It's Updating Time!

Gotta keep doing this, even in light of a hectic day-job that sucks mental power out of my skull.

Today: Sketches of one of my favorite Marvel Characters. It took me a while to come up with this look which both (a) makes enough realistic sense to me and (b) feels like it fits with Kirby's original aesthetic, but every time I draw Ben, he'll look similar to this.

Classic Rock / Dr. Who mashup covers

Part of the regretful thing of losing my webhost is that all of my old illustrations haven't seen the light of day for a long time.

Of course, to readers of this blog, who might be new to my stuff, it's all new to you!

This was the first in what was (at the time) going to be a series of classic Rock covers re-done with some of my favorite characters or elements from sci-fi or fantasy fiction.

Naturally, mashing up a cover by British rock band "The Who" and Classic British TV Sci-Fi show "Doctor Who" was a no-brainer.

Using the layout of The Who's "Who Are You" Album, I've depitcted the aftermath of an adventure of the first TARDIS crew of Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, Susan Forman and her Grandfather, the Doctor.

The episodes from the 60's, 70's and 80's just didn't have large budgets... which of course gave the show a very cheap look. I always loved the idea of having huge & expensive looking sci-fi mayhem accompanying the classic "Doctor Who" characters, and the best way that can be done would be through comics. I'd love to see a new series of comics featuring the classic characters. Alas, at the moment US's IDW and Britian's Dr. Who magazine seem to focus (understandably, of course) solely on the newer batch of Doctor Who characters.

OK, geek ramble over. Enjoy the image!

Smart Suit, Smoky lounge, dead bodies and Botany

My buddy Kristin created this excellent costume for the festivities this weekend, and I have the perfect Illustration to accompany it with.

(click to embiggen)

This is a relatively old one... but one I'm still quite proud of. Pamela Isley in a smart-as-hell suit... once I get around to coloring this, you'll see it's a dark deep hunter green suit with Gold stitched leaves and vines to accent it. If you're to be incognito in a swanky bar... and want to avoid instant attention... this might be a costume more appropriate than a green one piece.

Not putting down green bathing suits, you understand...

Yowza.

Old Enemies

The Doctor: You've come here to kill me, of course?
The Master: But not without considerable regret.
The Doctor: How very comforting.

Rejected flier: Bauhaus Bash 2007

In 2007, the Spring "Promise Breakers" art/music show was in danger of not having a flyer. The usual artist of the flier had been incommunicado and there was no flyer artwork for "A Bauhaus Bash." These fliers are used to promote the show, and then printed onto a limited run of TShirts that are given away at the show as souvenirs.

I just wouldn't be a Promise Breakers show without a flyer! It wouldn't be a promise breakers show without a TShirt! So being the wide-eyed optimistic boy of initiative, I sketched and sketched and cobbled together a rather busy... yet attention grabbing flyer for the event, "A Bauhaus Bash." I got this put together in about two days, and gave a printout to the gentleman organizing the show. He was happy to use it to promote the show, and I was excited to see them around town, and eventually on the front of a real live TShirt!

And then came the day of the show, when what do I see? The usual artist apparently got a design done just in time, fliers everywhere, adorned on the TShirts.

I went with a "Vampire" theme. It being Bauhaus (the band), it being Springtime, I went with the whole fact that Syracuse is finally getting more sun, therefore it's a bad time to be a Vampire. And hey, more sun? A GOOD reason to celebrate! So enjoy music and art and alcohol at "A Bauhaus Bash". Right?

What did they wind up using? The usual artist went literal, choosing to loosely illustrate the 1933 closing of the Bauhaus school, by drawing a Nazi Fraulein burning a stack of canvases.

Yeah, no better way to advertise a fun evening out of music and art and alcohol than Nazis destroying art. Pff. Whatever. I like mine better, but that's just me.

Random Sketch-aphernalia

I think I'll close out this first day of posting with some random sketches. To make it more interesting (and easy for me), no explanations for these. Some are old, some are new.

Star Wars...reluctantly

A buddy of mine owns a local comic store, Cloud City Comics & Toys. He also puts together Syracuse's own Comic Show, the Syracuse Heroes Expo. Each year it's grown in size, and so far, I've done the poster for each year (since 2007).

