Big Pharma Cartoons

While moving work off and old drive I came across several of these "New Yorker Style" cartoons I did for a big Pharma company about 10 years ago. It was fun to try and do or play around with that style.

Mermaids and Astronauts the Digital Wave

I finally broke down or rather saved up and bought myself a Cintiq 13' this past week. I have been wanting to get one since my assistant Mimi got done last summer and I played around with it some. I have even started doing Judge Parker all digital to see if that will work and flow well. I will stay with doing The Phantom traditional as there is also a demand for the originals unlike the Judge.

The biggest issue so far is adjusting my work set-up and the feel of the whole thing. 40 years of muscle memory and tactile feedback are compromised a bit so far--especially the feedback and feel. It all feels the same no matter the tool, all sooth, so memory has to sort of fill in there.

For me its all about flow and I have trained like a Jedi master in my traditional ways but the interface interrupts that so far. So its a bit of retaining here. I know what a 102 vs a 108 feels like and a dry brush vs a wet one or a whole host of tools and media--but the Cintiq feels the same for all. I also make many lines more that once as a result to get the one I want--something that never happens in the "Meat World" as I call it. I don't feel the mark the same way as I make it, and this is very different.

So, I'm giving myself some time to adjust and if I don't like it I'll just go back to paper for the strips. But I am more interested in trying to digitally paint as another way of working, maybe branching out to backgrounds and concept design, some of which I have already done in the past when working in animation. And for commercial art you simply have to know how to do it now. There is no escaping it and so I figure I give myself a minimum of 6 months to get the hang of it.

An all digital Judge daily done in Clip Studio

2017 is at an end and 2018 is rushing up fast, part of getting the new rig was to also move into the next step or phase of producing more of my own work. I will be releasing a book of my ink drawings in 2018 as well a making more paintings of these subjects, like the study of Astronaut and Mermaids above. The final might be produced as an oil painting. I also have plans to do a comic or maybe a graphic novel of the Detective character I came up with in the Inktober drawings that people really seem intrigued by. How will I do it all you might ask---I plan on giving up sleep in 2018. Happy, Happy Joy, Joy!

90's Flashback-Quasar!

I came across a bunch of pencils from my run on Quasar back in the 90's, the first book I penciled for Marvel. Ironically I followed the late Paul Ryan on the book, who I would also follow on The Phantom after he passed away.

  I experimented. a lot on this book. Mark Gruenwald wrote rich stories and I wish I had gotten to know him better as he was always very complimentary about my work. This issue was fun since I had the opportunity to draw The Eternals--another fun Kirby concept. When I started on the book I was doing a more "traditional" approach to penciling, having spent time in Al Williamson's studio and being a huge fan of his approach, as well as John Buscema, etc. But I think I saw the Cosmic Oddest by Mike Mignola and thought it was so good I wanted to try paring down the rendering and "push the forms more". Now I wince at a lot of the  nearly 30 year old drawing--but hey I was trying something new.

Talk and Demo in Willingbor

See you this Saturday at the Willingboro Art Alliance 9-11

I'll be talking comics and doing a demo https://www.facebook.com/thewillingboroartalliance/photos/rpp.140328629341430/1906210336086

My Sister Romita

 When I was younger and just in the biz I started collecting original comic art when I could afford it. I was making OK money and art wasn't as crazy expensive as it seems to be going today. many great Silver Age artists work was very affordable. I bought Kirby pages for a hundred bucks, John Buscema Thor pages for $5. I was always trying to get better, learn my craft better and some pages I would buy just for that purpose. They often were cheap pages under a hundred bucks, but they were inked by Joe Sinnott or drawing by Buscema, Kane, good folds or techniques, etc. I bought this old John Romita DC Love story in the late 80's as an example. These are I believe what were called bromides, a paper stat or proof which unlike some stats were not slick or had a shiny surface. This made correcting and cutting up the art easier. This old job was re-purposed from a much earlier 60's job, before Romita left DC for Marvel. This was now the 70's so all the hair was inked over to fit with those swinging times by somebody in production and its pretty bad and ham-fisted. But the faces and a lot of the art is still un-corrected and I leaned a lot about drawing a pretty girls face from this job as Romita was one of the very best at that.

