Blog
Friday August 31st 2012, 7:57 pm
Illusions, or better yet, delusions. Thats what I experience when thinking about my own appearance. And I suspect many of us do, there was a good brief example of this in a recent episode of Louie, very enlightening. I’ve been having to mull over publicity photos, having to make a choice. And I’m not happy with any of the choices in front of me, its not that they are bad photos, quite the opposite really. I just don’t feel like any of them represent me visually, but in reality it has more to do with I just don’t fully comprehend what I look like. And like I was saying, more than likely many of us experience this effect, even though we all look in the mirror daily. Somehow even that visage is colored by the perceptions that we have of ourselves, impacting our own sense of identity. I always have this experience when seeing photos of myself, feeling like its not really me I’m seeing, or tend to internally ask myself is that what I really look like. And in most instances I’m disappointed.
Vanity Pushing On Identity
August 31st 2012
Thursday August 30th 2012, 8:14 pm
Feeling wishy washy as today has this oddly off kilter sensation, have no idea why, even feel creatively uninspired. Some days are just like that around here. Causes me to sort of be unenthused to follow through with the scheduled day, peculiar. But somehow a prediction of what the result is. Had to rush out the door to get some more tat work done, but something inside me just wasn’t feeling it, mentally not there this time. So Wendy and I go in, and coincidentally it turns out I’m not quite healed up enough from the last session. I find this interesting that it worked out that way considering how I was just sort of blah about the process today. It raises the question in my mind that maybe its possible that somehow intuitively I knew it wasn’t the right time, that somehow the vibes in reality were connecting with my subconscious, giving me insight that I couldn’t see outwardly.
Happenstance
August 30th 2012
Wednesday August 29th 2012, 8:34 pm
Smart devices, smart people, smartly equipped. Something that I know would take me bloody forever, if ever, is solved in only minutes. The digital voodoo man is always giddy with excitement over helping us reach further into the here and now of the computer future, especially anything involving a Mac. It truly is almost like magic, his almost impenetrable knowledge is mystifying. Everything he’s done for us is so wonderfully kind. Honestly wouldn’t know what to do if we didn’t have his astounding assistance. His insight has saved me from doom on more than one occasion with technical advice and help. Unfortunately for him we’ve come to depend on his expertise quite firmly now, but he always makes us feel that there is no imposition. Fortunately for us we have him, a bit of an unfair trade off in our favor. Everyone who has a computer should have someone like him who knows all of the digital secrets that evade us tech novices, so we’re eternally grateful for our friend. Thank you.
Ubence, Digital Voodoo Wizard
August 29th 2012
Wednesday August 29th 2012, 3:38 pm
Here is the cover to Batwoman 14 in various stages. A Western flavored issue…
First up is the rough sketch of the idea for editorial approval.
Then here is the black and white version. I stuck to the sketch composition pretty accurately. I purposefully left the backgrounds without detail as I knew I wanted to have that be completely reliant on color tones and paint textures. Drawing in details there probably would have made it more confusing or cumbersome for that sunset western desert effect I wanted.
Color version by me. This is where the western effect comes into full play. The palette combined with textures in the digital paint were exactly what this piece needed to feel finalized as an idea. Having the only cool tones on the central figure does two things here, one- it puts the focus on him even though he is facing away, second- sells the idea of decay and death as well. And then having the ghostly Medusa figure within his form be the only white creates a secondary pull-in focus. With Batwoman and Wonder Woman being to either side of this and more affected by the palette of the setting allows for there to be a sense of layering, this layering effect is topped off with the design graphics.
Logo version.
