Cowabunga!!!

I've been drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since 1987...I was 11. I discovered the green teens when I was home sick from school with strep throat. I found out that there were cartoons on TV even after I went to school andthe original TMNT cartoon mini-series was being run at 9:30am. I was instantly hooked. The concept blew my mind. Once I was feeling well enough to go back to school I tried to spread the word on this new phenominal cartoon series I discovered....But...it was the 6th grade. My peers were all just way too cool to be caught dead watching "kid's stuff". After all, they had Guess Jeans, Hair Spray and Mtv and Motley Crue. Mutant Turtles? Pssshhh. So childish. But that didn't stop me from geeking out some. I drew them in my school notebooks occasionally but didn't see that cartoon again until 2 years later when the Turtle phenomenon hit full stride. By then My friend Pat and I became obsessed. Posters, bed sheets, toys, fruit pies, stuffed animals, and comics. We immersed ourselves in it for a few years. Anyway....all that is to say that even today, I still love the TMNT's and I really love to draw them from time to time. I drew the above Raphael and Casey Jones drawing and liked it so much I scanned it at threw it up on Facebook with an inquiry. "What would you pay for a sketch like this from me?" You see, I was seeing alot of artists posting ebay auctions of artwork they were trying to sell. Most were trying to sell original sketches. I figured that maybe I could get in on that. Sell sketches on ebay and who knows...maybe get someone to notice me. Maybe even Mirage Studios or Nickelodeon would spot my work and give me paid gigs drawing a TMNT comic book. Oh to dream. Anyway, inspired by the Raph/Casey drawing I decided to do a set. Pair a Turtle up with one of their allys. I still have yet to do a Leonardo one but I figured, I could, at least, share what I've done so far. Donatello and the Fugitiod and Michelangelo and AprilO'Neil.

THE VOID: 20th Anniversary Special

Yep! It was 20 years ago in 1991 that I created my favorite character. The short, odd-shaped vigilante known as THE VOID. Long story short...I used to draw comics of this guy in high-school and up through college. Eventually revamped him and put out some zine style mini-comics in the early 2000's. After a few years of trying out different comic ideas and even doing some pro-work, I had the itch to draw my favorite odd-shaped vigilante once again. The original intent was to have a full bore graphic nove

l of about 100 pages worth of awesome Void action but time got away from me, I had a long, serious bout with artist depression, and my own laziness sorta made that dream a distant one. I still felt I needed to do something special. It's not often one's favorite creation turns 20. So I forced myself to sit at my art table and came up with a 1-shot Anniversary Special. 10 pages of story and another 14 or so of archived drawing and sketches and preview pages of the actual graphic novel. My goal was to have it printed in time for the Minnesota Fallcon in October because that would have been around the 20 year mark.

So heres a glimpse of the glorious cover.

Because I'm feeling bad about it....

Here...since I've been a chump in regards to posting art this year, I'm gonna go ahead a post some old archived stuff I have floating around my computer from various projects and doodles.

I had a couple year stint as a sketch card artist for Inkworks (Now no longer in business! DOH!) and this is just a sample of some the cards I did for the animated Hellboy:Sword of Storms set. Still one of my favorites sets I had the pleasure of working on mainly because of the kick-ass character designs....and it was Hellboy!

The above is from a set i did for Alien vs Predator: Requiem. It was insane having to draw 400+ sketch cards of these highly detailed monsters in just 3 weeks while having to also put in a full week at the day job. Yikes! I barely sqeaked this dealine out! To try to save time I tried to "Bruce Timm" the characters a little bit....Make them more manageable to draw.

This pic above is the cover from a mini-comic I made which was a clever vehicle to propose to Becky with. By the way....it totally worked.

