My Withered Drawing Stump

It's getting close to leave for Pub Quiz, where my team, the fearsome Team Eleven, should do some serious damage. We're like the New York Yankees but not evil.

I finished inking the Mystery Piece. It took longer than I thought. I'll be coloring it tomorrow. Whoa, that's a lotta drawing and inking there.

Fun and Games

I've recently gotten a big assignment from one of my frequent clients. I don't want to step on their denoument, as Kingdom Come Batman once said, so I'm keeping their name and the name of this project quiet for now. But it's a mind-bendingly big job. The mind wobbles at it. It's going to feature a game board and fifteen illustrations, including the picture of everyone's favorite Micro Machine Candidate Dennis Kucinich. Dennis... last in polls, first in comedy. and, if we voted on First Ladies, he'd be a winner by a landslide.

I know I'm going to need frequent breaks from this gig to keep my head from imploding. Especially since it's due on Monday. On the upside, it shouldn't be too terribly long before I can post the final. Until then, I figured taking a couple of Sanity Pauses to show you the work in progress t'ain't a bad thing.

I Love It When Stuff Works

I know this is silly, but it's actually kind of cool, so I wanted to share it.

I went to Starbucks today, as is my frequent afternoon habit. Starbucks has been shaking things up to improve their product and the experience of going to their stores. I've enjoyed both, but it's good that they keep things fresh as it were. Anyway, they've now created these Green Spilly Stopper Things.

Okay, I don't know what they're really called, but they're cool.

Here's the thing: When I tool around in my car after having gotten my coffee, I usually have to cross railroad tracks to get back home. I guess I live on the wrong side of the tracks. Between the uneven tracks and the winter-exacerbated potholes, there are some bumps. Frequently, the coffee will spill out of the travel top and drip onto the center console of the Eclipse. That's no good. I've mastered driving while holding the coffee out the window as I cross the tracks, but that's a hassle in and of itself.

Before this, the only thing you could do was ask for a sticker to cover it. But it left a residue on the top and just never worked as well. Now, the Starbucks Engineers have come up with this little stopper thing that fits in the drinking hole in the traveler lid. And it works. I drove back from Starbucks, coffee in the drink holder as I crossed the tracks, and not a drop spilled. Pretty slick.

Clearly, it doesn't take a lot to impress me. But little things that work are pretty cool. I wish I'd thought of this.

Now, I do have a brilliant idea for an iPod add-on if anyone wants to talk.

Witchy Woman

In today's installment of Messin' Around, we present the Scarlet Witch.

One of my art school teachers posited the idea that men were mostly angles and women were mostly curves. It's something I apply to these Powerful Women pieces. But, for this one, I wanted to see how angular, yet feminine, I could keep the drawing. Scarlet Witch has a lot of angles in her costume, especially in her headpiece, so I could play off of that.

I also like the wacky Ditko-esque background that I was able to achieve. Part of it was a Happy Accident in using the Photoshop Twirl filter and applying it to the wrong area.

Now, if we could just get Wanda here back together with The Vision.

Coffee Time

I mentioned a couple weeks ago how, while on my annual trip to MegaCon in Orlando I stopped by Downtown Disney and was disappointed to find out that they no longer carried the little itty-bitty coffee cans anymore. Well, good news! On his trip to Disney, Bob Ingersoll called to say that they'd now introduced little, itty-bitty vaccuum packed bags of coffee... and in new flavors!

So, guarded by several of my Super Deformed Star Wars toys are nine flavors of Mickey's "Really Swell" coffee, including Regular Disney Blend, and the previously released French Vanilla and Hazenut are new flavors Breakfast Blend, Cinnamon Pecan, Blueberry Cobbler, Chocolate Caramel Fudge, French Roast, and Pralines and Cream.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available for purchase on the interweb. So, I'll have to parcel this out until I make it out to Disneyland come Comic-Con International time.

Look! Up on the blog!

Just messing around a little bit today. I wanted to try a different style, different color approach, different color choices. So here's the Superman illo I kicked around today.

It'll Be Here Before You Know It

I received my advance copies of Love and Capes #7 from the printer today. I got both the Free Comic Book Day and the retail version (available in July). I am so looking forward to this FCBD. I didn't know what I was in for last year. This year I do, and I think it's gonna rock!

Now You See Her, Now You Don't

I've had a little time to experiment and keep up the sketches. So, today, it's Phantom Lady.

I used to love DC’s Freedom Fighters comic. There was just something cool about a new universe of heroes (who all seemed to relocate to Earth One like it was moving to another city) that I’d never seen before. Freedom Fighters was cancelled in the DC Implosion, but she eventually came back in All-Star Squadron. For those of you DC people, that means she started out on Earth-Two, moved to Earth-X, and then Earth-One. And didn’t age a day.

Only later did I find out she was part of Quality Comics. That’s something I miss about comics these days, that sense of history that they had. So many characters today are clean reboots and you don't have that desire to find the old comics, see what they were about.

Phantom Lady’s costume has got skimpier and skimpier as the years have gone on... and I’m apparently not going to deviate too far from that tradition here.

Illo a la Retro

I've just done a spate of illustrations for Lone Star Press and my friend Bill Williams. These are for a forthcoming Wowio book that he's putting out, and I'll let him announce those particulars. I'm sure he won't mind me telling you to check out his books over there, though.

These are illustrations for a prose book, and I wanted to do them in a kind of classic pen illustration style. But I don't have any of those crow quills anymore, and was never all that comfortable with one anyway. So I decided to work all in brush. This one, a picture of an old-time coffin shop, turned out particularly well. I like that there are no ruler straight lines. I think I got some interesting textures, too. And working with only one gray helps keep it simple yet interesting while separating the image nicely.

Blub, Blub

My friend Thomas who runs the excellent Say it Backwards blog has started a new one, the Underwater Jiu Jitsu blog, devoted to Aquaman. I love SIB, and while Aquaman isn't on my short list of top characters, I look forward to seeing the Sea King through Thomas' unique prism of humor and insight.

Oddly, as I was battling the Vulcan Death Cold yesterday, watching the Indians trying desperately to lose their opening game, I started thinking about the next sketchbook piece. I'd decided to do Mera, Aquaman's wife. I don't know if she's dead anymore, of if they're married anymore or, well, anything. Man, Arthur has been messed up but good. And Mera's been messed up worse.

Heck, Aquaman killed her when she went insane. Well, he threw her onto a sharp piece of wood by accident, impaling her. It didn't take, as she got out of her casket the next day saying "I'm an alien from another dimension. Did you think my anatomy was the same as yours?" Well, you two did have a kid together, so it was a safe assumption that you kept your vital organs in your stomach cavity, but that's beside the point. Then she screamed at him some more and disappeared into a wormhole. Or something.

Anyway, in honor of the new Underwater Jiu Jitsu blog, and just because, here's my Mera illustration. If you really like it, you can buy it here.

Oh, and I think I'm winning the battle with the cold. Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a day or two.