Tuesday August 28th 2012, 8:44 pm
“IT’S ALIVE!” …the Frankenstein voice clip that boisterously emanates from Wendy’s phone whenever she’s received a message. Today it signaled a surprise visit to our little part of the world from a good friend of ours traveling through on their way home to Vegas after a whirlwind cross-country trip. His name is Warren, we love Warren, but hardly ever get to see him, so the unexpected visit was a welcome one. Sipping coffee downtown snacking on banana nut bread and trading stories of figuring out time consuming work techniques while still making a living. You see, Warren is the very talented colorist on Courtney Crumrin published by Oni Press, and he’s doing a tremendously great job. What he does really compliments this book, transforming it from the black and white version that has been known to an even more alive vitality, working in palettes that are extremely difficult to master convincingly, he makes it look easy. We knew Warren well before he has had a career boost, and so its quite a treat to see him succeeding at his love of comics. Something to look forward to without a doubt as he continues to grow into his own. And honestly, everyone should be reading Courtney Crumrin, and I’m not saying this just for our friend’s work, but because its truly a great book.
With Admiration
August 28th 2012
Monday August 27th 2012, 8:56 pm
Long fingers, protruding from a dark scaly hand of roughened skin and golden jeweled ornaments reaching up to clutch a blackened human heart. Inside it beats a cold city of vile corruption, a city that seems to exist in perpetual night, where even it’s heroes have scarred meaning. The dark heart slowly thumps here, truly the only place in a mythical world of gleaming icons that could birth the twisted natures of storied men and women into fruition of the deepest crudest desires for affliction. Only here can one hellish myth grasp for control over another. The lives of broken tales. Colliding metaphors of one monstrous idea into another. Only here can birth horrors that go beyond the metaphysical reality within the folds of two covers into the real, setting forth dark energies that will live well beyond the page, possibly infecting. A light will shine on this, exposing the rooted filth of a living idea that has been twisted by one smiling wicked mind after another. What lives in us to so easily create metaphorical worlds of shadow and death?
The Story Of A Single Panel’s Hidden Soul
August 27th 2012
Sunday August 26th 2012, 9:09 pm
Skewed. Thats the best word I can use to describe the affair I have with each and every page that rolls off my drawing table. Something peculiar happens as I work. In most cases I have to come to terms with the end results, as its usually not up to my hopes for it. There are many occasions where I’ll start off a page thoroughly unhappy with how its turning out, then a tipping point can occur, where my perspective of what is front of me shifts and I begin to see something in it that actually changes my mind into a more positive view. There are times where I start off enamored with how an image is flowing that day, but by the end feel its a failure. The strangest is when I go back and forth from one feeling to another and back again, a swinging pendulum of its-okay-its-not-okay-its-okay-its-not-okay as the work on a piece reaches completion, kind of a idiosyncratic twitchy compulsion. This falling in and out topsy turvy thing is really my own warped sense of what sits in front of me, but while in the middle of the process its almost impossible to remain objective, its all too close. Ultimately, when I come to rationality, I can feel a bit ridiculous.
Living With My Own “Art”
August 26th 2012
Saturday August 25th 2012, 11:25 pm
This bright Saturday starts off fine, another simple day, sublime actually. Working away, the drawing process moving smoothly and quite enjoying the flow of the results. Then after breakfast the world starts closing in around my head, a pressure and boxed narrowing, I know this dreaded sensation all too well. A bit of a swirling and a numbing sets in, and paradoxically heavy pain. My brain stutters thoughts and my speech crawls like its trying to catch up with reality. My head is floating in a sea of slight disorientation. My vision seems to go sideways, shaking hands jitter as I try to work some delicate brush effects, my nerves want to leap from my skin. The tremor floods into overdrive, even making it difficult to reach into the meds container, feeling a bit vulnerable. A sense of not being able to be still comes over me. Functionality becomes disjointed and sporadic, having to raise my concentration level to behave half normally while interacting with others. So at this point I just try to shut off, lay down for a bit, but relatively unsuccessful. This happens to me semi-regularly, enough to cause concern, I need to see a doctor when I can about this problem. The worst part, honestly, is dealing with it when wanting to have an intelligent coherent conversation with a friend, which was the plan for this evening. Fortunately it all subsides enough to manage, just hovers at a low level in the back of my head, and my arms feel a little heavier than normal, but other than that tonight was a good time catching up with one of my favorite people. Talking about comics and writing, applied to academics. He’s going to prescribe Batwoman: Hydrology to his Lit students this fall, have me into the class for some in-depth academic discussion. I’m intrigued and somewhat apprehensive as to what will come of it all, but the curiosity of seeing reactions from this unique point of view has me by a rope, should be a great learning experience at the very least. We then dovetail our conversation into our mutual love of Michael Moorcock. Thats the day in nutshell, sort of balances out.
