Visitor(s)

This weeks title coincided quite nicely with real life. Sweet Enemy and I had a big 'ol party to celebrate our no longer living in sin. Big 'ol, for us: about eleven people, but all of them are on our list of Most Important People on the Planet (Non-Family). It was our first large party at our house and it was fun/hard getting ready for it. I could have done a big portrait with everyone, but, I'm lazy. So, I picked the two farthest-flung males and a nice moment that really happened.

My really good friend Kick Enemy Men came from Maine and Jason "Lefty" Williams came from Atlanta (with Rayann, Sweet Enemy's oldest friend). First let me say (if you haven't clicked on the link) Lefty is a professional musician. I play bass and managed to also score an indefinite loan of a drum set, and since Kick Enemy Men (guitar) and I played together a lot during college, I thought we could get something going. Lefty forgot the special pick harness he uses on his right stump, so chose to play bass, so I hit the drums. Kick Enemy Men blew the dust off of his Les Paul and, receiving much ribbing about the rusted strings, started playing.

We did some fun stuff, even though us playing with Lefty would be like going on a mountain bike ride with Tinker Juarez . Then Lefty noticed something odd while playing my bass; a Memphis knock off of a Fender jazz bass. So he stopped, asked for an allen wrench and began to adjust my truss rod, listing off of the the problems it would solve if my neck weren't so bent. This just goes to show how cool he is.

He stopped after a while, handing the bass off to Rayann (she met him at the Atlanta School of Music where she was studying bass) and we played late into the night. We swapped instruments occasionally and I actually sang some.

Then we went upstairs, drank lots more, ate lots more, all the time reading from a book of 1,700 dirty limericks that Sensei Pincus and Heidi brought us.

So, after all that, here's the drawing of that moment:



Not to forget the other cool people: Sensei Ben Pincus, Heidi Albright and young Caleb; James Taylor (not that one); Andre Zero and Carol; Scotty B. and Gina; and last, but certainly not least, Debi Hron;

listening to while posting: "waking up is hard to do" by +/- (a terrible name for a band that might want to ever be searched for on Google

Captain(s)

My first idea for this was huge. A gigantic Sergio Aragones-style cocktail party with every captain I could think of. My excuse is running out of time. We have a huge party on Saturday and guests from Atlanta right now.

So, here's what you get. A sketch:



After this, they are both going to enter the Silliest Boot competition. I thought about including the female Captain Marvel and having her saying something like "Cry me a river, cap."

Swinebread should recognize the silhouette on the far right. One of the unsung captains...

Listening to while posting: Crickets outside my window.

Emergency!

I'm going to start off with bad news for the comic book world: Mike Wieringo died this weekend of a heart attack at the age of 44. I personally count him among the greats: Alan Davis, John Byrne and Richard Corben. If he was, in real life, as nice a guy as he seemed from his near-daily sketch post, he will be sorely missed.

Now, if you've linked to all of those artist sites, you may be slightly disappointed in coming back here. I think this worked rather well. An half-hour of research, an couple of hours of penciling 45 minutes of inking and two and a half hours of coloring and here it is. If you recognize it, you are officially old. Really, really old or really, really retro. It goes out to Stat Twelve, the best and only paramedic I know.



Listening to while posting: "1816, The Year Without A Summer" by Rasputina from 'Oh Perilous World'

missing

I was going to take advantage of the this week's title to engage in some irony and forgo this week's picture and get busting on a comic I'm working on with AndreZero. However, I decided to do a quickie in Illustrator (about 45 minutes).

This is based on a true story. When I was at art school, I'd gotten a friend into mountain biking. We searched together and bought a nice used bike (it came with early SPDs and she gave them to me in return for some pedals and toe clips). One day a month or so later, I was walking down the street with Sweet Enemy and saw her bike secured to a post by its front wheel only. I'd told her how to correctly lock her bike, but the lesson obviously didn't stick. So, I though I'd teach her a lesson and I flipped the quick-release and stole her bike for her. As S.E. and I were walking to the school to put it in her studio she met us walking the other way. She was rather surprised to see me carrying her bike (sans front tire).



listening to while posting: Fibber McGee and Molly: Brisk Walk to Dugan's Lake

moon/mune/muhn/mun

I should have hated this topic, but I didn't.

Huh.

The comic is based on a talk Sweet Enemy and I had about not-so-cool were-creatures. After finishing volume 2 of DC: The New Frontier by the wonderfully talented Darwyn Cooke, I decided to attempt the entire work with a brush. While I am NOWHERE near the inestimable Mr. Cooke, I thought it turned out well enough to try again.



Speaking of trying again, I thought I might attempt a weekly three panel. It may go nowhere, but it will be called "Synecdoche Theatre" and this is the first one...

Listening to: 'Small Plot of Land' by David Bowie from "1.Outside"


p.s. Just now, I thought it'd have been neat and really obscure to do a picture of Tom Cullen from 'The Stand'. Dang, I should have done that...

Poem

I liked this title and I don't know why. What it did was inspire me to get back to a medium that I hadn't done since art school: relief print. I decided to do a treatment of a poem in the way I'd done one in relief class. I took a haiku and did a very small print based on it. I don't remember the exact poem but it went a bit like:

Now, the fireworks
are over for the night
ah, how vast and dark.

Of course, you don't get to see the print. Only one has survived and hangs on the wall of a friend's condo. He won it at a raffle at a seminar at our aikido dojo.

Anyhoo. I haven't had time to do the actual carving, what with another trip to ride The Queen Latifah Trail in MA and some freelance web design work (Woo hoo! Firewood money!). So, what you get is a sketch for the print done in illustrator. It will be much cooler carved and printed. I think the composition is missing something. Perhaps the angles need tweaking. Any thoughts? The poem it's based on is below.



poor crying cricket
Perhaps your little husband
was caught by our cat

(by Kikaku)

Listening to: Fibber McGee and Molly episode: "Egyptian Good Luck Ring" (1940)

discovery

This was a pretty good topic, I thought. I had the basic idea on Sunday and sketched it out rough. Two more sketches later, I decided to attempt a scratchboard of it.

Result = failure.

Ah, well, can't win them all. So, in the need to get something up by Wednesday, I offer the third-round sketch placed in the semblance of an old-school sci-fi magazine cover. I would love to see this painted don't have much ability in painting. I actually entered art school hoping to be a painter, but sucked very much. I was so bad in fact that my instructor was so impressed with my progress from the fall to spring semester that the upped my grade from a C- to a C+. Luckily, I discovered type...

So, here it is. Just imagine that this was painted by Frank Kelly Freas or someone of his towering ability.



A used bookstore in town has a display of three items that the owner bought at an estate sale. Three pristine Fantasy and Science Fiction magazines and the original paintings of their covers! He has them displayed without price in a hidden area of the store. He showed them to me after I'd come up to the register with couple of 'golden age' sci-fi compilations.

Listening to: "Dawning of a New Era" by The Specials