Thursday, April 5, 2012

Wall Street Journal- Full Art Job

I had the opportunity to illustrate a six panel comic strip for an Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend (scroll down a bit after linking). Got the call Friday afternoon and it was in Tuesday's  paper. They did a great job with printing and lettering-- I was surprised at how good the color looked on newsprint!-
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304023504577319623333618562.html

Monday, January 30, 2012

 Re-masters- My Colors Over Comics Legends

Because of some life re-structuring and career re-focusing, I won't have a lot of sample time for comics in the near future. I had a lot of fun blowing off steam and taking an occasional afternoon off to color some of my artistic heroes and I certainly didn't get to nearly all of them. Michael Golden and Alan Weiss would have been next on the list.
So, here are the ten re-masters I've done all in one place (you can read my thoughts at the original entries by clicking on the artist name)-
Alex Toth

Neal Adams

Neal Adams

John Buscema

John Buscema

Jose Luis Garcia Lopez

Jose Luis Garcia Lopez

Kevin Nowlan

Jerry Ordway

Hilary Barta

Alex Toth remastered

Toth is one of the greatest designers in the history of comics- his work is perfect in black and white. So the problem becomes--  how do you add color to a perfect black and white statement? Toth used to paraphrase Noel Sickles- to add to the truth of something only lessens its truth. In the case of this page, I tried to stay out of the line art's way, use color holds judiciously (it was tempting to hold the bushes outside the window, for example) and model just a touch, keeping Toth's own marker/ink color work in mind.
Anyway, I'm happy with the results and had a lot of fun!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Remasters- Neal Adams pencils

I don't think that any comic artist (or illustrator, for that matter) handled the pencil as a rendering tool better than Neal Adams in the 70s.
Dancin' by the Nile-- The ladies love his style!-

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

More Monica Moon...

I really like the direction that Andrew's going-- a lot of fun stuff in these to color!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Friday, December 30, 2011

Another Re-master- Kevin Nowlan

I first became aware of Kevin Nowlan's work when he took over Moon Knight from Bill Sienkiewicz. I was disappointed that Sienkiewicz was leaving the book, but this new guy's art intrigued me. He cemented me as a permanent fan a few years later with his work on a mid--80s Batman and the Outsiders annual- pencils, inks, colors and a painted cover (and probably letters- I'm not sure)! He's still doing excellent work- check out his full art job on a recent Hellboy one shot- and remains a constant source of inspiration. I'd love to color his work on a story one day, but the digital coloring he's been doing is so good, I'm sure I'll never get the chance.