Color and Caffeine

Another painty bit

2012-01-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

A more recent water dragon, on a modest scale; 6 x 9", acrylic on panel. I tried for mysterious but it wanted to be cute, so…

Happy Lunar New Year!

2012-01-23T12:06:00.001-07:00

My painting, ‘Elemental Dragons’, started in 1990, finished in 2000. Oil on canvas, 24” x 42”.

2012-01-22T19:29:00.001-07:00

Middle-aged me wonders more and more why younger me accumulated so much stuff.

New year, new art.

2012-01-13T20:40:00.003-07:00

So far, 2012 has been okay. On New Year's Day we hiked up Thumb Butte, and didn't fall on our assets, despite the trail still being covered in ice after a month of sun and no snow. The following day G woke up with a cold, and we've been sharing it back and forth ever since. I'm fully in the chest-cough gremlin stage, while G has advanced to professional throat-clearing. True to the nature of colds I expect this to continue on similar lines at least until early February.

Last year was a wretched one for work income, so this year both of us need to bite the bullet and drum up more work of the paying kind. (That was the intention last year, but dad's decline and unexpectedly quick passing threw the waxworks into a tizzy.)

But mostly, I want to keep making more of my own work, for my own enjoyment. (If anybody wants to buy something I've done, that's a bonus.)

So far in the new year I've not managed much more than sketching and working on existing pieces. I did take a painting workshop in late December, and will continue to do so as time and funds permit.

Here's what I've been working on the past few weeks.

20 x 20" acrylic on canvas. A combo of painted and dripped color over a red-salmon background. I love how this one turned out.

20 x 20", acrylic on canvas, with sand. The lines were drawn with paint, with fine, wind-ground sand from far northern Arizona shaken over the still-wet paint. After drying, the surface was painted black, and when that too was dry, a damp sponge with white paint was dragged lightly over the surface. Makes me think of an aboriginal micro-chip.

24 x 24" acrylic on canvas. Pure color applied to a thick layer of white paint while everything was sill wet. An interesting technique; not calling this one done, though.

The next two are also works-in-progress.

Each started out as wet-on-white, but they were first efforts and disappointing. I wanted to try more paint-drawing/sand pieces, so these were appropriated. The top canvas incorporates decomposed granite from my backyard; the lower canvas is one I started in workshop and has fine, wind blown sand in the crossed lines and squiggles; the dots and mini-squiggles are just paint. So there will be two different surface textures.

Both paintings will get a coat of flat paint, and then I'll let the color fall where it will. In the salient words of 'Crash' Davis, "Don't think, Meat -- you'll only hurt the ball club."

Happy New Year Plus One.

2012-01-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

I did not one but two New Years Cards this year. I've loved dragons as long as I can remember. My favorite part of Disney's Sleeping Beauty is when Maleficent turns into one. So 'Year of the Dragon' was a vacation compared to last year's Rabbit struggle.

Despite that, I still forgot to post the thing here on New Years. So, here are both versions.

I scanned an existing monoprint/oil-transfer drawing into photoshop and played with inversions and layer effects, plus added color. (The original was monochrome.)

For the next version, I scanned the drawing used to make the transfer (as you can tell by the cleaner lines.) For the background, I used one of my recent abstract paintings. Layer effects helped tie everything together.

To everyone, may 2012 bring twice as much goodness as 2011 did. (Which, when you think about how stressful last year was, isn't saying much.)

Big wheel keeps on turning. Fingers crossed, everybody.

Christmas Cover Cobbling

2011-12-24T10:15:00.001-07:00

In the late 80s, when we were still restricted to a limited color palette, Gladstone published 'Uncle Scrooge in Color', a hardcover book celebrating the life of the old miser. Below is a color guide from the book, page one of 'Christmas on Bear Mountain', the 1947 Donald Duck story in which Carl Barks introduced Uncle Scrooge to the world. There he is at the bottom of the page, in all his original Dickensian irascibility.

Ten years and a vast improvement in printing technology later we reprinted the story again, in WDC&S 608. Here's another look at those two panels:

The two images are exceedingly tiny, but our boss at Gladstone, Bruce Hamilton, decided they would form the basis for the comic's cover. Editor John Clark put it together, under his nom de rapidograph 'Bucky O'Neill'. The two panels were blown up and redrawn, along with elements taken from other Barks panels.

I did a color guide...

…and below, the final, pseudo-Barks result.

Bruce was fond of saying that one could enlarge any Barks art to any size and the line weight would remain perfectly proportional. That may have been true when working with the original art (which was three times the size of a printed comic) but NOT when enlarging 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation comics-size photostats. But for all that, it's not a bad cover.

Best wishes of the season to you all, and in the words of the old duck himself, "Have another peanut!"

Random Duck goodness

2011-12-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Between work, holiday stuff and the usual end-of-year hamster wheel activity I've been a neglectful blogger. One of my goals (ha!) for 2012 is to catalogue the contents of my filing system which contains piles of material left over from the Gladstone/Another Rainbow days, plus winnowing out the still impressive stacks of Disney comps filling up valuable wall and floor space. Much scanning will ensue, and perhaps more posting of said ephemera.

Here are a couple of items I recently posted to Tumblr.

Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories 620 (Gladstone), January 1998.
Art by William Van Horn, who never met a snowflake he didn’t like, with colors by me.

A model sheet by Carl Barks from 1950.
Scanned from The Carl Barks Library Set 8, Vol. 3. (Another Rainbow, 1983)

2011-11-29T15:29:00.001-07:00

Anesthetic is wearing off. My mouth is starting to feel like the heavy construction zone it was for four hours earlier today.

2011-11-26T20:21:00.001-07:00

A bucolic session of disc-flinging @ Granite Creek park this afternoon in the falling leaves & waning sun, followed by Chinese takeout. Ahh.

Birthday hike, 2011

2011-11-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

For my birthday on Friday we'd planned to take a hike up Granite Mountain, a few miles north of Prescott. Since it was overcast and icky, I went to drawing class instead and then G and I tossed the frisbee on the courthouse square for a bit (it cleared up some by afternoon.) Saturday had the sun we wanted, so we headed out and up. GM is a prominent remnant of the ancient plutonic batholith that underlies the entire Prescott area, some 1.7 billion years old. We've hiked in and around it for years but somehow have never got around to hiking to the top. It's between 6 and 8 miles round trip, depending on which guide you read, and fairly steep in spots, but the trail is excellent. Good shoes, hiking sticks and flexible knees are a must.

The trail (#261) follows the base of the mountain before going up the exposed southern side which is thick with brush and prickly pear and exposed exfoliating boulders bigger than our house. Once you reach the top (still below the highest point but over 7,100 feet) the ponderosa forest returns, especially on the north-facing slopes. There was still a healthy amount of snow left from the small storm we had last weekend, and the breeze was pretty stiff from the south, so it was definitely a hike for layered clothing. We brought a gourmet repast of peanut butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, apples and cookies, which we enjoyed huddled in the lee of a rock shelf.

By the time we got back to the car the sun was out and the afternoon light was beautiful. We're very lucky to have places like this just a 20-minute drive from our doorstep. And I'm also grateful we are both in good enough shape to do this sort of thing without much trouble.

(Click on the image above to go to a Picasa album of photos.)

2011-11-10T15:02:00.001-07:00

Costco has always been free of muzak, but today, picking up G's specs, they had f#*!ing Xmas music blasting over big speakers. SO WRONG.

Take Back November!

2011-11-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Christmas is the bully of the holiday family, barging in where it's not wanted with its jingly music and freaking tinsel and relentless slaughter of any residual fondness one might have had for it with over-saturation and noise and pure crassness.

November is for Thanksgiving, dammit. Falling leaves and feasts and cooking and coziness and friends and family and 'Alice's Restaurant' and football and parades (for those who still watch TV) and wine and long walks in comfy coats and orange and red and russet and gold.

That dude in the red suit with the tiny ungulates can just back the hell off until November 25th, as the Flying Spaghetti Monster intended.

©Disney. Color guides by Susan Daigle-Leach.

Memory booster

2011-11-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

My short-term memory isn't what it used to be, and this being The Year of Distraction hasn't helped. Writing lists doesn't work; I lose or bury the lists. I don't have a smartphone to remind me of what I need to do, and Gary's STM is no better than mine.

Fortunately I have the two greatest things ever devised for the middle-aged mind: Post-its and a coffeemaker. (Three, if you include Sharpies.)

There was something else I meant to talk about, but I ran out of room on Mr. Coffee.

2011-11-02T21:01:00.001-07:00

When massive weather 'events' come pounding along every month or so, maybe it's time to rethink calling them '100-year' anything.

Halloween Barks: 'Trick or Treat'

2011-10-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Gladstone Comic Album 23, October 1989.

Donald Duck Adventures Album 21, September 1995 (Gladstone)

Donald Duck 26 (Dell, November 1952) was a Barks project from start to finish; iconic front cover art, 'Trick or Treat', 'Hobblin' Goblins' (featuring an early Gyro) and 2 inside cover gags. Only the back cover was non-Barksian. 'Trick or Treat' was adapted from storyboards for a Disney animated short directed by Jack Hannah. Barks' drew his version as a 32-page story, only to have it drastically cut by his editors at Western Publishing to 23 pages; Barks completely redrew the opening page-and-a-half.

34 years later, in Set II of The Carl Barks Library, Another Rainbow published a restored version of 'Trick or Treat' with the trimmed pages reinserted. (One panel remained missing and was recreated from art pulled from elsewhere in the story.) The CBL was primarily a black and white project, but for the restored printing color was provided by the great Marie Severin.
A few years later that version ran in Gladstone's Comic Album 23. Here's the original splash page, with Marie's lovely color.

In 1995, I did new color for 'Trick or Treat' for Donald Duck Adventures Album 21. That version was reused two years later in DDA 47 (comic). At 32 pages, it's too long to post entirely, but here are a few color guide scans.

©Disney

Halloween Barks: 'Hobblin' Goblins'

2011-10-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

First published in Donald Duck 26 (November 1952). Art and story by Carl Barks (featuring one of Gyro's earliest appearances).

I colored 'Hobblin Goblins' first for Gladstone's Comic Album 23, and revised that color twice, first for Donald Duck Adventures Album 21, then for Egmont's Carl Barks Collection. For this post, though, I want to put up Carl Barks' pages uncolored, to be enjoyed for their own sake.