The downside... they're all Star Wars related.

Now, before you get all huffy and offended... I still feel burned by the prequels. To say "I'm not a fan of them" is a bit of an understatement. They caused such deep wounds... that I have a hard time even today, with watching the original Trilogy, with the knowledge of those prequels...

But despite my misgivings, Star Wars is huge. The kids love it! And the freaking store is called "Cloud City!" So much like how Bilbo straightens out Tim in the British TV Show "Spaced", Jeff got me to briefly see logic long enough to crank out a new poster each year. Here they be.

2007- the flyer
2008- "Sith Club" Sketch mockup
2008- "Sith Club" (flyer)
2008 "Sith Club" poster
2009 (pushed to 2010) - tribute to Rosie the Riveter (BTW, Jeff, I never got any copies of these! What's up with that?)

Disaster Averted!

When I was a kid, my cousin Mike asked me to draw some of his favorite characters: Spider-Man, Batman (and I remember drawing two others, but I can't remember what they were). I did each one on a big ol' piece of Bristol Board, and he framed them, and kept them on his wall for YEARS.

Decades later, Mike was nearing the end of his time in the Air Force. My Ma cajoled me into doing a new Spidey Illustration for X-Mas that year. I had an idea in my head, but I have to be honest, I wasn't wild about doing it. At the time, I had 3 other X-Mas art projects that I had to finish. Throwing another one onto the pile wasn't going to alleviate any stress-headaches. But I did it anyway. I managed to get each project done before X-Mas... just.

Since the view is cropped in close on Spidey, it might not be 100% clear as to the scenario. Mike had been serving in Iraq, as the primary mechanic for a Heavy Duty Jumbo Jet (it had a specific name... again, I can't remember. the "HH" on the tail appears on many of this type of plane). If something went wrong, Mike fixed it. Whether it be on the ground, in the air, in the neutral zone or in enemy territory. He sometimes had to climb around outside the thing to fix it up. Action movie stuff. Anyway.


The pic: The idea here, Mike's plane flying into either JFK or LaGuardia (instead of an Air Force base, which would be more likely) being attacked/diverted by the Green Goblin. For what nefarious reason? Who knows but the @#$%ing Green Goblin. As the plane heads to Manhattan, your friendly neighborhood web-head starts doing his thing, webbing up the plane as best he can. The plane is just seconds from being safely secured between the buildings by Spidey's webbing, as the Goblin makes one more rush toward the plane, but is TAKEN OUT with an extension of pipe by my cousin Mike.

"We got big news..."

Once upon a time, I had a website with all of my great illustrations on it, and even some of my not-so-great ones. At the time, I had finally broke through, learned some code & actually gotten comfortable with HTML. I had a reasonably well designed and clever website, one I could keep updating with confidence that it would carry me across artistic sea and be a good professional face for me online. The “Isle of Dread” was my artistic home.

And then the webhost disappeared. They just vanished. And so did all of the websites they hosted. GONE.

I decided this wasn’t all that bad a thing... I was a little tired of correcting people when they THOUGHT I had said my website was “I love dread dot com” (no no... ISLE of dread...) So I decided to go back to the drawing board and cook up a new site, build on my skills,

A month stretched out to a few months, with the day-job and other projects that gathered on my hull it stretched out to years, of my not having a new website online. Perpetually on the back burner.

Enough time goes by, and you start to see things out pace you. The Internet had changed. When it came time to get something online, my old HTML knowledge was barely enough to impress the present-day appreciator of art. The net-savvy folk would have instantly pegged the site as “So 2005”

The thing is, one doesn’t necessarily need a fancy schmancy site to have a good professional presence online. The majority of sites I visit is all powered by a blog, Flickr, YouTube links, so damn. I’m going to just jump in and re-ignite my online presence! So with that in mind, I’ve got big news... the Party Boat is here.

I’ll be adding more to this ship as time goes by. It’ll be a bit of a flurry at first, I have a lot of classic stuff that hasn’t seen internet light since ’05. and of course the new stuff. I’ll be releasing stuff regularly from here on out.

It feels good to be back!