Flashback Art Gallery (1977-1988)

About 8 years ago, I published a "High School Art Flashback" blog post where I scanned in some old art of mine and shared it here.  At the time, I planned to post some more but...life happens.  Well, this past week my aunt mailed me a package returning to me a bunch of drawings I had given her back in 1980.  This got me reflecting on my past again and I grabbed some of those drawings and dug out a few more from the garage and this is the result:  a smorgasbord of quirky and nerdy things I drew ranging from about age 12  (middle school) through to about age 21 (college).  I don't know if anyone but me finds this sort of thing interesting, but I like having these preserved digitally.  I had a bad habit back when I was a child of throwing away any drawing I did that I did not perceive as "perfect."  So, I actually have but a small percentage of all the sketching and drawing that I did during those years.  Most of these survived because other people (mother, grandmother, aunt, etc.) held onto them.

I drew this Dr. Strange piece in 1977.  At the time, I did not really know what I was doing or much about art supplies.  I knew that I liked drawing on "boards" so I tended to scavenge large gift boxes from my mother and cut the bottom out of the boxes and used those as art boards.  This particularly drawing was done with black and colored sharpies and the figure of Dr. Strange was based on a Gene Colan drawing in a comic book.

In 1978, I was pretty well obsessed with Star Trek, Star Wars, Space: 1999, and whatever else I could find that was science-fiction-ey.  These are my attempts at drawing The Enterprise (Star Trek) and the Eagle 1 (Space: 1999).  I'm pleased to see I was attempting to figure out the shading on the Enterprise and I can see that the intricacy of the Eagle 1 design had me completely flummoxed.  I'm not much better even now at visualizing that sort of mechanical design in drawings.

The next piece is a little comic book I drew using a 7/11 Slurpee mascot named "Chuckle Cherry."  I have no memory of drawing this so I cannot explain its existence.  I can barely find anything online that even verifies the existence of "Chuckle Cherry" except I did finally come across this vintage photo someone posted online of an inflatable version of him that was apparently a part of the marketing at that time.

All I can really say in my defense is I must have really loved Cherry Slurpees that year.

  

Jump to circa 1980 and the above pencil drawing of a cat is one I did of our cat, "Darth Vader," while he slept on my pillow on my bed.  The Donald Duck drawing is one I'm pretty sure I traced using carbon paper, but I cannot remember actually drawing this so I cannot say for certain.  It's a mish-mash of sharpies and water-based markers though.  This is the cover I was copying (or maybe tracing).

I basically spent a lot of my time just drawing characters who had a look that I liked.  Baron Karza, the villain of the Micronauts toy line and the comic book, was one such character.  I'm pretty sure this drawing is my attempt at copying a panel by Micronauts artist Michael Golden.

Continuing my obsession with favorite characters, I was also beginning to get into specific artists.  The Wolverine drawing is copied from an issue of The Uncanny X-Men set in the Savage Land and drawn by John Byrne and Terry Austin.  If I remember right, it was Wolvie being thrown into the air by Colossus?  The Thing and the Hulk was me just copying the little faces that Marvel used in the corner boxes of their comics at that time.  I'm fairly certain that my drawing of The Wasp was riffing on her pose on this Avengers cover but wearing a costume she had on in a different issue that I liked.  It's funny looking back on it because the elements of this very basic costume are all stylistic design elements (wizard collar, puffy sleeves, sash, buccaneer boots) I continue to like to this day and have used in my own super-hero costume designs.

My first exposure to The Doom Patrol was with their 1970s version.  Above is my drawing based on artist Joe Staton's redesigned/updated character design for Robotman.  The other drawing is my attempt at a dramatic image of Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk.

Some cartooning from that time period.  A drawing of Harvey Comics' Hot Stuff, the Little Devil, cartoonist Dik Browne's Hagar the Horrible, and a gag I thought up of poor Mickey Mouse running for his life from a hungry eagle.

