30days Cover Repair & Asian Woman spread..

I think my posts are getting a little looooong and wordy lately.. so i'll try to jabber a little less and focus on the Art work more.

Also I've gotten rid of the code verification stuff... so it should be even easier to post comments now.

Here's a 30 Days cover I did - wasn't wild about the first skull with the eye poking out, so i decided to repair it by hand..

This seems a little better, eh?

I like how the snow blends in with the white above, but i doubt that will read very well when printed,

...so why not some color, to make the snow pop a little?

There, that'll have to do.

Here's a few panels from 30days, before coloring..

The main girl is a goth girl named Alice Blood. She's the one with the shorter hair.

I sorta notice she looks like a thinner version of Maggie from Love and Rockets. Not intentional. I figured I wouldn't force another chubby girl on Steve Niels since I'm getting to do Dana Chubby in my own stuff.

I know i'll revert to giving her a little tummy at though. Can't help it.

What else is on the table? Here's a few (hand drawn) tweaks on a Jay Fotos Zombie 68 cover...

* sigh * - okaaay - Now to balance out all that little-boy-gross-out-gore' stuff... here's yet another Asian woman in a double page spread..

You'll notice sometimes the photos i take are yellowish and sometimes brighter, that's because i have two bulbs in my desk light, and i switch back and forth when drawing, the brighter one shows more detail, but strains my eyes, so i switch to the lower wattage when my eyes need a break..

This looks much more dramatic in person, because it's on those huge 11 x 14 oversized sketchbooks. It's hard to show that scale in photos, isn't it?

Cody asked when I'll do an art show... meaning too, just get distracted. I wanna though. It be easier to connect with people at a gallery rather than a crowded noisy convention, eh?  And Chris, i was surprised i posed to soon too, trying to get in at least two a week. This month is a little crazy..

Frank - the *last* one is your favorite post now? Crap, now I have performance anxiety. : ) Well, this one will bring us all back to earth, just a few little ones this time.  Good question about how I divvy up time. I'm up at between 4 or 5am, and unless it's a deadline day, try to do paintings or creator owned doodles till about 8am, break for breakfast, then dive back in a 10am doing comic stuff, then after lunch i'm good from about 1-4pm.

Right now I'm finishing an Aliens 48 pager, (scanned this too low rez, but you get the idea).. also trying to stay ontop of the 30days monthly.. even *trying* a monthly is a crazy schedule. They tend to eat artists up and spit them out, so we'll see how long i last.

but everything ELSE...

is done to release pressure and is, i'm sure, pretty much the same reason everyone else does something to pay the bills,

it pay for what they *really* love doing.

" I don't get it..." Abstract vs Representational Art.

Glad everyone is digging the mixed media stuff, there's tons more out there, and I'll throw up more in the future, but there's an insightful post by Chris in the comments i wanted to get to first:

I don't wanna open the can of worms on Abstract/Post-Modern vs. Traditional Art debate, which I find really tedious at best. But Chris, I agree and totally get what your saying about abstract art. 

Another way to look at it is with music, I used to listen to  Zappa,  Stockhausen, Laurie Anderson, Bjork, John Cage, Captain Beefheart, Mr. Bungle, Eric Dolphy, the 'Raleigh Soliloquy' from Sublime, these and tons of other artists mix up melodic music.. with just plain weird-ass crap. Often in the same song. The fans who liked this may like the weird parts just because it sounds cool, others feel it's pretentious or indulgent to have 'weird for weirdo's' dissonant music s.. and i can see that too. Both are valid. Captian Beefheart,

I discovered what called 'abstract-modern-surreal' art books in my local library as a teens.  No one told me to like it or what it meant. Same time I was checking out the musicians above, their sounds and visual totally blew my mind. Yeah, sometimes bored me too, or seemed indulgent… or just.. went no where, or seemed "didactic", meaning message or idea  focused.. or as you say Chris, seems to lack feeling or emotional context. 

I'm glad your digging my stuff, and no one should sweat or worry if something i do, (either in comics or abstract art)… leaves them cold, or scratching their head asking "huh?" That's valid and does happen when one experiments in 'weird' areas. It's expected... and welcomed - - some of it hits for some folks, and some just misses. 

It's also why I wanna work abstract pairings into Dana stories, have Dana comment on it, because then the art is placed has some sorta context, it doesn't  risk of an abstract coming off as just a cold remote work.. like the example above with no text at all..

I got my share of puzzled looks for tons of abstract Maxx panels and Wolvie Marvel Comics covers too. But Like Frank said, I too no longer dismiss, but kinda *enjoy* my old detailed stuff like… Epicures, Wolverine, 'detail for detail's sake'... 

