Category: Art & Illustration

Includes everything from illustrations, sketches, and flyers to shoes, tapes, and an assortment of superhero doodles.

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Art & Illustration

F. D. A.

Here are some of the characters from the comic Faunamancer Domination Ascendancy written by Benjamin Marra & drawn by Michael DeForge. I’ve been gearing up to do some commission work and some fan stuff, so what better way to get into it than to do these amazingly designed characters? F.D.A. is a favorite of mine (which recently appeared in #11 here, but catch a page there), and I’d normally hope for more, except it sorta has the ultimate ending. Also, this specific cast is a mere drop in the vast sea of comics these guys put out individually. It’s sick… seriously, it’s crippling to even think how about how they must do it.

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All About Process Art & Illustration

Madman Party Pin-Up

I recently got the chance to collaborate with one of my childhood comics heroes, Mike Allred, creator of Madman. I did a pencil drawing, Mike inked it and his wife Laura colored it! As if that wasn’t cool enough, the piece was slated to go into the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster (in stores mid-December).

The pin up was to depict a large cast of creator owned characters, all in celebration of the medium’s independent spirit. The idea originally sprung from Allred and Dean Haspiel (who vouched for me and my masochistic streak love of drawing crowd scenes). The piece would have an accompanying essay written by Adam McGovern, so all four of us began thinking up a master list of potential characters to feature. It started at 20 or so, then easily over 40. I held off on drawing anything until a definitive list was hammered out.

First, though, a rough sketch to give me an idea…

I had started with the basic information: a big ass party. It wasn’t to be a group action shot, but a bunch of folks hanging out instead. I made sure to draw the room in proportion to the space needed for the growing list of characters (70 at that point). I wanted to channel Yves Chaland in a way, but my main source of inspiration was Joost Swarte…

…and Fred Hembeck.

The ultimate list of characters still had to be finalized. Between the four of us, a lot of characters were added, cut, suggested, added again, and dug up until that master list was actually completed. It ended up being a head count of over a hundred. All I had to do was make them coexist on a single page.

I wanted to convey every character’s personality at least in the smallest way. I had to reduce each one to a single, tiny movement. A bunch of little stories going on at once. I penciled as cleanly as possible and sent it off to Mike and Laura to complete it.

I still couldn’t believe Mike Allred was gonna ink this.

Working with Mike is a big deal to me.

I was really into Madman Comics back in the day, so I was naturally interested in the debut of its sister title, the Atomics. This was back in 2000. I liked the characters, the stories, and especially Mike’s positive attitude in making comics fun. He started his own company (AAA Pop Comics) and delivered a fun comic month in, month out. It was inspirational.

So much so that I was inspired to actually draw the Atomics. I had only drawn other people’s characters for company submissions, but this was different. I just wanted to draw something for the hell of it. So I did. I photocopied the drawing and mailed it to AAA Pop.

I didn’t give it much thought. I figured Mike might dig it and that was that. A few months later at the local comic book store, I was flipping through the latest issue of the Atomics and discovered that my fan art had been printed in the letters page!

Just like that, I was in print! For the first time! I received a very cool postcard from Mike himself months later. He was very supportive.

Skip to a year or so later. Remember when Mike teamed up with Peter Milligan to re-imagine Marvel’s X-Force franchise (later as X-Statix)? I was a total fanboy for this when it first hit, to the point where I even entered a contest – contest! – that involved drawing your own character. Readers were asked to create a mutant superhero for possible X-Force membership. What, you think I cared about creator ownership and licensing? Nah… I wasn’t submitting my life’s work, but just a goofy concept for the sake of involvement with a title I liked a whole bunch. All I wanted was Mike Allred to draw the mutant I created.

I called him Bastador, a teen Mexican wrestler who had a powerful living baby inside of him, constantly struggling to escape his masked mortal coil. Or something like that.

No, it didn’t win, thank you very much. I don’t even remember who did.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand.

Present day.

Imagine my surprise when this came in.

I was floored when I saw it. Leave it to Mike to take my cluttered mess and make it sing. He even added a few heads here and there. Given the sheer amount of creator owned characters, this single snapshot feels like we barely touched the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other great characters that weren’t squeezed in that I’m compelled to draw the other half of the room. Hmmm…

Thanks to Laura, Dean and Adam for being a part of this. Big thanks to Michael Dalton Allred for making it all happen and for being there with words of encouragement from the get go.

That’s my contribution to this awesome project. Be sure to get the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster this December 14th (some sources say the 21st). Don’t take my word for it; look at that roster. It’s got all of my favorite cartoonists and yours. Support your local comic shop while you’re at it, and have a happy holiday!

