Blog
Friday November 30th 2012, 10:27 pm
Crunching, cracking, warped muscles. An aggravated angry back has made me quite tired and ornery. Its put my mind into a festering position of damn it all. Couldn’t work a full day because of it, pain reliever didn’t really help much. My face humorously existing with a perpetual grimacing brow. So I’ve been laying down with a heating pad on full blast, but for some strange reason each heating cycle just makes my stomach twist up in knots. Apparently its my day for my body to say “fuck off already”.
Just A Bitch Session
November 30th 2012
Thursday November 29th 2012, 11:53 pm
I’m a bit giddy right now, and also slightly trepidatious in that its a crucial time for a particular story point to be brought into full play within the current arc. A representation of rebirth, reinvigorating life with fundamental change, to elevate a much loved hero into something new. There comes a certain kind of responsibility and caution in recreating what people know and love, but an excitement as well. Excitement in hopes that where we wish to take things will also excite the reader as much as ourselves, breathing fire into the soul of a long cherished character. But also a bit nervous to finally be at the point in the story where the big moment is ready to be illustrated. It all starts tomorrow. Releasing from my mind that first wisp of light and dark, sketching out the first lines and shapes, that first burst of action, setting down the path to catharsis. Leaping forward to finally overcome all fears and embrace the challenges ahead, seizing the moment that changes what can be expected. And in the process hopefully imbuing enough essence for a long adventurous future.
Embers In The Ashes
Wednesday November 28th 2012, 10:49 pm
Vileness. Abhorrent depictions of bestial brutality, most of it through twisted monstrous expressions stretching over a face of a primal grotesque ogre with a giant alien hook in place of a hand. Then there is the Deaths Head symbolized within the character of a man with invisible flesh. The things of nightmares. There is something inherently wrong with this picture, of how much I tend to find myself creepily enthused by illustrating the horrific. Even though I know deep down that its quite disturbing, there is an attraction to it. I’m unsure if it comes from the challenge it brings to the imagination, or possibly its human nature to be fascinated by the absurd regardless of which extremes get portrayed. I mean if I were to see the same images live and vividly real on the evening news, it would make me want to vomit. So its strangely alluring how different it all becomes when writing or illustrating, it tickles the mind quite captivatingly. And obviously I’m not the only person to feel this, considering how much of these types of images live within so many stories told from various cultures and mediums through artistic history. But it balances out by the equal amounts of beauty, and honest love and compassion that also exists within tales born from the human mind and heart. Both the horrific and the beautiful trigger similar emotional and subliminal sensations whether we wish to admit that or not.
Creating Mean
November 28th 2012
Wednesday November 28th 2012, 1:28 pm
I did an interview by phone last week about my work on The Sword album cover and Batwoman. Below is the link to part one.
Dig Boston Interview
Tuesday November 27th 2012, 11:16 pm
Twitch, twitchy, twitching. Little spasms moving through my body. My head gets spastic, throbs and pulses, waves of vise pressure around my skull. My temperament goes hazy, thoughts get unclear, my vision sits a bit sideways and dislikes the idea of focusing, putting off equilibrium. My nerves literally feel as if they want to leap from my skin and do a hyper dance while I ooze away. I can’t stand this sensation, it makes me feel insane. One of those days of systematic overdrive meltdown as one of my episodes goes into action. This time with brief bouts of exhaust smells again. Certainly makes it a bit difficult to draw as the day requires. Fortunately the majority of the problems set in toward late afternoon.
The Shaking
November 27th 2012
Tuesday November 27th 2012, 2:20 am
Like a dark shimmering jewel in it’s enticing quality. An even pulse, deep. With a subtle stir and a mix of creaminess releasing a savory air, the perfect heady liquid warmth nestles and ripples within the ceramic between my hands. The delicate heat penetrates well into the tightened muscles of my fingers, invigoratingly easing. I could do this forever, this gentle grip over dripped comforting brew. And with a sigh of softening demeanor, I sip.
Late Coffee Eve
November 26th 2012
Monday November 26th 2012, 2:09 am
Lifting up the cool cannister, then angled, and a “pfffft”. Layering puffs of white billowy yearnings over the golden tans. Raising up pronged steel followed by a swift smooth motion diving downward, in. Scooping and a slight twirl reveals glistening simple saucy desire, a wafting of beckoning aroma. Tiny flecks lightly crumble away from the carved out suppleness elevating through the small distance of air to meet a final destiny, while simultaneously elevating anticipation of the first fruitful sweet and tart burst glide across my tongue. Lets do that again, shall we? Until every last scrumptious morsel has been eagerly taken.
