Martians Go Home

Today I'm posting two more pages from the first issue of martians Go Home, which I will be done penciling this week. I'm really getting to do some fun acting and facial expressions here.

Michelle-2

This is the second pose with our new model in the DPC group, Michelle. I was really going for something a bit bolder and looser as I can so easily end up getting too tight in my paintings, in fact I went back in and busted up stuff with a bigger brush on purpose. Michelle did a good job of holding a tough pose on the hands, which were going to sleep in this pose.

SHAZAM R. I.P.

My great, great dog Shazam an Austrialian healer, succumed to heart failure yesterday, she was about 14 and a half years old. Great dogs make us better people, and she was really a great dog, and of any dog I have ever been lucky enough to have, she had the biggest, strongest connection to me. I recently read that dogs are as smart as two-year-old humans, and I'd say Shazam was at least that smart, she could read expressions on my face a body language so well.

I named her Shazam when I was working on the Shazam comic for DC back in 1995. That seems like ages ago now and the rythm and pattern of my life is very different, but the constant love of a great dog saw me through a lot of good and bad in these last 14 years. She was a fighter, surviving cancer at 7 years, she had such spirit and everybody , all my friends and family loved her too.

Dogs define times of our lives so well, like water carving away a mark on a riverbed. Now that she is gone I feel the huge mark she made on me exposed, and I realize how strong a force she was in my life, the one real constant force in my life that lasted beyond girlfriends, jobs, etc. I got her and my other late dog Buster just a month or so apart. They were so great together and I loved taking them to the park and playing frisbee. Well now she can play frisbee with Buster somewhere in the next click-over on the reality dial. Energy they say never goes away, it transforms, but my house is now very still. Quiet.
This really marks a big change in my life and with my cat Scavee passing just over a month ago leaves me at the current time without any pets at all. I think it will be a while before I get any new little animal companions, I need to give my heart a rest and time to settle and heal and to see where the new school year takes me.

in a few weeks I'll get Shazams ashes back and place her up on the fireplace with the ashes of all my other pets, someday when I go, I want my ashes to be mixed with their's and potted with a tree or something someplace.

New Model

This is a painting of our new model Michelle I started at this weeks Dirty Palette Club meeting, but wiped out twice, so I finished it from a photo. I'm still trying to keep up with doing the portraits and hope we can do another this week. 16 x 20, oil on canvas

The Creepertins

Here is the back to School strip for the Creepertins this month, which is a play off one of the strips from last year. There was a bit of a break when the magazine bumped us 2 months in a row but it seems we are back on the schedule now. It's been quite the mix of jobs in the last few weeks, I finished the Secret Saturdays Kids book for Random House, this strip, teaching my cartooning class at PAFA, painting and now I'm back on the Martian book and finishing up DRAW!--the summer is burning down fast, in three weeks School starts again!

Super Sad Final

Here is the finished painting, after a few more days or a week once it's really dry and set I might go back and slightly adjust things. I tried balancing the lights better on my camera for this shot, it still takes a lot of adjustment in Photoshop. I'm very excited about this series and have two more paintings in sketch stage I will be working on next. the painting is 24 x 30 in oil.

The X-9 Blog

The X-9 Secret Agent Corrigan story I drew a few months back is being published in the latest issue of the X-9 Modesty Blaise magazine which is published by Egmont in Sweden. Johan Kimrin who amongst other things lettered the story has a cool blog devoted to the magazine.

Super Progress

I worked on the painting again, really trying to adjust the background and then reworking the feet and hair. I need to let it set up so i can go back in again and keep hammering away at this thing, so many little areas need to be adjusted and reworked.

Super Sad continues

I finally was able to get back to working on my newest painting yesterday. I worked all day and well into the wee hours on it and then adjusted more this am. I still have a long way to go and I want what I did to set up so I can work back into it. I have two more paintings in this series as sketches that I want to get going on maybe next week.

Cartooning Class

This summer I am teaching my second class on cartooning, comics and animation at PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) in the CE program. It's a good class of eager cartoonist and we are coming down to the last two weeks of the course. This morning as the thermometer climbed up along with the humidity, I took the class over to LOVE Park to do a little "On the spot" sketching and drawing. We sketched and doodled the people walking and having fun in the park and then went back to class and took the drawings we did and refined them making new characters out of the drawings we did in the park. It was a lot of fun and for many, their first time ever drawing or sketching in people in public.





There was a class of young watercolorists from Uarts also working in the park this morning along with a band of kids from some local school, so it was really an arts in the park morning.

