"Two Mom's Eye" Paintings

Here's something .... it's a painting i started when i was still trying to break into comics, and have been on and off addling to it for almost every few years now. Part of it have been scattered in the background of many of my comic backgrounds too.

It has nostalgic appeal to me mostly because it's the longest single piece thing i've worked on, consistently.  Kinda where i started - art wise, and will probably end up. Unsure if it will ever be totally finished,

Maybe once i croak -  that'll mean it's done once and for all.

: )

I uses some powered graphite, which creates that weird 'oil vs. water"texture when mixed with ink, so i can't take 'credit' for that effect. Outside of tilting the bristle board from side to side to control it's flow.

But what's kinda cool is i did leave some areas empty, and tried to match the abstract graphite effect, by hand using both a brush and pen, with mixed results.

I called it 'Mom's red eye'. The red eye is part of Nola's personality. That's why Momma Ojo has a red eye too, btw... because of this painting.

A few years back.. I decided a few years back to do another companion piece, called " Mom's pink eye".. which will be from Dana's perspective.  Here's the two of them, side by side.

i really have no end goal here... just seeing where it takes me. I can already tell it's tending towards Sepia Oranges and Yellows.. so it's a much warmer one. Sand,  Acrylic Gel.. and the old wet in wet watercolor trick.. tilting, changing the flow... letting gravity changing the shape.

Here's the pink eye in 'stage one', still pretty raw and naked. Over the years it went through four more stages, with dozens of photos for each stage, which may show up in some future art book... probably Worlds..

in the mean time, this gives you a cool little progress peak.

Here's my defacing my own trout ad.  I dunno why but i enjoy using my own hand made art, then printing it out on paper, then re-painting over it by hand.. Not a radical idea, tons of artists probably do it too.. but i just enjoying using digital ways of distorting my own art even further. 

this is still unfinished so far.

So this is close to the end of the phase three. Maybe i'll throw up the finished piece in another post? Or add a few more in-between phases instead?  But pics online are a lot cheaper than killing trees for some art book, eh?

Thanks for letting me share all this goofy-ness.


- Sam

Maxx Cover Progress... and something Goofy.

Drumming up two cover's at once for the reprints to try an get ahead..

This stared as a wet-in-wet color for the purple, then I added detail on Maxx's body with dyed brushwork in his body.

It's actually fails at what i intended, to almost do a sepia colored cover with very little saturation..

but if i wanted subtlety, i shouldn't have created a super hero who's the color of a grape, eh?

Least there's some subtler texture on the tree and moss, which are mostly watercolor, marker and watercolor pencils.

I've put off finished it until i can pull in Julie, who looks a little too distorted, even for my taste. We'll see if i can save her on this one.

Markers seem to be breeding like rabbits lately. Those pen/brush ones are additive, though i still usually prefer brush & india ink.

Here's a total change in mood, a did a short Garbage Pale Kids story, which is close to drawing an underground comics as i get anymore.

Before you think me crass for doing Garbage Pale Kids story, remember this is the same guy who draw Toxic Avenger covers and stooped to drawing a Hamster book during the Turtles funny animal craze. 

So I basiclly have no shame.  Proudly so.  I threw in the same Mom I used in my and Ryall's Mars Attacks story, and i bet this is the *only* GPK  story to have Sigman Freud help the Mom who's struggling with her her sons disgusting preoccupation with "bodily fluid".

Remember Amy in Zero-girl got advice from Carl Jung reincarnated as a rolly polly bug. So I'm both pretentious and grotesque, all at the same time.

The cover was a parody of the old Jaws poster.. so instead of the shark, which would have been too similar, i used this over-sized boy instead.

Coloring it probably took longer than drawing it, but it was still kinda fun to draw something different.

Last one, Mom about to take a bath.. and the shark shows up to surprise her.  Totally ridiculous, but i need to draw something totally stupid sometimes.

Here's some roughs for the second Maxx cover.. these are the thumbs, about two inches high... i dunno who i bothered to color the rough, just doodling and got distracted..

Julie looks a little think here so far. One thing I'm trying not to do is to re-capture what's in the thumb. The orange pads are just my lazy masking efforts.

I can't decide if the Maxx should have the "serious" eyes ... or the big wide-eyed "worries" look in the larger final version.  There's no right or wrong, but we'll see what mood I'm in when i finished it up... probably over the weekend.

The little taped spots on Maxx's back are where the logo will overlap his back. Again, I hate to lose to much brushwork in his arm, but the more color layers i add, then i'll just have to go in all over again and re-ink, with a brush... it's stupid how much brush work is lost on my art as a resulting of coloring.

Yes, i could add it digitally, but just lazy and easier do to it all at once.

Here's some pics of one of the older Maxx covers.. it has almost everything in the top, leaves, sand, glue, hair, macaroni, whatever i could get my hands on..

Again, a lot of this crazy surface texture never prints when scanned and, before artists postings blogs, few people would even see how the originals look.

I think if i ever did a book of Maxx art book, it would be stupid not to add some photos showing these textures from side angles along with the flat scanned version, don't you?

I guess in some ways, an artists is just putting in things for themselves. Things they figure wouldn't ever see print in the final. Some of those Sienkewicz, Bisley and McKean covers have wicked detail if your lucky enough to see the originals.

There's so many amazing artists out there who inspire the rest of us.  I kinda feel, (at the risk of sounding self effacing), that have always hoped i was sort of a middle ground artists, someone who beginning artists could see as a bridge to these better known artists who have more skill and draftsmanship than i'll ever have.

Sorta like, " Hey, maybe i'll never be as good as my <insert favorite big name artists here>.. but if Sam can do *that*.. make those mistakes, and own them, point them out with humor and fun, then somehow maybe i can find a niche for myself as an artists someday too. "

These artists blogs go a long way towards erasing any bridge between "professional" vs "amateur" artists, which as we all know are kinda an absurd distinctions to begin with.   

Just tons of people doodling goofy crap and throwing it up online. 

Maxx Covers... from 'Abstract/Messy' to 'Simple/Peaceful'.

on the left is a 'fashion page' from the Worlds of Sam collection, and i literally painted over it for a new Maxx cover. I had to turn the page sideways for cover proportions.. if you look back and forth, you can see what shows through from the original painting.

Here's the finished cover with the logo. Julie's a little abstract, but i liked that.

This was the third redo this Maxx cover, and the two below were my first stabs at it. 

The first one was okay, but kinda seemed too conventional.. the the second one felt too abstract, at least for a Maxx cover. A lot is down to whatever your taste are, but in this case, since i own the Maxx, i have just enough freedom to make a dope of myself.

Here's a semi-abstract painting of yet-another-1900s woman. It started with a botched effort yo paste down a Twout at I drew... when i pealed it up, l was so impressed with the texture it made...

.. I tried to "blend" it with gold paint into a woman's hair...

I added some distress grunge to her face, to echo the torn texture up top.

it''s not finished yet, but its getting there.

It's hard to take credit for gold acrylic paint, which anyone could add. I took these pics because gold acrylic highlights never scan very well.

It's always better to cast some light on it from the side.

No clue where this will wind up. Maybe one of the Twout books.. or somewhere else. Just another side project between Maxx stuff - a like drawing Maxx, but a few covers can drive you a bit batty.

And now we end with the other end of the spectrum. From an Abstract & Messy Maxx cover, to two simpler ones.

One's almost a zen brush painting,

and the other is just a peaceful simple sitting under a tree shot.

Sometimes simpler can be the coolest of all.

- Sam