The local MNCBA fall and spring cons are always a good excuse to flex my art muscles for charity as they have charity art auctions every year....and every year, I generally like to submit something in hopes of bringing in big bucks for either the CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) or the Lupus Foundation. Both great causes. Jumping on the Invader Zim bandwagon that all the cool Hot Topic kids were riding, I decided to do the above piece in hoping those disfunctional, gothy, teens would squeal with glee and merriment and empty their savings accounts on it. Sadly, the sun was probably out that day so the goth kids and their monies never left their homes to see this thing which I created for them. It didn't sell for very much...*sigh* (sorry for the blurry photo...I didn't have time for a proper photocopy)

This piece was a cover for Dead Dog Comics' From Heaven To Hell series. It features the book's two female "hosts" duking it out in Supermanesque attire. Sadly.....Dead Dog is no more as well but I did do quite a bit of work for them while they were up and running....sadly, most of it will never see print though. Again...*sigh*

I'm not dead....honest. 2

Yeah yeah yeah......I've been lax in my Art-Blogging duties. What can I say....Lack of motivation, being extremely busy...it's all gonna sound like excuses. I'm not sure when I'll have more artwork posted but I want it to be soon so I'm gonna tell you it'll be soon. SOON! In the meantime....Go to this convention http://midwestcomicbook.com/ . I'm gonna be there and I hope to have some sort of mini-sketchbook available there for you to hand me money in exchange for. We'll see....It's just shy of a month away so alot can or can't happen before then!

CHEERS!

Please...Can I have some more. MORE?!!!

Since I've been negligent in updating, I'm gonna post 2 in one sitting. I did a bunch of scans of things I had lying around so I might find myself updating more. Here's some of the more recent stuff.

This first one was a random doodle I did on a piece of cardboard that came with some curtains. I kinda liked how things turned out on the cardboard, so I've been saving other pieces like this that I find. I couldn't help but think that drawing of the girl kinda looks like Liv Tyler so I drew elf ears on her and also threw in Golem for good measure.

A sketch of my character who's simply named Toast. My friend Pat Gleason and I were hanging out at a place called Hard Times in downtown Minneapolis about 11 years ago, trying to come up with a wacky story idea we could pitch to Dark Horse Comics. Amongst the notes and sketches from that late night session was the lead character without a proper name. All we had next to her sketch was "Toast". Nothing ever came of Toast or that story pitch but a few years later, I decided I wanted to use the character in my mini-comic "THE VOID" as the girlfriend to The Void's brother Eddy. The original Toast idea was that she was an escaped mental patient/punker chick who drove around in a dune buggy. Well I figured why mess with a good thing?..so I kept her just the same for the mini-comic. I'm not done with her yet either. I have plans for her in the VOID redux should I ever get to drawing it.

I'm currently in the process of writing and doing the layouts for the 2nd issue of my book PEEP. Not to spoil anything but there is a story that features younger versions of both Ronald Reagan and General George Washington. So these are just character sketches of both.

As stated in the previous blog on my character's James Crow and Rex....Here's a possible update on their look. Quite a bit of difference from the versions I created 23 years ago. I'm still working out some stuff on these characters so keep a look out again in the future.

And finally...since I was updating James Crow and Rex's designs, I figured I'd update a character that debuted in my first James Crow comic back in high school and continued making appearances in my comic The Void. His name is MASK....I know....real original, but I was 15 and hadn't even heard of the Dark Horse Comics character yet. The overall, design isn't much different from the original except for the wrist bracelets.....They used to have big spikes like the ones Chun Li from the Street Fighter video games wears. The other change is that this version has a little bit of a neck whereas the original was just a "scubbing bubble" looking head resting on a beefy body. I'm not done with this character either. Though his name may need to be tweaked, I plan on him being a major player in my VOID redux. The main reason I decided to update his look.

YEESH!! Where've I been?!!

Well....Time just got away from me. It seems like even if I had a time machine, I'd still always be playing catchup. With the holidays, both Bequi and My birthdays, and various other goings on and obligations, I just never seemed to have the time or energy to work on this art blog. But I'm here now so here are a few random items from my stacks.

Pretty self explanatory. Lego people vs. Little People. I did this one for a warm-up for class but I stole the idea from myself on a T-shirt design I did for my cousin's military unit in Iraq called The Ocho. I think I put the sketches for that on an earlier blog.

A Cyborg bear. It was a class warm-up on drawing cyborgs and this is what came to me.

A boy and his pet....bug....thing.

And lastly....Chibi Wolverine and Deadpool. Note Deadpool's captions giving greetings.