Original Art Sundays No. 165: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 21

Only a few pages left to this story, as we come up on our fight scene, page one. One of the only pages in the story to not feature any of its main characters. Don't worry, Kay Seurat-Seurat and the Cowgirls will reappear very, VERY soon!
But for right now, the story demands that, in the words of J. Wellington Wimpy, "Let's you and him fight."

Again, a lot I like here. The energy, the economy of dialogue, the layout, and the last line is, of course, stolen from Superman's classic line when he was hit by lightning.

I wanted this page to be raw energy, hence the sparse background in the action panel. It also gave me an excuse to play with manga action lines. I seldom use manga conventions in my work (at least consciously), but as I've been reading more in preparation for this year's SGMS conference, it seems to have been on my mind.
The way this is flowing, I seem to be actually keeping my self-imposed schedule.
This matters for two reasons:
1. It's better for my mental health, my morale.
2. It helps build a readership. I hope people like the work, I hope they enjoy it and get something out of it. But none of that will happen if the work's not there. I get it that a reader wants to know what to expect, and delivering on a regular schedule is a crucial part of that. Really, it's just good business and good manners.
That said, I hope I can maintain the pace through the end of this story!
What after that?
Possibly back to A Private Myth, or another Cowgirls story, or....

Original Art Sundays (Wednesday) No. 164: Suurealist Cowgirls, p. 20

Only four or five pages to go of this story, the second major Surrealist Cowgirls story.
There have been two minor SC stories, and of course, the paper dolls and the lunchbox for fun.
The page at hand:

 

Some notes on this page:

Sparse backgrounds. I tried to shake it up a bit from the heavy black backgrounds of recent pages, and used some support graphic elements for diversity. Chief among these are the lined partial background of panel two, a device I freely stole from Terry Moore, and the connecting infinity symbol in panel three.

I'm trying for more dynamic poses as the action builds. To that end, the face in grief in panel two, Kay's fainting in panel four, and Master Pah coming to life in the final panel.

Narrative note: until the last panel of the previous page, Master Pah had not moved other than to speak. His anger and sense of betrayal at the presence of his former apprentice spur him to physical action.

Scanner access is greatly improved now. 

Next: the battle, page one.

Original Art Sundays (Tuesday) No. 163: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 19

Posting a couple days late due to scanner access issues, yet again. Once the Fall semester begins, my access will improve. Then as long as I can be professional enough to get the work done, all will be well.
Now, the page before the big fight:

I really like this one.
I did some minor edge clean up and cleaned up the blacks a bit in Photoshop. Otherwise, it's all hand work.
Panel One, the full negative effect, was fun to do. I know I could have just drawn the panel conventionally and done an Invert in Photoshop, but what fun is that?
Panel Two, with the whole gang, was also a challenge. By putting Whalliam in the back, I organized them into a tight group, ready for attack. Also, once again, Louise shows insight and initiative in calling for Tolcanan (finally called by name), who's been following our intrepid troupe all this time. This is important since she's sometimes seen as an airhead and a bit of a victim. No simplistic characters, even in a silly story.
Panel Three offers some big hints at Tolcanan's true self, but does not tell all.
Trying to keep the four motifs going here: surrealism, whimsy, Westerns and tension.
Next: Who is Tolcanan? And the big Magic Gunfight, Part One!

Original Art Sundays No. 162: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 18

Only six pages left to this story!
Here's the latest installment:

So the Zen Master is the villian? Okay...
In my Comic Writing course, which ends tomorrow night,  we've been talking about the challenges of doing written humor, either in comics or in prose. Humor is dependent on timing, and when someone else is reading your work, you surrender control of timing. This is usually remedied in comics by visual exaggeration- think Howard Cruse, Robert Crumb or Peter Bagge- but that's not my style, so I find other approaches. My most common tools are puns and surrealist visuals.
These tools can be tricky. it's hard to be over the top and subtle at the same time. On this page, I aspire to a sense of menace, and hope to achieve it without losing (or forcing) the silliness. The surrealism scenes usually begin with a random image, and are honed by making the design work in a plausible way. I don't want it to seem cluttered, while I want to retain a sense of a full-tilt surrealist desert and world.
Overall this is going the way I want it to (except for Taz the kitty's continual insistence on jumping into my work space). I'm continually inspired by Bob Clampett, Carl Barks, Jim Woodring and Mary Fleener in doing this work.
More and more, I see this as either a Golden Age 64 page book or as an 80-page Giant comic, old school DC style. With the completion of this story, I'll have about 47 pages of Cowgirls material total.
Page 19 is almost done, so let's look forward to next week!

Original Art Sundays No. 161: Sketchbook redux

Next page is 3/4 done. With limited scanner access again this week, I opted to concentrate on other work, including the class on Comic Book Writing that I'm currently teaching, and completing an article with a deadline of yesterday (I made the deadline, BTW).
Here are some pages from that same sketchbook to tide us over.

No. 4 pencil, fine line marker and metallic blue marker

First up, a random stab at a female pirate, inspired by old friend Sarah Cardin's fascination with pirate films. Period piracy has become a bit of a fascination for me. I am vehemently opposed to contemporary piracy in most forms.
Next, an original superhero that was fully developed but whose story was never realized.