The Ughs, Then Literature Discussion With A Side Of Coffee If You Please
August 25th 2012
Friday August 24th 2012, 7:17 pm
Well, the intention for today was to jump right back into the work program, full steam ahead. But after sleeping in way too long, then sifting through portions of email, having a bowl of cereal, I found myself drifting lazily back into slumber. There is always something about travel, even when easy, I find that I’m burnt out the day after returning. But in this case I chalk it up to having been working basically every day for the last few months, excluding the event planning trip we just took for a couple days. Although, I hate the feeling of lagging, sort of makes me feel like I’m just dragging from being lazy and dull. So tomorrow I’ll be obsessing over the lost productivity of the day. Bleh! Not the most fascinating thing to write about, but there ya go. I suppose its rather appropriately a piss-poor topic considering everything I just said above.
Doldrums
August 24th 2012
Friday August 24th 2012, 12:59 am
The whirlwind planning trip is over, we stretch out on the 15 headed toward LA. It was late afternoon, so for a short time we faced a blinding setting summer sun as we drove into the dust hazed mountains that break the Nevada California border. As it descended over the horizon to greet another part of the Earth across the pacific ocean, the open sky became smoky reds and burnt oranges, rapidly receding to a hint of green before transforming to deep royal blues. We drove along grooving to Lana Del Rey, sighting packs of burros grazing on dry spindly desert plants. As dusk settled in further the terrain became that beckoning mysteriousness that I love so much about the desert, fields of silhouetted Joshua Trees appeared to dance as we sped past them, like some long forgotten tribal creatures of an alien culture. In the full dark we could see hundreds of scattered red flashing lights running up the slopes outside Mojave, an almost eerie thing, as we’ve never seen that before in all of the many times we’ve made that drive in the night. These long drives always make me introspective, thinking about how good a trip it was, even though extremely busy with arrangement making. However, we tend to come away feeling a bit sad, Las Vegas is our other home. One that we don’t get to see often enough, same could be said for the people we love there. We’re missing them already.
Desert Leaving
August 23rd 2012
Thursday August 23rd 2012, 12:39 am
With most of the arduous decisions having been made over the last couple days, it was only things better left to Wendy and her friend Heather, to have their day together. Leaving me to ponder simpler things that I enjoy, such as the fact if I’m having toast, whether it be wheat or sourdough or any other choice I’ve got to have peanut butter on it, always a disappointment without, just isn’t toast to me without my peanut butter. A bit silly and mundane I know, but sometimes you just have to sit and relish something as plain as the joys of peanut butter, simple as that, no arguing it. I can’t help but to really take in these sorts of ordinary things these days. I’ve come to understand the finer things in life in my humble opinion are really simple ones, that are there every day, things easily taken for granted but shouldn’t be… alright then. Now it was off to visit Ralph at Alternate Reality Comics for a bit with Heather’s husband, my dear friend Scott. Ooh what eye and brain candy can be found at that shop! Around every corner and end-cap sat just such amazing tempting things, certainly I could buy out the place and be giddy with comics overdose and not a complaint in world. Settled on some regular items, and picked up omnibus collections of old Indiana Jones comics, happiness. I’m a bit of a sucker for older pulpy stuff. Got to play being geek/nerd/fan while having conversations about this and that, what I may be reading right now versus what Scott is into, before turning our focus onto story creation for ourselves, a game plan and plot breakdown for something to happen later, all while between intermittent chaos of zippy bouncy child dramas that would zoom past in the house at breakneck speeds. It amazed me Scott could keep a straight thought in his head. Yeah, all kinda low-key today, no excitement of life changing events or having to think of how to handle the art for a page, or whatever else that I might find to be intense, but ya know, that is just fine. Sometimes thats what I deeply need to reset myself.
