Skool Arts

I haven't been drawing much lately because I've been helping my wife Bequi out by inking her pages. So unfortunately, there's not much new and fun stuff other than a few odds and ends I've done for the Art Academy class I teach. Here are some of my favorites from the last term.

The object of the creative exercise (warm-up) was to draw someone that had something to do with water. So I drew this rather pissed off life guard creature.

This Creative Exercise was a bit more complex than normal. We gave the kids 3 options of action to draw. Someone running, someone sitting and someone flying. I chose sitting as you can see.....And we've all been there before, haven't we.

Like the week prior, we decided to have the kids choose from 3 options again. This time it was from a princess, and alien or a wrestler. I chose a wrestler AND and alien in the ring. I'm still annoyed with the spaceship dome....the shine effect looks forced....but...to be fair...I did it in in the last 20 seconds before we had to call time..

This is my favorite from the whole term. It was on the last class which is always a free-draw for the creative evercise. Here I depicted an evil "Skottie Young" style kid with a Super-Soaker and hid pet PugDragon posing for a picture.

Meet James Crow and Rex!

Inspiration comes in many forms. In 1988 mine came in the form of two dinosaur stuffed animals. Back then I was really into making little audio skits with my dual cassette recorder. I would often compose news reports or comical adventures with various recorded sound bytes recorded from TV or radio integrated here and there. I was inspired in this by local DJ's and their integration of sound clips into their intros and such. Also my love for the Dr. Demento show played a huge hand in it as well. Most of the time these were only funny to me, my cousins and my friend Pat but we all loved making them and listening to each others newest creations.

One summer day I decided to make a parody of James Bond. I needed a lead character fast but didn't really have one fresh in my mind so I began looking around my room. My eye was drawn to two colorful and cute plush dinosaurs sitting on my book shelf. A purple Pterodactyl and a blue T-rex. Why not?! But I needed a name to play off the James Bond Parody. James was a must but I needed the last name. Out of my love of Mystery Science Theater 3000 came CROW from the character CROW T. ROBOT. The sidekick was a desperately easy one since he was a T-rex. Somehow Johnny Rex was a no brainer for me. So with my 2 lead characters figured out I created my first audio skit of JAMES CROW. I even used a TV recorded James Bond theme as the intro. It was a hit with my cousins and especially with my friend Pat. Soon Pat was creating James Crow skits too and we would each spend hours recording them as well as sharing them with each other. With each new episode we would try to raise the bar on funny sound clips and clever plots...although, most of the episodes followed a certain repetitive formula. It didn't seem to matter to us though....we we young and easily entertained.

After years of doing the audio skits it was time to bring the James Crow characters into a new visual medium. Pat and another friend named Eric started drawing their own comic books in school under the FAR-CRY comics monicker. I was encouraged and inspired to do my own so without hesitation I went straight for James Crow. Doing it in comic form was far more liberating than doing the audio skits. Now I was able to see the secret agent characters in action and further expand their universe.

In issue #2 of James Crow I introduced a new character called THE VOID. Though I loved James Crow, eventually he ended up taking a back seat to this new super-hero character. I still did an occasion James Crow book here and there but I mostly focused on developing THE VOID.

One notable villain in the book was the BABY NINJAS. If you've followed me on the convention circuit, you probably know that I've published 3 comic strip style books based of the Baby Ninjas and I still sell copies of those books at shows today. Though they had origins from mock newspapers I drew up years earlier, their inclusion in the James Crow comic book was where these terrible tots really started to develop for me.

It was in the hayday of the IMAGE comics years that comics became dark and brooding and so did our titles at FAR-CRY Comics. Not even James Crow was exempt. Death and tragedy had creeped it's way into the once comical and slap-sticky comic and in a lot of ways, I think it sort of sullied it. The darkest moment was when Johnny Rex ended up dying on a space station in some convoluted crossover I tried to do with JAMES CROW and THE VOID. That was the last time I drew the book.

Poor James Crow and Rex only showed up in the occasional sketchbook or FAR-CRY pinup in the years following the last comic appearance but I could never forget these two. They like all my children are very special to me and I would always come back to visit them.

