SUMMER 2023 CATCH-UP ART POST!

  

SUMMER 2023 CATCH-UP ART POST!

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.

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.

High School Art *flashback* (Part 1)

Digging through one of my old art portfolios I have stashed under my bed to post that old drawing I did of Iron Man back in 1980 got me looking through the whole thing.  So, I snapped some photos of a bunch of my doodles and such from my high school years (I also snapped some of my college years). 

What follows is a little trip down my cartooning memory lane.  For most pieces, I do remember what I was thinking at the time and will share that as well as the snapshot.  I was a weird kid with odd things that I would fixate on.  All of these photos should be clickable so that you can see them larger, and more clear...if you want.

Quite Possibly My Favorite Movie Poster EVER!!!!

When Captain America throws his mighty shield,
All those who chose to oppose his shield must yield.
If he’s led to a fight and a duel is due,
Then the red and white and the blue’ll come through
When Captain America throws his mighty shield!

BLOOM LIKE AN ARTIST

Thanks to Eric San Juan @ http://shoegaze99.blogspot.com/ and The Simple Things blog @ http://fl0e.tumblr.com/ for bringing this to my attention.  The truth hurts.  If I had a heart, I would cry.

*Clicking on the full-vertical piece seems to be too pixelated to read so I have broken it into 5 parts to read easier here.  So please ignore the "breaks"*

The cartoonist who made it can be found here: http://jellyvampire.deviantart.com/

Spotlight on "Ghosts"

SPOTLIGHT ON "GHOSTS"

To me, one of those funny things about the publishing media is the "ghost writer." I understand the thinking behind it. Famous people (politicians, actors, nuts, etc.) can sell books simply by putting their names on it. So, the publishers toss money to the celebrity for their name, and then hire someone else to write the books. For whatever reason, everyone else thinks it's just a wink-wink-nod-nod type of thing that doesn't matter. However, I've actually been in the position of "ghost writer" on some things in the past, and while I knew what I was doing, it has always bothered me that someone else gets to claim credit for the work I did. I'm also just cynical enough at this point to never believe any politician or celebrity ever writes their own books. I am, however, willing to at least give due to the "autobiographical" books in that I honestly think those books are usually more of a collaboration between the celebrity and the author. Heh. Although even then, there are exceptions. When Hillary Clinton supposedly wrote her life story, I remember a TV interview where she couldn't "remember" things she had "said" in her own book. But can I just say that my road to cynicism began when I discovered that John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize winning book PROFILES IN COURAGE had actually been written by Theodore Sorenson. To me, that's just outright lying to claim authorship of something you didn't write...and especially something as profoundly resonant as that book. Then, to discover over my life how many books I thought were authored by one person were actually written by someone else. For example, who wrote STAR WARS? George Lucas? Well, that's what it says on every edition I've ever seen of the novel STAR WARS (actually originally subtitled FROM THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE SKYWALKER). But no, it was written by Alan Dean Foster.

Anyway, over the years of my disgust, I've gotten to where I play a little game whenever I walk in a bookstore and see a new novel "written" by a celebrity. The game is: FIND THE REAL AUTHOR. In recent years, it has become a bit easier because the less egotistical of the celebrities will allow the ghost writer(s) to share credit on the cover (i.e., William Shatner with Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens). But it is still a rampant practice to hog all the credit for the celebrity when he (or she) probably never wrote one word. That's where the game comes in. Digging through the always lengthy acknowledgements requires some skill to sift and shake until the true author's name finally pops up.
This first installment is for Mr. Glenn Beck's new novel THE OVERTON WINDOW, a political thriller, from the massively popular but also incredibly irritating radio host. Well, let's see....digging through Beck's b.s. takes us to special thanks to first his Viewers, Listeners, and his "Insiders" (who I guess are people who actually pay money to the idiot to get even more garbage from him than his radio show, tv show, and free web presence). Then he declares that they are not racists. What? Then he thanks his poor, unfortunate wife, kids, and some other radio folk. Ah, now he gets to thanking his editor and staff at his publisher Simon and Shuster. That's good...but still no clue as to the actual writer. Did Beck actually write his own novel? No way. Let's turn the page on his incessant acknowledgements...
Page 2. Ugh. Now he's thanking the people that syndicate his radio show and then praising Fox News Network. Blah blah blah. Then a bunch more thanks listing people but not singling one out. What? This can't be right. Let me go back to page 1 and check again....ah. Hahaha. There it is. I actually missed it on first scan. Here it is. One sentence between his family and the editor, he writes: "JACK HENDERSON for pouring his heart and soul into this project. And to Jack's wife, LORI, for letting him."

The nebulous thanks is always the true author. Usually it says something more along the lines of "Without whom this project would never have happened..." or "I couldn't have done it without you..." That sort of thing.

So...hats off to ghost JACK HENDERSON, author of THE OVERTON WINDOW. Hope you get your due in attention and money for this sure to be an instant best-seller.

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My new resume' for your perusal and consideration. Thank you.