal John heebink's pencils.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Finals week and catching up

Boy, ho long has it been since I updated this blog? It seems like every day I was going to do it, then did something else, tne woukd forget till the next day. Today is the first time in a few weeks where I don't have to hit the ground running. I still have plenty of work mind you, but I don't have the huge grind of the last few weeks.

The smemster is coming to an end at DCAD, and the students are all working on their final two assignments, a storyboard and a comic. This years class is the best crop of young moldable minds I've had since I started teach, and that really makes it all worth while.



They pinned up the final storyboard roughs for critique, now they have to make the changes and clean em' up.



We also had our first few measurable snows this winter, or late fall.
This is a shot from the hallway outside my classroom.


My student Nathan has really come along well, he's woking very hard an his western comic, he even did two covers for it, here's one of them.


The last few weeks I've been turning him and the whole class onto Frazetta, Kubert and Toth, brining in books and comkcs from my collection. I've been really drilling them on layout and composition, use of blacks. I have them going to the library and doing art searches on Google as well. One class I was down there with nate to show him some Toth art and right away he started applying some of what we talked about to his work. Great to have students like this. Sixteen weeks is not a very long span of time to teach anyone the complex visual language odf storytelling , on top of solving many basic drawing issues like perspective. I feel just as we get warmed up, the semester is over.

On top of teaching I just finishined my development on our Nicalodeon project with Bill Wray, along with Jim Gomez. Now it's a waiting game to see what the muckety-mucks at Nic say. Go or no go...... It was a lot of very , very hard work, exhausting but highly creative..developing our own show. I'd love to show you all something, but I can't just yet.

While that has been churning on one table I have still been inking huge plies of scenes every week for Minoriteam along with help from Bonaia, my assistant. It's still great fun getting to "embellish" the kirby style. I just inked a bunch of T-Shirt designs, so I hope they'll remeber to send me one, a XX. this work looks to continue into next spring.

I continue to bang away on Fear Agent as well, doing finishes over Tony Moore's breakdowns, and I'm halfway through the current issue. So i am like a art robot with 8 arms, ink on this project, in this style, woosh, spin around and ink on something else in a completely different style..I'm the Stylemaster 5000!

FIGURE DRAWING
I still try and make it to the life drawing lab every week after class on Tuesdays. I am committed to continuing with it, but I am struggeling these past weeks and I am not happy with what I am doing. I think I am so tired after class, often having 3 hours sleep the nite before I teach, I am just not able to focus enough. I feel off my game, often like I am drawing 'drunk'. Without the Buzz of course. I will idealize in a second, I will blow porportions because of it, drawing what I know, not what I see,since I draw idealized figures out of my head all the time. I plan on doing more of this over the winter break, hiring a model and doing it privately.








My assistant Bonaia was there and posted some of her figure drawings on her blog as well.

BILL WRAY'S BlOG

My good friend and great cartoonist/artist Bill Wray has started his own blog which is all about his excursion as an emerging California painter, chock foull of his great paintings. Sure we know him from Big Blown Baby, Monroe in Mad, Hellboy Junior and of course Ren and Stimpy, but the last few years Bill has been moving into the Fine Art arena and is producing some fantastic work. I worry we'll eventually loose him to the world of Fine Art, but the artist must follow his muse. Bill has been really serious abou this and working hard as well an taking many lessons and seminars from several top painters in the field today such as Wang and Matt Smith, etc.

Go-Go Bill!

Friday, November 25, 2005

Thanks For Nuth'n Gullet Fest 2005

Boy, it seems like it's been forever since I posted anything here. It's just been crazy busy between School, and my workload of Minoriteam, Inking Fear Agent, final designs on my Nic project and trying to finish up Draw! 12, and the usual Holiday crush.

But like that last decade or so, i hosted the annual Manley Turkey fest. I picked up a 31 lb free range bird from Whole foods aalong with lots of other goodies. their meat and veggies are the best, but they also cost way more too. But nothing is too good for my guests. I usually break my cooking down into 2 days, doing the most cooking the day before, Wednesday. I also do my shopping at off hours to avoid the crowds. For instance I hit whole foods at 8:30pm, after dinner rush and rush hour, less people to hassel, I hit the local supermarket at 1am, it had been restoked and there were no crowds at all; so my buddy Scott and I were in and out like pirates in 20 minutes. It was so cold here in Philly this week i even left the stuff in the car till the next day.

Wednesday I worked, inking on Minoriteam the new show on Adult Swim along with my pal Rich Faber who was hired on this week to give the production an extra boost to catch up. Rich and I along with Bonaia worked "round table style" from my dinning room table, cranking out inks. I am hired on the series to essentially be an illustrator, embellishing or stylizing the pencils, much like one of Kirby's inkers. The show is being drawn in a suedo-Kirby style and being done like the old Marvel Cartoons from the 60's.Super limited animation. the job is a blast, one of the most fun jobs I've ever had in animation. the final art you'll see on the show will be the actual art I ink, which will be awesome.



Rich and I inking away.

I started cooking about 6pm on Wednesday evening, I did my mac Cheese first, popped that in the oven then did the stuffing ( which included andulice and pork sausage) and green bean/snowpea cassarol.










The scerect to successfully cooking a turkey is really simple, slow cooking. Turkey can be dry, especially if you overcook it, so slow cooking lets the juice stay in the bird as it's intrenal temp heats up.I put my bird in the oven about midnite or so and let it cook slow at 350 all night, waking up and basting it a few times. By 10:30 Thanksgiving morning it was ready, it's little red thermometer had popped it's red woody.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

DOLL AND CREATURE

This is the cover to the first issue of Doll and Creature by John Heebink and inked by me. Image is reprinting in color the series that Heebink, Remender and I did a few years back which was originally published by Larry Young. I hope this time it gets better distribution and more people get to see it, I think it's one of the best books I've worked on art wise and Remender's story is fun too!

Friday, November 11, 2005

X-mas Final

Here is the final card art back from the agency over seas with the "Lichtenstein" effect coloring done by the Art Director.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The letter R

This is a pic I snapped while walking from the parking garage on Shipley over to the school on Market and 6th in Wilmington. I try and carry my digital camera with me at all times for just such an 'art opportunity". I see things all the time that strike my artist's eye, little scenes like this. They are all around us, in our daily lives if we just take the time and set our minds to pay attention, slow down and look at the world we are passing through.

Figure it was Tuesday

Yes it's Wednesday, but yesterday I hit the figure drawing class after teaching at DCAD. It was cool that so many of my students came along as well, so it was a packed house as my pal Scott was there to boot. Here are some of the drawings from last night's session, all done in charcoal. I felt a bit more on point, but I am still only 50% happy with these. Back at it next week.