In 1982, DC Comics' Swamp Thing was turned into a movie and they relaunched his comic book as Saga of the Swamp Thing.  I was into all things Swamp Thing so, of course, I did a drawing of the character in an attempt to imagine him in my own unsettled "style."

Another odd compulsion in me my whole life is getting on these kicks where I would do exhaustive series of character drawings based on a gag.  For example, in elementary school on into early middle school I would obsessively draw sharks and dolphins dressed out in Marvel super-hero costumes.  In my young mind, the "men" were the sharks and the "women" were the dolphins.  Well, the next phase in that type of compulsive drawing behavior was this desire to play around with the simplistic image of Pac-Man and re-imagine a world of stock characters who were essentially human except they had Pac-Man faces and I would give them names that were some sort of Pac-Man puns.  Yes, it makes no sense, but it became some sort of creative challenge to see how many variations I could come up with.  I drew way too many of them to share them all.  But here's a few samples to laugh at.  Note that I was experimenting on cartooning with a "big foot" sort of style and using different line-art texturing techniques.

First off is just a basic Pac-Man followed by the Saturday morning cartoon version and then "Mr. Spac" (Mr. Spock).

From left to right are President Richard Paxon, the Hunchpac of Notre Dame, and Indiana Pac.

The Empire Strikes Pac

A couple of years later, in 1984, I drew this cartoon playing with the Marvel Comics' What If? series showing what would have happened if the very UN-bullet-proof Captain America had not equipped himself with a bulletproof shield.  I notice that the cartoon figures are still a bit stiff but much improved over the Pac-Man cartoons 2 years before.  I'm still using the same sort of "big foot" on the characters.

1985 starts to showcase a nice jump in drawing technique and experimentation that I credit to my college art classes at Temple College.

Mike Grell's Warlord (DC Comics) character meeting Grell's Star Slayer (Pacific Comics) character 

Sergio Aragones' Groo the Wanderer

 Playing with high contrast black and white ink drawings and female forms.  Shadowcat from The X-Men (note once again my fondness for puffy sleeves and sash).  The other 2 drawings are from a photoshoot in a Penthouse magazine.  I wish I could remember the photographer's name.  At the time, I know the joke was that you only read Playboy of Penthouse for the articles, but I was picking up an occasional issue specifically for the photo pictorials by this one photographer because the artistic design really connected with me back then.

    

The last 2 years of college I knocked out a few interesting pieces.  The first is The Joker as The Devil and my attempt at drawing Watchmen (which I don't believe had even concluded at the point I drew this).  The Joker drawing was an attempt at mixing my pencil technique with markers.  I notice some stylistic elements here that are reflective of stuff I draw even today.  The Watchmen piece is a total disaster in retrospect in terms of anatomy and physics.  I cannot at all figure out what I thought Nite-Owl was doing being dropped down on a rope from his ship but yet he's just floating there above it.  It makes no sense.  But I am impressed that I at least tried some perspective tricks and badly envisioning the anatomical features of Bubastis there in the back.  It was a nice effort for a teenager maybe.

 

Below is short poem/story written by a friend in my dorm that I illustrated.  I think I had some good ideas here and not the absolute worst in execution but there's some real need for a better understanding of how to do certain effects using ink.

The last piece is a watercolor painting I did for my painting class.

MEMORIAL DAY 7-FILM MINI-REVIEW ROUND-UP!

 

MEMORIAL DAY 7-FILM MINI-REVIEW ROUND-UP:

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

★★★★ out of ★★★★★

The first fully-realized X-Men movie that finally takes its cues from the successful Marvel Studios AVENGERS franchise and successfully adapts a clas...sic storyline from the comics. Surprisingly smart and deftly shifts in tone and pacing between the decades. Best of all, director Bryan Singer did something that the directing of Amazing Spider-Man 2 should take a cue from -- he lets the character moments breathe and allows the actors to do their thing. When you surround the story with actors of the caliber miraculously assembled for this film, you better damn well let them act.