©Disney

These scans are from my stash of oddments left over from the Another Rainbow/Gladstone days. The notations at the top indicate the pagination for Donald Duck 249, which went on sale October 1986 -- 25 years ago this month. And I realize that's how long I've been working in comics.

My first job was inking backgrounds on a Blackthorne comic ('Labor Force') in the summer of '86. That's how I met John Clark, who was lettering the book, and who was also an editor with Gladstone. He hired me to do freelance color, and I've been employed in the industry ever since. The level of work has varied from inundation to a bare trickle; since 2008 jobs have been getting scarcer, but coming after several years of unending work and near burn-out, I'm not complaining (much).

It's been a heck of a ride. I wonder what the next 25 years will bring?

Door art

2011-10-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

About ten years ago, during a slow period, I started painting the doors in our little 1971 ranch house. I had (and have) fond memories of the artwork my mom had put on some of the doors of our house in Scottsdale before she died. My favorite was a Space Odyssey-inspired painting on the back of the hall bathroom door, complete with op-art graphics and planets floating in the infinite void.

I got off to a decent start. Inside of a couple of years I finished three paintings in the main part of the house: the utility room door got a Magritte homage, the front closet was graced with a gold dragon on a blue field, and the furnace door received a green fire-breathing giraffe.

Before I could get to the rest of the house, the paying work picked up. Then we moved to MD, then we moved back, work was still eating up all the free time, and I wasn't inspired. I did get as far as painting over the doors' shiny dark walnut varnish with lighter paint to brighten things up in the hallway and bedrooms--all except one. For some reason I never did anything with the door to the back bedroom, formerly our office, then a storage dump, and now the art room. It's in a blind corner, but still. Now that that room had a purpose again, an arty one at that, that door was mocking me.

So Tuesday, we unhinged it and hauled it outside. I washed and sanded the surface (I considered just walking over it in my scratchy bare feet, but thought better.) Brought out all my cans of half-used paint and big brushes and empty chow mien containers and water buckets and went to town. I'd been thinking of doing another figurative painting, but nothing was bouncing up and down in my head wailing to get out. And that big surface was perfect for a drip-and-pour motif. Over the next few days I kept adding layers. Like any painting project I start on, halfway through I was sure I'd @#$%! up. But I'm happy with how both sides came together.

Of course, if we ever have to sell the house, the real estate agent is going to have heart palpitations.

Digital sketching redux

2011-10-17T14:55:00.001-07:00

I'm late to the party, but finally checking out some of the sketching apps that have been developed for iTouch, iPad, etc. I did this landscape last night using Sketchbook Express (I'm trying out the free versions before plunking down the few bucks for the real deal. Such a miser.) Reference was a photo I took of the landscape around the Agua Fria National Monument last year.

I did this piece on the standard Mac desktop using my Wacom Bamboo tablet. It took me a few tries to get the hang of the controls, and I had to look at the help doc to clarify a few things. I'll try a sketch on the iTouch before I commit. But overall, I'm pleased.

Seasonal Barks

2011-10-14T12:22:00.002-07:00

It's that time of year, so here are a few more scanned color guides from my archives (i.e., the filing cabinet) with a Halloween theme.

This batch dates from the early to mid-90s when Gladstone's color Carl Barks Library 'albums' were in full swing. As I may have mentioned previously here or elsewhere, Bruce Hamilton (Another Rainbow/Gladstone's owner/publisher) reserved the job of laying out the CBL album covers and title pages for himself. Each was composed of Barks panel art from a story or stories appearing in that album, blown up and rearranged. I did the color guides for the majority of them, which were then digitally separated by Jamison Color in Missouri. (We were doing the bulk of the in-house pre-press on Macs by that time, but it still took a lot of server power and processing time to do digital seps. Between comics and albums we were generating a couple of hundred of color pages a month at that time; with our tiny staff there was no way we were going to do all those seps ourselves.)

Donald Duck Adventures Album 9 (9/94), title page

Art from "Voodoo Hoodoo" (DDFC 238)

Bombie, the original pop-culture zombie star.

Donald Duck Adventures Album 21 (9/95), title page

Art from "Trick or Treat" (DD 26)

Comic and Stories Album 43 (7/95), front cover

Art from "Jet Witch" (WDCS 254)

Comic and Stories Album 38 (3/95), front cover

Art from "Volunteer Fireman" (WDCS 225)

Not a Halloween story, but it seems to fit in the theme.

Comic and Stories Album 14 (2/93), front cover

Art from "Donald Duck's Worst Nightmare" (WDCS 101)

Donald Duck Adventures Album 10 (10/94), title page

Art from "The Golden Christmas Tree" (DDFC 203)

Scary ghosts, scarier printing

2011-10-13T10:15:00.002-07:00

Cover of Mickey Mouse 252 (Gladstone), November 1989. Art by Murad Gumen, illustrating Floyd Gottfredson’s “Bellhop Detective”.

As I recall, Murad Gumen did quite a few Mickey covers during Gladstone's run. He had a nice touch with the Mouse and did lovely drawings. I can't remember who did the color guide (there's no color credit, so it might have been Murad). It's a cool concept, and the spooky logo lettering is a nice, out-of-the-ordinary touch.

The cover didn't print as well as it could have, unfortunately. The dark background colors are unevenly saturated, and the separators ran the background colors behind the blacks in chunks, giving Mickey's head an unintended ghostly cast of its own. Clean color trapping wasn't a strong suit when working with film and Xacto knives, as the separators at World Color were still using at that pre-digital time. These days it's a snap.

It's hard to remember sometimes how quickly desktop publishing and digital tech changed the world of printing. These days all you hear about is how print is going the way of the dodo (unlike the dodo, print will always be around, just not as prevalent). But print itself has been utterly transformed by the digital age. I can do things on my consumer-level Mac in hours that would have taken days or weeks in turnaround time with several vendors just 22 years ago.

Of course, this is also one reason why employment is in the crapper; jobs that used to require multiple pairs of hands to complete now take only one--and that one often gets paid a fraction of what they were paid previously. And yet life gets more expensive and the population keeps rising. Ah, humanity!

I wonder if our future cockroach overlords will enjoy comic books? (As something besides appetizers, that is.)

Small works, October 2011

2011-10-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

I recently managed to get several (7) pieces of art done in a relatively short period of time, thanks to being invited to participate in a showing of small works at a local gallery here in Prescott. (The Frame and I on Gurley and Granite Sts.) It's wonderful what a deadline and the carrot of public display can do for a persons productivity, although I 'cheated' a little by reworking several existing ideas. Since this is a time-honored tradition with artists from Monet to Turner to Magritte and beyond, I don't feel too guilty.

Each one of these is 5 x 7 inches -- or will be once matted and framed. I went outside the lines on several. Once you start doodling on a background it's hard to stop. ; )

Here's a slideshow/link. Enjoy!

Thanks, Steve.

2011-10-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs has moved on to that great OS in the sky.

He was 56; 5 years older than me, 2 years older than Gary. A man of our generation, but he accomplished more in his short time on earth than I could hope to in three lifetimes.

I will never forget seeing my first Macintosh computers in the art building of my university the year I graduated, 1983. Or the first Mac commercial in 1984 during the Superbowl. Or buying our first home computer in 1992, a Mac IIci, followed soon after in 1994 by our first computers at work; Mac PowerPCs. I did my first digital coloring on those PowerPCs, and have colored, retouched and lettered thousands of pages on Macs ever since. Mac and Apple have made our work easier, possible, enjoyable, and economical.

That IIci (1992-1997) was followed by a G3 (1997-2002), 'snowball' iMac (2002-2005), G5 (2005-2008), iMac (2008-present), and Mac laptops of varying vintages (since 1993). I listen to music through an iPod from 2004 and an iTouch from 2009. (Plus a Shuffle for workouts.) My next 'laptop' will be an iPad. The work and creativity of thousands of people have contributed to the usability and survival of Macs and the Mac OS, but through nearly all of it, Steve Jobs has been a driving force and focal point.

Happy journeys, Steve. You had flaws like all humans, but your gifts were sublime. Thanks for sharing them with us. Thanks for making my life and career a little bit better, a little bit less frustrating, a little more enjoyable, a lot more elegant. Thanks for Pixar. Thanks for 'one more thing'. Thank you.

This post created on a 2.4 GHx intel Core 2 Duo iMac.

Two Macs and a cat.

Montmorency vs. Sir Boiler Shirt

2011-10-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

'Ghost of the Grotto', by Carl Barks.

Originally published in Dell's Donald Duck Four Color 159, August 1947.

As colored by me for BOOM! in April 2010. (Not published).

Pages 21-26: Ye End!

A sprinkle too much pepper.

2011-10-02T20:16:00.001-07:00

'Ghost of the Grotto', by Carl Barks.

Originally published in Dell's Donald Duck Four Color 159, August 1947.

As colored by me for BOOM! in April 2010. (Not published).

(Page 20 is one of Barks' most memorable pages and best gags. I imagine he really enjoyed drawing that one.)

Pages 16-20:

A twelve-gauge can opener

2011-09-29T19:44:00.001-07:00

'Ghost of the Grotto', by Carl Barks.

Originally published in Dell's Donald Duck Four Color 159, August 1947.

As colored by me for BOOM! in April 2010. (Not published).

Pages 11-15:

"Heave-ho and a merry Yo-Ho!"

2011-09-27T10:24:00.002-07:00

'Ghost of the Grotto', by Carl Barks.

Originally published in Dell's Donald Duck Four Color 159, August 1947.

As colored by me for BOOM! in April 2010. (Not published).

Pages 6-10:

To be continued on Friday.

'Hoist me, boys!"

2011-09-26T23:00:00.001-07:00

'Ghost of the Grotto', by Carl Barks. Originally published in Dell's Donald Duck Four Color 159, August 1947.

As colored by me for BOOM! in April 2010. (Not published).

BOOM! canceled the issue this story was to go in right about the time I finished it. Despite having worked on the story in good faith, I was never paid. On the other hand, I never uploaded the finished files, either. Since BOOM! is out of the Disney comics game, and who knows what Marvel will do (if anything) with the classic Disney stories (especially since Fantagraphics is doing their own version of the Carl Barks Library/Collection), perhaps I'll just post my humble color here. All rights reserved to the mighty Disney Corp. et al. And special thanks to Unca Carl for drawing and writing the thing.

