CARTOON MUSEUM SIGNING: Sat. April 27th. 11am to 2pm. !!!!!

Don't pay the ransom money - I've escaped... and resurfaced... more or less..... unscathed!  Got bogged down, overwhelmed by everything in the pipeline, work wise! So thanks for everyone's patience while I took some time to get my act together.

Remember even if i take some time off, shift to hibernation mode, I will resurface ground-hog like eventually! It was weird digging through all this old art,

...and batches of newer art lying around the studio, awaiting to be delivered to the Museum.... so much stuff lying about in little piles. You'll probably recognize most of these pieces here.

Looks like we've finally nailed down a DATE & TIME  for the Museum signing: Sat. April 27th. 11am to 2pm.  I'll be signing and you can order a copy of the "Sam Kieth: Samplings and Dabblings, a Retrospective from the Comic Art Museum.

Andrew Farago will start a Facebook page to count it down and a Kickstarter page to cover the costs of supplying the Museum with some printed copies, so keep your eye out for those too!

If you live in the bay area.. you may have already seen these pieces here. Most are mostly already framed on on display right now. Wanna thanks Andrew Farago, Scott Dunbier at IDW for kicking off this whole thing, and Shaenon K. Garrity, John Butler and Ryan Graff their exhaustive designing and editing work....

.....in getting the Museum book looking, well... looking like a *real* book and everything!

A show of pervious work may seems odd, since chances are you've seen this published or on the blog already. But I have to remember there's nothing like seeing things in person, is there?

If your *not* in the bay area... no worries. That's what the Worlds are books are for.  I chose to avoid putting in work for hire stuff like Marvel or DC stuff... i wanted it Worlds of Sam" books to be more 'creator owned' focused.

But if you wanna drool over classic older stuff, the Museum books good for that.

I can see this year... will really be my 'big year out' publicly. Outside of this (and San Diego this year), I think.... overall it's best I keep chained to my drawing board. I haven't even gotten to SDCC yet, but you all know what these big shows are like. It's crazy. But the fans make it worth it, they really do. 

More Good News: There's a rumor I may stop by at *one* other spot in another bay area location.  Still up in the air. But, assuming that second place event even happens? Just know, between 

1. Cartoon Art Museum resepction, and 

2. this one other possible mystery appearance, 

these TWO places are your ONLY chance to get something signed from me.... for a looooong time. 

Yeah, I know I haven't hit the east coast, and I promise in the coming years... will *try* to make my way out there.... eventually if I can. 

I think I am just am better built as a machine... and happier.... when avoiding too much traveling.  You fans... are beyond cool and make it all worth while!  Comic cons, crowds in general, not so much. I wish i could just beam myself over to your living room, sign, then beam myself back home again - that would be the best. 

Btw, here's a bunch of moss I added to the box... real moss - I hope it lasts the length or the show before it dies - wish me luck there! But, I can always add new moss to it later...can't i? 

Also, my apologies for the plethora of creep pharmaceutical spam polluting the comments section. Only way around that I see it making you enter a code before posting comments, which is a pain, but might be worth it to keep the spam to a dull roar? what do you think?

So, while I HAVE disappeared for a while, hopefully the 96 page Museum book, the 240 page Art book ( which IDW solicited already so I have to get it out now!) which will be out in July for comic con, hopefully these will make up for everything.

Just remember, anything you see that I do art-wise that you do like, remember YOU guys are the inspiration for my creating it in the first place!  So these books, and future ones...

 are really my trying to give back to you, my fans.... for urging me out of my doldrums (and introverted turtle shell) and into the sunlight, for however briefly i manage pop my head out.

My humble thanks to you all!
- Sam

Isz Jam and 'Dr. Weird' pages

Here's a Dr. Strange Parody I drew years ago, which was later reprinted in I Before E collection.

...with a generous slathering of blacks.

notice how small and modestly sized my name was back then?

plus my nod to those little 'windows between dimensions' effects Ditko did so wonderfully.


Then while digging through the old stuff, here's something else I forgot all about... back before I broke into the big two... I was found any excuse to work an Isz into short story work I could find. I hit up a series of friends at the time to help draw an Isz story, you know... one guys draws a few pages, hands it to the next guy, make up up the plot based on the last guys part?

I lost steam and got distracted with other things. So it got filed away and forgotten. It's only half done... only up to page 15.  So i figured why not throw it up here?

My old friend Ty Templeton got the ball rolling...  Like the Dr. Weird story above, Ty edited and wrote quite a few small press stories i drew, and has done tons of work for nearly all the bigger publishers too. His book Stig's Inferno was one of my favs.

I'm afraid all I have is these faxes Ty sent me 20 years ago. Apologies if you'll go blind trying to read them. The other parts are easier - promise.

Next Isz three pager (actually 4) was Dave Garcia, another pal from my small press days. He and his wife did the comic Panda Khan which was pretty cool. Here's a cover Dave did i've always loved.

Here's what Dave came up with..

Now's a curious one.. I didn't know the third artists, so I'm guessing Dave knew him and got him to agree to do one? Turns out his name's John Patrick Morgan (or J.P. Morgan), another 80s artists who drew, among other things, a cool book I vaguely remember called Fission Chicken.

Sadly John passed away not long ago.  That's really a shame. So, hats off and a toast to the two pages John did for my isz jam story.

Next up was Tom Stazer who drew a space parody book I loved called 'Spaced'.  Another strip i loved of his was called 'Crazy Bob'. I even painted this back cover for one of his Spaced issues.

Tom's space ship in Spaced always looked like a hair dryer. I like drawing hair dryers for some reason. Uncle Freddy anyone?