The heart of the film is the younger version of Xavier, who has lost his sense of purpose at that point in his life. Most interesting of all was the emphasis on Mystique/Raven who becomes the singular most important mutant on Earth and whose actions lead to the dystopian deadly future (10 years from now) the X-Men are trying to prevent from coming into being by sending Wolverine's mind back in time to his younger body.

Much has been made about the "reset switch" ending, but even without spoilering the details on that, I have to admit that I am completely okay with it. I have always enjoyed the X-Men films but they have suffered from a lack of cohesion and long-term vision. The benefit this film has is that now Marvel Studios has demonstrated that you can approach these super-hero franchise films with an eye towards building a larger universe and with longterm planning. It does not completely remove the other films from continuity for without them occurring, then the events that happened to rewrite history would never have happened. So, they are important pieces of a future that will never happen now (or will be different).

FIRST CLASS plus this film set up a future successful franchise with a closer adherence to the spirit of the comics themselves and I am glad to see it. This was a movie that was a hell of a lot better than it had any right to be.

#xmendaysoffuturepast

THE GERMAN DOCTOR

★★★★ out of ★★★★★
 

A chilling Argentinian film (with subtitles) about the infamous psychopathic Nazi "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele after he escaped to Argentina after World War 2. The story itself is fictional but it is wrapped up in actual history, specifically about a female Nazi hunter working for the Mossad who tracked Mengele down to Argentina around 1960 and was found dead after Mengele escaped capture.

The film is about a young family who open up a lodging home in the mountains so that the artisan father can focus on his baby doll design work. Their oldest daughter is a teenager who has a genetic disorder preventing her from progressing into puberty at a normal pace. A mysterious, but charming, German Doctor comes to stay at their lodge and becomes interested in her and her family. As he over-involves himself in their lives he becomes somewhat obsessed while crafting a co-dependency between all of them.

What makes this film so chilling is the charismatically charming performance of Àlex Brendemühl as Mengele. He captures the mind of a true psychopath replete with the magnetism and cold, but not dangerous demeanor. When things fall apart and his self-control begins to slip so we catch glimpses of the evil in him it is both fascinating and repulsive. We hate ourselves for liking him and getting drawn into his web.

An excellent film that just flows smoothly like a well-written novel.

 #thegermandoctor

NEIGHBORS

★ out of ★★★★★
 

There is nothing redeeming in this film. It only earns 1 star because there are a couple of laugh-out-loud slapstick moments. The movie assumes that every person on the planet is just a huge pile of excrement with no value, no morals, and no character.

The two worst parents on the planet suffer the indignity of having the worst fraternity on the planet move next door. What follows is just a series of patently unfunny bullshit in which I wanted to call CPS on them after the third or fourth time that their baby was simply left at home alone in her crib all night.

Revolting.
#neighbors

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
 

Fascinating vampire movie by director Jim Jarmusch and starring Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton, and John Hurt. Really, that pedigree is enough to justify going to see this one.

It's slow-moving and eccentric. It felt less like a vampire movie and more like one of those odd little short stories you get in the occasional vampire anthology book. It really is not about vampires but is using vampires as a plot device to comment on the human condition. It's no mistake that Hiddleston's character is holed up a decaying brick home in the abandoned urban Detroit area. The modern decay is reflective of his own spiritual decay.

The movie is not "beautiful", but there is dark beauty in it. It is mostly absurdly funny in the blackest of black comedic ways. I enjoyed the love between Adam (Hiddleston) and Eve (Swinton) and it was interesting to see how they were stronger together than apart.

This film is not going to set the world on fire, but it is definitely worth your investment of time if you get a chance.

#onlyloversleftalive

THE RETRIEVAL

★★★★★ out of ★★★★★
 

One of the best films of the year. It's a gut-wrenching film set during the Civil War with a young black boy who is used by a white Bounty Hunter gang to retrieve escaped slaves and bring them back for a fee.

