Monday, July 27, 2009

Astro, part III





Continuing the improvisational comic I've been creating in my sketchbook.
Previous installments (part 1 and 2, respectively) are here and here.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Where's my time machine?

From Crypt of Shadows #19 (September 1975)
©Marvel Comics Group



Here's a close up:



Makes me wonder who ended up taking this class. I wish I could go back in time and study under Buscema. I've been wondering lately why there's not more of this sort of thing available. I know more and more colleges are offering course in comics but it would be interesting to just be able to take a workshop style session with a pro. This would be great for people (like me) who have some skills but other things they could work on and who could use a pro's eye to help push them in the right direction. Can't we get C.B. Cebulski to engineer something like this?

I see where Frank Santoro offered a workshop to teach his method of composition. That's something I'd like to see more of. As a matter of fact I looked into taking it since it was being offered for only $40 but I couldn't justify the cost of travel from West Michigan to NYC to take a 2-hour workshop. Matt Madden and Jessica Abel offer something like four-week sessions but then you have to be able to take a month off of work in the summer and afford to stay in New York that long. I think one-week sessions would be perfect so people like me could consider using a vacation week to get the time off and one week is long enough to learn a decent amount of stuff without being a major scheduling headache.

If anyone is interested, I bought the comic for $1 at a used bookstore. It's in rough shape and I almost balked at paying the dollar but it contains some great old Atlas comics when they were basically doing the EC style sci fi stories with the twist endings. The comic reprints "I Fought the Colossus" from Strange Tales #72 which looks like uncredited pencils from Jack Kirby, "The Hidden Martians" from Uncanny Tales #14 with art by Dick Ayers, "Earth Will Be Destroyed" from Tales of Suspense #9 with art by Steve Ditko and "He Never Reached the Ground" with uncredited art by (I'm fairly certain) Bernie Krigstein. I should research those credits since only the Ayers and Ditko stories are signed but I'm fairly good at spotting artists so I'm confident in those guesses, especially since Kirby and Krigstein drew some of the most distinctive faces in comics.

Friday, July 24, 2009

#FemmeFriday

Today at work I was doodling a picture of a girl and had an idea to have a fake Twitter theme day on this blog called Femme Friday. Basically, every Friday I'll try to post a drawing of a girl. Here's the first (and probably last) effort...


This drawing was sketched lightly in blue pencil and then I went over it with a regular #2 pencil to darken it up and hide the stray lines. Then I added some contrast and cleaned up some remaining stray lines in Photoshop.

Astro, part II


Astro is just a working title for a sci-fi story I've been improvising in my sketchbook. Trying to average a page a day but working on two at a time so hopefully I can post 2 pages every 2 days. Though, since I don't quite know where it's going or how I get there it may just fizzle out and this will be all I post. Also, trying not to fuss with it in "post" (i.e. Photoshop).

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Astro


One reason why I was excited to see the British small press comic Decadence, which I linked to in my last post, is that recently I've been toying with some SF-themed stories myself. These are the first couple of images I've bothered to scan.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Decadence is a good thing

Thanks to a recent episode of Panel Borders, a podcast from England, I found out about Decadence, an English small press comics anthology featuring science fiction which, from what I've read and looked at so far, is like Fort Thunder meets Metal Hurlant. And if that isn't something that sounds good to you then I'm not going to waste anymore time talking to you!
I haven't even checked it out too much yet but what I've seen already looks amazing. Hopefully this post will not only remind me to go back and look at everything I haven't yet seen but also encourage anyone who comes here to check out these mind-blowing comics.

(Images nicked from the Decadence site- hopefully they don't mind!)