Gothic Spookiness

Here's a picture I did close to ten years ago. I had  discovered the role playing game Ravenloft several years before , when I was 14,  and had become totally obsessed with it . I still think it's a pretty cool, evocative game. I loved the art in the rule book too by Stephan Fabian . It was during when I first discovered Ravenloft that I started reading "gothic"stories( or at least books I thought were gothic). Lovecraft, Walpole, Stoker, Shelley. etc. This period of reading still effects everything I draw to some degree. I think this picture holds up pretty well.

Cecily Briggs And Her 400 Fireflies Character Sheet

This is a drawing of the main characters in Cecily Briggs and her 400 Fireflies. This project is a collaboration with an author and will likely happen sometime next year, depending on scheduling. From left to right the charcters are: Sybil,Uncle Chester, Kelvin and Cecily.

Shelf Guardian, Conneticut

Here's a small watercolour I did 8 years ago that finally found a home as library guardian. This picture was picked by wsome very nice library staff at the public library of Columbia Conneticut (pop. 5000) to appear in small posters at the library to help promote shelf orderliness. Now he guards shelves far from home.

Dancing Fish

Here's an example of another, small part of my work. This pencil rough is for a restaurant in Ontario. Jobs like these are really fun and pretty low pressure.

Sybil Character Sketch

Here's another character from Cecily Briggs. She's a mermaid automaton with an electronic brain. She's programmed to only answer questions as vaguely as possible.

Cecily Briggs Character Sketch

This is a character sketch from one of a number of proposals I have. It seems to now take years between the time when an idea begins to take form initially and when it's finished enough to bring to a publisher. I'll talk more about this comic soon. If anyone is interested in putting together a comic book proposal one thing I've learned recently is the nessesity of the character sketch, on for each first or secondary character. This helps the art editor get a feel for the tone and style and changes can easily be made based on the information provided by these sketches. I'd also recommend about ten sample pages.

Comic Strip

20th Century Playlist (Sibelius)

While waiting for go ahead on some projects I'm drawing all sorts of stuff that pops into my head. This is a drawing I did of Jean Sibelius, one of my favorite composers. More and more I'm enjoying late 19th and 20th century music, it sounds so immediate and exciting. I thought I'd give you a sample playlist of what I'm listeninfg to while I work these days.

Sibelius~Vilolin Concerto, Opus 47

Górecki~Largo, Cantabile

Nyman~All Imperfect Things

Coates~Summer Day Suite

Copland~4 Pianos Blues #1"Freely Poetic"

Dvořák ~Concerto For Cello, Allegro

Prokofiev~Dqnce Of The Knights

Martinu~Works For Piano

Satie~Gymnopedie#1

Whup!

I'm currently waiting on the go ahead on my projects so I spent that time finishing up a Harry & Silvio comic, maybe the last one. My next two years are pretty full. This leaves the Harry & Silvio stories at about 42 pages, not really long enough for a collection. Maybe I'll finish it up with an illustrated story at some point down the road.

I have two projects right now plus i'm scripting and putting together a number of proposals. More on that tomorrow.

Raygun

Here's another train doodle. I still have lots. I'm still pretty excited about getting into spectrum. Julie and I celebrated with a bottle of Cava. also, I've started developing a newe story idea so I'm starting to research World War One for it. Any book recommendations are more then welcome. Also finished up a Harry & Silvio story whicjh might be my last as I'm pretty booked up for a while.More on that later.

Hurray!!!! I got into Spectrum!

Yay! I got into the 16th annual Spectrum book of contemporary fantasy art!! This is something I've wanted since I was 15 and is a huge deal to me. This is the book that showed me what I want to do in life.

Above is Peter De seve's painting for the call for entries.

Lilly & Bärpanzer

In an alternate world it's world War One and the Austrians make tanks that are sentient and shaped like animals. Lilly, running away from an evil count finds an abandoned Bärpanzer, a tank bear. They escape together through the wilds of war ravaged Europe, chased by automatons.

This piece is for Tim Guthrie.

Something I Drew When I was Really Mad At Someone

I was having an argument and drawing at the same time. It's a weird habit I've picked up. I tend to like the resulting drawings. I also tend to not underrstand them.