He gets sent, with his unscrupulous uncle, to retrieve a freed slave for a huge retrieval fee but over the course of long trek back they bond together and the boy is put in an excruciatingly difficult position.

The directing and the acting in this movie are fantastic and emotionally real. It is painful to watch at times but only because you, as the viewer, are so caught up in the boy Will (Ashton Sanders) and his youthful guilt and shame. He is being forced to grow up faster than his heart and mind can keep up.

Highly recommended.

#theretrieval

PARTICLE FEVER

★★★★ out of ★★★★★
 

Very simply the best documentary about the launch of the Large Hadron Collider you'll probably ever see.

For a science nerd like me, I couldn't really ask for more. The film follows the lengthy years-long process of getting the Collider built, and the key scientists involved in it. Before long, and through some quite clever opportunities for explanations to us lay-people, we find ourselves emotionally caught up in the moment when they finally discovered the almost mythical Higgs boson (or God Particle).

If you just said to yourself "What's the Higgs boson?" then I suggest you should be required to watch this movie. You can thank me later.

#particlefever

TRANSCENDENCE

★ out of ★★★★★
 

One of the worst films I've seen this year. It makes the fatal flaw of being relentlessly boring and just plain stupid.

This emotionally overwrought sci-fi flick just makes poor story choices after poor story choices after poor story choices in an attempt to engage us in its cautionary tale of the Singularity -- when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. In this case, it starts with the death of a visionary scientist played by Johnny Depp whose brain patterns were captured and incorporated into a computer program.

As he evolves, all manner of stupid stuff happens. The movie also stars Paul Bettany, Amy Adams, and Morgan Freeman but they're all wasted on a ridiculous script saying obscenely stupid dialogue. Really, don't waste your time on this one unless you need something to help you battle insomnia.

#transcendence

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High School Art *flashback* (Part 2)

In Part 1, I tossed up some art from Jr. High on into the early years of High School.  Now, I'm going to share some stuff from the latter half of High School (and maybe some College).  Just keep in mind that I was young and still learning! 

 This first pencil drawing was of "Snowball" from ANIMAL FARM.  He's the Lenin analogue in the allegory.  I am 100% convinced that the roots of my own conservative ideology can be traced back to my eye-opening encounter with Orwell's work through my High School English class.  *Thanks Mrs. Hopper!*

Other than girls and food, the things that primarily occupied my High School mind were comics, Star Trek, and vampires.  Slow time in class produced this Dracula sketch that I never finished. 

Star Trek was in the front of my mind after the incredible experience at that age of the death of Mr. Spock in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN -- which is where this sketch got its inspiration.  You'll note I started to lay down some inks on it and then never bothered to finish it.  Story of my life.

This ink sketch of Daredevil was done entirely using a croquill pen and india ink with no pencils at all.  Also done at school during some down time.
 Which brings me to something that I started doing in High School (and continues today occasionally when somethig gets stuck in my head).  That would be the costume redesign for popular super-heroes (something popularized online at Project: Rooftop) and original character concepts.

The original "MIMIC"

In this old, ragged X-MEN comic I had left over from when I was little, there was a story featuring a character called "The Mimic" and his mutant power was that he had all the powers of the X-Men themselves.   That means, he had wings like Angel, eye-beams like Cyclops, monkey hands and feet like Beast, ice-hurling powers like Iceman, and telekinetic abilities like Marvel Girl.

By the time I was in High School, the most popular comic book published by Marvel was The "New" X-MEN, which was primarily made up (at this time) of Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Sprite.  I thought, in my brilliant teenaged brain, that since the original Mimic had sacrificed his life to save the X-Men, that it was time for a "New" Mimic to show up and join the X-Men.  So, tis was my update of the original Mimic's costume with elements that demonstrated he was adapting the powers of the current line-up of characters rather than the original line-up.