...if i didn't dig that 'classic' noodley stuff, (heck… I wouldn't have done it in the *first* place.) 

So, yeah.. I'm flattered if anything I do strikes an emotional (or cerebral) chord. 

Just like now-a-days I am pleased to do stuff i couldn't dream of doing back then... like this portrait: 

In fact, this is one of the FIRST portrait I took a stab at.

I wasn't going for realism, (not that i'm skilled enough to pull that off anyhoo), but I wanted to capture a certain mood/feeling of her face, rather than technical accuracy?

I started off making my usual self-critial doodles...

I'm always trying to escape chasing down some spark of life in simple little gesture pencil, marker rough i do. I really prefer the little face on the lower left, it seems less labored than the bigger one on the upper right.

The sketches above are same 'bowl cheeks' and ' pouty lips' I always do... somehow these cliche's followed their way right from the sketch into the finished painting. plus the ever drifting eyes...

Looking back, I sorta wish I'd kept the finished painting loser... like these sketches are..

I always have mixed feelings about my women's faces. I wanna capture the imperfections, but there's just a limit to how much illustrative skill i posses, plus, even as a teenager i was struck by abstract, post-modern and conceptual art I'd read about.

One of my favs, Paul Klee, also Willem de Kooning, and Joan Miro, were all artists I developed a love for totally... outside of any art school education. Not slamming that. Just found them from books I'd dig up at libraries.  Most of these dudes were trying to break free of constraints of a previous school of art. 

Drawing 'weird'... was something I personally didn't have the chance to explore in my art until the Maxx, when I had a chance to cut free and fumble towards the trail blazed by Sienkiewicz. Electra and Stray Toaster were the first direct bridge to these other artists above. 

It does my heart good to know, before most modern artists who were canonized and swallowed up by academia and collectors...  In their life own times, most they were like us. Dumb schmuck living in a studio and minds.. trying to paint themselves out of their problems... forging some sorta new paths. 

Even Schiele was both inspired by, (and emerged from the shadow of) Klimt's glamorized portraits of women's portraits. Sienkiewicz was inspired-emerged from Neil Adams and Barron Storey.

Then, I inspired/emerged... from my Dad. See, my Dad was an artists too.  I grew up watching him paint realistic portraits. But he also tried his hand at abstract paintings.

So for me, it's kinda a personal linage.

I lucked out, discovered the sub-culture of comics allowed me to dabble in slightly abstract styles, and later do art books.

Here's getting back to simple vs. detailed... here's that drifting eye on the upper left side in the finished piece, come on... doesn't the first tiny little marker sketch one just seem to ' breath '? It's apples and oranges, i know. But i STILL say the one one the left has it's merits.

I'm telling you... 'simple drawings' really call to me. 

But then why do I waste my time doing this big-ass elaborate paintings then?

I dunno. 

I just like to swim through a variety of styles and periods, good bad, intricate, crude. I hear some artists bitch "..it's all been done so what's the point?" True. But since it's all been done, the pressure's off your shoulders isn't it? Like Sondheim says in Sunday in the park with George, "..let it come from you, then it will be new."  May sounds trite, but it rings true for me.

Maybe it's like my dad. Both sides are inside of me... normal and abstract... even when they don't always see eye to eye with each other. 

So there you are.

Mixed Media Crap and Technics I,.. (and many others) use.

Because you demanded it.... Mixed Media stuff Galore!

Frank Patriot, cody Megan Rose and Casey Crow (among others)  mentioned what I use in various paintings. Yeah, Prismacolor watercolor pencils are a nice easy way to throw down color and blend with water..

I guess the reason i never bothered to get into this stuff, is there are only so many tools out there, aren't there? I mean, after Watercolor (some say difficult, but my personal favorite), Acrylic, Oils (which i tend to void as the always me a headache), what else.. Gouache? Markers, Pastel, Charcoal, Ink, Glazes..

I mean, the list is endless..

In some ways I think i tend to downplay what tools i use, because it strikes me we all use the same crap, more or less. To me, it's less *what* tools they use, and more *how* they use them.

I age old question we all ask".. how to you get it to look that way?" It's a great question, and one i have no really good answer for.

However, here's a few things i've monkeyed around with...

Powered Graphite & Alcohol:
Here's the old Powered Graphite mixed with Denatured Alcohol trick. Sometimes it's called Wood Alcohol, you may have to get it at a hardware store. It's not the drinking kind either. : )

Something about how the Alcohol and Graphite resist each other looks like oil and water sometimes.

I'll sometimes add water or india Ink too. All tend to pool up, eddy and resist each other. Here's one treated with a blue watercolor wash afterwards.

Do it outside though, because the Alcohol can really stinks up a studio.

