Superboy

How do you feel about your old art? Are you embarrassed? Ashamed?  Does it hold up over time?  Sometimes I am very impressed with myself -- seeing artwork from decades ago that still shows skill and technique.  Surprised that the artwork is that good.  I know more now and have additional tool sets to work with, but I am still impressed by that young artist.
Originally drawn in 1994, these were samples that were done at size -- as a kid I didn't know that comicbooks were drawn larger than the print version, so I learned to draw in really fine detail.  When they come out with the Marvel Tryout book, that's when I learned that comics were drawn larger.  I can remember it almost like yesterday.  We used to have a comics and comics on the K street Mall here in Sacramento -- K street was an open air mall in downtown. I would occasionally take a break from my studies and take the bus downtown.  They sold old comicbooks, but they used to stamp them with their store address on the first page -- desecraters!  I couldn't afford the Marvel Try out book, but I learned that the art was drawn at the large size -- I remember thinking "What do they do with all that space?"  So this was a return to my roots sort of thing.  Doing artwork at the original training size for me.  Awesome experience!

Time keeps on slipping into the future: Legion Of Superheroes

I used to look at other's blogs and wonder how they could take so much time between posts.  Eventhough I'm drawing I'm not taking hte time to scan, and post. To be completely honest, I've been asleep at the wheel.  I could have been posting before, but I didn't make time.  I will make a honest effort to update. I've been doing art unrelated to pages, not sure how impressed people would be with that type of process stuff, but I will post several things.  As for now, I'm getting back on the horse --drawing sequential pages.

I tried to post this material before, some of it was very experimental. The storytelling is fairly straight forward, but the experimental part is in the artwork, I tried different textures -- I used funky 70's poster art inspired designs for the spaceship, which I think the comicbook editors I submit sample artwork to didn't understand, sometimes I forget that editors are not all artists so they don't understand that there is a difference between technique and style.  I did a tutorial at my art group on design -- with this work in mind.  In comics in the fifties, every spaceship look like a rocket or a saucer.  Star Trek, changed that so for most of the 70's spaceships were derivative of that, Star Wars changed the dynamic again in the late 70's, so on and so forth.  And I won't talk about Iron Wolf with wooden Galleons in space, actually I will talk about Iron Wolf.  In design, we need to be close to derivative.  In other words, until the cultural dynamic changes, we need to meet the expectation of what a a space ship looks like.  So my spaceship control boards were these funky designs and because they did not fit the cultural dynamic, I think potential employers were not desirous of seeing more.  I based the character on hair bands of the 80's who were rebellious carryovers of the rock bands of the 70's -- Sunboy is Bon Jovi, Cosmicboy is Van Halen, and Tyroc has an afro.

Punisher 2099 Sample

I received a script from an editor at Marvel mid to late 90s.  For Punisher 2099.  I did some exploratory things, but overall I like the pages.  It didn't turn into a job, I don't know if it was because the editor didn't like the artistic flourishes or (blame this on my memory) I didn't turn in the sample in a timely manner.  I know I did multiple styles of art for the piece and this is just one version. I haven't done anything in this style in a while, the technique holds up even after all this time.  My underlying structure has improved -- perspective, design, light and dark, but all in all not too bad.

Amazing Spiderman 531

 As is my wont, I would pick up a current issue of  a book and do pages I picked up Amazing Spiderman 531.  The pages I decided to draw had several interesting features -- although I didn't know it at the time this was the beginning of Marvel's Civil War.  The Titanium Man played sniper, which I thought was silly considering the array of weapons at his disposal, also I couldn't imagine how he would use a standard rifle.  Spiderman had a new costume. And the pages I chose took place on the steps of Congress.  Lots of interesting stuff to draw and I overworked it, too much research, too many photo references, by the time I finished my sample it was too old (in my mind) to send to editors.  So some pages have more layout details than other pages.  I redesigned The Titanium Man's armor, created a shooting gadget for his sniper moment, and went nuts on Congress -- number of steps in front....

Ghost Rider

 This is me just drawing.  Ghost Rider, my design.  There are things I would do different, hindsight being 20/20, but there are things I like.

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Random Fandom

This is a random selection of incomplete tryout pages that I have completed-- oxymoron I know.  The pages were mostly complete, but the whole tryout was incomplete.  I have dozens of these sad to say.  I was getting my practice as an artist, but no one was seeing, because I would lose interest or something else would come up or any number of life interruptions would take me away, and it might be weeks or months, since I worked on the pages and I would have grown as an artist since then.  I know these seem like very different styles, and to a certain extent they are, but they are something that I can easily create. In the Aquaman piece I am exploring the old fashioned adventure style, I do that one rather well, but I think editors aren't interested in that style.  Everything else is done in variations of the American manga style.  The problem of course, is I didn't finish the sets of pages and editors did not see them.  The Green Lantern Piece was one of many that I did about the character.  I enjoy the second tier characters, and sometimes I am attracted to the lower tier characters, sometimes they have more visual hooks to them.  Green Lantern, of course, is all visual.  The Witchblade Magdelena Darkness script "Heart of Darkness" was difficult because I've never read the books!  I've never gotten into the lusting for comicbook characters thing, and "good girl" art never really stuck on my radar.  I was too busy chasing the real thing!  So the research was extensive, getting covers and examples.  The real problem, to me, is that there is no definitive way of drawing the character, everyone is encouraged to create their own style with very little influence, unless the artist, chooses to follow someone else.  Its like drawing Superman from a vague description, you might get some interesting visions, but you also get some uninteresting and bad visions.

Green Lantern