The Back Of My Sketchbook

"L'Oracle du Mort" Fortune Telling Magician Automaton

I found this video through the well known steampunk artist Jake Von Slatt. I love this piece by Thomas kuntz. I very much think we share a philosophy on life.

My First Published Comic

very cool! I got my copies of my very first published comic yesterday. 

Larklight Review

New Metachronicles post: a review of the brilliant Larklight by Phillip Reeve.

Situation Bird

This is a ink sketch I did for the Situation comic I'm doing with jeff VanderMeer.. It's a bio-engineered, mechanical abomination bird. It doesn't have a big role in the comic but I love to do these little side sketches for projects to get a sense of the world the story takes place in.

This drawing is also really influenced by Paul Pope. It's probably no surprise that my favorite artistic expression is drawing. When I was in painting class in University my teacher urged me to draw with the paint because that was strong suit. I recently bought Pulp hope, The Art Of Paul Pope in which Mr. Pope ruminates on the value of drawing and how we respond to drawing. I'm a big fan of Paul Pope and if you love drawing I'd recommend this book. He really synthesizes twentieth century Western art, Japanese woodblock prints, manga, comic strip art and all sorts of other things and has come up with a unique exciting style.

Emergency Book Throwing Out Post

I had to share this link with everyone because there's really crazy stuff going on in the U.S. Apparently the bill that congress passed last year to protect U.S. citizens from dangerous toys also includes any book for kids published before 1985. 

Please read the full article here.

I think this is way too easy to abuse.

Sketchbook and Watercolour pans

Here are a couple of Sketchbook sketches. My comics are going really well and I'm happy with the progress, although the sheer amount of work is causing some anxiety. I'm working on two comics right now one is for Tor and the other is a secret project that hasn't been announced yet. They are both amazing projects I can't believe I'm attached to. This is a pretty crazy time. The only drawback to all this is I have to put my own projects on the back burner. Hopefully the year or so it will take me to complete these projects will give me time to think about my own projects.

A Girl On The Train

Hourman

Shane-Michael Vidaurri

OK, this was really fun. Shane-Michael Vidaurri and I decided to each post superheroes today. I posted Hourman and Shane posted a picture of Dr. Midnight, which, as of this writing I haven't yet seen and I can't wait, I love Shane's work. I was really playing with the materials here, finger painting with ink, throwing it at the paper, letting it drip. I did it using huge boar bristle brushes that you'd normally use for oil painting. I have no idea how it looks like anything at all. But I loved doing it. This is also an exorcise in blacks. I wanted to see how much of the image could just be black ink like Frank Miller or Alex Toth.

Up top I have added Shane-Michael's Dr. MidNight.

Robot Museum Paints

Here's an example of a gouache painted page for the Robot Museum book I did for Scholastic Education. It was published as a fun story accompanying a tutorial on robotics for classes. I think it looks nice but way too stiff and I could be using the cartooning language better. I guess this was my first professionally published comic book. It was the hardest thing I've done. I'm very much buried in work right now with no sign of letting up but that's OK because I still read comics in bed at night.

Redux

I'm being nudged into a cartoon world, and I'm pretty happy about it to tell the truth. On the left is my original concept for a character in the comic I'm working on; Jeff VanderMeer's The Situation. The editor wanted it less tight, more expressive. I told her that's how I'd draw all the time if I had any guts! So I came up with the guy on the right. I'm really, really happy with the redesign and it makes the whole project one hundred times more exciting. And I draw faster this way. That's just a nice side effect.
Also, I'm very happy with the way watercolour and gouache looks over a brush and ink drawing. I somehow have misplaced all my watercolour tubes so I had to use my traveling half pan set and liked using it a lot. I wasted less paint this way.
What does everyone think of the two designs? I think the second one is much better suited to a comic book. I have very smart editors.

Central Station, Montréal.

Drawing's I did with brushpen while waiting for a connecting train in Montreal. At this point I could not stop drawing with this thing, I was having so much fun with the thick lines and rich blacks. The sheer energy of working with a brush.