Pages 1-5:

2011-09-20T20:38:00.001-07:00

I apologize for being a dull Social Media participant of late (and for the next couple of weeks) while I concentrate on getting work done (the paying kind and the arty kind). I will do my best to be scintillating in October.

2011-09-04T21:50:00.001-07:00

I dare you to watch this and not smile.(No cats involved, although there's a dog walking through.) http://ping.fm/R61L0

Art History (mine, not the college kind).

2011-08-31T23:27:00.000-07:00

After I started working full-time at Another Rainbow/Gladstone in the late 80s, my personal artwork output trickled to near zilch for a long time. Since comic book production of that era (at least at our company) meant using rapidographs and white-out to touch-up stats, and painting photocopies with watercolors to create color guides, I didn't feel inspired to clutch a pen or paintbrush much after I got home in the evening--unless I was doing freelance color work, which meant a paycheck.

Occasional I'd make myself sit down in front of a blank piece of paper long enough to get a groove going, and turn out a piece of work that reminded me I could draw and paint well enough if I'd put in the effort.

Going through the odds and ends I did during eleven years of day-jobbing, there are examples of my usual subjects: dragons, horses and big cats--but especially the mountain lion, aka cougar, puma, catamount and panther. (Is there any other animal that has a different name for each region it lives in?) I love their striking look, that sense of housecat grown to prehistoric size.

Here are five paintings of cougars I did from '89 to '99; more than any other big cat in my limited repertoire.

Watercolor and gouache on paper (really thin paper, unfortunately). 8 x 10"

Acrylic on paper, 11 x 14"

Gouache on bristol board, 5 x 7"

Acrylic on paper, 4 x 6", preliminary idea for...

...Oil on canvas, 30 x 48".

(This shows the painting halfway completed--but it looks better at this stage than when it was 'done'.)

And here's our own mini mountain lion, or petite puma; the Junior Member of The Firm himself. Master of all he surveys, indeed.

Shh, I'm cheating on Blogger.

2011-08-30T17:11:00.001-07:00

I've started using Tumblr.

It has some advantages over Blogger in that it's simpler for posting images and text -- it doesn't seem to have the font and layout crinks I run into here. For now I'm going to use both, and see which ends up being more useful. Between Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and now Tumblr (and my neglected Flickr and DA accounts), I've about maxed out what little digital multitasking ability I have, so something ought to go, unless I can become both a lot more interesting and focussed.

Negative Dragon (but in a good way)

2011-08-24T16:36:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, my tendency to miserliness can lead to a neat piece of work.

After messing around with some block printing, there was a film of ink left on the glass. I thought, 'I hate to just wash this down the sink.' I put a sheet of paper over the ink and drew a quick dragon; the pressure transferred ink to the paper for a carbon-type print. Neato!

There was still ink on the glass, so I put down a fresh sheet of paper and rubbed like hell with a spoon. The result was this sort-of monoprint, with a negative image where my drawing had removed the ink.

The print is about 6 inches wide, and doesn't have as much contrast as you see here; I boosted it to bring out the image. But I really like the effect.

Painting on a Sunday

2011-08-16T20:52:00.002-07:00

I took another abstract painting workshop with artist Charles Huckeba this past Sunday. For this session we worked with the concept of 'ghosting', drawing inspiration from the works of Joan Miro and others. As always I came away with more than I entered with; new ideas for technique, different approaches, several 'aha' moments, and the usual frustration with my perceived limitations. Mostly, I had fun being in an all-art environment; just making pictures on a Sunday.

These three paintings are about 20 x 20", acrylic and a variety of pencils on canvas. I'll keep working on some of them. he beauty of this form is being able to keep oing in and adjusting as the mood strikes. Walking away and returning later often brings new thoughts to light.

2011-08-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Potential thesis idea: At what point does a generation go from being 'the future's best hope' to 'the bastards that screwed everything up" ?

2011-08-16T18:30:00.001-07:00

Can't Have Everything Dept: OpenOffice does many things well and it's free. But also hellaciously, maddeningly slow.

2011-08-11T19:21:00.001-07:00

Fun with sound effects and Photoshop!
http://ping.fm/7EPId

2011-08-07T18:50:00.001-07:00

Floating captions. Variegated screentone. Transparent FX. Radial speed lines. The Four Horsemen of manga retouching.

2011-08-07T17:40:00.001-07:00

APS replacing our old meter w/a smart meter "to better serve you!" Which is utility-speak for "Gonna charge you more for the same service."

2011-08-07T17:18:00.001-07:00

Right after the hourly gloom report--sorry, "news update"--the oldies station played 'Eve of Destruction'.

2011-08-05T20:28:00.001-07:00

S&P? The jokers who said all was peachy just before the 2008 crash? F*** 'em and their 'downgrade'. And their little dog Congress, too.

2011-08-02T19:37:00.001-07:00

The game 'Battleship' is now a movie. Next up: 'Candyland: Bigger, Badder, Unwrapped!'

2011-07-31T13:48:00.001-07:00

Making my first batch of Gajar Halva. Me shredding carrots by hand--20 minutes. Shredding in a food processor--10 seconds. Whee!

Stick it to me

2011-07-18T14:46:00.002-07:00

My dad was a philetalist. I’m not, but I’m tempted to be when the USPS puts out stamps like this. (These are from 2008.) http://ping.fm/mHPXW

2011-07-17T14:24:00.001-07:00

Take almost any transcribed interview. Remove 'really' 'like' 'I mean' 'you know' 'actually' and 'just'. Voila! Something readable.

Irony, or just irritation?

2011-07-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

In 1972, when I was eleven, my mother died suddenly after surgery. At the time, my father was newly unemployed, but well into his career as an alcoholic; my severely handicapped older sister was living in an expensive full-care facility 3000 miles from home, and life as we knew it was pretty crap-tastic. The general public response to all this grief? Tough shit. Not my problem. Glad it's not me. Don't bother me with your uncomfortable situation, it might be catching.

After being kept out of school a couple of days for the funeral and whatnot, I went back to school. I was in the latter part of sixth grade that April, an unpleasant time as I was the pet bullying project of the class pretty-girl clique. I'll give them this faint praise: They left me alone for almost a week. Then it was back to same old bullshit. As far as the school was concerned, the main issue was making up schoolwork where I'd left off, as if I'd had the flu.

Nobody offered any sympathy or help or a shoulder, at school or anywhere else. I tried talking to a friend about it and she practically ran away. Adults were just uncomfortable with me. I could tell they desperately didn't want to talk to me about it, and I was a good kid, a quiet kid, a very discombobulated kid, so I Dealt With It on my own. It was like having an embarrassing secret that I was forced to tell people over and over again. Did I mention that I hit puberty later that same year? Such fun times. Thank goodness for music, books, movies, art and later on, fellow nerdy friends. That was the only therapy I got--but it sure beat the alternative.

Go forward 40 years, and now my dad has died. He had a decently long life. His health was crappy the last ten years but that was mainly due to his own lifestyle choices; drinking, bad diet, zero exercise. He died of expected causes at an expected time of life, and frankly, it was a relief to have his and our exhaustion at an end. We had a thousand good conversations over the years and were close for long time, before his health decline and the frustrations of aging made him more dependent on us, and a bit resentful. But he remained personable with his friends. So many of them approached me after his death with the the phrase "He was such a NICE man. So witty and smart." And I'd think, yeah, I remember that guy.

The fact is, I feel no grief at his passing. I can get nostalgic for the good times we had, and feel a little wistful that the last years were so difficult for all of us, but grief really isn't on the table, for all the reasons above.

However, since the day he died I have received more offers of grief counseling from more sources that I ever knew existed. Hospice. Mortuary. Cemetery. AARP. Even the CSRs from the credit card companies offer condolences and advice on--you guessed it--grief counseling. Which is, honestly, lovely and humane. But all I can think is:

Where the hell was this in 1972 when I @#%*! NEEDED it?

(You know what I wish I had NOW? A crash infusion of Arizona and Federal estate, tax and trust law. THAT I could use.)

It's a wonderful thing that there is more care and concern taken now for family and friends and especially children after someone dies. And just because I don't feel the need of grief counselling under this particular circumstance doesn't mean I wouldn't be grateful to have it under another. But the irony of this has just been smacking me this past month, and I had to get it out. I wasn't allowed to whine when I was 11 but by Grabthar's Hammer, I'm whining now. So there!

I feel better now.

Sundry Art

2011-06-28T14:30:00.002-07:00

I'm trying out Picasa Web albums. If I did this link right, clicking on the image above will redirect to an album of my recent art efforts. If it doesn't work, I will use some bad language and try again.

Update: It works. No bad language was harmed in the posting of this link.

Death and taxes.

2011-06-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

That about sums up the past few months. My father died in May after years of ratcheting-downwards health. Since February he'd been bouncing back and forth between hospital, nursing care and his assisted-care apartment, while we followed in his wake trying to catch the debris and sort it into something understandable. Everyone from doctors and nurses kept hedging on his prospects. "He could go on like this for years" they kept saying. And then he didn't.

I'm grateful his frustration and discomfort and unhappiness are at an end. I'm also grateful to be free of the stress, strain and exhaustion that was a big part of having him in my life. Dad was a kind, intelligent, curious, knowledge-loving, engaging man who did his best when he could -- but he was also an alcoholic depressive who ignored elephants in the room when it suited him. Which was far too often.

Prior to his passing we'd been shoveling through his papers and discovered his years of non-tax filing, which, while I can't blame him for on one level, on a practical level was a huge headache that became a full-scale migraine after his demise. He left just enough of an estate to be an problem. The past month has been a blur of paperwork, travel and frustration, but bit by aggravating bit things are getting sorted out, and after obligations he left behind are met, there might be a smidgeon left for us. I always told Dad my main concern was that he not run out of money for himself, and he managed to do that. He also was fond of saying he didn't want to cause us any trouble, and I know he meant it -- but there again, those damn elephants got in the way.

I have several friends who have gone through similar events this year. We've reached the age where those parents still alive are now passing away. One dear friend lost her father a month before mine, and is now dealing with severe health issues of her own. All in all, 2011 has been less than a stellar year so far.