The Life Of Apple Pie
November 2012
Sunday November 25th 2012, 1:13 am
Some things just have to be done in waves. Too much leftovers from cooking a feast, so the house becomes Thanksgiving Holiday 3.0. with more endearing company, some that couldn’t make it on the first wave. But all of the good eats causing the extended grogginess I always succumb to every year. Regardless of the inevitable brain-fuzz-bliss-out, I love being able to just focus on people, our friends, letting the problems of work slip away into a haze, we don’t get that enough around here. As I’ve been doing this blog I find it interesting that for times like these I feel a lot of sentimentality but really don’t feel like putting that into words, unlike other points of this year long exploit. There is no desire to be overly insightful, but rather just be happy in the fact of the event weekend itself. I find gratification in the simplicity of this.
Short And Sweet Two
November 24th 2012
Friday November 23rd 2012, 8:47 pm
Ahhhh… With a physical and mental sigh, there is only the inevitable slow motion day after T-day coma-bliss from a well orchestrated holiday feast-fest, and all that remains are thoughts of the company of good friends, sleep, and the expected traditional leftovers meal.
Short And Sweet
November 23rd 2012
Friday November 23rd 2012, 3:04 am
Bloggity, gobblity gobble, we all gobble, gobble. Gobble it up, piles of savory oven roasted bird, and luscious smoked ham. Gobbling swirls of smooth garlic mashed red potatoes. Gobble up shovels of mixed butter vegetables. Coma inducing heavenly mac’n’cheese… oh… my… god… gob… gobble GOBBLE it all up. So damn good one serving just isn’t enough, the second feast wave sets in….
Now practically gobbled out, not another bite… But then there is still the pies, oh yes the pies.
So Much Good Eats Its To Die For
November 22nd 2012
Wednesday November 21st 2012, 10:59 pm
A visage chiseled without losing the idea of the feminine, a personality big and yet inviting. A stature that is bold, tall, and uniquely glorious. If I were to ever have a say over who should be cast in the role of Wonder Woman, it would have to be our amazingly cool rock and roll friend who is here for the Thanksgiving holiday.
The One And Only Jenn Neal, aka Jennocide
November 21st 2012
Wednesday November 21st 2012, 1:38 am
In my ship floating through the orbit, mesmerized by the blinding white, I can’t help but to gaze upon the exquisite details slowly evaporating before me. The twin moons losing substance, losing solidity, as they are slowly awash in the radiance of the trespassing wave effect of The White Out. My heart sickens as the world below me also starts to fizzle and sparkle and gleam in crackling beauty, knowing that this enrapturing visage is truly only a horror with a pretty facade. It is death. No it is worse than that, it is nothingness, as if existence is being swallowed up into a dissipation of remembrance.
My wits regain some clarity. I have a chance still. Not to undue the damage or reverse the loss of my home, but to at the very least attempt to survive. And if I can do so, then seek vengeance against the death bringer, Mister Time. With a rapid surge of adrenaline I frantically hit at the control panel, grab the stick, spin the craft around as quickly as it can. The nose facing out into the stars, they beckon mockingly. And then a force setting me deep within the thickness of my cockpit seat, and I’m thrust at lightning speed out to another destiny.
My ship is reaching maximum velocity, and I can see from the corners of my sight twinges and ebbs of the White Out wave at the edges of my sides. I refuse to look, my eyes wide and unblinking into soreness, tears begin run from them. That if I blink, the very stretches of space before me would no longer be there with the rise of my lids. I refuse to even glance at the whiteness approaching and racing beside me, as if I were to do so I’d instantaneously forget my self, that all of who I am would flash away, that even my ghost could not be left with the vanishing of my body. Then my mind seems to take on a numbness, everything is shaking down to my very bones. A rattling inside my skull wanting break it apart from within, bursting out with brain-matter and blood, before blinking away in cascade of sparkles and that terrible white. The whiteness… has become engulfing, flooding my vision, I am blind. No more ship, no more beckoning stars. No universe to find a dream in. Just unbearable horrible whiteness. Whiteness. White… White… Wh..ii…tt…e…..
…e…..
………………….. ……… …… …
… M… mm… My….My eyes…
…are… heavy… I’m fighting. My eyes are fighting. They struggle like eternity is a struggle. But at last they creak… and crack… opening. And again… all I see is white. But the numbness is dying away now. My head, it rests upon a hard surface. I blink, smears of distortions. I blink again. Now the white has become something else, I feel tilted, and the white runs away from me along a flat plane.
