Death becomes her

Copy of an image of Death (from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series) commissioned for a tattoo that I did recently...

Arachnastasia

Recently finished sketch of another character from Lorelei's Library of Curiosities, Arachnastasia. Along with another of the original pages...

Lorelei

Quick sketch of Lorelei from the "Lorelei's Library of Curiosities" story I did a couple years back, published in Negative Burn's Summer 2005 issue. For those that never saw the story, here's a page from it as well...

A Walk in the Woods

As a boy, I always enjoyed a good solitary walk in the woods from time to time. Nothing was more relaxing or captured the imagination quite like it. Happily, I think I've passed on the same sentiment to my kids... which was the inspiration for this sketch.

SNOW!

A couple of old sketches (of a much older Zozzle than I draw these days) in honor of the first snow to hit our area in about 2 years. Didn't last long, but lasted long enough for the kids to make snow angels, build a snowman and of course, have a snowball fight. Yay, snow!

New sketch for a new year

Here we are 11 days into a new year, and I've been too slack to post anything. So, here's a sketch I did last year and colored this year, just to get things going again. Kind of cute variant of Kalesh from the Hunter series I illustrated years ago...

oh, and a Happy Belated New Year to all!

Happy Holidays!

Here's hoping everyone has a great holiday season! Seeya in the new year!

Water Colors

I've finally started painting landscapes from life again, taking the watercolors out with me for quick lunch breaks. Fortunately the weather has been most agreeable lately... I'd forgotten how relaxing it can be to go out and paint what you see, making choices what to show, finding patterns in the colors... Here's the latest...

Modigliani

a quick hommage to one of my favorite painters... with the way he exaggerated proportions and experimented with different cultural styles, I would have loved to seen how he would have drawn comics...

For the uninitiated, here's a link to some of his work and a brief bio... here

Not just another Bim-bo

Finally, the final version, in rough... see below for the color finish. This one just felt right to me, aerodynamic and sleek, not too cute, not too scary, and fun! Hopefully others will feel the same.
What do you think? I'd like to hear from you... yes, you. Not the person behind you, looking over your shoulder. Not the crusty old man who lives downstairs who mumbles to himself while eating Cream of Wheat (or is it farina?). Not even the french pastry chef who makes the "to die for" eclairs that you savor. I wanna hear from you!

Bim a ling ding

More Bim developmental drawings... Was starting to get the right feel here, but still didn't feel right to me. Not aerodynamic enough, maybe still a little too scary, or too cutesy... another thing to keep in mind when I'm creating a character is "Will I want to draw this guy a thousand times looking the way he does?" Because if I don't, I'm setting myself up for a world of hurt down the road when I'm drawing up a story.

Random sketchies

Just putting up some random stuff from the ol' sketchbook... just doodles really. Who said my doodlin' wouldn't get me anywhere? Oh yeah, most of my teachers, that's who. Well, that was before the days of sketchblogs wasn't it? Hah! The last laugh is mine!

The Leaves they are a' blowin'

Autumn is one my favorite times of the year, particularly now when the leaves are peaking (at least here in central NC they are) and starting to fall. I love the colors, the smells, the coolness after the humid summer, heck I even like to rake leaves. And of course my kids love to jump in the piles... so here's to autumn! Maybe someday I'll actually color this sketch up!

The Evolution of Bim

-or- How a Cow became a Bim pt.2- I was going to start talking about what I started playing with after the initial cow drawings to make a unique character, but at this point the changes are pretty obvious. The similarities left are his eyes and general attitude, only because so much of that comes from the expression in the eyes...

Moo-Cow

As promised, here are the cow drawings that spawned a whole new set of characters and I guess even a new drawing style for me. Kind of opened my cartoonier style... or at least was a step along the way. Its always been interesting to me how the evolution of one's style progresses, so I thought it was high time to look at my own progression. (If one could call this progress... )

Zoinks!

Way too long since I posted, what's going on here anyway? Must...post...something...before blogging abilities...wane...

This lil' critter evolved from a cow,
in a few days I might show you how
His best friend's a girl who's also a bee
Her picture can be seen on my first entry.

More to come with these guys...

Friday of Doom

On the occassion of the 4th collection of Grant Morrison and my run on Doom Patrol being released, I thought it would be a good time to present some sketches I did years later while having a fit of nostalgia. After re-reading theses stories, I was reminded just how fun they were to illustrate, truly some of the most enjoyable stories of my career. Bizarre, yes, and truly funny at times.

I've often been asked how we came up with such strange material. I don't know about Grant, who came up with most of it, but for me it was just a lot of taking things that wouldn't normally go together, and finding a way to make them work together. I took a lot of cues from the surrealists, particuarly Max Ernst, whose collages were a prime example of this... telling stories with an image cobbled together from different elements that were never meant to belong. Somehow, they take on a life of their own from there. Good times...

Ice skating in August

Nothing says summer in North Carolina like... ice skating? Well, the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup back in June, so why not? Anyway, my son Brendan joined his buddy Brendan for some ice skating at the local rink one hot Sunday in August, and not wanting to crush my kneecaps with my incompent skating style, I figured it'd be a good chance to sketch. While most skaters are moving pretty quick they tend to repeat the same actions as they go around the ice, which made it easier to capture some of their gestures.

Widowed redux

In the time-honored manner of showing the process of artwork on a blog, I was going to show the preliminary drawing of my last post. In the end though, I couldn't leave well enough alone and decided to throw a simple design element into it. Simple, yet effective, yes?