I pulled this out again and have it next to my desk as a reminder of how to do it right and it comes in handy for Judge Parker and even the Phantom. John Romita always drew the right angles with great clarity and appeal and having done soap opera strips for seven years now I can greatly appreciate the skill it takes to do this even more. Simple is hard, clarity is hard and the emotions he shows are always clear.

Its easier to draw superheroes with exaggeration but here you really can't do that or people look ugly. I'm sure he was influenced by the great illustrators like Al Parker and Jon Whitcomb, enjoy!

Odd and Ends

Trying to get back on the blogging horse and blog more often than in the past year. The daily drumbeat here in the studio has changed with the addition of the Phantom comic strip and the fact have basically given up painting for the most part as a result. I have also been rethinking where I want to go and what I want to do as a painter and gallery wise as well.

I haven't even been plain air painting this spring at all and decided to forgo entering any contests at all. I could do a whole post just on the PA contests and my feelings on them---and maybe I will--or not.

I just put together a new watercolor/gouache painting rig so I hope to get back to painting this summer just for me. I also think I needed to completely detox from the MFA which I graduated from in 14---three years ago! Funny how time flies when all you do is work. 

I ran through the annual ASE for PAFA last Sunday after the AS Student show. How the school is fast changing and I think more into what all other art schools are like. I still think the first ASE I saw in 2007 was the best I had seen with the strongest contingent of drawing and painting--the core of the Academy, not what I mostly saw last week, and many changes are coming down the pike at PAFA. I am glad I got to go through the end of the old era, had a few of the older teachers before they retired, but life and the business of art school moves on!

While moving and sorting (the endless purge) I came cross the drawing at the top which I did back in high school. The old zip-a-tone is starting to yellow now, but that was done in 79-80 so much of the work I did then that has zip is also yellowing. The logo "contact" was hand lettered and then pasted on. Its of course a big Wally Wood pastiche/homage as I was and still am a huge fan of his work and earlier on he was  an even bigger influence on my work. 

In the same portfolio I also found this cover rough to Darkhawk No. 9. I also found an assortment of other old art some of which I might post. Funny how you forget drawing something and when you find it it might bring back a specific memory of time.

I'm also posting an assortment of progress work for the two strips. In the strip above my assistant Mimi tightend up the Mozz and Guran figures for me and then I inked them.

Here is this week's Sunday strip. We are finally coming to the end of the storying with Sophie, the band, the kidnapping and the family secret. Its really took a big turn from my original idea I gave to Wilson before he left the strip. Next we will be dealing with the April situation, then who know, at that point it will be a completely new direction as all the old Wilson plots will be wrapped up. I had planned to do a contest to give away some strips but decided against doing that after the deluge of nasty comments by the CK message board. So instead some art will eventually be for sale on Ebay. I still want the comments gone and hope to convince King along with many of my fellow professionals to get them to ax them this year. Yeah, thats for you trolls reading this.

 Here are my pencils for an upcoming week of the judge and below for The Phantom. I enjoy doing the landscapes on both strips and in general the Phantom is more exciting to draw since its a superhero gig. which lends itself to much more interesting compositions than I typically get on the Judge. I try to in general pencil the work just tight enough to ink, leaving some of the drawing to that part of the process. I feel after a year on the Phantom I am starting to get a feel for the characters like I do on the Judge and I think I like drawing Guran the most. He's the comical type so his acting can be a bit broader and the hat is a great iconic thing to use as well.

This video shows me inking on a Judge Parker strip. I have been doing live demos on my Facebook page so keep an eye out.

Odd and Ends

Darkhawk figure is in the house! I still haven't seen the Guardians 2 yet, but I hear this figure is hot right now. Still no word from Marvel about and so I had to buy my own copy.