And so I did visit them again a few weeks ago in the warm-up exercise for the class Becky and I teach. I pretty much kept the original design elements but tweaked their anatomy's just a little to give them more structure and style. It was fun drawing these old friends again and the kids really seemed to enjoy them and the brief back-story that accompanied the drawing. I even brought my old plush dinos in the following week to prove to them where my inspiration came from.

This has got my mind going on maximum warp a bit and I plan on going back for a complete overhaul on these characters again very soon. Maybe make them look more like the actual dinosaurs they represent. I'll keep you all posted on the progress as it developes.

Third Post.....GRAB BAG OF AWESOME!

Yes indeed....another one. I figured since it's been a while since I posted that I had some catching up to do. As you can tell from the title of this one, this is just a bunch of random sketches I had floating around. That Top one is from a warm-up creative Exercise from the class i help teach but I can't, for the life of me, remember the theme that inspired such a beautiful creature.

My buddy Pat Gleason who is the penciller on DC's Green Lantern Corps was over a couple weeks ago and asked me to help him sketch ideas for a new villain in the book. The CORPS is full of all kinds of weird monsters and aliens so I was noodling around with a few creepy alien heads here....Oh yeah...and I sketched Pat and our mutual friend Tim (as they appeared in or just out of High School) there as well.

Speaking of drawing friends...heres Pat once again. I was planning on drawing some of my friends as the captured scientists in the AGENT MONGOOSE and the Hypno-Beam Scheme book I worked on for Lerner Publishing. I didn't end up using Pat in that book but I did happen to use.....

My other buddy Andy.

And finally, here's my character Jane once again. This was for last weeks warm-up which happened to be the last class of the term so it was a free-draw. No theme...just draw whatever you want. I really like how she turned out here. Especially since I really screwed up her eyes in the beginning and threw in the Aviator Shades as a last ditch effort to save the drawing....and it worked! I'm really happy I went with the shades here! I also gave her a shirt that was worn by a character named Renji on a couple episodes of the Japanese anime' BLEACH.

More fun with Creative Exercises.

Wow....two entries in one day. Aren't you lucky. Anyway, heres more of the warm-ups that we do with the kids in the art class I help teach. The one up top is of a kid amped-up on energy drinks. I kinda dig that one cuz he looks like a fugitive from a Ren and Stimpy cartoon.

Next up is my Space Snowman character facing off against some Eskimo in the Arctic.

The theme for this one had something to do with an Octopus so I made the Hip-Hoptopus vs. Tourettes the Penguin from my Great Big Pissed Off Bear Comic strips. One of my faves.

This theme called for a character that had the power to control earth or dirt. I decided to go a completely different route on this one and drew a kid playing in his sandbox. I was trying to be all deep and smart and stuff. At any rate...Note: What's the cat burying in there in the background?

Lastly is a more recent one where the theme was to draw a character with the power of grossness. So...Snot and Boogers seemed to be the right way to go on this one. I especially like how the Booger Beasties came out in this one. They remind me of Evan Dorkin's Milk and Cheese.

Sketching on the clock.

Having a physical day-job doesn't lend itself to much lag time to slack off enough to get in any real decent sketching. Once in a while opportunities to bust out a quick doodle arise, either during my lunch break or while waiting for something or on someone. Either way....I need to seize those opportunities more. Here's just a few quick noodles I did while at the daily grind. Note: they're usually on other papers or notes....Just like my homework in High School.

AXE COP WILL CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD....if you're a bad guy.

Today I'm promoting my pal Ethan Nicolle's Online sensation Axe Cop. His 5 year old brother Malachai writes it and Ethan draws it and it is a beautiful thing that everyone should check out. It is hillarious....Trust me! He's gotten a surge of exposure with this recently and there's a possibility, if the surge continues, awesome things could come from it very soon, so I just want to help spread the word.

So unless you hate America, pie, babies and your grandma....get over to http://axecop.com/ and check it out.

Hitler wouldn't do it....You don't want to be like Hitler do you? CHECK IT OUT NOW!

http://axecop.com/

I hate Lady Gaga so I drew her.

Above is quick character study of Lady Gaga I did preparing for the GBPOB strip featuring her doom in the upcoming issue #3. Even though I find her annoying, and her "music" disgusting, I'm liking how this turned out....it kinda looks like her.

And below is a snip-it from the strip.