The travel between here and Phoenix for Dad's issues coincided with an uptick in work, so since February I've had little time, energy or inclination to do much personal artwork. (This why I'm a wanna-be artist--real artists work through anything.) I've done a bit here and there, though. I'm trying out Picasa again, so will link to an album of some new-ish stuff in the next post.

These pictures are of my Dad in happier times. After a while, I'll be more likely to remember him like this, and that will be a good thing.

Dad and his older brother (right) in 1997.

Digital sketching

2011-05-05T00:53:00.000-07:00

Quick and dirty self-portrait, Photoshop.

Art Card Monday

2011-05-02T14:01:00.000-07:00

A few art cards I worked on this past weekend.

Acrylic on bristol board.

Acrylic & gouache on bristol board.

Ink & gouache on bristol board.

Gouache on bristol board.

Acrylic on bristol board.

Marker & gouache on bristol board.

Ink & Prismacolor on bristol board.

I counted my stash last night and have done 150 of these little guys since mid-2009. I really need to join one of the many art card selling-trading sites, as well as set up or join an art-selling site to get my other stuff out there. There are so many such sites and more pop up every day, it's easy for me to get overwhelmed with choice and end up doing nothing. Which is dumb. I just need to pick one and get going.

This is my brain on paint.

2011-04-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

This pointillist piece started out a few weeks ago as a charcoal attack on a piece of 9 x 12" drawing paper. I was scrabbling out my anger with my father for being such a giant pain in the ass. It turned into a messy shapeless scrawl-fest, and in frustration I tossed it under the desk and forgot about it.

Last week I rearranged the art room (part feng shui attempt, part deliberate distraction) and found the drawing. I had two watercolor pans partially filled with dregs of gouache from a previous painting session, and decided to experiment with painting over charcoal. With no image in mind I started daubing bits of color, and after about ten minutes I got into a groove; in an hour and a half I ended up with this. What started out as a angry black mess became something a with a little more life.

I've never done a piece quite like this before; I liked it. I wasn't thinking while I painted it, and that's a good thing. I think too much. I think myself into death spirals of frozen indecision and guilt, and it can be nearly impossible to turn those off. This helped mute my interior klaxons. Maybe I should do a few hundred more.

Rocket Reverie

2011-04-14T22:10:00.001-07:00

Rocket Reverie first appeared in Gladstone's Donald Duck Adventures 5, in the summer of 1988. It was one of three 2-pagers written by Gary Leach and drawn by Don Rosa that were published by Gladstone that year -- and the last time, to my knowledge, that Don drew anything written by someone else.

Rocket is the best of the three, and was inspired by Gary's love of Carl Barks' ducks-in-space story Island in the Sky, Barks' adventure from 1960 in which Uncle Scrooge hauls Donald and the boys into space in search of an asteroid to use as an extra-terrestial money bin. Along with 1958's 24-Carat Moon and other stories, Barks portrayed a Duckburg with spacefaring capabilities. To him it was no different than having proximity to oceans, forests, mountains, deserts -- whatever the story required.

Similarly, Gary's 2-pager presented Donald and the boys on vacation in space, traveling in a ship quite familiar to Barks fans. But Don couldn't reconcile himself to that; his vision of the duck universe existed solely pre-rocket-era. (Apparently he considered Barks' space stories 'non-canonical', which is pretty funny in an anal retentive sort of way.) So he added a panel at the beginning establishing that it was a pickle-ice cream-induced daydream of Donald's. Which is sort of cute, except that for a guy who liked to make noise about not having his artistic rights respected, he didn't ask if he could change the story--he just drew it that way and sent it in, take it or leave it.

Back in January BOOM asked me to color 'Rocket" for one of their Disney books. I mentioned that it had been written by Gary, and I wonder if they credited him. I'm assuming it's been published by now. Heck, I might even get paid for it in the next month or two. (The rapidity at which job delivery is requested is sometimes inversely proportional to the amount of time it takes to get paid, kids.) I didn't do it for the money, though. Page rates for coloring Disney stories are less than edifying, but as Rosa art goes, this was a breeze, and I can't resist a good space yarn. This one's for you, Mr. G!

Click on the pages to see a bit bigger.

Art Card Friday

2011-04-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

I just bought some more canvases at a stomping good price, due to them having a few defects that preclude them from being good candidates for saleable artworks. They are perfect for experimenting on, though. I'm also pondering taking another painting class.

And sometime this month*, after finishing work obligations and dealing with dad obligations, I need to get Gary to lock me in the art room with a sandwich and an edict to finish a painting bigger than my head before I can come out again (bathroom breaks excepted).

But for the moment, I'm still working small (art card size) and fast (3 to 10 minutes, tops).

Like these thingies.

A copy of a classic Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge. An exercise in fast freehanding in ink, with gouache slapped on as an afterthought (and it shows).

Angry dragon in ink and gouache. Of course he's pissed, I cut off his nose. Clearly a subconscious reaction to allergy season.

Suave Feline of Mystery in white and red acrylic over ink.

It might be a neon apatosaurus under a jungle moon, or it might be a color exercise in acrylic. Either one works for me.

*April? Seriously? @#$&!

Killer Bunny

2011-03-18T23:28:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, which seems eons ago, I quoted the prediction for a Rabbit Year as being 'placid'. If the first two months of this Rabbit Year are what's considered placid, I shudder to think what would qualify as 'turbulent'. This Rabbit is more Monty Python than Beatrix Potter.

Between earthquakes in New Zealand and even more horrifically in Japan, uprisings and civil war in North Africa, the GOP's war on women, public broadcasting and working people here in the USA, and on a more personal level, my father's joint health and fiscal emergencies, I'm about ready to hitch a ride on a passing spaceship. At this point I'd even take my chances with the Vogons.

On the homefront the past 6 weeks have been a frantic juggling act of work deadlines and dealing with dad's needs. Art is on the back burner. I admire those intrepid souls who can make art in the midst of chaos, but I'm all out of intrepid at the moment.

In the spirit of arrested intentions, here are some of the last covers I colored for Gemstone. The Rosa cover was intended for Spring Fever 3, to accompany Barks' 'Mystery of the Loch' and the other (which I believe is by Daan Jippes) would have been for Uncle Scrooge 387, illustrating Barks' 'City of Golden Roofs'. (BOOM! recently ran the Rosa cover, with different color.)

The Year of the Rabbit

2011-02-02T22:19:00.003-07:00

...begins February 3rd. According to my book of Chinese lunar years, this should be:

"A placid year, very much welcomed and needed after the ferocious Year of the Tiger... people will acknowledge that persuasion is better than force. A congenial time in which diplomacy, international relations and politics will be given a front seat again. We will act with discretion and make reasonable concessions without too much difficulty."*

Well, politics certainly has a front seat, or more accurately, punditry. The rest of it would be nice but seems unlikely.

As I wrote in a previous entry, Gary and I started sending out cards for New Year's in lieu of Christmas many years back, partly because it gave us some extra time, but also because I like drawing animals. This year I hoped to get artwork done early enough to print full-color cards, but despite getting an early start and making several attempts, I couldn't decide what to do. So I dumped a pile of sketches (see below) in front of Gary and asked him to do his Art Director Guy thing. He selected and tweaked and I drew the result, which in hindsight seemed obvious. Because nothing says 'Happy New Year' in tumultuous times like Viking bunnies paraphrasing Shakespeare.

(The hard-copy version we mailed out was b&w, but I added some color for its appearance here.)

*The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes by Theodora Lau, Harper & Row Perennial, 1979.

One more arty bit...

2011-01-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

...before the month is out. Watercolor sketch this time, a quick-rendered memory picture compiled from our many walks in the Prescott National Forest. Something late-summerish to offset the grey days of winter.

Bring it on, February.

Gouache almighty.

2011-01-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

I love gouache. All the solubility of watercolor but with that lovely opaqueness and flatness that makes it so forgiving. I wish it wasn't so expensive, but then that's true of most art supplies.

I still have some ancient tubes of Winsor & Newton purchased in the 80s, all long since solidified but still usable once I hammer some bits out and add water. I picked up a few new tubes of primary colors recently; maybe I'll pry open my wallet again and get a few more not-easily-mixed colors, like a nice vivid orange. I do love orange, especially in the winter.

Here are some gouache sketches and doodles, all blathered out this past month during my doldrums.

This and the top sketch come from my love of cave art.

My Balrog-inspired ID monster. Snarl.

Another ID monster. I was feeling really swell that day, can you tell?

Some self-portrait work. A friend said recently, "You're always smiling in photographs, but in your paintings you look so... different." Yup.

A page o' horses.

Sometimes I can do nice things. I painted this from a photo of a friend, as an exercise in color, light, and painting directly without an underlying drawing--and because I really like the photograph. (The rabbit was extra.)

January...

2011-01-29T17:59:00.002-07:00

...is nearly over, with nary a post here. This is due to my life-long tradition of having a brief, mildly upbeat post-New Year's resolve to Do More With My Life and Talents, Because Everything Will Be Okay, which quickly and inevitably degenerates into several weeks of Who Am I Kidding, I'm a Hack and the World is Doomed, Doomed I Tell You.

Which to be honest is my basic frame of mind on a more or less constant basis, but I try to keep it subsumed with my own brand of meditative mantra, avoidance of triggers (difficult in our media-and-politics-and-pundits-obsessed society) and a small daily dose of a non-trendy anti-depressant. Generally this combination keeps me functional, reasonably content and passable company. When it doesn't work, these days I try to keep it to myself as much as possible until it passes. It's better for everybody that way, me included.

Enough of the sorry personal crap. How about some ducks?

This Daan Jippes cover is one of my favorites. Gladstone used it for Uncle Scrooge 220, cover-dated August 1987 (which was also the month I started working full-time for Another Rainbow/Gladstone). Gladstone had been publishing monthly comics for just under a year at that point, and had been in Prescott since January '87. Prior to getting hired I'd been freelancing for them, coloring Egmont material drawn by Branca and Vicar and Milton and Jippes. For this issue I colored a short Beagle Boys story by Esteban, but the cover was (probably) colored by our pal Mike McCormick who was AR/G's Art Director at that time. It's a nice summery, simple, bright cover with a great gag.

In 2001 (or 2002, I can't quite remember) I did a bit of freelance color for Egmont, mainly Junior Woodchucks material with a few covers thrown in, including this one.