A Simple Ordinarily Perfect Day
August 22nd 2012
Tuesday August 21st 2012, 11:49 pm
More planning plans. Scrumptiously put into a sweet haze of cake tasting luxuriousness. Butter and Bavarian creams, Strawberry filling perfect for it’s slight tartness, chocolate caramel ganache that melts your mind, and the absolute most moist cake texture, adding up to an experience unprecedented. And usually I hate frostings of any kind, but this was unbelievably impressive. I don’t think I’ve ever sampled anything so delectably perfect. Then shifting to a floral thought process as we sift through shades of red, purples, and blues, all exotically and artfully presented in a never-ending stream of simply gorgeous ideas. Shifting again to a meal overloaded with tangy tomato sauces and spicy meats over entirely too much pasta, all the sensations tickling the tongue delightfully creating that familiar sigh of oh so good, then accented with coffee and cream. Sharing the day with friends that really are more like family, chosen family. Joyful conversations of humor and the notion of considering the idea of being a tattoo artist someday. Satisfied with a full long day we step out from the restaurant to be greeted by bold gusts of wind, lightning and thunder, mixing with the warmest of summer desert rains pouring down, the mist of it gently pelting our faces.
Menagerie Of Goodness
August 21st 2012
Monday August 20th 2012, 11:25 pm
Plans. Planning plans. Ceremonials. Exploration of decisions for an important event marking and important time in our lives. Taking in the lush details of the location, atmospheric, sophisticated, but not stuffy and uptight. There are blacks and golds and reds, all of a baroque nature with a slight sense of gothic drama and risque imagery that suits our off kilter tastes. It’ll be entertaining and something to remember boldly. Reinventing our union just for ourselves and no one else, though others will be there to join us, it truly will be really for us alone. An idea we’ve desired for twenty years.
Looking Toward A Wedding We’ve Always Wanted But Never Really Had
August 20th 2012
Monday August 20th 2012, 11:06 am
At this fun link below, DC has posted on their site a very flattering brief article about my work, very nice of them…
DC Article
But what I find most interesting is in the comments section this debate that was immediately raised, that Batwoman and some of my other projects being difficult to read as digital downloads for an eReader device. So here is my two cents about comics for these types of devices. I find comics that are for this format to be perfectly fine, but I also feel I shouldn’t have to alter what I do specifically to accommodate this relatively new technology format, especially because its evolution most likely is far from done. My approach to storytelling is specifically something I’m interested in as an artist exploring how to visually tell a story. I prefer to experiment with it all, and right now eReaders are designed for conformity for the most part, for the basic traditional page, which is usually fine. But there are plenty of other comics creators besides myself that defy this traditional expectation. As artists we should not be expected to conform something we’ve been long doing well before eReaders ever existed. Comics are more than doing things in expected ways, thats part of the beauty of our medium, in my opinion, and it may be considered a bit stale, but I really don’t care, is that eReader technology needs to catch up to us, to the creators, who like myself have been experimenting with comics for well over a decade.
Well there ya have it. Yes, my view may be considered out of date, but honestly, if an artist can’t fully express themselves as they wish to because of tech formats, then its technology that really should adapt, and ya know, most likely it will. The eReader experience is wanting to duplicate the “real” reading experience as much as possible, so I believe we will see a time not far down the road where we’ll have devices that can accommodate a more wide range of our medium’s perspectives.