Its been a bit since I updated here and I have been super busy with the strips and the end of the school year. But let's face it, when am I not busy?  The two strips have me at max capacity so I have hired an assistant Mimi and pulled in the help of my buddy Scott Cohn to help on backgrounds to gain some time.

                          Mimi sorting the piles of comics and then there are all the paintings

Mimi starts the full time crunch this summer and has already been working for me a few months, mainly putting my art in order, but she has pitched in a bit on the strips too time/school allowing.


Then Mimi challenged me to try my hand at drawing a manga style drawing, so I did. Not sure how manga-ish it is but it was fun to just wing it.

I also had my final class of the year for the After School Program at PAFA, it was a fun yer full of great kids. Budding artists all! The student show is hung this weekend.


One of the cool things I came across on a recent Ebay hunt was a year (1957) of Judge Parker strips by the original artist Dan Heilman to did the strip into the mid 60's when Harold LeDoux took over full time. I heard that he was helping Heilman along from the 50's doing backgrounds etc. Hellman had a journeyman_Caniff based style which was very common up until the 60's when that style faded away more and more with few exceptions like Frank Robbins. Its interesting to see what the strip was like before Sam Driver entered the scene and to see Randy, the son of the original Judge as a kid, along with his sister who was evidently written out of the strip decades ago. Randy is now the judge as the original Judge Parker retired about 10 years ago during Eduardo Baretto's run. the strip was much more serious and the storyline I have is about bullying and juvenile delinquents which was very much a topic back in those days like the 1955 movie Blackboard Jungle. The Strip has steered far away from any topical or social cometary based storylines that I can see for decades and is much more a typical soap these days.

 I have also been warming up some mornings by doing a few Phantom Sketches which I will ink up and sell via Ebay, so stay tuned for the links. I have a few more and might do up to a dozen and then post them all.

Then on a quick break I went  to the great Howard Pyle show hosted by Drexel University where Pyle taught illustration classes for two years before he opened his own school in Wilmington DE, where he taught the likes of NC Wyeth. 

its a must see show if you can make it

April 3-June 18
Paul Peck Alumni Center
3142 Market Street
Open Monday-Friday, 9-4 p.m.
Free and open to the public

A great show featuring Pyle, NC Wyeth, Rockwell, Lyendecker, Parrish and more.

Back On The Horse

Its been of a break for me here on the blog for a little while now, but life or my artistic life certainly has never slowed down. Doing the two strips, Judge Parker and The Phantom keeps me busy with the boiler at full steam six sometimes seven days a week, as well as teaching my illustration class at PAFA in the After School Program.

 I enjoy working with these budding, young, talented and motivated artists! It also gives me a window into the young growing minds in the world of today, their tastes and knowledge and how they see the world of comics and art-life. Suffice to say they see the world in some ways fundamentally different than I did at their age.

Some hard working students taking their thumbnails to the first rough stage. More changes will be made from here and another round will happen before the final comp and color comp. I believe in working on tracing paper and avoiding the digital for the developing student in the beginning to work/see the piece as a whole. Working digital often means detail over unity for the developing artist

                       Some recent Phantom work, pencils and some Judge Parker strips as well

A lot of it has to do with tech, but also what they are exposed to in the run of everyday life. But one thing is the same for many--the dream of becoming an artist! This is where I come in and try to shine the light on the paths to take to get to the dream if they are willing to seriously work for it. Watching some students grow over the years is the best thing I think you can experience as a teacher.

I have also recently hired an assistant who's right now organizing my comic art and will move on through my paintings, files and eventually my comics as I organize and thin the heard here. I'm certainly if anything mid-career as they say and I just have too much stuff, it happens to every artist I know. So at a certain point it either is an asset or a burden. I saw that when I was in Al Williamson's studio--he had an amazing collection to be sure, not only of his work but the work of others, the greats and strips clipped, stats, man, you name it. But at some point it went over the top and it was at point very unorganized and a burden that he both loved but worried about. So I figure time to make this art pile organized so its an asset, especially for teaching and my own enjoyment. This also means lots of old tech is getting tossed too--old computers, scanners, printers---ugh!