I liked the color design on the Gladstone version but wanted to do my own take, so I borrowed some elements, adding a painted sky/background and keeping the sun white-hot with a faint yellow cast in the center. I added a light shadow to Scrooge, painted the fence gray to knock it back a bit, and made the coins silver for color contrast with the ground.

And yes, I know the original cover gag was a take on 'Penny Seed', so the coins should have been copper-colored. But since coins in Egmont U$ stories are nearly always colored gold, no matter what denomination they are, it's a moot point. The lettering on the bag would have been changed for each language it was printed in, so I'm sure they changed the coin color and probably the paper money 'seed signs' as well.

At that time they didn't give me any constrictions on how the color should be done, just told me to do what I thought best. So I did. I'm sure some would see it as degenerate for being too fancy/shmancy with the painting effects, but I wasn't trying to show off or use effects for effects' sake. I just wanted to make a good cover. I think I did.

2010 in the rearview mirror.

2010-12-31T18:47:00.001-07:00

And so another year ends, in the human reckoning of time, although for the world itself we are simply in the midst of another winter season*. A particularly snowy one here in central Arizona, thanks to a slow-moving cold front that left nearly a foot of snow once it was through. A lovely cold present from nature and a bit of a make-up for the chintzy monsoon.

All years go by quickly; this one went by in such a blur I'm still a little surprised that it's New Year's Eve already. I don't make resolutions, simply hope that once again we'll navigate another year without too much fuss and bother, with some good times to balance out whatever hiccups may occur on the FTL journey to New Year's Eve 2011.

A few things stood out in my personal 2010:

• I turned 50. On the surface, this doesn't seem like such a big deal as it was in my parent's day. 50 was OLD, then. Now it just seems like a continuation of the 40s. But I do notice a shift in my worldview, one that's been growing the past several years. One that doesn't get as worked up over things I can't control, doesn't worry quite so much on a daily basis, and is more in tune with enjoying today as opposed to fretting over the future. Frankly, the future isn't looking so hot, so why not enjoy what's good now?

• We went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for the first time. Something we could have done long before now, but the impetus of meeting old friends got us out of the door. It was an utterly gorgeous trip and reminded us again what a beautiful place Arizona is, despite the petty foolishness of some of the humans who think they run the place. Geology laughs!

• We knocked down the silly little wall in our living room that had been bugging us ever since we moved in 18 years ago; painted the kitchen (now that you can see it when you walk in the door, it seemed like a good idea), cleared out the back bedroom for a painting space, and finally framed two of my big paintings that had been waiting to be properly finished for way too long. In other words, our abode finally looks (slightly) more like the home of grown-ups as opposed to college students.

• I made more art. Not enough, mind you; I'm still far better at avoiding than creating, but my output this year outpaced the last ten combined. Sad, but a step in the right direction.

• I made less money. A LOT less, and the same for G. Both of us have seen work and page rates decline the past several years, but this year the drop was precipitous. For the first time since we've been married, our gross income was less than our outgo. (I include taxes paid in the outgo column.) Not by a huge amount, but sobering. We aren't spendthrifts. But everything costs more by leaps and bounds (our spartan individual health insurance policy premiums alone ate up half my income for 2010), and in our line of work, one must do more and get paid less, if the work comes in at all.

So, 2011 could be better, could be worse, who knows. My wish remains the same, for us and for anyone reading this: be healthy, be happy when possible, love and be loved. And get out and enjoy the world while we can.

As someone once said, tomorrow never knows.

Cheers!

*I really should have said 'northern hemisphere' but I let stream of consciousness get the better of me. Sorry, southern hemisphereans.

Night of the (Linoleum) Lepus

2010-12-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Normally I stay up late to midnight or so, either futzing around on the computer or reading. So staying awake for the eclipse on Monday night should have been a no-brainer. Except that whenever I have to get up early or stay up late for a specific reason, my body goes into contradictory mode. 'You don't want to stay up late and see a silly once-every-400-years-eclipse,' it said Monday, 'you want to go to slee-ee-eeep.'

(Whereas the night before it wanted to stay up to 1:00 am re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the 30th time. Contradictory.)

So I distracted myself from the sleepies by making my first block print since high school. Since I've been thinking of attempting a linoleum-block cut for my 2011 New Year's card, I made this a test run. I did a quick sketch directly onto the block using a magazine photo clipping as reference and started cutting. The whole thing took about 15 minutes (before printing), so it's not exactly polished, but I'm pleased for a first-in-a-really-long-time effort.

And we did stay up for the eclipse; it was partly obscured by the high misty clouds, so we didn't get to bask in the red moon-glow of totality, but it was a lovely thing to see, all the same.

Let it snow.

2010-12-19T23:36:00.001-07:00

William Van Horn has drawn a mighty big swack of Disney duck stories in his long career, and I colored a fair number of them. Working on Bill's stories was always a pleasure; he is a consummate draftsman with a love for line and energy. If Don Rosa'a stories took their cue from Carl Barks' long adventure stories (with an emphasis on angst and history), Bill's stories took theirs from Barks' Walt Disney's Comics & Stories ten-pagers (with an emphasis on slapstick and one-liners.) True, some of his ten-pagers felt like 3-page gags stretched out to fill ten, but even so, the art is always a treat.

For me Van Horn's slightly zany silent-movie style lends itself to a colorful palette, and this story had lots of skies and snowbanks -- a nice canvas to work with, and to have nothing but blue skies and white snow wouldn't do justice to the art. (And winter skies often reflect and refract a range of color not always seen in warmer seasons.) Bill also loves to draw snowflakes, and lots of 'em. My memory is prone to hyperbole, but I would swear that of the last dozen Van Horn stories I colored, eight of them involved snowflakes.

'Creature Comforts', which ran in the final Gladstone issue of WDC&S (633), is one of them. Also featured is a Fermy, one of Barks' subterranean seismic beach balls from 'Land Beneath the Ground' (Uncle Scrooge 13, March 1956). Barks' Terries and Fermies also had Southern accents, although I think Enrico's dialog came straight from Foghorn Leghorn.

Color here was a combo of Dr. Martin's and marker, plus pro-white for the snow. I could have saved myself the trouble and just instructed the separators to knock out the flakes (which I did anyway), but by that point, I had time to dab snowflakes, since no more books were in the pipeline.

All images ©Disney

A letter to Santa, Carl Barks style

2010-12-16T17:35:00.001-07:00

"Letter to Santa" is a 24-page story written and drawn by Carl Barks for Western Publishing in 1949, first published in Dell's Christmas Parade 1, November 1949, and reprinted twice during Gladstone's run, first in Christmas Parade 2 (1989) and then in Donald Duck Adventures 11 (Carl Barks Library in Color album series) in November 1994. For the 1989 version, we marked up pages from a beat-up copy of the Dell CP as color guides. For DDA Album 11, I did new guides for digital separation, taking advantage of fades and blends, but don't think I got too crazy with the color. I mainly tried to complement the great art in this classic story.

Bruce Hamilton, Gladstone's publisher/owner, laid out all the CBL in Color album covers. It was his decision to create cover art for each book from panels and figures in the stories*, in large part as a money-saver (no new cover art to commission) but also to avoid using Barks cover reprints, already in heavy use for the comics -- and not always available for the original issues his stories appeared in. Since Bruce was a night owl, we would come into work some mornings to find the floor near the copier machine ankle deep in rejected copies covered with bits and bobs of Barks panels at various sizes, and his highly-annotated final layouts sitting on John's or Gary's desk.

This cover was one of his more successful layouts. It took advantage of a rare full-page splash panel, so very little enlargement was needed, and the stat we had was clean and sharp. The only retouch needed for the cover was to replace the logo, title box and wreath-encircled caption with art to match the background, something John Clark was especially adept at.

(Since the cover and page one of the story were practically identical, I just added the necessary info to the cover color guide sent to Jamison.)

"Letter to Santa" is one of Carl Barks' best-remembered stories, Christmas or otherwise. It was also a particularly fun story to color, what with steam-shovels dueling in the streets of Duckburg and a pair of impostor Santas getting run through the wringer by the frantic Huey, Dewey and Louie (who perfectly embody the sense of anxious tension I remember so well from childhood Christmases).

Here are my color guides for the first ten pages (page one above). I apologize for the spotty quality of these images; our scanner is giving up the ghost in fits and starts, creating lots of shadows and doing a lousy job of descreening among other idiosyncrasies.

*Bruce's theory was that Carl's art was so well-drawn that it could be enlarged to any size without needing any retouching. If we'd been working from originals, that may have been the case. But we had photostats of varying quality to work with, and take it from me, there was a lot of art retouching on those album covers, especially when a 1-inch duck had to go up 800% or more.

All images © Disney.

Christmas cards, 1986-1998

2010-12-12T12:51:00.003-07:00

In an earlier post I talked about making my own Christmas cards, starting in 1985. I think I called them hand-made, but that's fudging it. I may have designed and/or drawn each one, but they were all produced using mechanical means of some sort. The first two were at least mounted on card stock, but even that got to be too time-consuming.

(A few of our friends make honest-to-goodness handmade cards for the holidays, each one an individual creation, and I bow before them. That takes a type of skill and patience I don't have!)

Here's a gallery of efforts from the 80s and 90s, before I switched over to New Year's cards. Some are better than others, some are cringe-worthy. All were done pretty much at the last minute.

1986 - The Sleeping Santa
I had finished my homage to Rousseau's famous painting that year, so I stole the same theme for that year's card. Ink drawing, photocopied and glued to card stock (can't remember if I hand-colored any of these. I suspect not.) I re-used this last year, as an e-card with color added.

1989 - Animal Rebus card (cover and inside)

I set this at work on the Compugraphic typesetter, a massive beast that used 7.5" floppy discs and ran out type in galleys redolent of developer and fixer. The illos came from Dover clip art, pasted on with wax and then photostatted and photocopied.

1990 - No, I'm Not Pregnant

I thought I'd make an effort to draw a card that year, and since we were still living in our crowded apartment with our combined collections of books, comics, records and what-nots, that was the theme. I drew my hand that way because I didn't know what else to do with it. I didn't know it was a universal sign for "I'm preggers!" Since we'd been married just a couple of years (and I also made a reference to getting crowded) many people assumed that was the hidden message. This was the last time I attempted anything like self-portraits. (The attempts to be clever continued, unfortunately.)

1991

A joint effort between G and myself. G's little caveman is named Tundor and has shown up on many a card between us and the family over the years. The rest is my fault.