Seems Tom handed it off to Mark Martin. I'm a huge fan of thus guy, he did a parody of Dark night called Gnatrat, but my fave was the hard to find book 20 Nude Dancers 20 Poster Book.  Very funny stuff if you can find it.

Here's what Mark added to the Isz saga..

Whoever drew this last two pages is a mystery. The only name i have written down is Don.

Maybe.. Don Simpson? Not sure just who drew these two pages, but here they are for what it's worth..

And with that, our story trails off.  Unfinished.  These hand 'round robbin' stories are hit and miss, and the plot always takes a beating.  Probably not worth publishing, but worth throwing up online. My apologies to all the artists here for taking... what was it? 20 years? 25? (before it seeing the light of day.)
Sheesh. Pretty tacky of me, but at least it's out there now.

Signings, Museums, Birth of an Isz, and a Nemesis Cover.

Hey gang,


Afraid I needed to take a full month off from posting, and re-charge my batteries after the store signing. But, I do wanna THANKS EVERYONE of you who stopped by - wow, too many to mention by name!!!!  It was the best twohour signing (that turned into nine hours!)  - course that extra time was added by my doing few extra sketches which clogged the line, but we managed to get everyone in - signing and sketches, and my apologies for those who didn't make it in this round. ( if there is another 'round'... whew.. this one left me winded!)

Plus,  I was told that by sundown this line was almost wrapped around the whole friggin' building - yikes! So much for my stupidly sweating no one would show up. I'm always clueless about these things.  

Thanks to Dave Downy and his crew, the Signature guys were all cool and even my mom got a chance get a ring side seat to check these things out.  It all went beyond my wildest expectations, and I have all of YOU guys/gals to thanks for your endless patience.  Remember I got to sit on my butt and sign, while you guys had the harder job of standing in line! - For which I am eternally grateful.

But,  enough already. But, yeah... beyond awesome. ( not me, YOU guys!)

______

In other public news, here's some preview examples for how the Retrospective Comic Art Museum art book will look. Their printing a 96 page museum book which will catalogue all the pieces in the show. Kinda in four parts, 1) Marvel - DC stuff, 2) Maxx stuff, 3) Later Paintings and 4) Trout Antiques.  So an overview of all my crap. The size specs in this sample aren't right, this is just a rough John Butler is finishing as you read this.

However, still hammering out a NEW date for a Comic Art Museum reception ( which doesn't have to line up with the art opening)... maybe end of Feb? Or possibly into April. Stay tuned for a solid reception date.

______

Okay, enough plugging of stuff.  Back to throwing something else interesting to look at.

Here's an old drawing of an Isz I used on business cards i printed up back before i broke into comics.  ( thus the ink and brush) - Kinda silly as most editors I rarely met in person, only through phone or snail mail.

Also here's an old Isz story I drew for the Fantagraphic Comic called 'Anything Goes'.

This is as close to a phallic mythological of the birth of an Isz... long before it later appeared in the Maxx.

Still struggling with women's faces here.

Not so much a story as an excuse to shamelessly sticking Isz in the funny animal Critters comics. Even though Isz aren't really an 'animals', are they? Wandering Stars. Where ever I could plug him in.

Nobody seem to care, but back then...

...there wasn't much to say about something weird little thing...with no eyes and a shaft for a body, was there?

Just kinda.... strange looking thing.

Most of these Isz stories were reprinted in the two I Before E collections, but i though it might be cool to see these pages up close.

I also dug up these blue lines of the art  I hand colored too.


-----

And here's a old Nemesis cover.  I may have posted this before... not sure.

(above) is a splash page Moebius did in his Aedena Cycle story, which is what inspired my Nemesis cover.  (Sorry i don't have the black and white scan, just this Epic color reprint.) This awesome space ship Moebious did always inspired me as a teenager..

His kicks ass. All mine really has in common with Moebius's ship... is a slightly forced perspective.

The hot air balloons harken back to my 1800s fixation. I wanted to see how much if a city could be suggested by lights against silhouettes.

Also tried a suggestion of fog with some splatter.

My white out was almost like cake layers... so thick back in the old days. Now, it's usually caked on acrylic instead, but the same idea. Trying to fix by plastering on as much white as possible.

Notice my unusually hidden signature... tastefully worked into the art, rather than outlandishly large like it usually is? : )


And there we go.

Wow - I can see I have a heck of a lot of comments to reply too, haven't i?  : )

Thanks again,

to everyone...   for everything.

- Sam Kieth




 

Abstract Painting... that morphed into something else..

Here's something that I just started for fun...

Just dabbling with some Clear Gell...

This stuff is usually used with Golden Acrylics,which do interesting things with the Gell.

..but you can use regular Acrylics with the it too.

Pretty messy until it tries..

..but the up side you can tilt and work with the Gell while it's still wet. Get different effects by tilting and dripping.. rubbing...

...dragging the pallet can cause some sweet 'tracks' effects too...

so normally i'd quite right here..

but it occurs to me i might be able to work this into some cool textures...

...for a Nola page!  .. this Mom Logo on the lower left should do the trick.

I'll work in one a mom's face with the 'eyes that don't match on purpose'...  down at the bottom...

Now here's a rough version... I blend it a bit more below...

I think adding the panel borders ( even if their empty right now) - actually may *help* unify this page a bit, what do you think?

I like panel borders done digitally too...  but i did the borders right on the art look better, so the rough texture of the paint effects shows through. You may have to click on it to get closer and see what i mean.

So that's that. Now the easy part - i just need to add something to go INTO these panels, so it makes a story.


Wish me luck.

Sam



Btw... has anyone had any trouble posting comments? I remember a few posts back someone mentioned it i think.  Luckily the spam has not been to bad not a problem so far either.  Fingers crossed!