---

Oxidising chemicals like Sodium Sulphide, or Asphaltum on Dutch Metal for example, can cause a cool eroded effect. Cupric Nitrate on a copper surface, looks like every other sepia Dave Mckean background painting. 


Bad news is, most of these hard core Oxidized chemicals are Dangerous: They can BURN skin, and are NOT to be inhaled - - so be careful. I stopped using them because of the fume inducing stuff gives me headaches. 

So instead, above, I've had safer luck with creating similar  effects which sorta looks like eroding surfaces... the craggily texture is detergent mixed with powered graphite and Detergent, then acrylic and pastel over that.

Here's something I've fooled around with... using spray fixative or various types of glue, then watercolor (or other paints) over the surface,

You can lay down the watercolor either before, during or after drying.  In the above pics, check out how the yellow watercolor 'recoils' or dries away from the art board, which was sprayed fixative first.

Above is a combo of some cork board i found at a thrift, plus Gel medium and various Acrylics.

Gel mediums, like pumice are cool to 'build' up a surface. They have various thicknesses, rough, smooth, or sand mixed into them for a grainy effect..

Above is some Dr. Martin watercolor dies over some 'still wet' acrylic paint... notice it tends to eat into the paint in an interesting way. The rough texture in the yellow-green area is made with tissue paper crumpled in paint, then lightly dragged over the surface. Also some 'torn canvas' in there too.

Here's an old standard any watercolor freaks know, the old 'salt dropped into wet on wet watercolor' trick.. I must have used this a million times on covers and backgrounds in comics and paintings.

Most Art stores sell tons of different textured paper.  I pasted one onto my sketchbook, then tried to blend these into Acrylic Gel medium too... The lines from a whit out pen ...sorta sticks out and seem crude to me here, so I may smooth them out a little with Acrylic white paint... 

Below is a wet brown gouache paint, pressed onto a piece of brown paper with cheesecloth.

Here's an old trick too, working ocher or orange watercolor dyes into a yellow color inside the flower shape. You can work the darker watercolor dies from dark to light by, adding water to dilute it... (duh!) ..

 Remember watercolor dies like Dr. Martins (as opposed to tube watercolors)  tend to fade, but you can work that in your favor.. here's an example below.  A painting I posted a few weeks back.

Notice how the middle of a teal 'squiggly line' of watercolor seems to 'fade' in the middle? That's what I mean by using fading to advantage. Watercolor esp. fades when used over acrylic.  Once you make a line, you can go back in and beef up the saturated color on either end of the line.. giving a luminous 'dark to light to dark' effect. As if light is shinning through.

I get asked about the texture on the lower right in the one above, it's a Kleenex dipped in half acrylic paint and half water. You can drag or twirl the tissue however you want, then it dries hard onto the surface in that shape you want.

The stringy stuff above is Household 'Goop' glue. Yup, that's a pasted in piece of hardware in there.

Anything lying around the house is in danger of being used... like...

wood.. or...

Leather, springs, bolts.. anything you like.

Sometimes it's as simple ( or crude ) as ripping a surface, defacing it with smears or using sandpaper or a metal rasp to do some real damage.

Here's an (not entirely successful) experiment some paint and dirt blended in with wood.

Now you may say to yourself on a lot of these what many people say about post modern art " Hell, i can do that sam!" and you'd be totally right. I see no line between amateur and professional anymore, just 20 century blur of everyone creating what they want, using whatever inspires them. Beyond good or bad, crap or quality.

I don't think any of us who draw or creates really understand how we do it, at least not consciously. In a way i don't even WANNA necessarily analyze it too much.  I don't want my 'right brian' .. busting up the party, so to speak.

Or that may just be me.  I don't really have anything to 'teach', as i'm self taught (and suffer for it). All i can do is share crap that i've tried that works, and other stuff that fails.

For me, stuff I draw that fail miserably... is often greatest chance... greatest 'gift'. Someone once asked Paul Simon why his Graceland album was so good, and he replied the last three albums which didn't work before, it were the reason why.  I used to be so ashamed of all my mistakes and floundering.  Then i realized most everyone else can see what works and what does. there's no secrets. Now, I try befriend a bad face and a poor drawing, because it's something we all know the truth of.

There's nothing like totally screwing up a perfectly good painting, but coming away with the benefit of some fresh thoughts/ideas you never had before. Or bust up possibly bullshit artistic preconceptions you previously held.

But i agree... if i don't at least TRY trying new tools and technics, I'm bound to get bore and endlessly repeat myself.


And lastly, if you look closely, you can make out the  layers of black acrylic paint piled onto the sketchbook i do my chicken pages in. That's why I do chickens, owning and repossessing my flaws