Super Sad continues

Here is the next painting on the easel. I started it last week and blocked all of this in in one day, it's had to sit for a few days while I finished up some commercial work, but I'll get back to it this week.

A Potrait Study

This is a quick portrait I did this week with the Dirty Palette Club, it's of the same friend who's modeling for the Super sad series I'm working on. It's 11 x 14 in oil. my goal is to still do one portrait a week over the summer to just keep pushing up Art Mountain and reinforce the recent lessons from my portrait class.

Super Sad

Here is the final painting, I spent a few days looking at it and then adjusting things and finishing the hand. I glazed back into it. It always looks duller on here than in real life and it's not so blueish, I'll eventually need to get the final paintings professionally shot.

I feel like I have a good momentum here and will be working hard on the next painting after a few commercial deadlines are out of the way.

Super Sad continues

After a few days break I got a chance today to work on this painting a bit more and I worked all over the entire canvas. I will bet a chance to rework it again live from the model later on this week.

Martians Go Home

Today I'm posting two more penciled pages from the first issue of martians Go Home. So far it seems I've really had to pull all the stops out here between drawing old cars and now cowboys and horses. I have to say goggle is great for reference on all of this stuff, better than having to do it like I did in the older days where I would have had to spend time in a library, book store or hope I had a book or something in my morgue that I could use.

I also drew everything straight, I didn't use any projectors to trace down the cars, or use the blue-line technique here. I want this to just be me and the pencil and whatever distortions come in are then more my style and take on things. This is something I always admired about gene Colan's work. He used photos but didn't trace them, he drew from them and thus made them his own, warped them through his "artist's eye". So I'd sketch the shapes I'd want, find a pick of the car close to it and then draw it in the exact angle or shape I wanted. It's more fun too and more of a challenge. Art isn't about being easy, if you want to continue to improve you must always put a little more weight on the bar, and that will mean sometimes you fail and have to erase, and fight for that drawing, and when you win--well man, that's the best thing ever.

Martians Go Home

It's been a while since I posted anything on my current comic project so here are a few pages from the first issue of Martians Go Home. I'll be halfway through the first issue by this weekend and by next weekend I should be done with all of the pencils and then be on the inking wagon.

I'll be uploading a few more pages next week.

Super Sad continues 2

I worked again live from the model yesterday morning on the painting and then more on the background after she left. Now I'll work from photos I took and develop the background more until the model returns next week.

The background is in flux and though it will have a dark stormy sky, I'm not sure if I will add anything else in yet, I'll wait and see how I feel as this goes. I'm trying something a bit different here as I am letting this painting grow organically, I intentionally cropped the legs to give the figure a weird heaviness, yet also a incomplete and powerless feeling.

Super Sad continues

I'm working on the first large Super sad painting this week, this is from the first two sets where I roughed in the figure from the live model. I'll keep updating this as I go along.

The Old and the New

Yesterday the Dirty Palette Club took it on the road again. This time we set up near Drexel University in a nice park nearby the train yards with a great view of the city, the old power plant and the new very futuristic Amtrak building.

This was what I got in about 3-1/2 hours or better painting in the beautiful afternoon sun.
11 x 14 in oil on a Blick canvas.

Portrait Class Week 6 Final

yesterday was the final class for my summer portrait class with Al Gury. I had a great time in this class and can really say I did learn somethings and felt I made weekly progress. Al's a great teacher and so affable, he makes the class a very relaxing experience even if I am ragging at myself in my head over my work. the painting above is the final painting from the morning half of the class. there are so many little things that bug me about this, drawing, edges, etc., but I am happy I was able to keep it loose. the hardest things about doing these portraits for me is the one week break in between sessions. I'm also not so sharp in the mornings sometimes and feel I don't get cooking till the afternoon. I was seriously tempted to wipe it all out yesterday but Al wouldn't let me.
This is the second portrait and I'm far less happy with this as far as drawing goes. This model was a pain to draw, I never got her down right, but I am happier with some edges and paint application--hey, you have to try and salvage something ...
Al gave us all a good final crit.

My classmate Lisa felt like many of us, weary from the battle as class neared the end.

Some of our homework, my friend Christina turned in some really nice portraits and a study.

The models Tim and Claire take a break.

My buddy Joel shows us all how to hold it down in thee nd and enjoy yourself.

My goal now is to still do at least one portrait a week, be it from life or a study so I can really drill in the things I have learned in clas and to keep the momentum going.