Sketchbook Stuff

I'm crunched for time right now, so i thought i'd throw up a few old sketchbook pages.

These were around the time of the Broadminded story i did... note the girls belly aching to pop out a little?

Some of the 'plot points' are littering these art doodles.. sometimes i'll do them in color, one for each 20 page issue or chapter.... Obviously i lost more time on Charlie's shoulder and bicep and the Ira's girlfriends outfit that i did anything else..

above, just doodling between the of blue lines in the notebook.

I always like looking at how different artists-writers plot a story... it's always different. Some let the visuals set the pace, some write it out, or a little of both. It's telling ... what key words a writer uses to sum up a sequence. Be it either thumbnails or written sentences.

Interesting that above,  Four Women was part of a group of ideas... Legs too.. 'Kalamazoo' eventually morphed the Soccer Queen story in later Maxx issues.  Special Ed was something my Cousin Dave and I kicked around, then abandoned.

The 'Mother Daughter' idea went through dozens of several incarnations... which finally grew so large i split it into four parts ~ which later became the four stages of 'Dana' life.  ( I know, where *is* it, right? Coming SOON, i promise!) It's hard when things seem 'alive' in my head, but before they come out of my pen of pencil, they don't exist yet for you guys, huh?

What was 'Men and War' on that list above?  Don't even remember.  I do know 'guy' action stories, politics or war issues never hold my attention like dysfunctional mom daughter stuff does, so i imagine any War plots... just faded away.

I sometimes did these on the backs of pages too, so some have bleed throughs that look kinda ruddy.

Lucky a few are on one side, so their less busy.  I also was fiddling with those colored pencils, soft leads, a little color... but mostly just seeing where a sharpie took me.

There's always something 'revealed' about sketches, it's so personal.  Flawed.  It's like nothing's polished or fixed yet. It's all raw and exposed there, for better and worse.

I always thought my fashion stuff dated way back to Zerogirl, (remember the square headed mom?)  But i can see some of that fashion stuff scattered even these old sketches too.

Fashion designs just never pops up much in super hero comics, do they? So it never found an out let. Just bubbled away. These are a lot like everyone else's doodles, which is the point. Just letting the our imaginations go where they go.. even if it's a dead end.

Nemesis Covers & Sketchbook stuff

Before I could get any regular work with the big two, I landed a cover gig on some Fleetway reprints of  a comic called Nemesis.

Above are some lighting doodles i did on the back of the cover.. to dope out how to ink the arm shadows...


It the time I was really proud of these... as I'd never pulled anything of like this yet. However... here's how the colored covers looked ..

I'm not trying to rag the colorists, (no idea who it was), but... ahh... I was a *little disappointed*?

So much that I'd put into them... like all these alien faces... had gotten totally lost once colored.  That would happens over and over in comics.

Below some of the rough layouts for this cover... notice i was big in blue pencil back then.. I had fun dreaming up alien heads on a wall like deer or elk heads. the little dot on at the bottom was my favorite.

So these original covers.. gives you a second chance to be seen fresh.. notice i threw in one of my 1800s gals too... no one seemed to care.

Looking back, it's glaringly obvious i wanted to show off my inking skills and these suckers.  Along with the Epicurus and the Mavel Presents covers, the Nemesis covers were me at my most 'anal', brush stroke and detail wise.

Even though no one noticed them.. when i look at the originals, i'm still kinda proud of them, for what they are.

Weirdly enough, during this same time I was doing the opposite of this... doing things like this little brush one here.

My cousin Dave expressed how surprised he was i did this, and that it looked 'nothing like me' at the time, it seemed so full of energy and unlabored. I always kept this 'Kata' drawing and this a change in my thinking to try something like this..

I also plunged into watercolor too... but my palate was pretty saturated and crude.

I was trying for something ... ELSE... something different than the over-rendered hyper detailed covers... but didn't know how to get there.  Yes, i liked those too, but it's like i had to sustain some other part of me.

I found some old sketchbooks from around then and noticed i was starting to doodle bonsai trees even back then.. but still couldn't negotiate the fun energetic (but crude) sharpie notebook sketches with logo like super detailed covers..

also was dabbling with soft lines like this watercolor - this was exciting to me, but i didn't see any comics that looked like this, (this was before the whole painted graphic novels in the 80s and 90s flourished)

Below i tried this too in these story i did with an is in it... almost every panel done with a different style..

It wouldn't be till years later I'd find a way to navigate between all these styles somehow into a cohesive whole, and i'm happy that i still struggle with it. In a good way.

okay, back to finishing up that MOTHer drawing i started.