Clarity steps in. The flatness white stops just a foot away giving way warm earthy wood tones all slightly full of discrepancy, scuffs and scratches, stains and grainy textures. I slowly lift my drifting head, my jaw is slack and sore, it cracks and pops with each subtle movement. As I rise up, the flatness of white shifts a little, pulling my attention to it’s surface. Strokes of black shapes and lines dance across, revealing subliminally instant recognition of an epic mythology, there is a story here.
Then I remember again. Yes, I remember, this is me. I’m telling this story, its alive with words and pictures, but as I look down at it I can see its not done, parts of it incomplete. There is an ending somewhere waiting for an illustration to reach it’s conclusion. I slowly glance toward the wall in front of me, where steel grey holds a counting digital screen. The clock is quickly ticking upward. Time is running short. Can I do this? Can I overcome this battle with Time. Is there enough of it? In my heart I hold out hope. But I fear of an unforeseen disaster sweeping in, preventing me from reaching the end of this war unscathed.
Mister Time Is Counting On It
November 20th 2012
Tuesday November 20th 2012, 12:50 am
Haggard. There is no other word for what I am right now. Its the physical remnants from experiences of the last few days. Stressful work crises that are too lengthy to go into right now. But there were two highly charged ones, both of equal weight but for different reasons, both personally important to me. Although only two, they’ve emotionally wracked my mind so harshly that my very body is fatigued from the intensity of the situations. It wouldn’t be so bad if they each didn’t follow each other so closely, a little breather of sanity between them. However, on a brighter side they seem to have been averted… for now. We’ll have to wait and see just how true that is, which takes a different kind of energy itself. But there is nothing left in me, I need to regroup, reset. I truly despise feeling this way. It saps some of the joy from my work. And so here I am, haggard from it, with nothing left right now but this melancholy cryptic blog. Like I was saying, things have the appearance of having worked out, so it wouldn’t sit right to discuss the problem with any details. If it all holds true, then possibly I’ll never have to say anything about it again.
In Need Of A Deeper Rest Beyond Just Sleep
November 19th 2012
Monday November 19th 2012, 3:18 am
Twisted up into knots and feeling a bit sliding sideways. Insides turned out into visions of blood red trapped in a grey gloom of warped claustrophobic delirium. A sickness rooted into vivid dimensions of sputtering rotten spasms of psychosis. It threatens, it disturbs. Utterly creepy, nerve twitching, it almost smells, and leaves a putrid flavor within my mind. Coming away from it needing to clear my head, it makes my stomach hurt. It mesmerizes in its collision of nightmare genres, the absurd juxtapositions adding to the topsy-turvy equilibrium destroying effect, using commonly known horrific tropes that really are quite generic. But through the genius mashing of them into off kilter editing with a high surreal bent somehow sets a new stage, one that seeps deep down into the subconscious primal brain triggering that icky lingering sensation. I’m of course talking about American Horror Story: Asylum. Gripping thoughts into haunted irrationality. But yet, there isn’t enough, its so good I crave more of it’s drug, but I can only handle tapping that vein in small doses.
A Night Of Gruesome
November 18th 2012
Sunday November 18th 2012, 12:13 am
Today has been pretty nuts, all over the place, leaving me reeling and disjointed. Slamming my head into pieces. Blasting wind and rain, feels a bit metaphoric for the chaos of the day. Trying to resolve website problems, good art sale, discovering the backyard fence is broken and that I can’t fix it properly because the drill isn’t charged, a major unresolved work crisis that I’m trying not to freak the fuck out over, surprisingly finishing a first draft of a script, catching up conversation with Trevor McCarthy about upcoming stories, thinking up a cool idea for the next two pages I have to draw… I feel like there’s something else I’m missing. Can’t think of it right now, my mind is fuzzy, swimming, and my feet are distractingly cold regardless of socks and slippers. So no interesting introspective musings to flesh out here for the blog, just a whirlwind.
This Was Saturday
November 17th 2012
Saturday November 17th 2012, 1:46 pm
The pages are now up in the store as planned, just roughly 40 minutes late….
Saturday November 17th 2012, 1:28 pm
I’m sure those of you wanting to get going on the new art sale are wondering what is going on, as the new pages should have been up in the store as of noon today pacific. We’re having some sort of internal website problems and are working on it now. Hopefully pages will go up very shortly.
Please keep checking in, and sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.