Monday August 20th 2012, 2:27 am
Long hours, the grayness of dusk as the sun goes to sleep, hitting my senses a bit dreamily. The yellow and white stripes skim the road passing into another existence of what is left behind, but stretching before us into a palpable black pitch, a desert summer night, beckoning to the mysteries that lay beyond the shadows of bleached out dry plants along the graveled shoulders as our high beams discreetly flicker upon them before they, too, vanish behind us. Then in a suddenness we have red lights brightening, as all of the already weary travelers come to a dead stop in the middle of what feels like an endless void. There is only us and what lives within the radius of our unmoving lights, nothing else matters right now. We sit and wait, the Beatles’ I Am The Walrus mesmerizingly reaches down into our ears from some distant satellite, and its 1am on a highway somewhere that is supposed to be California. Off in the distance heavy clouds skirt the horizon catching golden light from an unseen moon that hides it’s face behind the curtain of a building storm. As we sit and wait for clear signs of movement, we’re treated to a dramatic show of electrical natural might, flashes of white hot brilliance flutter through the sky like the finale of a fireworks display on the fourth of July. Impressive and bold as it takes over the vastness of the sky, its like entering another time and space.
Desert Night Driving
August 19th 2012
Sunday August 19th 2012, 12:20 am
A bit overwhelmed and deluded from the hammering in my head. Slamming away incessantly, making it difficult to keep a coherent momentum of thought. Sometimes when I get like this, I have a swimming effect, or rather like I’m floating and bobbing on a wavy ocean surface while my brain oozes out and drifts away on the swirling bubbly current while I grasp for it aimlessly sloshing through the thick sea, trying not to suffer any more lack of slipping intelligence. Never much successful.
Head…Aches, Yet Again
August 18th 2012
Friday August 17th 2012, 9:05 pm
Shifting through mindsets, warping perceptions of time, displacing things to be done, jumbled together, and so too does the story as it moves forward in a spiraling sort of pattern. Decisions come rapidly, gut induced in defiance of the preconceived notion of what is expected, of what was the plan as I’m typing away, feeding a different side of my brain to develop a new chapter. Then shifting again into a visual component of the same thing, but taking place in a different moment of the long form tale in front of me, a different set of pages, a different chapter. It all feels a little psychedelic.
A Mixed Day Of…Interweaving
August 17th 2012
Thursday August 16th 2012, 11:07 pm
Tired, just plain burnt. Scratched up with black and grey, the lines transforming into feathered wings stretching outward gracefully. Gently descending doves about to greet the still forming rising serpent that coils around in it’s glorious earthy tones of reds, blues and greens. A story unfolding as the symbol is heatedly coming further into reality.
The Next Phase Of My Sleeve Tat Is In Full Swing
August 16th 2012
Wednesday August 15th 2012, 10:45 pm
Both having wit and genuinely interesting personalities, full of that endless energy that comes with childhood, each having broad grins, dark hair, and eyes that show an inner intelligence seemingly well beyond their years. Not surprising considering our good friends are their thoughtfully smart parents. After batting around a red balloon for ten minutes with the girls upon our arrival to their house, we settled down with our friends and those two charming daughters. Zarah, being the oldest, interested in telling stories about their numerous black and white cats and the funny things they do, just too cute. And the younger, Xandra, a little more fidgety and bouncy, decides its time to be creative, pulling out a small unassuming little pink heart shaped piece of paper containing a wonderfully bizarre idea. Little penciled squiggles of what appears to be oddly shaped interlocking ovals with small stubby appendages of something that apparently stands on four legs. On one side, instead of an oval, its more accurately a round circle giving the impression of where a head would be. Rising off the creature’s long back are what at first looks like two flags, each waving in a different direction. One has a black circle and the other a larger black circle. When asked if these were indeed flags, the spry little rambunctious girl says giddily with her smiling round face, and in a manner suggesting we should understand this already, that “No, they’re both guns. One shoots giant rockets and the other shoots more guns!” She laughingly and affectionately refers to it all as a “Steampunk Mouse”. Zarah quickly adding that the gun that shoots guns, that those guns in turn shoot more guns with each new gun smaller than the last. There is adoringly twisted little genius minds at work in their heads for certain. How can you not love that spark of joyful unfiltered creation.
