Caricature Pain

I agreed to do a gratis caricaturing gig last Saturday night to help out our little local Episcopal church...it was brutal. I went into it so filled with hubris but I fired blanks all night and I haven't been able to do a proper drawing since. Some of the less miserable efforts below. Had to turn to color to cover my lack of creativity and (worse still) acuity.

Here's an example of a decent one. Done months before, when I was good.

I've been stewing in self-doubt and self-loathing ever since....at least I got to talk to Ellis on Sunday. Thanks for giving me a lift, El!

Munchkinland

Here's another one. I feel good that it's only takes me one day to do these...until I think about how much I'm getting paid :-/

Had to get this up before the midnight deadline. I'll fill you in on details tomorrow.

(UPDATED VERSION)

Done for the co-author of the fascinating and lavishly illustrated "Memories of a Munchkin," a memoir by the little person who played the Munchkin Coroner. The over-sized Lollipop Kid is a caricature of the (surviving) co-author, Daniel Kinske, a really nice guy who, after fielding a bunch of questions from me about the legend of "Midget Town", handed me a copy of the book and asked only for a drawing in return.

I believe in "over-delivering."

Check out the book--great cover by Hirschfeld, too!
 

Thompson Sighting!!

Being a proper American now, Ronald Thompson wanted to visit the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. I came along to make it a mini-Blue Sky reunion. I even brought along sketchbooks, and after a few hours of inspecting the place, we sat down for an all-too-brief attempt to capture something of our historic surroundings via that time-honored method, pencil-to-paper:

Thompson was reluctant at first...It helped that I'd brought along one of his own sketchbooks for him. I'd had it since we used it to source those (wunderbar) pages that Ron contributed to the immortal "T.A.G. Annual Sampler." He perused a bit of his old work (which pleasantly surprised him), and those rusty gears began to re-engage....

Lookit this incredible-ness. There's no Thompson like RON Thompson!! 

 Seriously at work.

There were digi-pix a plenty, too.

A steamy day down in S.D. After the ship, we stopped by the Bob Hope Memorial sculpture group next door. It's a pretty good Bob, but a kinda crappy Memorial (can you tell I'm bitter from getting cut out of the commission? The artist who did it was kind of a douche--originally it was s'posed to be divided among 5 local sculptors, but douche-y worked HARD to cut all the other sculptors out of the deal). The Hope memorial is completely eclipsed (and outright dwarfed) by the even more heinous Seward Johnson "Kiss" sculpture. Really tacky. And weird.

We got stuck in downtown traffic--surface street traffic that had every route from the seafront to the freeway blocked solid both ways. It was like Comic Con was going on, but apparently it was just downtown workers, residents, and a whole lot of visitors (we heard lots of German and Japanese...plotting revenge, perhaps???).

But the traffic didn't sour our day--just our armpits. We had a damn good time. Woulda been even better if we coulda roused a few more T.A.G. alums to join us. As Thompson said, "NEXT TIME, DAVIS!!"

A Late Post

Thanks to those of you who had the time and/or inclination to check out Scott McMahon's book.*

Something is better than nothing, even if it's late (as I used to tell my teachers).

*Tom Moon and Ellis!

Pencils Done for FUME #1

Now to do a marker version...before Monday morning.

(This one took forever...I'm not used to doing covers, so I had to edge my way up on it, adding one figure at a time and seeing how it looked...I think when I add color I can knock back some of those tertiary figures...gonna use a faint printout of the pencils to do my markers over, then scan that and combine them via the magic of MULTIPLY!)

 this thing is killing me.

UPDATE THE THRICE: Revised and finalized for the "art print" version. Elz, thanks for the color input--it really helped!!

I Like When The FF Are A Dysfunctional Family

My favorite times. When I read my first FF story as a kid (Dr. Doom's first appearance as reprinted in "Bring On The Bad Guys"), the thing that stuck out was all the hard-edged bickering between the group. Left me severely uneasy.

Reed is saying something like, "Easy lad!"

Been meaning to finish this and post it for weeks. Of course, I should be preparing for ECCC....

Some Guys Are The Count...

...some guys are Nosferatu.

Happy Halloween!