Saturday November 17th 2012, 3:18 am
Staring, blinking, staring some more. Blankly my eyes canvass across brightness in front of me. Nothing is there. Or is it? Its certainly there, it must be, just not here. Obliviousness, but then I catch that my gaze has drifted downward to the little plastic push tabs in front of me. Objects scattered, disarray around, as my hands just sit there unmoving, except for the occasional involuntary twitch of slightly curled fingers awaiting orders from my mind to engage. But to engage what? There is nothing here. Bumps in my thoughts, hiccups of connections. I look up again into whiteness, it’s fraught with unspoken peril. It taunts, it haunts. Then almost subliminally something occurs, sparks of phrases trickle into life slowly ebbing from the darkness that is the tube-link to the more colorfully profound Ideaspace. The download sputters into motion slowly, tweaks and flickers, specs of information floating along unevenly. But within a few moments the rhythms of creation smooth out, the flow equalizing into consistency. And I find myself typing sporadically, almost spontaneously, voraciously. This what its like for me every time I start the very beginning of a first draft script.
Writing Fits
November 16th 2012
Friday November 16th 2012, 3:22 am
Devilish little obsessions developing in my hands. Flinging tiny feathery things like digital grenades. They sail across as pops of yellow, red, and blue. Lobbing them through a pastel manufactured sky at fat cutesy bright green piggies, their pleading eyes blinking at me sporadically in fears of going kablooy in small puffy bursts of dust from collapsing structural damage inflicted to their meager safe havens of pixeled wood, stone, and ice. But my own simplistic destructive desires evilly ignore their faux give-me-mercy gazes. I know I’m a late comer to this silly seductive game, but its so damn addicting this week.
Angry Birds On My Pocket Voodoo Machine
November 15th 2012
Thursday November 15th 2012, 2:54 am
The enormity of this vile thing is overwhelming, it’s huge body so heavy gravity forces it’s bloated yellowed belly to drag and scape the ground. It’s leathery scaly serpentine plated skin tears and rips across trees and cars and people, not oblivious to the rending and maiming its desire to move causes. There is an eagerness and gleefulness in every twitch and hiss. Sinewy muscles ripple and flex, shrugging off the falling twisted steal and concrete debris from the collapsing structures, a business high-rise here, a steepled church there, it doesn’t matter the purpose the buildings, all of man’s feeble toils of civilization are trampled beneath this behemoths clawed feet. It swivels around revealing multiple heads, multiple horns, rows of gleaming blades for teeth, yellow white piercing eyes of destruction. The Beast Of Babylon, a wake of evil born from recesses of pure imagination and myth brought together, from the dark natures of humanity that we all deny but know in our hearts exist.
A Monstrous Whipping Tail Strikes Gotham
November 14th 2012
Wednesday November 14th 2012, 3:06 am
Standing amongst the scattered shards of translucent black glass, of all that remains of the giant threatening thing are dying purplish embers flickering away from each and every infliction I made with my cutlass. Now after the violent confrontation with that strange creature that seemed to be made of darkened crystals, the icy cobalt hues of the altered reality shifted once again into the blood red pulsing foliage, what I could only describe as a forest made of flesh.
I feel like this was nothing but a fruitless distraction, that somehow I was led astray, to lose precious valuable time. I slog my way back to my vessel. Unload my gear into the storage compartment. I stop to take in one last look of this oddly pumping world, the echoes of thumps and the sounds of bubbling liquids that I can feel just beneath my heels, below the squishy tendril covered surface. The sensation of all this is nauseating, my stomach feels loose. With a deep sigh I wipe the sweat from my brow, I won’t be longing for this sweltering stifling place again.
Now tucked tightly back into the soothing artificial atmosphere of the cockpit, setting a course for orbit, that nagging feeling of losing precious time is once again upon me. I have disdain for myself, so easily falling into this misdirection. I’m sure that it must have been my enemy, Mister Time, who had set this in motion by planting the distress beacon that drew me to that disturbing planet, that is slowly drifting away behind me as I break the outer orbit’s grip. One last quick fuel burst and I’m jettisoned into freeflow.
I’ve set a course for home, I’ve no leads to ascertain the whereabouts of that insidious villain. The thought of failing this mission, failing to stop a universal catastrophe brings me low. I can only hope that once returned that some other pertinent information can be discovered from another ransacking of his offices or estate. I open the control console case, remove the The Zone drug, lifting the greenish liquid filled syringe to my inner arm and inject the contents into my readied vein. Haze takes over, my eyes slip…
After some weeks in stasis mode, I’ve been awakened from my induced slumber, approaching my homeward. Seeing Kashana’s distant marbled surface of lush greens, quiet blues, pillowy white clouds, I realize just how much I’ve missed it all. I yearn to breathe mountain air. I’ve been gone much too long, its been nearly a year, but feels like several.