No. 2 and No. 4 pencil on sketchbook paper

I had to severely darken the image to get the text to read. I pulled out the area around the figure, upper right, for a bit of contrast. The textured gray that fills most of the image is simply paper texture taken to extremes in Photoshop. In case you can't make them out, the notes in the page are:

• Practical shoes and boots
• Costume offers protection (armor?)
• NOT skin tight
• Hair- either keep short or in back
• Mask? NO!!
• Dark tones hues/ colors/ contrast intensity
• Eliminate V-
• Go to hi-strength leotard w/Kelvar
• Chainmail vest/tunic
• Knife sheath - Hip? Boot?
• Whole thing is too medieval

This was an attempt to create a plausible female superhero, based unconsciously in part on the 70s version of the Huntress by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton, also on my meditations on Doc Savage, and inspired by a Tess Gallagher poem titled The Kiss, from whence comes the character's name. I had thought the hand-held crossbow was an original idea, until I realized I'd cobbled it unconsciously from this story- but the notion of the bow being collapsible and wrist-mounted is all mine.
Though I can find no specific record of the Gallagher poem (she wrote several poems about kisses, but I cannot find this one), I do recall hearing her read it on NPR and my fascination with it. The notion she described in the ensuing interview, that a woman's kiss could be a secret agent or a superhero, charmed and inspired me.

The Huntress, from DC Super Stars No. 17,
December 1977

Of course, many of the ideas that I considered crucial to the character have since manifested in other wonderful characters like the Andreyko and Pina Manhunter series and the  Rucka and Williamson work on Batwoman, about which I've gushed in the past. In this context, it's also important to note Ivory Madison's revision of The Huntress. Sadly, she's done only one comic story since then.

Revisions based on previous sketch.
No. 4 pencil and marker

This is my meditation on superheroes, women, and superwomen. I have the storyline plotted out and characters developed in notes- have done for decades- but as I have no shortage of current projects, I wonder if it will ever see fruition. I suspect this is one of those things on which I would write and hand the art off to someone more suited for such work.
As always, I am overwhelmed by the number of projects I start and seldom finish- a common problem, I hope!- but I do take heart in the occasional completion of one.
This is the issue I bring to my writing students. Others only see the finished product as 100% of what it is. The creator sees it as a much smaller figure, sometimes less than1%, of the vision, of what could be.
Next week, back to the Cowgirls!

Original Art Sundays No. 160: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 17

Another page on schedule! What's the world coming to?
Well, maybe it's coming to me.
I think I'll rework the second panel before taking this to press. For now, it tells the story just fine.

Lots of elements here I like. The layout is simple yet interesting, it moves the story along nicely, and the morph in the last panel is very compelling. I love working with swirling, flowing lines and patterns.
The "bad Bodhisattva" is a reference to a song by one of the bands of Greg Merdick, a friend trough Kim Matthews. The song is a fun ditty called "Bad Buddha."
I'll put up an extra post of non-Cowgirls stuff this week.
I'm teaching on Monday nights for the next month, a course on comic book writing, so I hope to complete the next page today so I can scan while I'm at work tomorrow. But the story will continue next week either way!

Original Art Sundays No. 159: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 16

As promised, the next page of the story, long overdue!
I've talked in the past about the challenges of self-imposed deadlines. The truth of it, which I sometimes bypass, is that if it's important to you, you make time for it.
There are sometimes circumstances that interfere with this, especially those related to survival. We're talking Maslow's Heiracrhy of Needs here. While even Maslow acknowledged that his theory has flaws, at its core it's solid. One cannot learn as efficiently on an empty stomach, just as it's more difficult to produce creative work when one's resources vary widely and survival is sometimes an issue.
However, difficult is not impossible. J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book on the London subway going back and forth to work. Not the most efficient way to work, but the results cannot be disputed.
As Reed Waller once told me, if your work is good, it will be recognized. That doesn't mean you'll get rich, or even that you will necessarily make a living, but the work will be recognized.
It's been 23 years since I first seriously pursued creativity as a profession. 23 years of fits and starts, mostly as a result of my self-doubt, but ultimately 23 years well spent.
To this date I have no idea if my work is any good or not. I just know when I'm doing doing work I like, and I like this story.
The next page is already 3/4 completed.
While we look forward to next week, enjoy the current page of our story.

Original Art Sundays No. 158: Jury sketches

I'm pleased to report that the next page of The Surrealist Cowgirls is completed, and will be scanned this week for posting next Sunday.
For this week's offering, here are some sketches from the jury box of the trial on which I recently served. I will make a separate post later this week discussing the case itself, with some accompanying comics!
These were all done in ballpoint pen on yellow legal tablets.
There are still occasional illustration jobs doing courtroom sketches. There are some courts (like this one) where cameras are not allowed, and newspapers and magazines still occasionally hire courtroom artists, though the practice is dying out.
I did about 70 sketches during the trial. I may organize them into a comic of the trial at some point down the road. But now, here are the most interesting of them.