On some cards we drew additional stuff on the inside; this one went to my dad.

1992 - First year in the house (outside and inside)

More clip art, this one from a book of classic engravings. I set the type on the Compugraphic again, and statted it onto clear film, then painted the backs of the letters with white-out and statted the whole thing. Hard to believe we were just a couple of years away from ditching most of that for desktop publishing.

1994 - First Mac card (outside and inside)
Done on our first home Macintosh, a IIci with a whopping 5 mb of RAM and a humongous 256 mb hard disk. The art was hand drawn and input with a UMAX SCSI scanner (I still miss that thing, it was a trouper), with Zapf dingbats providing the snowflakes. First laser-printer card, too.

1995 - First Quark XPress card (outside and inside)

Quark 3, I think. Trying to be clever with type and color. Clunky, but interesting to do. This was one of a few I printed out at work, on a color printer that used wax which came in big crayon-like sticks. (The results were very crude by today's standards, but at least we could proof in color when we needed to.)

1996 - Two for one

More Quark and clip art, this time from a Dover collection of copyright-free animal engravings. Not sure why I did two cards that year; maybe I was feeling guilty for using clip art again. The first is my favorite. I like the idea of a Wise Man being the first last-minute Christmas shopper.

1996 Card 1 (outside and inside)

1996 Card 2 (outside and inside)

1997 - the last 'Christmas' card

One more round of Quark and clip art, and another dig at the shopping mentality I so don't have. This one we didn't even set up as a card, really, more a mini-poster, folded like a brochure. But we printed it out on nice yellow paper!

I couldn't find anything I did for 1987-88, 1993 or 1998. I'm not sure, but I think those years I bailed entirely and sent store-bought cards. (To the possible relief or disappointment of some.) Starting in 1999, I switched to New Year's, and the cards became a little more consistent. Still late, though.

To be continued...

Giddap, Napoleon!

2010-12-08T21:53:00.001-07:00

Before Carl Barks created Yuletide classics like 'Letter to Santa', 'Christmas for Shacktown' and the U$ introduction story 'Christmas on Bear Mountain', there was this 8-page ditty done for the Firestone Christmas Giveaway of 1945. Presaging in some sense the theme of 'Shacktown', this was (by all accounts I know of) Barks' first duck Christmas story. He did 4 more of this type in the following years up to 1949; all 5 Firestone stories were collected in one color volume by Gladstone in 1992 as one of the CBL in Color albums.

This story wasn't the best of the lot — the later Giveaway stories showed more storytelling polish. But the art is nice and more importantly for the purposes of this post, I found my color guides.

I did some minimalist work here. We were in the early days of digital color separations, and simpler color was less expensive to render. Plus, we were pumping out a fair amount of material at that time, so I was ripping out color guides as fast as possible to keep up with deadlines on several books at once.

Still, it came out okay. Six years later I reused the guides with just a few tweaks for WDC&S 633, the final Gladstone issue (*sniff*) and the last issue until Gemstone started up with 634 in the Spring of 2003.

'Donald Duck's Best Christmas' features Donald, the nephews, some long-eared urchins and a decidedly variant version of Grandma Duck, banged out here in the omnipresent Dr. Martin's.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Every year, it's the same thing.

2010-12-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

Nearly every year since 1985, I have made my own Christmas cards. It started out as a way to avoid buying cards at a time of financial duress. I had plenty of free time, but not much free cash (postage wasn't a problem since my Dad had plenty of spare stamps from his collecting endeavors.)

That first year I went to town: I came up with a drawing, photocopied it onto decent laid stock, and hand-colored each copy before adhering it (with rubber cement, sadly) to cards made from parchment paper leftover from my college lettering class. The result is pictured above. I also numbered each one, and that was my first mistake—If I'd been thinking I would have numbered each as "1" and saved myself a lot of good-natured ribbing from recipients about who got which number.

The other mistake I made was in setting a precedent. As I recall, the next year I was feeling more flush and sent out store-bought cards, eliciting some kindly grief about 'where was the hand-made card?'

Making my own cards was kind of fun, so I went back to it the next year—although never again to the extent of that first attempt. For one thing, I finally got real work, which kept me hopping, for another, I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to doing my own stuff. Every year, I'd think about doing the card in June or July. Or August or September. Surely I could get it done in October or November. Surely, I couldn't. It always ended up a frantic scramble of idea-searching and execution on December 20th or later.

Because of that, about ten years ago I switched to doing New Years' cards based on the Chinese lunar calendar. That gave me an out of a few more weeks (Chinese New Year doesn't start until February!) and had the bonus of being animal-oriented, always my favorite subjects to draw. (I've missed a few years for various reasons so have yet to complete a full cycle.)

Anyway, this year is no different. I thought about making the card early, never got around to it, and now there are 3 weeks left in 2010. You have to give me points for being consistent, at least.

2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, so this morning I sat in Cuppers coffee shop with my sketchbook and a pen and the iTouch open to Google images > "rabbit/hare" and started doodling.

I think one of these will eventually become The Card. If I'm really on the ball I may try doing a lino-cut print, otherwise it'll be back to the trusty laser-printer. Either way, I'm determined to get the 2012 card done early next year. Really!

Maybe.

Probably not.

Finally Finished, Part 2

2010-12-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

This post is a bit late—we really did get all this done by Thanksgiving—but after 18 years of waffling and moaning and whining (me) and putting it off (both of us), there's finally a dedicated art space set up in the house.

Last year we had decided that the only way we'd ever get a studio would be to add a room to the house, so we had plans drawn up and talked to some contractors and the city planning department and all that jazz. Then it got cold—and we got cold feet.

This spring we decided enough was enough, called up the contractor, got a quote—and found out from the city that his license had expired. We called another contractor. His license was current, he gave a us a good quote—then two-thirds of the manga G had been editing/rewriting were cancelled, rendering our income to a much-reduced level.

At this point we realized the universe was trying to tell us something, i.e. 'don't spend almost 20K right now, you idiots.'

But it spurred us to make do with what we had. We had the (disappointed) contractor put an extra window and a ceiling fan in the bedroom that had been our office before we had the ex-garage remodeled 4 years ago. We had thought to turn that room into a library/music room, but ever since the above mentioned remodel, it had been a repository for the piles of comics boxes, magazines, ephemera, and all the other almost-but-not-quite junk we'd moved from the other end of the house. I should have taken a picture of the 'before' state, but just imagine the above picture totally filled with white boxes and you get the idea.

Once we got all that stuff out (and scattered throughout the rest of the house until it's warm enough for a yard sale), we painted the dingy white walls and started moving all the art stuff in. Books, reference, supplies, easel from under the house, drawing board, various stacks of paper and bits and bobs. For the first time in ever so long, all that stuff is now in one, accessible, workable place. Quel incroyable!

Now I have no excuses. I have the place, the stuff, I even have a bit more time than I did a few years ago when I was working 7 days a week (I miss the income, but not the stress.) So there it is. Time to get creative. It feels good—and scary.

Fir-Tree Fracas

2010-12-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

Wow, December. Again. Yeesh.

You know, for me, the bloom came off the Christmas tree sometime in the mid-70s during my adolescence, and it never really came back. Sometimes I miss the unbearable sense of excitement associated with childhood Christmases. I especially miss the feeling of time standing absolutely still. These days when months go by like weeks and the holidays are more a chore and an ever-increasing hammer-to-the-head of commercialism and selling than an anticipated break, some of that childhood dazzle would come in handy.

I'm really not a Grinch or a pre-ghostly-visit Ebenezer Scrooge. (A little Uncle Scrooge, definitely. I think the whole gift-exchange thing should be limited to little kids and significant others and left at that.)

I like the simpler side of Christmas: making cards and baking some cookies, putting up a few decorations and listening to the occasional Christmas carol (preferably sung by a choir and not the latest auto-tuned Pop-tart.) I love how Prescott decks out downtown. It's a treat when we get snow during the holiday. And of course, putting up a Christmas tree. But definitely NOT like Donald, as chronicled here by Don Rosa in "Fir-Tree Fracas":

"Fir-Tree Fracas" was one of the earliest Don Rosa stories published by Gladstone. It first appeared in Mickey and Donald 1, cover-dated March 1988, but I think it actually shipped in December '87 (issue 2 was noted as being on sale in February; M&D was published 8 times a year during its initial run, rather than monthly.)

Note the incredible amount of white space in this short, compared to what would appear in later Rosa epics. Which is just as well, since the paper and printing that were available to us at the time were not up to the task of showing the incredible detail Don so loves to draw.

At that time the comics were still being printed by letterpress, with the color separations being processed by Chemical Color. Very limited color choices, as shown in this recent post at The Beat.

This is the only time I colored this story, I think. (It was hand-lettered by John Clark.) It didn't make it into Gladstone's color album re-printings of Rosa's early stories, which is too bad. These are my original color guides, probably done not long after I came on board full-time at Gladstone in August of '87. Christmas always comes early in publishing. ; )

Click any of the above images to see larger. (Top image taken from Rosa's Life and Times story "King of the Klondike".)

Thanks.

2010-11-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

For the Earth in all its incredible beauty and bounty; our enduring, abused, magnificent spaceship.

For friends near and far, good health, and a home.

For clean water, hot showers, and soap.

For creativity in its myriad shapes and forms.

For art supplies. And coffee.

For good food, and enough of it.

For intelligent, compassionate people.

For Macs, Photoshop, and iPods. And the internet (the good bits).

For electricity.

For literacy, and music, and John McPhee.

For a mortgage under 40K.

For 25 years of work in an industry that is perpetually going under and yet still standing. And Carl Barks.

For antihistamines,Trazodone and ibuprofen.

For NPR, PBS, and The New Yorker.

For rain.

For (almost) everything I've seen and done for the past 50 years.

For the good still in the world, that makes getting up in the morning worthwhile.

And most of all -- thanks for my boys.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ONE AND ALL.

Photo of the Earth from the moon from the Apollo 8 mission, 1968. (NASA)

Art in the mail

2010-11-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

My dad has been a stamp collector since he was a boy, which means he's been philatelically active for seven decades. He tried to get me interested in the hobby when I was young, but it never clicked with me. I appreciated how much he enjoyed it, though, and when he told me about 'covers' (illustrated and stamped envelopes sent through the mail) I had to give those a try.