Jon Klassen

How the heck did I miss this guy's work? Jon Klassen is amazing, I first saw his work a couple of weeks ago and I feel like I've been run over by an art steam train.Beautiful,lyrical art balancing design,narrative and expressiveness. I really love this guy's work. I'm so glad he's getting attention for his Coraline design work.

Mord & Scarskirt

Here are two character sketches from the comic The Situation, which I'm working on for Tor dot com. The story is written by Jeff VanderMeer and is an amazing, headspinning, beautiful and disturbing science fiction tale.The prose novel is available free here. It's about how to make a fish.

Upstate New York

From my train window.

David Lloyd and V For Vendetta.

Another amazing thing I got in New York is this beautiful sketch of V from V for Vendetta by the brilliant David Lloyd.Mr Lloyd's work is breathtaking, expressive and haunting and kinetic. I can still remember sitting in my friend Evan's basement in high school discovering this book for the first time. It really blew me away and is still one of my favorite books written by Alan Moore. It's also extremely relavant being an exploration of terrorism and democracy and human rights.

Comic Heroes #'s 6 and 7 : Bullet Girl and Spy Smasher

Comic Heroes 6 & 7 : Steve Canyon And Johnny Hazard

Comic Heroes #'s Four And Five : Sky Wolf And The Black Angel

Two more heroes from the Golden Age of comics I sketched last week. I think sky Wolf probably has the wackiest costume and for some reason it looks like I based his likeness on the guy from Flight of the Concords...

Comic Hero # 3 Air Boy

One of the best known of the Aviator comics from the Golden Age, Air Boy is the story of a young man inheriting a prototype ornithopter and waging war on Nazi super villains. One prominant villain is Misery, who would trap pilots souls in containers.

Air Boy was drawn by Frank Kida and Dan Berry and was written by Charles Biro and Dick Wood. It was published by Hillman. This comic was later revived by Eclipse.

Comic Hero # 2 : Iron Ace

The Iron Ace was RAF Captain Ronald Britain. Dr. La Farge, a member of the French resistance and part of a line of Iron Aces dating back to Charlemagne, was killed by Nazis but passed his armour along to Captain Britain just before dying. The Iron Ace flew in a plane covered in "Fabrikoic Micro Iron" which made his plane almost indestructible. I love the strangeness of this idea. I also love the image of a fully suited Knight driving a plane and fighting Nazi's, like something Mike Mignola would dream up.
Iron Ace was drawn by Fred Kida but thew writer is unknown.

Comic Hero # 1: The Flying Dutchman

This is the first installment of a 9 part series on forgotten comicbook heroes of yore.

The Flying Dutchman was a back up feature  in the popular  Airboy comicbook ( later called Air Fighter Comics) of the World War 2 era, known as the Golden Age of comics. It was published by Hillman. It's unknown who wrote his adventures but they were drawn by Bob Fujitani. The Flying Dutchman was a fighter pilot from the Netherlands whose family was killed by the Nazis and his adventures were basically vengence for this. He would drop white roses from his plane after he defeated an enemy. The story is a bit thin butI love his costume.

Modern

Another thing I absorbed in New York was all the early to mid twentieth century art, especially in Moma. Artists that really affected me are Matisse, Cezanne(whose works look much better in person then in books), Redon, Kirchner and Roualt . I had always loved these artists but seeming them in person and not in an art book from 1973 was a huge revaluation. Cezanne in particular amazed me with the vibrancy of his colours, I was totally amazed because I always thought he didn't care about colour but his work glows like stained glass. What shocked me about Matisse was the scale of his work, it's enormous and you feel like you're walking into his painting. They're almost more like stage set then paintings. Redon's work was far more beautiful then I imagined. In books his paintings always appear somewhat unfinished but this is not the case at all, his paintings are rich and immediate. Kirchner and Roualt (and Modigliani) probably have had the greatest impact on my artwork as far as expressiveness and line and shapes and colours go. I've been influenced by modern art since I ( was little my Mom had prints of Roualt and Kollwitz hanging in the house I grew up in) but have resisted it feeling strictly realistic art is more legitimate. Looking at animation like Coraline and cartoonists like Mike Mignola and Darwyn Cooke I really don't know why I hesitate. I'd love to do a whole comic in this style.