Revising Stay!

It's interesting to revisit the same thing six months later. This was me six-eight months ago. This new illustration is now. I'm glad where it's going.

Ze Birds Ze Birds!

The first illustration started with me thinking about my girlfriend's grandfather who was a very neat person. He traveled the world extensively and has shown my girlfriend lots of wonders while she was growing up. This is a homage to the man that made my girlfriend who she is today. From that, I drew more birds.

Spaghetti

This looked neat I thought

Dino dancing

They're not dancing in one of the images, but they sure look like having a good time!

More Buttons in watercolor

I like the drawing a lot. In pen, brush, watercolor.

More Buttons

I think at some point very soon, I will start delving into writing comic stories more about Buttons or something else. I have been itching to working in color.

The Pioneer of Pterosauric Aviation

That'd make a GREAT! children's book title.

Dino Awesomeness!

When I was a kid, I read these dinosaur books that I loved reading over and over again. Each book focused on a certain dinosaur and had many colorful illustrations each page. I loved the bright colors and the drawings. I learned about brontosauruses, tyrannosauruses, stegosauruses, and triceratops. I especially loved brontosauruses. In that book, I remember to this day, there was fabled to be a HUGE sauropod called an ultrasaurus that was rumored to be the largest dinosaur ever.

Fast-forward to today. As of now, I have this idea for a picture book that centers around a pterodactyl learning to fly and early flying machines. To prepare for this picture book, I had to start doing research on dinosaurs. It was like being a kid again. I have forgotten how cool they were. Apparently too, since those childhood books of yesteryear to today, a lot about the understanding of dinosaurs has changed. These are the top facts which surprised me when I researched:

1. Pterosaurs (pterodactyls and other flying thingies) are not considered dinosaurs. Only related.
2. Though many dinosaurs died off, some saurischians were considered to evolve into birds. Those closest related to them were raptors and t-rexes. An archaeoptyrx is considered a link between the two.
3. Dinosaurs could have possibly had fur and/or hair. Most likely to have hair were smaller dinosaurs that needed insulation to keep them warm during the seasons.
4. Lots of scientists agree that dinosaurs were warm blooded or a stage of between cold and warm blooded animals. Though the climate was considered much warmer during the Mesozoic Era, the amount of energy needed to move and be agile for dinosaurs requires warmer blood.
5. The ultrasaurus of my childhood was an incomplete skeleton found in Utah and is no longer considered the largest dinosaur ever. Rather, it was considered a large specimen of a brachiosaurus. The largest considered though was found in Argentina called an argetinosaurus believing to weigh at 100 tons (only a partial skeleton was found though).

Now some drawings. Note: I know that ankylosauruses are much bigger than raptors. I wanted to use the entire page.

Political Cartoon for the Day

I like how it came out.

Boys Love Too!

There's a recurring theme in my work for a misbehaving brat that thwarts authority and parenting. This little kid I think is the opposite of me for he has "joie de vivre." He is spontaneity, the id to my ego. It is perhaps in the rattlings of my mind I do find a voice that wants to continuously life to the fullest and/or rebel against constraints. For one reason or another, I identify myself not to be this little kid, but the opposite. Stolid, calm, subdued. I think somewhere in the middle of this dichotomy falls who I really am.

I wrote a new story focusing more on the kind of love that boys know best using this boy as a vehicle. How I picture it, all the writing and the colors of the picture book would be quite dainty, elegant, girly, and VERY PINK. I figured it's time to make a pink book that boys will read. That's my aim at least.

New Comic

Just click on it to view it bigger. Hooray.

Buttons is a Scaredy Cat

A preview of many many new comics coming soon! I love how the watercolor came out too. Shazam!

More on Stay!

A couple color illustrations on Stay! I also have been sketching a lot for the story. The sketches are almost done!

New Political Cartoons.

It's been a while since I have posted cartoons or sketches. I've been keeping pretty busy.

Osama bin Laid in the bottom of the ocean!

I like my pun. The political cartoon I did for the occasion.

 

More on Stay and a chinese dragon!

Where the Wild Things Went

I think that if Maurice Sendak continued that story about the Wild Things, they'd be captured and taken into captivity and brought back to the real world where they were subjugated to the demands of more children. Then they'd have to do things like swimming and playing baseball. Or so I reimagined in a sketch.

More about that dog and his master

So I put them in a city setting more or less. I've recently took photos of my surroundings seeing how I haven't looked outside my window for inspiration. It's helping me give a setting and grounding for my picture book idea called "Stay."

Bad Timing

I did not mean to make light of the recent storm that struck the south. Sometimes, one can have the worst luck with something topical. I did this cartoon only yesterday, and overnight, more storms hit the deep south taking a couple hundred lives with it. I originally did it to point out a record month of April of tornadoes and severe weather that until recently, has not been taking lives. Henceforth, I told Pat Biancanello of Smithtown Matters not to put it up online.

Barring the recent events, I did like the execution. Also, more Gaddafi and al Assad.

Introducing the gouache (globby paint)

This drawing started out wrong. I inked it, wetted it, and started putting down Prussian blue watercolor. I hated it. Over the Easter weekend, I went home and did no drawings or art. Played a lot of guitar. I then brought back some gouache. Looking at the piece, I decided to put down some gouache and it saved the drawing. Huzzah!

And Then some pen and ink doodles

Then on the opposite end of things, I've been making random pen and ink doodles. Nothing special, but a couple came out neato. I drew a couple more of the man being followed by his dog. I especially like the lawyer one. It makes the boldest statement.

Prince Valiant and some Flash Gordon

This past month of April has been a very dry spell for me creatively. Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with new ideas for picture books, comics, or random illustrations. Nothing seems to be appealing to me.

While a part of me says to step back and take a couple weeks off, another part of me wants to work through it. In the meantime, I've been redrawing some Prince Valiant comics from the late 30's. Hal Foster's rendering are beautiful and unmatched by anyone on the comics pages save a couple others. Being classically trained as an illustrator from the Brandywine school, Foster introduced fine rendering to the comics page and beautiful storytelling. Reading one of the Fantagraphics introductions, Mark Schulz points out that although he renders realistically, his black and white art work is still very abstract, and the distance between "Prince Valiant" and "Peanuts" in terms of art is a very minute one. It's then the brain that makes the jump from abstraction to representation which is neat to me.

Anyhow, I've also been making myself do more reference work. A couple of these illustrations were done with the aid of a photograph that I've taken. A very good habit to get into especially if realistic rendering or foreshortening comes into play. Very good practice.

House

Some pen and ink work. The first I drew a house, but then I drew the guy in a car. My homage to Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac I suppose. The next one is fun too. Actually both drawings have angry people in it.

Pine Tree

Hiding behind a pine tree

New Cartoon

This didn't go up yet on Smithtown Matters, but I like the drawing.

What I'm working on.

These illustrations are part of a project that I've been working on with a very friendly person with a PhD in psychology. Basically, the project is illustrating a number of conflict resolutions and situations through the medium of comics. I instantly loved working on this project since it's gives me a chance to flex my comics muscles and do some different things that I would normally not do. I've been drawing Beetle Bailey, Blondie, and then my own interpretation of the situation in how I see fit! These couple shown is my more realistic side. Being a huge fan of Frank Cho, Al Williamson, and other classic illustrators, I worked on making these pieces as clean as possible. I like how they came out.

Ocean Side

As Michelle told me, that dog looks like Doug from Up.