Whenever I sent a card to Dad, I'd try to a) put an interesting stamp on it and b) add a quick little illustration that either related to the stamp(s) or was a nod to something going on in his life, or mine. He sold some of the stamp-themed covers at auctions, but kept nearly all of the more personal ones. When he moved into his smaller apartment last year, he turned over boxes of family memorabilia to our care, and in one of the boxes were all the envelopes he had saved.

Here are a few samples, mostly from 1989, when apparently I was sending cards about every three weeks. I was a much better correspondent before email!

For Father's Day.

A nonsense cover for Mother's Day (he gets both holidays).

The following three covers were a nod to some aggravating times Dad was going through with the Navy in his capacity as a contract negotiator for Motorola.

From 1993: a theme cover (note the norse-racing stamps) and since it was the 20th anniversary of Secretariat's big triumph, I put in some extra effort into the art.

And from 1997: a tribute to both Looney Tunes (stamp) and the Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner mission underway at the time.

Putting it together, bit by bit.

2010-11-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

The ex-bedroom-ex-office is slowly coming into its incarnation as a studio space; a few more items to move out, add some shelving and work surfaces, and it'll be good to go. My plan was to be painting in there by my birthday, but since that's tomorrow, I've adjusted the date to Thanksgiving. Hey, it'll still be November.

In the meantime, there are paintings in the painting room, which is a good start. (And a drop cloth, which by this time next year should be an artwork of its very own.) This stack is from another abstract workshop with Charles Huckeba this past weekend, resulting in five new canvases plus additional work on two previous paintings.

This session expanded on what we did before and I came away with even more ideas and energy to put into practice. And practice really is the name of the game. Each painting triggers an idea for another, each color combination makes me think of other combinations, and eventually something starts to happen that goes beyond technique.

(Aside: For years I suffered from nighttime panic attacks that woke me up with incessant loops of worry; mental death spirals that left me exhausted. I finally asked for help from my naturopath; he prescribed a small nightly dose of Trazodone, which has helped tremendously the past few years. Just recently I've had wakeful nights again, not from stress, but from visions of paintings and colors. You know, that I can live with from time to time.)

Closer looks below at the new and reworked stuff, although better photos are needed to show the texture which is a big element of several pieces, and which doesn't come through well in snapshots. Some of these are finished, others I have further plans for. All were a blast to work on. Click to embiggen.

Assemblage & glazing, 20 x 20"

Wet on wet, 20 x 20"

Thick pour over two-tone, 20 x 20"

Multiple pour, 20 x 20"

Detail

Multiple layers with modeling, scraping and glazing, 20 x 24"

'Shape' painting reworked with pours, 24 x 36"

Assemblage reworked with glazes, 24 x 36"

I want to do more figurative work, too, but right now this kind of painting is what I need to rev up the engines. I've spent so many years doing work for other people. This is just for me, and it feels very indulgent. I still feel a little guilty -- but I'm getting over it.

Abstract painting on a rainy weekend

2010-10-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I took a two-day abstract painting workshop with Charles Huckeba down at The Art Store in downtown Prescott. It was a blast. Charles was a terrific teacher and I learned more in those few hours than I would have mucking about on my own (my usual approach to painting.)

We did four fairly large canvases over ten hours. Mine were 2' x 3', and it was both liberating and humbling. I've played with abstract ideas on a very small scale with the art cards, but these were 12x art card size! Although I don't consider any of these 'finished' work, they still represent more painting done in a short period of time than I've accomplished in years.

Each painting used a different technique; Drip, layered stripes, shapes and assemblage. We used regular flat latex acrylic house paint, which was another eye-opener, and big brushes and stir sticks for application. We worked on all four simultaneously; while one stage was drying we'd get started on another canvas and go back and forth, adding layers to each. We had to punt a bit, since mama nature rolled in with some impressive thunderstorms that extended drying time, to say the least.

I enjoyed each style, although the brush-painted stripe and shape canvases were the most challenging. I'm only partially satisfied with my color choices or brush work. But that's the beauty of this sort of painting--each one gives rise to ideas of what can be done next. And as Charles pointed out, none of these have to stay this way. They can be added to subtracted from, painted over and redone. Endless possibilities. It's a great way to experiment with color and mood.

The assemblage piece was the most eye-opening and satisfying. I've done collage in the past and this was similar, but more organic. Applying cut and torn canvas shapes to the surface with gel medium created gorgeous textures that were glazed over and brought to life with washes of earth colors. Charles has done amazing works with this technique and I can't wait to try more.

It was ten hours well-spent: it got me out from behind the computer to interact with other arty types and kick-start my creativity.

And as a bonus, I also ended up with a pair of customized sneakers.

Spooky Gladstone

2010-10-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

I recently went through and sorted out my stash of Gladstone color guides. Most are from the last few years of Disney comics and albums; the cover color guides peter out sooner than the story guides, since we did more cover color files in-house towards the end of the license.

In the spirit of Halloween (so to speak) I scanned a few of the eerie-skeery-themed cover color guides along with the printed results for comparison. Limitations of my scanner aside, it's interesting to see how the guides translate into print.

Art credits are below each image; Gary colored DDA 38 and I did the others. All color separations were done by Jamison Color of West Plains, MO. All images/characters owned/copyright by Disney, yada yada. Click on images to embiggen.

Donald Duck Adventures 35, December 1995
Art by Pat Block, layout by Russell Schroeder.

Donald Duck Adventures 38, June 1996

Art (and story) by William Van Horn.

Donald Duck Adventures 47, December 199

Art by William Van Horn. (Featured story was Barks' 'Trick or Treat'. )

Uncle Scrooge Adventures 35, November 1995

Art by William Van Horn, color guide by Susan D-L.

(I bobbled the call-outs on this one a bit; intended the colors in the foreground character to be cooler and more shadowed, as they appear on the guide.)

Of Color and Credits and a Companion

2010-10-07T19:30:00.000-07:00

The stories in Gemstone's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion by Don Rosa (2006), are a varied bunch in terms of their American publishing history. Where the original twelve chapters of Don Rosa's epic were published sequentially by Gladstone in the mid-90s, the 'fill-in' chapters that followed came out over a longer time frame and were split between Gladstone's and Gemstone's licenses, with some variance in colorists and letterers.

There wasn't much room on the Companion contents page for a full listing of credits, so they were lumped together at the top with no indication of who did what on which story, etc. I'm picky about such things, so I made a list. (Someone else has probably already done this, but c'est la vie.)

Click on any image for a bigger version; SDL is me.

Front and back covers

The background image of coins depicting Uncle Scrooge in his many iterations was one of a slew of drawings done by Don for French publisher Hachette, used in issues of Picsou, the French Uncle Scrooge magazine. Shown in full on the back cover and as the background image for the front cover. The image of U$ with his dime pedestal comes from the art Don drew for the cover of Uncle Scrooge 300 (10/96, Gladstone). More about this later.

Title page art

I may have colored this, but I don't have a file, so I think it came from Egmont.

"Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies"

First American publication: US 297 (4/96, Gladstone)

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by SDL.

The lettering and titles by Todd were new for this printing; for its original publication in US 297, the wretched Whizbang was used for the dialog. It was the early days of digital lettering, what can I say.)

"The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark"

First American publication: US 318 (2/99; last Gladstone issue)

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by SDL.

Color files from US 318.

Cover art for "Cutty Sark"

First American publication: L&T Companion

Colored by SDL

"Cutty Sark" recap panel

First American publication: L&T Companion

Lettered by John Clark, colored by SDL.

"The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff"

First American publication: US 306 (10/97, Gladstone)

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by SDL .

Cover art for "Pizen Bluff"

First American publication: US 306 (colored by Gary Leach)

The file from US 306 wasn't available, so I did new color for this printing. See comparison above.

"Pizen Bluff" recap panels

First American publication: L&T Companion

Lettered in-house at Gemstone using CC Wildwords, colored by SDL.

"The Prisoner of White Agony Creek" and recap pages

First American publication: L&T Companion

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by Scott Rockwell.

Cover art for "Prisoner"

First American publication: L&T Companion

Colored by SDL.

"Hearts of the Yukon"

First American publication: Walt Disney Giant 1 (9/95, Gladstone)

Coloring by SDL, lettering by Bill Pearson--I believe. Unfortunately no lettering credit is given in the original comic, for which I take responsibility; I set up the text files for those issues and in the quest to cram in everything using the 6-point type necessary for that format, the lettering credit got dropped. Mea culpa.

Cover art for "Hearts" (German version, redrawn by Rosa)

First American publication: L&T Companion

This was a slight variation of the art originally drawn for the front cover of WDG 1. Don't know who did the color for this version, but it is based on the cover color I did for WDG 1. See comparison above.

"Hearts" recap panels

First American publication: L&T Companion

Lettered in-house at Gemstone using CC Wildwords, colored by SDL.

"The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut"

First American publication: US 332 (8/04, Gemstone)

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by Scott Rockwell.

Cover and poster for "Sharpie"

First American publication: US 332

Colored by SDL.

The poster image was used as the back cover for US 332

"The Last Sled to Dawson" (excerpt)

First American publication: Uncle Scrooge Adventures 5 (6/88, Gladstone)

Lettered by John Clark, colored by SDL.

"Dawson" was originally colored for USA 5 by Mike McCormick; I did new color for its reprinting in the Gladstone album 'Early Rosa' vol. 2. Those files were re-used for Gemstone's US 350 and here.)

"The Dream of a Lifetime"

First American publication: US 329 (5/04, Gemstone)

Lettered by Todd Klein, colored by Scott Rockwell.

Poster for "Dream"

First American publication: Back cover of US 329

Colored by SDL.

"Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies", "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" and "Hearts of the Yukon" had been digitally separated originally, but were old enough that files were no longer available. For those three stories, I sent my original color guides to Jamison Color in Missouri to set up new files. If you compare the comics versions to the Companion versions you'll see some subtle (and a few not so subtle) differences.

Why didn't I just do new digital files for those three stories and skip the middleman? Because there was no way I could digitally separate 63 pages of detail-packed Rosa stories in the time available without doing a lousy job AND losing my mind. I had time enough to do new color for the recap panels and the covers, which was fun. (63 pages would have been not so much fun.)

Here's the color for the "Cutty Sark" and "Prisoner" covers. Both got trimmed at the top when printed.

