Four for the Price of One

Here is another post featuring past work. I don’t believe I’ve addressed any of these projects here, altho I might be wrong about that. If so, I’ll adjust this entry later.

The “Marriage under reconstruction” and “Holiday headache” pieces are from 2013. Remembrances of the creation of either of them are wispy, vague. Sometimes, looking back on old work – even small, informal sketches – I can recall where I was, what I was snacking on, things I was thinking about while doodling; other times I might not remember squat about a larger piece that clearly took much time.

For “Marriage…” I have next-to-nothing in the memory bank. Hmm. That’s kind of me as a model on the right, except skinnier and taller; so much so that it doesn't look like me at all. I used the excellent pencil tool in MangaStudio and most likely colored it in combination with Photoshop.

For “Holiday Headache” I have a recollection of drawing a tiny, sinister looking face on the figure in the house behind the curtain. You probably can’t even see the figure in the image here – click on the images to embiggen. I got rid of the face when I realized how small it would be in print.

 “It takes a neighborhood” ran in 2015. I intended to have the little old lady falling from above and the neighbors looking up, ready to catch her with the safety net. That was probably too silly for the story, or maybe it was an unnecessary hassle to design a page layout that way.

“Yoga takes you higher” was great fun! I don’t know why I didn’t put this up before. Maybe I thought it was too goofy, or maybe the process was so easy and simple that I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say.  "It was fun to do and it was over way too quickly! I made a John Lennon style cartoon and then spent most of the time trying to get the spattery effect looking alright." Yeah, that's about it.

More art soon... maybe even NEW art! (Maybe.)

P.S. I included the layouts this time because, in each case, they clearly improve the art. Ahem, well, that might be the case all the time, but I re-discovered these while looking at full-page pdfs from the archive and I liked them better than when I saw the illustrations alone.

The page designer for all of these is, most likely, longtime colleague Jennifer Schaefer, who has improved (or saved!) many many many of my efforts.

Long Time No Blog

I found this on my work computer the other day. It was a brainstorm/rough for a story about women students making inroads into college classes overwhelmingly populated by men, I believe. This was several years ago, and I don't remember how it all played out. This idea wasn't pursued and I didn't do anything else for it. But I kind of like it in this slovenly, ragged form.

My blog-drought has lasted so long because I haven't been drawing much, and nothing I've created for my job recently has been spiffy enough to write about. Another art-slump, I guess.

I've tried to get the personal work going but  – whenever I crack my knuckles and sharpen my pencils and tape the paper to the drawing board and adjust the lights and knead my kneaded eraser into the perfect shape and go get a coffee and come back and crack my knuckles again – I'm beset by distractions and inconveniences both imaginary and actual (though I cannot perceive the difference until later.)

My quiver of excuses is deep and the lure of spending the final conscious hour of my day lying in bed, thumbing through old comic books, is strong. Oh, and pinball on the iPad; that's another bedtime thing. And CataclysmDDA. And Pathos. And Twitter-skimming. Settling down to sleep can be a time-suck for me.

It's nice to be posting something again, tho. I'd like to do more of it real soon...

Pot Savvy Seniors

Here is an illustration I put together for the July 6th Mercury News front.  The story, by longtime colleague Sam Richards, is here. He does good work, that guy!

I created a silhouette of a rocking chair, took a photo of wood grain and applied it to the silhouette. Then I went in and shaded it to give it some form. The seat cushions have a bit of burlap texture and a silly little pattern I made in illustrator.

Open in a new window for a larger image

It's a pretty simple idea and execution, although it took me a while to come up with it. Here is how it looked on the page:

That's all for now!

More Dubs vs. Cavs

Here's a collage, arranged for a Mercury News special section preview of the 2017 NBA Championship. I know, I know – that was weeks and weeks ago, but I've been lazy about the Blogspot upkeep.

Photos: Mercury News ace, Nhat V. Meyer; AP guy, Marcio Jose Sanchez;
Jason Miller working for Getty Images

As usual, I didn't have much time to work on this assignment, and – rather than try to do some elaborate drawing or cartoon – I thought it would be fun to use some photos and create something reminiscent of a rock poster. I was hoping to be a little edgier but, again, not much opportunity for exploring ideas. The image above is what ran in print.  