Prosecutor, opening remarks

Judge Kyle

Key witness, day six

Same prosecutor

Prosecution Witness, Day Three
(nowhere near as mean as this sketch makes him look!)

Diagram of Ponzi scheme, Day three

Key witness, Day three

Key witness, day three

Key witness, Day five

Cross-examination by defense, day six

Defense witness, day seven

Witness from SEC, day six

Defense attorney

Defense team, day one

Prosecution witness, day two

Prosecution witness, day two

Defense Attorney

Defense witness, June 4

Defense witness, June 4

Defense witness, June 4

Key defense witness Frank Vennes

Defense witness, June 5

Defense witness, June 4
(this was the sweetest guy, just did a bit of accounting work for the defendant,
got no cross-examination, for which the entire jury was grateful!)

Prosecution closing remarks

Defendant during closing remarks

Original Art Sundays No. 157: Sketchbook: Swipe Files

My jury duty has finally ended and I will be posting about it soon.
The next page of Surrealist Cowgirls is closer, closer, closer to completion and scanning.
Meanwhile, here is another batch of themed sketchbook images.
These are from the same sketchbook as the preceding batch, but the uniting theme here is different. These are all works drawn from reference.
I have not shared these with anyone until now.
Again, this was a very fertile period for me. While my personal life was in shambles, my confidence in, and skill in, my art was growing by leaps and bounds. This may have been a posture of defiance (the one thing that could not taken from me at the time). Or it could have been just a way to keep my mind off my situation.
Whatever the reason, while these have their flaws, there is something to recommend each of them. As cases in point, the Pyle study is in large part an experiment in single direction hatch, and the Spike Lee piece is an attempt to draw in pure shadow- as few lines as possible.
Here they are for your perusal and enjoyment.

Fortune's Friends by Colleen Doran, composition inspired by cover, #4 pencil

Figure study from Burne Hogarth, #4 pencil

Study from Burne Hogarth, #4 pencil

Face study from Kaluta/Russ Heath Shadow book,
#4 pencil and marker

Accidental color version of Kaluta/Heath piece.
The marker chemicals embedded on the page
facing the original sketch,
and created purple and yellow tones on their own!

J. Noel Paton copy, #4 pencil

Howard Pyle copy, graphite stick and green ballpoint pen.
Pyle has been a personal favorite since childhood!

Spike Lee, #4 pencil sketch off TV, probably from The Actor's Studio

Next week: either jury sketches or the Cowgirls page.

Original Art Sundays No. 156: Sketchbook: SF scenes

Jury duty and reduced scanner access continue to hamper the conclusion of the Surrealist Cowgirls story (I anticipate 3 -5 pages for completion of the current story). However, it appears that my commitment to the jury will end this week (though there's no way of knowing for sure).
In the interim, here are some more sketchbook pieces. These are from the same volume as last week's Omaha work, again circa 1992.
Inspired by the recent and largely ignored demise of SF great Jack Vance, whose adaptation of his story The Moon Moth made my Best Comics of 2012 list, these are SF themed sketches. I stubbornly refuse to use the term "sci-fi", though I know it's a losing, if not lost, battle.
In doing these, I was influenced by Kelly Freas and James Pitre (the latter for emotional content more than style- for the sleek stuff I don't mind Vallejo, but prefer Julie Bell). I don't pretend to be in the same league as these folks, but that's where my inspirations lie.
Next week: either more sketches or the next page: the jury is out (literally) on which!

Alien Landscape 1, #4 pencil, marker
and metallic marker

Klingon, #4 pencil and metallic marker

Vulcan Romance, critter looking on,
#4 pencil

Alien Kitty, #4 pencil

Original Art Sundays No. 155: Sketchbooks: Omaha the Cat Dancer, 1993

Next page of Surrealist Cowgirls is still evolving. I may take a day and finish it next weekend.
Always wrestling with the fine line between taking my time to do it right and just dinking around!
Meanwhile, some older sketchbook stuff.
In 1992-1993, I was living with a man who was, ahem, less than pleasant much of the time. I've talked about this in the past and will not rehash, other than to provide context here.
During this time, I found solace in healthy eating and in exercise (I lost over 30 pounds, and when I next saw Reed, he said I was too thin- something nobody else has ever said to me, before or since!) and in my art. I couldn't tell the stories I wanted to tell, since my actions were being closely scrutinized and obsessively criticized, but I filled several sketchbooks. He didn't seem to mind what I sketched too much.
These are all from one sketchbook from that period.
Though these clearly have their flaws, there are many things about them I find pleasing. The anatomy is still lacking in many places, but there's an energy and attitude to them I like to this day.
These were random in the sketchbook. I tried many things artistically during this time, some of which I may post later.
But given that Reed and James Vance recently completed the Omaha storyline, and that Reed may be attending San Diego this year to promote the final volume, this seems as good a time as any to post these.
I'll post a review and final thoughts on Omaha at year's end.
Enjoy!

Marker sketch

Marker and #4 pencil

Metallic marker

Marker and #4 pencil

Marker

Marker (no tail!)

Pencil & marker w/notes