Then off to the right, from the corner of my eye, a sudden blinding flash pierces the circumference edge. This is not the sun! My god, he’s been here all this time! And by the devils, he’s set off the device. Waves of white light ripple outward. Everything is slowly blinking out, orbiting satellites flicker and vibrate into nothingness. The nearby space station The Star Walk, shatters, then the fragments sparkle away, its almost beautiful if not so horrific, five thousand souls worked there, lived there, entire families gone in an instant. Everything is being erased. And now above me our sister moons start to fade, I can actually see distant twinkles of stars begin to shine through them. At first I’m in shock, I don’t know what to do, its all happening in brilliant slow motion as the first wave creeps toward me. To return now only to be caught in the event horizon of the White Out effect, to have utterly failed by a ludicrous goose chase is… I don’t know… a doom. Is that a ticking and a clicking I hear in back of my skull? Even in this sea of devastation that takes place before me, my heart somehow still holds out hope, that there is still a chance to beat the clock of death.
Mister Time Invokes A Power Akin To God
November 13th 2012
Tuesday November 13th 2012, 1:51 am
Leaning back in my comfy office chair, with a deep sigh my brow furrows uncontrollably. My eyes locked into an almost deadman’s stare, lingering over the white sheet of paper in front of me, half images existing upon it, a story scene in half life right now. Grimacing at the problem, trying to figure out just what isn’t working for me. Sometimes there are days where no matter what is happening in my brain, it doesn’t correlate with what happens as I try to execute the vision I’m having. Execute, an interesting word choice, dual meaning there. Yeah, I sometimes want to execute the page, just kill it. But I end up fighting through it to find the best possible version, malleable solutions, but that version lives no where close by to the version I imagine. A challenge that goes beyond the challenge of creating these images, a challenge to accept its failings.
Work Flow Obstructions
November 12th 2012
Monday November 12th 2012, 2:26 am
Dullness. Drab. Relatively unexciting. Just another ordinary day, ordinary Sunday. Full of work, solving drawing mechanics problems. Full of little adjustments, tweaks to probably relatively unimportant details. But I can’t help myself. Sometimes I just can’t stop from applying just a little more. But beyond this, its a drab mundane day, just nothing itching to be said or discussed or analyzed. Days like these almost feel like they just shouldn’t be, but I guess life becomes this most of the time as routines take over, blending time.
Not Much Of Anything
November 11th 2012
Sunday November 11th 2012, 2:59 am
Late night crisp and nip. An icy edge. It tingles. A coolness. A slight sweetness that defies it’s chilled flood. It spreads onto the bristly surface like a thick glide of a paint daub gently squeezed to a release. Pearled white and softly gleaming, suitably symbolizing the effect its meant to have. Time can be marked by its application. A second’s precursor to the simplicity of a mundane action that resets the day to day into refreshened sighs, sharply stating a revolving routine.
Calling Rembrandt A Toothpaste
November 10th 2012
Saturday November 10th 2012, 1:23 am
Olfactory sensory distortions in hyperdrive. The very atmosphere encroaches around me, feels like its a threat, yet all is clear and clean. I’ve been in this bout for at least five days now. I feel like the air itself is toxic, I rationally know this isn’t the case, but the sensation of unnatural fumes permeates. For the past few years I’ve been experiencing a very strange disorder. Every now and then for no apparent reason that I would know, all I can smell is exhaust fumes, like when sitting behind an old bus stuck in traffic. That icky sensory overload and gut reaction that invisible vile substances are looking to penetrate lungs and choke you out. There is no relief from it and its highly disturbing. When it occurs, I live with it 24/7. The toughest part is that my body is fooled by this sensation and I feel a bit sick, and my lungs want to reject breathing, like my body feels like I’m literally only breathing toxicity. The first few days are the worst, until I get used the sensation, then I can breathe easier. But the smell is constant, there is no subsiding, all I can do is wait it out until the episode ends as mysteriously as it begins. I’ve had this occur in length of at least two weeks or longer an episode. I’ve been meaning to see a neurologist, but haven’t had the time to deal with multiple doctor visits and tests. But once I get the last issue of this current story done, I’ll have the opportunity to take a break and begin the investigation of this problem. Smelling constant exhaust is surprisingly exhausting.
Fume Factory
November 9th 2012