I sold yet another Kenny tee...

Wow. That's like 3 in a week. Nice. This is the blog that got no love from anyone. So I'm celebrating its Oliver Twistness by posting this picture:



An ugly drawring of ugly high school kids from the 1980s.

And My Favorite...

And once again, no she's not anyone you know. Pencil drawing, scanned, "inked" in Illustrator, then taken into Photoshop and digitally airbrushed. She's a sort of half-assed Bruce Timm rip-off with coloring badly copied from and inspired by some Spumco stuff.

Now that I've seen some of the Golden Book art, I might approach this drawing differently if I were to re-do it. But I'm not going to. I want to work on new things. I'm not destined for a job in the animation industry, it seems.

But I can still create my own comic book stories and illustrate them.

A Double Shot of Your Bat-Boy's Love...

This was my initial drawing:



Then I scanned it and fooled around with it in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop until I got this:

More sales at CafePress!

I've sold 11 shirts on CafePress this year. At this rate, I'll receive a commission check sometime in early 2008. The bulk of them have been this shirt:



I get $1.00 a pop. And actually, I've sold 2 shirts in one week. Which is my new all-time record! The other shirt that sold this week was a girly-girl shirt for the womanly lady type fashionista chick:

My Spock Characterization is Spot On!

This was done as a sketch, scanned, opened in Adobe Illustrator then painstakingly "inked" to have a slick, cold finish. Impersonal. Sort of clip art-ish, the artist's hand seemingly removed. I was into that then.

It's an outgrowth of a non-digital inking style I was using in graphic design at UGA, especially on some stuff in my Concepts class. I was never happy with my shaky hands, though.

Colored in Photoshop. I was into flat colors as well.

An old fave of mine...

This was a design for a band t-shirt. If you know me you know the band and you know why I offered to do this. If you don't know me personally, I won't tell you the band name but I will tell you their bassist was this really cool young woman I had a major crush on.

I would've settled for being mere friends but in the end she wasn't particularly interested in even that, and that's cool. Some people are going to be into you and some are not and you can't let it bother you when you don't click on any level.

But damn she was awesome.

I'm less embarrassed by my schoolboy crush on her than I am by the really bad coloring job I did on it after the fact. I wish I still had the original so I could rework it using some of Art Lozzi's color ideas and the stuff John K's been preaching about.

Copying to Learn...

There are two amazing art lessons on John Kricfalusi's blog right now. John K is giving away a world class art education and all you have to do is read his blog and practice, practice, practice. I guarantee it's better than the one you might get at the University of Georgia... and I know that from experience.

The first is by Art Lozzi, a background painter for Hanna-Barbera back in the day. He has a beautiful style that made the H-B cartoons in their heyday warm and inviting to look at.

Also, his how-to commentary is a must for any artist, working in any visual medium. Well, maybe not photography, but maybe you ace photographers out there can find some applications for it somehow.

It's clear, concise and practical. Nothing ephemeral or mystical about it. Just smart plain-talk you can understand and put to use. It's stuff you can read and then immediately run and practice, hands on.

I may not be a painter, but I'll probably keep doing some color work and I know I'm gonna be stealin' from this modern day master.

Another one is by John K. himself, where an artist he's worked with copied a painting from a Flintstones Golden Book. She's already so good (I think her drawing rocks) and yet she's still pushing herself to get better. Which is how it should be, because once you become complacent in what you know you are finished, Jack. Finished!

As good as dead.

John gives her a critique that like Lozzi's explanations is specific and immediately useful... very reasoned. It's strong and based on valid, concrete principles.

Clarity. That's what I like about it. Clarity and specifics. John first gives her the good news, then tells her exactly what she did wrong. And she takes it like a pro. You just know her next effort is going to be lightyears ahead of the first one... like I wrote, she's that good!

"This is wrong, this is why, try this instead."

I wish more teachers were into that kind of thing. I had maybe two in my art school days. One was a former army helicopter pilot/Vietnam vet. Maybe being in an actual war eliminated a lot of the touchy-feely indirectness. He could detect bullshit in art. And I know because several times I turned in bullshit and he called me on it, telling everyone in class what I'd done and how. It wasn't telepathy; it was knowledge.