–Fiffe

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Art & Illustration Sometimes I Like Stuff

Summit Street Maps: Reeyobigs Edition

INDUSTRY TODAY

I was asked by a peer to draw up John Carter, even though the only thing I knew about the character was that Gil Kane drew him once. I liked the challenge of working on something unfamiliar, especially if it has swords. I never get to draw swords.

FORM TOMORROW

Death To the Universe has a great piece about the unique visual demands that only comics can carry (that’s putting it as broadly as possible). A Treatise on Optics nails one of the many aspects that make comics an important and beautiful art form.

On a loosely related note, another one of my favorite blogs, Heavy Discussion, recently posted a bunch of pictures and commentary of old zines. I think having tactile proof of one’s interests may be archaic, but it still has a lot more intimate power than we give it credit for. Having said that, don’t rule out the notion that HD may have inspired this post.

A FEW OTHER THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY

It’s not weird for me to look up and find that Slave to the Rhythm has been on repeat all afternoon. That, and a bunch of podcasts. Baseball on the radio might as well come next. Perhaps the hum of an electric fan may do the trick.

Brett Gelman has a new podcast up: Gelmania. That’s right, the guy behind the immortal iBrain teamed up with Tim Heidecker for this one. I hope it’s a recurring thing. It’s all good, but the 17:12 mark is where you want to be.

I wonder if that bit was the reason Marc Maron sounded bummed while talking to Neil Hamburger recently. Neil, who sings for one of the most important figures in Metal, usually leaves me in tears. I can see how awkward and out of place it is to have him come out in this intimate way that Maron’s cultivated.

BACK ON COMICS

Nick Abadzis wrote a piece about the Russian Cartoon Music concert played by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, an event we recently attended in Brighton Beach. Nick’s got some exceptional drawings accompanying the article. Good to see Blaise Larmee and J-Shasta leave comments.

Did I mention that Tony Salmons has a blog? Yeah, and he’s posting tons of original and unseen art over there. I have to pry myself away from the screen whenever he posts something.

In an unprecedented move, I discovered that I was basically wrong in my hateful assessment of the Legion of Superheroes: Five Years Later. I’ll write about the experience at length sometime soon but in a nutshell: I love the Giffbaum era of the title and have become obsessed with its place in comics. I recently came across Tom Bierbaum’s livejournal, where he describes what went on with each story he wrote issue by issue! I know… thank me later.

SWORDS

Oh, wait, look. I have drawn swords before. This Tellos piece was done a couple of years ago for a proposed Mike Wieringo tribute book, put together by Todd Dezago. I liked Mike’s art a whole lot but I never got around to reading Tellos when it was coming out. I was unfamiliar with the story, but the characters were fun to draw.

That should do it. Back to inking.

–Fiffe

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All About Process Art & Illustration

Comic Book Jazz Hands: BETA RAY BILL

George O’Connor and I have used BETA RAY BILL as an excuse to collaborate once again! This time I pencilled, he inked, then I hand colored this here horse faced warrior (take a quick peek at our previous attempt, which reversed our tasks). We slapped a logo on top of it in order to fit the “What If” Blog format (formerly known as the DC Fifty TOO blog which features a lot of my favorite cartoonists, I’m not joking.)

Big thanks to Jonathan Morris for putting this together and for the invite. I dare not forget the amazing Sarah Crowe, who helped George and I out on the technical (and spiritual) side of things.

Beta Ray Bill was created and designed by Walter Simonson (Thor #337, Nov. 1983) and is property of Marvel Comics Group Entertainment Disney.

Check out the step by step…

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Art & Illustration Sometimes I Like Stuff

I Still Believe (Daredevil #260)

I recently did this drawing for Bergen Street Comics, my very own Daredevil cover on one of the blank “sketch” covers. I noticed that the back portion was available, so I designed it vertically, knowing that what I wanted to draw wouldn’t necessarily work if the comic was one/half displayed.

You may ask, “Well, how come you didn’t have him striking a pose mid-jump through a couple of water towers or fighting a cluster of ninjas?”, and you may very well have a point. Although I’ve seen those classic scenarios done to death, I still like them just as much as you do. However, no version of Daredevil is as close to my heart as Ann Nocenti’s version.

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Art & Illustration Music Is Involved

FLYER ART: A Collection

An old friend of mine, Erik Mallo, is currently looking to recruit musicians for his original recordings. I was more than happy to tread some familiar ground by making a flyer for his endeavor. I like his music a whole lot, so it was my pleasure to assist him in any way I could.

Click on the image below to read the fine print & feel free to pass it around to other musicians.

Since I haven’t done a flyer in many years, I thought it’d be interesting to pull out some of my older ones. Whether it was for the Knitting Factory or for a pal’s band, drawing flyers was a dominant preoccupation for me. With this new one complete and in looking back at those from long ago, I came to a few conclusions.

