Road Trip Romp

Last week's post topic for The League of Extraordinary Bloggers, "Road Trip", got me thinking about possible illustrations to match that subject.

Here are some rough ideas I had about being stuck on the side of the road, taking a trip to the beach, or just people being in a car having fun together.

 

Since its summer I thought about pursuing this one about the beach, with two of the women in the party stripping out of dull gray clothes to reveal colorful swimsuits.

 



I did a few studies of people removing clothing, but I had trouble hitting upon a story I could tell with that. Maybe I'll take a break from the beach and just go back to the general road trip concept because that still has a number of possibilities.

Does anyone have a cool road trip story to help serve as an inspirational springboard?

Princesses and Power Rangers

In preparation for Wednesday’s Sketch Day I did a few practice runs to make sure I could produce drawings in about ten minutes. I featured these sketches on my table so that people would see what kind of art I do as well as inspire their choices.

 The Fourth and Eleventh Doctor were
originally going to be a part of my Sci-Fi Father's Day Card

Deadliest Predators: T-1000 and T-Rex! 

I tried to lure in the family demographic with these doodles of the Power Rangers or Elsa and Olaf from “Frozen” (effectively finishing a project that I’d started back in January)

Strangely enough it was Dave Andres sitting right next to me who kept getting the Disney Princess requests. Maybe because I was the closest to the entrance he got the spill over from my line. 

Collector's Corner Sketch Day

On Wednesday, Collector's Corner, the local comics and game shop, hosted a Free Sketch Day for the patrons. Myself and other area artists drew various pop culture characters to promote the kickstarter campaign for the Michigan Comics Collective's new anthology book. 

Here are the sketches that I did for our visitors.

Thomas with Spider-Man

Paxton with Cyborg

Katie with Alice

Wayne with Rocket Raccoon

Larry with Carnage

Valentine with The Tenth Doctor

Liam with Daredevil

Erica with The Eleventh Doctor

Zac with the White Aquitian Ranger 

Wayne with The Rev of Avenged Sevenfold

Raelina with herself as a princess

Kamina with a Lawn Gnome Wizard

It was a lot of fun to meet with people and draw for them even when there was the pressure to pick up the pace. We're planning to do this next month to celebrate the 75th Batman-iversary. You'd better believe I'll be there.

Tools for Tomorrow

INSIDE:

To the Dad who was always on the cutting edge of technology 

and prepared us with the tools we’d need for tomorrow.

Recently I began thinking about how essential my parents were in helping me to recognize quality storytelling.

During the Nineties there were a great many spectacle driven movies that I felt I needed to and threw a fit when my parents would deny them to me. Looking back at how lackluster many of these titles were, I’ve come to realize how my parents were really protecting my taste palette from being desensitized by these flash-in-the-pan flops.

As alternatives, my Dad introduced me to cerebral science fiction features like “Planet of the Apes” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”. These were things I certainly wouldn’t have willingly watched on my own and were partially responsible for forming much of my current sensibilities.

Given how my career has been molded by such moments, I wanted to celebrate my Dad’s choice in sci-fi cinema on Father’s Day and honor the heritage of my Geek patriarch with a card that made reference to something other than Star Wars.

Originally I was going to have multiple mini-illustrations from many sci-fi movies but decided to narrow my focus on just one film that played to Dad’s love of cutting edge technology.

The Dudinetz Abide

Portrait of the Dudinetz family (Sarah, Kim, Chuck, Josh and Pete) that I was commissioned to do as a Father's Day present. 

The reference photo I was given to work with was rather grainy and the figures weren't standing on the same level surface so I took quite a bit of creative license with this one. Makes me wish I had taken more process screenshots. 

LOEB: Shelf Expression

Originally I was going to show off my movie collection, as film is especially inspirational to me as a means of storytelling, evidenced by my catalog of at least one hundred titles. However I only have original boxes for less than half of them, so it might not be that impressive of a showcase.

Instead I'll turn to my other second-hand store weakness; books!

Yes its so tall it reaches the Enterprise in orbit!

This is nothing, you should have seen how it used to look!

Starting at the top left I have some of my earliest inspirations for drawing; newspaper comic strips. Highlights include the complete run of Calvin & Hobbes and the first ten years of Zits.

Business of art stuff on this side. My organization is based on weight distribution, so theres some other subjects in the mix like The Making of Casablanca or The Making of The African Queen. 

Comic book trade paperbacks. The Marvel flag waves high.

Illustrated children's books. 

More business of art books, mostly related to comics. 

Hulk Gray was too tall for the comics shelf

Coffee table books about influential illustrators

Vintage pocket sized paperbacks guarded by Garfield.

(Classic Dennis the Menace is my personal favorite, but don't let him know!)

Bigger collections of comics.
Lee and Kirby's Fantastic Four got me into comics as a kid. 

Will Eisner kept me going on them through high school.

The green number on the end is a collection of Pogo reprints.

More newspaper comics from my childhood. 

Camp Foxtrot may be the book I've owned the longest.

The Heavy Stuff. Literally.

See the rest of the League's stuff:

* Goodwill Geek has a toy army that puts The Nutcracker to shame.
* Brain goes ape! 
* Miss M has a collection inspection
* Nerdy Life has a workspace wonderland
* Revenge of Toy Box gets dolled up
* Midnight Monster's shelf is Universal

Comic Book Issues

The Michigan Comics Collective has mounted a Kickstarter to put together their collaborative anthology book which will spotlight local artists. Learn more here. 

They're also making plans to put together another book for next year and are looking for new material so I'm in the process of brainstorming ideas.

I haven't draw comics in a long time, but I do have a love for sequential storytelling so I sketched a few rough ideas for short stories that parody elements of certain sub genres.

Private Eye Phil Noir meets a Femme Fatale who literally has trouble written all over her.

Rex Relic searches the jungle for a lost city of treasure, only to fall of a cliff into a rapid river and waterfall.

I want a produce a story thats 3-4 pages at most (because I recognize my limitations and tendency to get hung up on the details) However I'm having trouble getting past the idea stage. While Rex has more development what with the fall into the river, that doesn't really come to any sort of satisfying conclusion. 

Over the past couple days I've been trying to come up with story ideas and I'm tired of trying to force something into shape and just want to get back into drawing anything without a deadline crunch or project guidelines and let something develop naturally.