After that I loved his class. I felt I was finally really learning something. Almost everyone else hated it, including his teaching assistant. Art was only felt to them, not something with order or rules.

What people should understand is, this kind of criticism isn't saying you're bad at drawing. It's a learning tool to become better!

Another way to learn is by... guess what... copying. That's right, copying the work others have done as closely as possible. That was part of the point of John K's exercise with this young artist- she'd taken it upon herself to copy a certain piece of artwork exactly, to learn it and master its lessons.


I copied Alex Toth here... and botched it. But
I learned from it. My next effort will be all the
better for having tried.

The resistance to copying as a learning tool? This idea you can't learn anything by imitating what you see, that you must start by being original? That's mere foolishness.

For one thing, there's nothing you're going to do EVER that's completely original. Unless you are some kind of superhuman genius which more than likely you aren't. Sorry to be the one to break the news to you.

And I know I DEFINITELY am not.

For another, every art technique has a precedent that's identifiable. You have to learn them in order to use them properly and that requires copying in some way, shape or fashion. When you're learning shading, more than likely you're trying to shade in some way you saw in a picture you admired, no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise.

It's unavoidable. If you're an artist, you must've at some point seen art of some kind. It's in you. You don't come up with this stuff in a vacuum. There's a saying about not trying to reinvent the wheel, an old cliche. But it's a true one. You don't have to invent it if it's already there.

People forget that in all the "art is subjective" talk, the tools and methodology of art are objective. They exist in history as a body of knowledge to use and learn from. No one goes out to build a house without having first learned how to hammer nails and saw wood and take measurements. And they learn these things by copying what other builders have done. They learn this stuff as a science in a class filled with practicalities.

No one questions it. So should it be with art. Learn what works from people who do things that work. Use what works to then do your own thing. But first principles, baby.

Writing too. If you've read something and it inspired you to become a writer, chances are you're going to imitate it somehow. Rod Serling said all writers start off copying someone. He said he himself started off as a third-rate Hemingway imitator. "Everything I wrote began with 'It was hot,'" Serling said.

Copy in order to learn. It's not that you have to plagiarize or reject what you think are new ideas. It's just that first you must master the basics, the rules. Doctors, athletes, lawyers, cops, pilots, architects, acountants all do this. They learn it until it's internalized and then they do their own thing with it. And people bow to their expertise.

Only the most assinine self-satisfied of idiots would try to perform brain surgery without having gone to medical school and learned the science of it, the nuts and bolts of the profession and how the human body works. We'd slap his ass in jail if he tried it on us or our loved ones.

But every joker with a word processor or pencil in his or her hand thinks they're a genius, inventing new worlds. In effect performing that brain surgery without text, a pilot flying blind, a lawyer with a fool for a client.

They're making their jobs that much harder than they're fooling themselves. Use what the experts have created for you. Don't be afraid to stand on their shoulders.

Copy in order to learn. Put in the time and effort to learn and improve. You can do it. I know you and I'm pretty certain of this. Dammit!

But don't plagiarize. That's a different animal altogether.

I'd forgotten about these guys... meet the Yardmops!

This drawing took maybe 5 minutes. Probably in ballpoint pen, but after 6 months in Japan, I can't remember. I can't even remember what I was thinking about when I drew it.



Ehhhhhhhhhh?!!?


"The Yardmops? Who the hell are the Yardmops?
Are they related to Orange Range or Asian Kung
Fu Generation?"

My Charles Burns ripoff piece...

I did this a while back for a portfolio I put together, hoping to get a job in Hollywood! No responses, though.

It's a character from the novel Geek Love, which I recommend you read. The original drawing... well it doesn't exist. I freehanded the whole thing in Illustrator, painstakingly to create something cold and formalistic. Like Burns' work, which creeps me out in a good way.

I declare this to be a semi-success.

Yabbadabbadoo!

Welcome to my all-new all-art all-the-time-blog!

Here's Rika to get you started:



It's an inking test... working on my drawing style for my big-ass comic book I'm working on. She's not a character from it, although she's a partial inspiration for one. Rika, the bassist from Melt-Banana is who she is. And she shreds the bass, baby. Shreds it!