Hear Ye Hear Ye-
I've started to sell my original comic-book art - I had let it build up for 15 years.
If you're curious - you can go over to the fanatastic
Graphic Collectibles website and take a gander at what Mitch has for sale - chances are you'll be able to get yourself an original page of artwork for a reasonable price!
INKBLOTS!
INKBLOTS!
INKBLOTS!
INKBLOTS!
Iron Man!
Dude - what's not to like- he's a man MADE OUT OF IRON-
Intense.
Marcel Marceau dead
I think it appropriate to observe a moment of silence.
And now- Scott Koblish with the weather report
Ooooo- it might rain here tomorrow - we've had 2.5 inches of rain in the last 19 months. I think this year will have more rain than average, it just feels like it. I moved some stuff out of harms way tonight
Very cool and crisp tonight. Fantastic.
Love in a time of Cholera
Cholera. Iraq has gotten so bad that there's an impending epidemic of Cholera. Partly because of a slowdown on imports of Chlorine, because the trucks were being used as bombs 9 months ago. So far there are 25,000 sick, 10 dead, with expectations that the epidemic will peak in October.
You will hear that Iraq has had Cholera outbreaks before, with 1999 being the latest with 30 people sickened. The current rate of sickness of 25,000 is quite an improvement for that little bacteria.
GAWD DAMN!
Paul Mounts did a spectacular job with the cover to issue 4 of the Weapon-
I started out with a shot of The Weapon leaping toward the reader-
i liked it fine, but I wanted something in the background. i thought about some shots of downtown Honolulu or the lava pits of Hawaii Volcanoes park, but couldn't decide before nightime. Before I fell asleep - I thought of rain in diagonal streaks. So I sat down on the computer, made a completely black background and drew some streaks in photoshop and then merged the image of Tommy on the photoshop document. I made some droplets bouncing off Tommy with the eraser tool.
and then Paul did his magic and made me look like a genius. I gave him another layer of rain that he could put on top of the main layer and when the rain was overlain it made the image look less flat.
Voila! Kickass cover!
Violet; Swinging.
Nice week at the Comic Shop-
Hi everybody - or, more realistically - hello two or three people -
This week I've got the last issue of the Weapon (issue 4) due in stores, as well as the last issue of the Fantastic Five (isssue 5). Both stories have nice twists in their final acts, so pick up a copy and gasp appropriately.
This month also has the 6 pages I worked on for The Immortal Iron Fist #9. Not sure when it comes out - maybe next week, maybe the week after that. Only the god of scheduling knows (who would that be, I wonder?).
I think the Daredevil Annual I'm working on comes out in October or November, and the Marvel Adventures Hulk issue I'm inking will come out around then too.
That's it for now. Gonna put Violet to bed after her bath is over.
One of my favorite pages from the 3rd issue of the Weapon
This is one of my favorite pages from the 3rd issue of the Weapon- Originally i hadn't any idea of what to put in panel one - it was supposed to be an uncaptioned shot of Volcanoes National Park. I had some reference for Hawaii, but it was all green and lush and mountains and water and I didn't want to repeat what I'd done in other parts of the series, so I went looking and found a volcanic lava flow credited to the park and smacked my head - of course! Lava! And it would look great with a sunrise over the mountains - AND I could do it all in silhouette. I think the panel took me a little over 20 minutes to draw, I just went in with some ink after sketching a zig-zag pattern. Paul caught it all and really made it shine.
In panel 2 I looked at a lot of what Frank Cho does with his jungle scenes and tried to think of what I could do in mine. The palm fronds in the upper right hand side of panel 2 were the most fun to ink - i just took out my brush and bam! the time of day (early morning) helped out tremendously in staging different shots - I could use silhouette liberally and I think it helped out the compositions. It especially helped in panel 3, where Paul really caught everything I imagined could be in there and more. really lush greens and pale blues and burning reds next to stark black - he did a fantastic job.
I also liked the layout here - i don't often get a chance to break up the page like this: full top tier horizontal, verticle 2nd panel, breaking up the rest of the page into a smaller rectangle where I put the final 3 panels. Fun!
I find it hard to see that anyone would care about this sort of thing...
Here is a section of the most recent work I did over George Perez - for issue 6 of the Brave and The Bold. As an inker for George you stand on the shoulder of a giant - so you think you're 500 feet tall, but really, the view is just what George sees all the time.
Here's a half page of pencils-
-And here they are after I monkeyed around with them. I'm sure a little bit of my own personality comes through in the inks, but I try and keep any deviations of style and excentricities to a minimum.
I'm very familair with George's work, having studied his art for over 3 decades, honestly closer than any other artist I've ever known (with the exception of myself) - so I try and ink him like I've seen him ink himself. My favorite work of his was when the Teen Titans shifted over to the Baxter format and he inked himself on the first few issues and a lightbulb went off in my head and I thought "Oh, THIS must be what he wanted the whole time."
I liked how George had a different face, hair shape and body shape for each of the Challengers of the Unknown and I tried to keep that dynamic as clear as possible, evern when their heads were turned away from the viewer.
I'm not very good at describing what it is I do - I've been inking for over 30 years, 15 of them professionally, so it's really just second nature to me now -and as a result a complete mystery. A "just do it" sort of thing.
Secret Headquarters-
The auction/unveiling of the 3-Minute sketchbook at Secret Headquarters went well. I got to meet and talk with a lot of really greta folks. The artwork is being shipped to the upcoming Baltimore Convention for auction as well. Bid on it today - a lot of really neat work is there - my favorites being Neal Adams' and Tim Sale's sketches. A lot fo Zorro sketches - I don't know why - including one from Steve Rude that in no way was 3 minutes long - it was definitely under 8 minutes, but it didn't feel like 3 minutes to me. But what do I know - I wasn't there...
Never say Never, but- Try Never To Complain
Boy, I hadn't had time off in four years - i worked every single day for over a thousand days straight and now that I have the day off I'm going slowly insane with boredom and financial worry. I don't know what's better - having so much work that I feel really overwhelmed or so little work that I feel really overwhelmed. Doesn't strike me as a good deal either way.
Still, I worked on 6 pages for the next Iron Fist issue this past week and that felt nice - it stretched a different set of art muscles for me and gave me a little time to think about my art style - I did the bulk of it in a very thin, somewhat wavery (for me at least) thin pen style to fit waht the previous artist had done with it. I think it turned out ok, I felt like I was a little heavy handed with the first 2 pages I did, but I loosened up and gave it what I felt was a nice delicate line in the end.
I liked the script quite a bit - by Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker - it seemed like it took a few unexpected turns, but was clear in what it needed and where it was going. Good dialogue, fanciful locations.
Maybe I'll do a sketch of Iron Fist today - I like the character and I did finishes on a miniseries by Butch Guice a few years ago. I had always wondered why Butch did breakdowns on that book, and Mike Perkins told me this year that it was because Butch had broken his hand. I was laid up after hernia surgery when I inked that book, so maybe it was a bit of a cursed book. It was a LOT of fun to do though and it took my mind off of not being able to really function, ie. walk, after the surgery.