The Artful Mind Bending Imagination Of Children
August 15th 2012
Tuesday August 14th 2012, 9:38 pm
Bold and powerfully expressive. The brush strokes give the illusion of coming to life before my very eyes. Fluidity at it’s finest, building a lush tapestry but yet of a toothy texture. The black shapes created are absolutely in perfect composition to what needs to be conveyed. Somehow, whatever was being illustrated always seems to be beautifully suited to the techniques, defiant of any genre expectations. Be it Fantasy, Mystery, War Stories, Drama, Superheroes, it doesn’t matter, he made the stories his, to dictate the visual rules regardless of stereotyped content. No easy feat to pull off, this is a sign of a true master.
Honoring By Perusing The Comics Of Joe Kubert
August 14th 2012
Monday August 13th 2012, 9:35 pm
Hope you guys enjoy it. My copy here had a bit of printing problems, but overall its things only I probably will notice
😉
Monday August 13th 2012, 8:42 pm
“March. March. We’re marching along. The world is a very grand place, we’re marching along. Its awfully hot out today, marching along. Hmm… whats this giant wall of bright green that blocks our path? Its cut off our caravan, our good neighbors are either on the other side or crushed by this chugging thing. It sounds like booming rushing from inside. And it curves outward toward us, stretches farther than we can see to either direction, past the stalks and blooms it goes so far. Ahh!! Run! Scatter! The gushing is coming, the gushing is coming!”
Segmented and frail looking, the frailty a deception of our perception. A deep dark brown that from my vantage appears to be black until a much much closer inspection. I’m sure that my prodding is an annoyance, but they keep marching along the rubbery green tube that must seem like a perfect highway that they can march along crossing the yard, bypassing any of the pebbles that must seem as boulders, and the nooks and crannies of the dirt that must seem like tiring hills or cratered valleys. The fount from the nozzle must be like a deluge, something to fear as it creates the equivalent of a massive tidal wave flood of drowning death across the parched land. I really don’t care much about them though, only that they keep getting onto my arm, tickling the hairs. I know they are just trying to escape the onslaught that I bring to the world as I go about my very mundane task. Little tidbits is what they are, march, march, marching along.
Watering The Garden, To The Detriment Of Ants
August 13th 2012
Sunday August 12th 2012, 7:34 pm
Well, I knew something was off about today, I could feel it in the air. Just heard the saddest news. Joe Kubert has passed away, he was only 85. This really is horrible, and my heart goes out to the Kubert family. I never had the luxury of meeting him, though I certainly would have loved that. I came to Kubert appreciation a little late in the game. Surprisingly, because I had been exposed to so many great variety of artists from his era before. There was something I just wasn’t getting about his work whenever I encountered it. But there was damn good reason others wanting to learn turned to what he had to offer, why he started a school for our beloved craft. Wasn’t until I’d become a more educated seasoned artist myself that I truly understood the genius of what his work is. Not was, but is, because it will remain a vital part of my understanding of good art for as long I live, it will always be fresh and inspiring, probably well past my life, uplifting others.
Sunday August 12th 2012, 7:22 pm
When fretting over my lines on a single square quarter inch of a characters arm.
When I stare obsessively at a page of my art trying to determine whats wrong with it.
When I get nervous over how I draw rocks on the ground.
When being upset half a day over a bad print job, which really is out of my control.
When I’m never satisfied with the level of rendering complexity in my grey tone work.
Just to name a few.
How Do I Know I’ve Got A Perfectionism Complex?
August 12th 2012
Saturday August 11th 2012, 7:07 pm
Mimicking old seventies bleeps, blops, blips, electro whistles, and the waning circular sounds of a keyboard organ. Funky reverb of unexpected strange conversations that loosely lead to the telling of a story wrapped in the cheesy science fiction of a bygone era. Of pulpy interplanetary travels and loopy notions of time travel, reminding of the much much older Doctor Who shows that I love. This all falls between charges of retro rock’n’roll psychedelia, pumped up enough to get you motivated to flow along with the trippy ride of the whole album. I can’t help but like the weirdness of it all. An unsurprising effect considering who runs the program is one of the lovingly more oddball members of The Damned.
Listening To The Doctor Spacetoad Experience (featuring Captain Sensible)
August 11th 2012