In 1991, The Void made his own comic debut just in time for Christmas. Holiday cheer abounded! So much Holiday Cheer that it couldn't be contained to just one cover.

Then again in 1992, on the anniversary of his debut, in issue #27, The Void returned to spread Holiday glee to the masses once again.

And Now The Void returns once again to don the santa hat and wish you a Merry Christmas in 2009!

Maybe someday, I'll learn to draw! Merry Christmas!

Matt

Tis the season...for Matt sketches!!!

With Christmas fast approaching, and in keeping with the spirit of giving that is part of the essence of the holiday season, I present you with this humble assortment of fine sketchings from the past few months.

This is a Peep Sketch I did while getting an oil change this summer. I think it turned out rather well...right on par with Peep looming over the bloody skull I did 2 years ago. I'm pretty proud of it.

I really like how this one turned out....ALOT! This was for the creative exercise warm-up on the last class of the fall 09 session. I drew my character Void's evil brother Trak with his Katars at the ready as he skids across the floor. I had this drawing approved by the Poop Monster since I had some extra time.

When Sam (co-teacher at the Art Academy) went to Korea in the middle of the summer session, we had the kids draw what they thought he was doing over there. They had him doing everything from zip-lining, to tagging graffiti, to battling ninjas, to picking up chicks. But everyone knows he was fighting bears as depicted in my drawing for that exercise.

While getting my Brakes fixed on the work van I squeezed out these random sketches. No real plan...just randomness.

In High School some friends and I made a super-hero film called SPATULA MAN. I played the hero in this epic tale while my friend, John Conn, played the villain-THE EVIL OLD BAG. This was a remastered rendition of those old characters I did as a 30 min creative exercise warm-up for the class.

In case I'm lazy and I don't make another entry before Christmas....Have a Merry Christmas all!

"She shall bring forth a son,
and thou shall call His name Jesus;
for He shall save His people from their sins."

~ Matthew 1:21

Halloweenies!

Over the 2 weeks leading up to All Hallows Eve, Bequi and I decided to go with a Halloween Monster theme to the creative exercise in the Manga/super-hero Art Class we teach. The Creative Exercise is simply a 20-30 minute warm up drawing we have the students work on in the beginning of class to help get their creative juices flowing. Most days we write an idea up on the Dry-erase board and the kids will create their drawings based on those parameters (EX: Draw a character that has the power to control noodles). At the end of the 20-30 minutes we have any student who is willing and brave bring their drawing to the front and we have a brief comment and critique session to hopefully, help and inspire the students. The above drawing is mine from the first session. I really wanted to draw a big ol' droopy blob assaulting a child for his Halloween loot.

This next one is from the second week. I wanted the students to draw the scariest monster they could think of. I drew Edward Cullen from that stupid TWILIGHT series (I saw the RiffTrax version-So funny). To me this is truly scary that Twilight is so popular....Vampires that are supposed to be vile, bloodsucking, monsters, turned into pale, lip-wristed, metrosexuals who sparkle in the sun and drink deer blood somewhere in Seattle. LAME!!! It's worse than when George Lucas made Darth Vader into a whiney, pansey, crying for his dead girlfriend at the end of Star Wars: Episode 3. Anyway, Here's Edward, in his big-haired, sparkley goodness, ready to play ball while Count Dracula and Nosveratu look on in disgust.

Then and Now: Far-Cry Comics

Back in 1991, Pat Gleason, Eric Farrington and myself started FAR-CRY COMICS. They were 14 years old and I was 15. Inspired by Batman, TMNT, GI JOE, Spider-man, and the Punisher, we cranked out comics for the simple joy of entertaining ourselves and a few of our friends and classmates. Issue after issue, the 3 of us cranked out the comics and built our skills as artists along the way. This also pushed Pat and me to actually pursue a career in comics. Pat and I continued to draw our comics well into college and we even resurrected them in the early 2000's when we produced some new issues in a mini-comic/zine format and sold them at comic book conventions and even a few punk shows around the Twin Cities. The above drawing is from 1992 and drawn by me....no doubt during one of my classes. It was our usual suspects group shot of characters from our various titles. The following is one I did earlier this fall that started as a doodle of one of Pat's characters and them exploded into an action "all attack" group shot featuring a current roster of usual suspects. Alot can change in 17 years but some of the faces are still the same....just upgraded

More sketches!

Time for another installment of random drawings from my recent archives. The one on top is a class warm-up exercise that went horribly awesome. It was all in pencils. I tweaked it in photoshop to make it it all the more lovely.

The following is a class warm-up of a character from a series I'm developing and hope to get off the ground someday. Her name is Jane and she has a Tommy-gun....Need I say more? The next is a Power Girl piece I did for the 2009 Fallcon art auction. I was inspired by Amanda Conner's depiction of the DC character and wanted to try my hand at it. It was a class warm-up at first but in going back to redraw it for the auction, it ended up making the original look like crap. This new one looks so much better.

This one is another piece I donated to the 2009 Minnesota Fallcon Art Auction. I had gone back and read the Jim Lee/Chris Claremont run on X-men issues 1-10 from the early 1990's, and was inspired to draw Cyclops and Psylocke.

The next two of Grifter and Sister Zealot from Wildstorm's Wild-C.A.T.s. They were 45 minute warm-up exercises done over 2 days that I did at home. I was trying a personal experiment with these in hoping to get my creative juices flowing as well as giving myself an excuse to sketch fun stuff, and not just jump straight into the freelance work.

Cheers!

Far-Cry Comics crew circa 2002

This was during a drunken wandering at the Wizardworld Chicago comic convention back in 2002. It was actually 3 separate pictures of Pat Gleason, Bill Hauser and Me standing over a light outside of a hotel. I merged them in Photoshop to create this Horrifying image of undead comic artists.

Happy Halloween!

"You're gonna love my nuts."

Hmmmm...maybe we should find a different spokesman for Planet Doom Studios.

Heaping Piles of Blog

At the prompting of one of our students at the Art Academy, I decided to resurrect the Art-Blog I started a couple years ago. Maybe this will prompt me to sketch more. So I might as well start this Art Blog out with some random drawings I've done over the last few years. These are in no particular order...Just a grab bag of awesome! Enjoy!

This was for my Bruzzin (Brother/Cousin-long story) Robb who is currently serving in Afghanastan. It's for his unit who are code-named THE OCHO.

Drew this Super-Girl in the art class I co-teach as a warm-up exercise. I liked it so much I redrew it and inked it.

Another Class warm-up that I liked so much I redrew and inked later. Sometimes, I come up with cool stuff in those warm-up exercises.

Lord Beef...a character Pat Gleason and I made up back in high school.

Firefly from GI JOE. Drawn for the art auction at the 2003 Fallcon.