Below is a modest tweak for online presentation. Horizontal images are preferred for online, which is always an extra batch of work since one must squash and recompose the job as the deadline guillotine falls. There was an extra spoonful of disappointment when I realized it's more square than horizontal. Ah, well. It would make a pretty good CD cover.

The End.

The Warriors Again

This is slightly belated, but: The Golden State Warriors are the champs! Again! It felt weird typing that the last time (a couple of years ago) and it might be even more bizarre now since it looks like it could be an annual occurrence. The past few decades have been grim for those of us who have a sentimental attachment to the ancient days of Clifford Ray and Rick Barry, or the exciting years spent with Run TMC. I don't follow the NBA like I used to but it's cool to see "Golden State Warriors" and "champions" in the same sentence.

We won't mention what happened last year, tho, 'kay?

When it became a distinct possibility that the Warriors might sweep their way through the playoffs, I started to work on this illustration, but it looked like the image below.

It became clear halfway through the fourth quarter of game four that LeBron wasn't going to let such a historic feat happen on his watch; and that was a bit of a relief for me, since I would have had to finish the illustration by the next day for use in the Sunday publication.  

I used the extra shift to re-think it a little bit, and to focus on coloring, which is the most time consuming part of the drawing process, in most cases.

Sooper-Man

Just a quick post to jolt the blog back to life. I'm still goofing around with Anime Studio/Moho in my spare time, of which there has been very little. Haven't animated anything yet but I'm re-learning how to rig stuff. Here is a quick figure I drew for practice, but I haven't animated him yet.

The End!

Test Run

Purchased the latest Moho/Anime Studio update. Very cool, but I've forgotten what I learned back when I purchased an earlier version a few years ago. Can't figure out the freakin' walk-cycle to save my life, altho I had that down once upon a time. The rigging tools have stymied me, as well; and all of the youtube tutorials have left me in the lurch. Grr.

So, this is all I've figured out so far, and it's something I could've done in Photoshop, but it's as far as I've gotten. Imagine the horse is a fully rigged silhouette that gallops along until it gets down to the water. Then it steps carefully in before accelerating offscreen, stage left.

The art is a discarded piece I made a year or two ago, but I had to extend it quite a bit to fit the screen size, spending more time painting than learning how to animate. Bad planning. Again. More soon, unless I toss the computer through the window.

The End

Super WiFi

I created this illustration for a story by the always informative Troy Wolverton of the Mercury News, and you can read his most excellent work at this link. The image was drawn and painted in Clip Studio Paint with a bit of Photoshop.

Open in new window for a larger image.

After struggling for some time with a workable concept for the topic, I decided to create a simple parody (or homage) of the movie poster for the first Christopher Reeve "Superman" movie. My first submission to the editors was basically the sky and the emblem. Mr. Wolverton wrote: "Maybe the shield could be at Superman's farm out in rural Kansas? Like a lonely homestead out on the prairie?"

The scene where Pa Kent dies in front of the barn immediately leapt to mind. That shot – the barn, the house, the windmill, – I've always thought it was lovely. So, I tracked it down through the magic of Netflix and painted it in at the bottom.

Horizontal re-working for the online presentation.

I wanted to do an animated version, too; but it was long past the print deadline. In fact, I didn't get it done until... well, until just now!

Whoosh! That's all I've got for today.

Lois & Clark

Goofing around with the Clip Studio Paint drawing program. Touch of Photoshop for color tweaking.

This was part of the brainstorming work while trying to come up with an idea for an illustration to accompany a story about super wi-fi. Nothing came of this doodle.

Hey! It's That Guy, Again

Gotten a lot of mileage out of this president already. How many Obama-related assignments did I get over the previous eight years? Hm. Nothing on my blog, far as I can tell. I had a couple, I think, that I didn't get around to posting, but The Donald has been way more... "interesting," I guess.

Illustration for the Sunday, March 12 front page
of the Mercury News and the East Bay Times.
Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint Pro.

I am not a big practitioner of the photo-heads on cartoon bodies manner of working – I prefer to caricature – but it saved me a lot of time and I liked the way it turned out. I found a much better, sinister, laughing Kim Jong-Un head shortly after I sent the image to the designer for the final time, but there was a flurry of re-sizing and redrawing to fit a late size-change and I couldn't bring myself to give it one last tweak.