First, it’s easy to see that my approach was text-heavy. These things required tons of pertinent information and I also liked the idea of sneaking in mild jabs at the bands and in jokes along the borders. I imagined someone taking a flyer and needing to read something on the subway, so giving them their money’s worth was the way to go.

Secondly, I clearly had an aversion to color. I was resigned to being a strict black & white artist. I didn’t think color would save these pages from looking bland, muddled, or incomprehensible. I certainly didn’t think it hindered me as an artist. I was reacting to what I saw everywhere, the carnival colored rock & roll imagery. I would see pieces by “poster” “kings” like Kozik or KayWolf and scoff at how bland it all was. Every flyer and poster I saw was either generic and boring or derivative and lacking any thematic reason to exist. I thought I was tapping into some new shit by cramming every page with stuff, daring you to take a second from your precious time to hold still and read a word or two.

Looking back, however, I would’ve handled things a little differently. I wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice information for design (even with today’s ultra accessibility), but I would definitely play a lot more with color and patterns. I would scrap the in jokes and focus on making a strong image, especially if the band was already well-known and the poster was just another piece of merch for them to sell. It’s interesting, though, that with this new flyer I tried to make a solid design while incorporating ALL of the information that was given to me (which was of upmost importance). I added no cutesy details and tried to compress the lettering wherever I could. I’m happy with the way it turned out.

Now here’s the old stuff in chronological order, from 2001-2005…

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Art & Illustration Sometimes I Like Stuff

AKIRA Summer Fun

The little kid is Akira. That guy behind him is Joker. They’re both characters from Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA.

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"ZEGAS" Art & Illustration

Zegas Commissions & the Black Terror

These here pieces are a few recent commissions I did of my Zegas characters, Emily & Boston. It’s weird drawing commissions because there’s little room for mistakes. Zero room, actually, and so I was super careful in the inking and hand coloring. Considering how messy I can be sometimes, I’m proud at how clean they turned out!

On the flip side, I’ve been toying around with digital coloring these past few weeks, and who better to practice on than the Black Terror? You may have seen this guy around, he’s one of those public domain Golden Age properties. It’s basically the Punisher with a cape… how could I not draw that? The drawing itself is in ink and his gray/yellow suit is hand colored, the rest is digital. Although it looks like the simplest, most rudimentary set of choices, what you see here is me trying to figure this whole coloring thing out.

It was fun, but I don’t know if I’d like to do an entire comic like that. It would take forever. For now, I’ll try to stick to what I know.

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Art & Illustration Comics I Make

Goodbye, 2010, It Was Grand

Before I close out and lock up the 2010 Art File for good, I thought I’d post a few random odds and ends that never really found a specific home anywhere. Hopefully, they’ll now have a place to rest within your hearts.

I didn’t do to many X-mas cards this year, but I like this one the most.

“SEQUOYAH” is a work-in-progress. It’s written by Nick Bertozzi. We have tons of ideas for these characters. I can’t wait to draw more raccoons.

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Art & Illustration Dear Friends

Warm Ups & Top 5 Villains

Recently, we all celebrated George O’Connor’s birthday by fooling him into thinking the topic of the day was “unicorns”, while actually drawing something more directly related to him. I opted for his favorite Olympian god Hermes!

Earlier in the week, Drawbridge came up with J.M. DeMatteis Day, in which we all depicted some of our favorite DeMatteis characters. I drew J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter in his natural state, inspired by the mini series of the same name that J.M. did with Mark Badger for DC Comics. Whatever results from their fantastic collaborations, it comes highly recommended (see Gargoyle and Greenberg the Vampire). I also threw in some Oreos (J’onzz’ favorite) as a tip o’ the hat to DeMatteis’ run on Justice League, and some Dostoevsky (one of J.M.’s favorite). Huzzah!

Also, we all drew characters from the comic, LOVIATHAN, in celebration of its creator Mike Cavallaro’s birthday. I drew Queen Aine, who has a head piece that rivals Jack Kirby’s Maximus the Mad.

On an unrelated note, a couple of weeks ago, The Comics Reporter had their weekly “Five for Friday” ask their readers to “Name Five Members Of A Rogues Gallery NOT Batman’s, Dick Tracy’s Or Spider-Man’s And Don’t Identify The Hero.” I submitted my Top 5 villains as:

1) Ammo
2) Bullet
3) Bushwacker
4) Wildboys
5) Typhoid Mary

In closing, I’d like to show you my drawing of those villains, a sort of warm up sketch I did before that list was asked for. It was meant to be!

But enough warming up. It’s time to go to work.