I am close to setting up my painting studio at home which will be separate from my drawing or comics studio. I'm taking the bedroom that has the best light, both north and west and will make that a separate place than my drawing studio where I do comics. I will be able to control the light better and even have models in.

I have also been thinking about changing direction in what I paint and of doing a book of my pen and ink drawings. I'm thinking about doing paintings more along the line of the Inktober pieces and not pushing the landscapes as much. I sort of feel the Plien Air" thing is a bit crowded and what I want to do --the urban thing isn't so appreciated around here. Its also the allocation of time vs return. I have stacks of landscape paintings and love doing them, but maybe less of that and more of the other paintings is where I will go for a while. I entered a lot of PA shows last year and was declined by most so that money might be better spent on fixing the studio and doing new work. I am also not big on competitions and want to paint what I find interesting.

I'm maybe more conscious of time now with the strips eating up the bulk of my time in the work week as well as the changing gallery situation here in Philly. I am also planning a limited enrollment on-line class for sometime this year. Maybe 10 students or less to start, and I am not looking to teach beginners or those with a lot of basic drawing problems, that would be a separate type of class,  so I will require a portfolio submission. This way I get students strong enough to take the info and build on it. One thing I am very set on now is that advancement  in art really must be based on ability. If the students struggles with basic drawings issues, those must be tackled and proficiency achieved in order to advance. The way most schools tend to run is that unless the student really flub a class, they go to the next year. But I believe now more than ever that advancement should only come with displayed ability--otherwise the student moves toward graduation without the skills they must have to get work.

I'm begging my third story arc on The Phantom and I'm three weeks in. Its been great working with the writer Tony De Paul in the past year. The stories are not only well written and fun to draw but he's the best writer I have ever worked with as far as helping with reference. That's a big deal on an 80 year old strip--believe me! The next story is about a vision Old Man Mozz has about the Phantom--and one that isn't good. I won't say any more but it will maybe be the best story I've worked on so far and will have many long time Phantom fans on the edge of their seat.

We are also wrapping up the Sophie/Band/Kidnapping story up in Judge Parker.  The story went in a way I did not plan when I sent the original plot to the last writer Woody Wilson before he retired mid way through, and its twisted and turned a lot with the new writer Francesco Marciuliano.

In recent weeks I'm contributing more now to the active plotting than before and I am now the one with the most knowledge and history of the strip, as I enter what is now my 7th year on the strip. The weight of these continuity strips his a heavy one. For instance in this story there is a visit to the grave site of Needy's and Sophies Grandfather, Ezra, who passed in 2003 JP time. I don't even have access myself to all the strips history but can have the syndicate send me weeks of something if I need it.

Now we have never been very accurate time wise on the strips for obvious reason. All continuity strips play fast and loose with time. If Sophie was 9-10 years old in 2003 now she'd be 24 or so and Neddy 3-4 years older wold be 30. Sam and Abbey would be on SSI. But nobody ages in strips, even the Phantom would be 100 years old now if we kept time. But in order to accurately draw the strip continuity wise I can't leave off the date on Ezra's grave as it was drawn on there by Harold Ledoux. That was established and is "cannon" as they say. Thus the conundrum!

So since I figure maybe it's 2011-maybe 12 or so in the strip, Sophie can s till be 16-going on 17. This is where the strips must break with reality as stories advance time in only one way--strip time not real time. Under Wilson there was never a Christmas strip with the characters, which we have introduced now, nor a change of seasons which I have introduced as well. The strips inch along year wise and many readers who are used to the way TV and movies work want time in the strips to run just as fast---but they never have or just about all the continuity strips would either have to take place in the nursing home or the principle characters would even be dead! Peter Parker would at least be in his 70's-wallop'n Web Snappers indeed!

I think the plan on the next JP storyline is to wrap up the missing and pregnant April Bower as well as her father and that will finally rest the long outstanding plot issues from Wilson's run.

OK, back to the Skull Cave!