Missing in action

2010-10-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Although G and I bowed out of working full-time for Gemstone in the Spring of '04 and returned to the freelance life in AZ, we stayed on as contributors to the Disney comics. G edited and midwifed the Takealongs, while I continued to do color for stories and setting up/coloring the covers for Uncle Scrooge, WDC&S and others. It all went well for a few years but in 2007 the cracks in Gemstone's facade started to turn into canyons, and by Spring of '08 late payments had turned into non-payments.

We weren't the only ones not getting paid by Gemstone, and while the amounts were significant to us, they were small compared to the outstanding bills they had with bigger vendors (and probably still do). So we cut our losses, gave our sympathies to long-time friend and co-worker John Clark, and were totally not surprised when Gemstone Comics was eventually given the boot, along with most of its remaining employees.

As the saw goes though, it was fun while it lasted. Sort of. Doing Disney comics with Gemstone as compared to doing them at Gladstone/Another Rainbow was the difference between going to a big chain cafeteria and dining at a small family-run diner: the big cafeteria is shiny and seems to have endless choices and potential, but nothing tastes good, the restrooms are skanky, the tables are never bussed and you have to wait forever to get the check. The diner has good days and bad days, but the food always shows up on time, somebody's paying attention in the kitchen, the servers are attentive, and while the owners may have the occasional meltdown (okay, fairly regular meltdowns), they care about the business and always pay the staff.

As to the image of Uncle Scrooge 338 pictured above, it's one of the covers I colored during happier days for Gemstone. Since it was a Valentine's cover I added a background image of cascading hearts and was quite pleased with how the whole thing came together. (I'm sure some people hated it, which is fine.)

However, I never received a copy of the issue and according to John, neither did the editorial department. I knew from personal experience that stuff meant for the editorial department, like proofs and original material and preview copies from the printer, often got sidetracked or 'lost' on its way through the maze of the Diamond in-house delivery system. (Usually into one of Steve's many offices.) The printer copies of this issue met such a fate. Or maybe they fell off the truck, who knows. I think all that stuff had to go through Jersey. (Kidding, Jerseyites.)

If anyone out there reading this has a copy of Uncle Scrooge 338 and wants to trade, let me know. I've got a ton o' stuff, I'm sure we can come up with something.

Break Time!

2010-09-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

We didn't really get going on a digital platform in-house at Gladstone until about 1994. Up until then we did everything the analog way, with the exception of the MCS typesetting system. But all the line art was shot on our big process camera downstairs (similar to this puppy), we used rapidographs and white-out to touch-up the art, and wax to paste-up the mechanicals. ('Oh, wax-boy!') And of course the ubiquitous Dr. Martin's for the color guides.

Us production & editorial monkeys all had drawing tables to work on, the surfaces of which were covered with white mat board, thus giving us a place to test our pens, wipe brushes, jot down lunch orders, and doodle.

I doodled a lot. Fortunately the mat board was two-sided so it lasted long enough to spare me the wrath of our business manager. (Even then everything art-supply-ish was expensive, although it was cheap compared to now.) It was all idle scribbles, but I saved a few things, mainly stuff I drew while on the phone. I hated talking on the phone, especially when it was because I had to chase down late material. So I doodled the aggravation. Beats smoking.

Bambi Redux

2010-09-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Off and on the past few weeks, I've been thinning out twenty-years-plus of old paper. Financial stuff, work stuff, just plain stuff. This means delving into the file cabinets and cardboard file boxes and actually looking at what's been shoved in there since before the days of cell phones and internet access. A veritable time machine!

Fortunately it's not been nothing but dry listings of numbers. A few drawers are stuffed with mementos of my time at Another Rainbow/Gladstone/Hamilton (fondly and appropriately acronymed as 'ARGH'). Color guides, notes, old schedules, book plans, photocopies of stories and artwork, copies of correspondence. It brings back a lot of good memories. (And some bad ones, but one of life's pleasant properties is that mundane bad stuff mellows with time, while good memories stay green).

One good memory (that ties in with recent postings here) was triggered by finding the color guides I did for Gladstone's Bambi album, way back in 1988. The artwork, by master artist Ken Hultgren, was originally published in Dell Four Color 18 in 1942, an adaptation of Disney's movie version of Felix Salten's novel. (From book to movie to comic, the publishing 'circle of life'.)

For Gladstone's printing, publisher and major domo Bruce Hamilton wanted a painterly approach. This was well before the days of Photoshop and its software cohorts, so he asked me to do color guides for Steve Oliff's Olyoptics studio, which would use them to create production paintings to be scanned and separated for printing.

In retrospect (hell, even at the time) it would have made more sense for me to just do the paintings for separation myself. Or for Steve and Olyoptics to do everything from scratch. But at the time I'd only been in the business for a short period, and Steve was a known quantity. Bruce liked my color sense, but wasn't confident in my ability to do 'final' paintings. I could have been insulted, but I was just happy to be working at that point.

As it was, Steve and his crew did a wonderful job capturing the colors and effects I created in my guides, and I think 'Gladstone Comic Album #9 - Bambi' is one of the best Gladstone produced.

Here are a few pages of my color guides. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them, so many years ago. (Click on any image to see it embiggened.)

An experiment.

2010-09-09T21:08:00.000-07:00

I've been posting art to deviantArt for the past year, off and on. There's an embarrassment of riches online when it comes to sharing images and information. As of now I'm using several: Facebook, Twitter, deviantArt, Blogger and Flickr. (I also have a Photobucket account but haven't touched in in months.)

I'm still trying to sort out the best policy for posting images on the web in terms of getting the most bang for the effort; so far my solution has been to either multiple-post in various places, or post it in just one spot and add links to the others. It gets a little cumbersome.

Seems like more sites are becoming interactive, making it easier to share content. I'm about to try deviantArt's embed function. (Excitement!) This should bring up a recent oil sketch I did, testing some new paint.

cave horse oil sketch by ~colorfauna on deviant ART

Well, it seems to work. Slightly clunky image frame, and it takes a few seconds to come up. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting." ; )

Fifteen Rabbits

2010-09-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here are a few scans from my copy of Felix Salten's Fifteen Rabbits. According to Wikipedia, this book was published in 1929, 6 years after Bambi. (The copy I have, 'revised and enlarged', was published in 1942.) As I mentioned yesterday, the events in this novel take place in the same time and place as those in Bambi, who makes a brief appearance in this story.

The tone and message of this book is similar to its predecessor; part allegory of the human condition, part plea for respecting the natural world. This time the story is told through the experiences of a family of rabbits, with plenty of interaction from other forest denizens.

Kurt Weiss provides the art, as he did for Bambi. These drawings are especially evocative of forest life; as lovely as his Bambi illustrations are, these are better. He made it look easy, damn him. ; )

The original Bambi

2010-09-08T19:07:00.000-07:00

My family moved a lot when I was a kid; today's economic turmoil is nothing new, and my father had to restart his career several times throughout his life. That meant moving where the job was. Once I became an adult, I did some moving on my own for the same reason. In the 31 years between being born and finally settling into a house of my own, I figure I've moved house 13 times.

So there's not a lot of mementos left from the early days of my childhood. Packing and unpacking so many times, one starts getting rather stringent with what's keepable. I sometimes think of books and toys and tchotkes I had as a kid that I miss having now, but for most the memory is plenty--and doesn't take up any room.

I still have a couple of shelves of children's books from my first ten years, though. Some were bought new at the time; Dr. Suess stuff, for example. Other, older books came from estate sales and library sales my mother went to on weekends. This was in the early sixties, and she would come home with boxes of books that had imprint and copyright dates going back to the 30s and earlier.

Here's one that is familiar to just about everybody thanks to Walt Disney.

Written by Felix Salten, Bambi was originally published in 1923, 19 years before it became an animated feature. My copy is dated 1931, with a translation by Whitaker Chambers (who apparently was an interesting fellow to say the least) and beautiful drawings by Kurt Weiss. It was and still is one of my favorite novels.

It was not originally meant to be a children's book as we think of a children's book; it is a terse but descriptive book about life and death and relationships, told through the voices of forest animals. The characters display the full range of human experience and personality; love, anger, embarrassment, infatuation, self-delusion, disappointment, fear, and finally, grace and wisdom.

But Salten was keen not to just make observations of human nature through his characters--he wanted to make it clear how animals lives were affected by and at the mercy of humans, humans both cruel and kind. It is a sad and hopeful and wonderful book. I read it when I was 8 or 9, and I 'got' it. I wasn't scarred or traumatized by its frankness. I think it might even have helped me a few years later, when I lost my own mom to sudden death.

The illustrations are marvelous. It looks to me like they were lithographed, although they may have been charcoal or conte. My copy was clearly printed by letterpress, in two colors, black and warm brown. The end-papers added a pale green. I've scanned some of the interior illustrations and endpapers, along with a smidgeon of the text.

Salten wrote a sequel to Bambi, Bambi's Children, that was published in 1939, but previous to that he wrote Fifteen Rabbits, which took place in the same time and place, with similar themes. Bambi appears briefly in it. I've scanned a few pages from it as well and will post those tomorrow.

My Weird Working Life

2010-09-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

For the tail end of Labor Day, a list of my life's labors, so far.

Age 11:

Helping in my mom's shop (she sold natural lotions and perfumes), a day here and there. Consisted mainly of sitting behind the counter in the 8 by 8 foot space and watching people and the occasional shoplifter go by.

Age 17-18:

Shift job at an industrial silk-screen plant, inspecting and packing rub-off transfer games. Three months of doing that from 3pm to 11pm five days a week convinced me of what I already knew -- going to college was a good idea. But I wasn't ready, so I moved on to clerking at Walden Books for nine months before starting college in the fall of '79.

Age 19-21:

Summer jobs during college: 1980, Clerk at B. Dalton's (pluses were all the books I could read, minuses were customers and standing all day); 1981-82, production artist at a small advertising firm (pluses were the location, which was in a house down in a wooded glen with foxes and wild strawberries, minuses were few, but included a extremely fundamentalist co-worker who thought 'Quest for Fire' was satanic.)

Age 20-22:

Campus job as night desk assistant and head desk assistant (woo woo!) for my college dorm. Each dorm had a reception desk where visitors had to check in, manned 24 hours a day. At night the duty consisted of making rounds every hour and letting people in after the doors were locked at midnight. As you might guess, most people desiring entry at that point were hammered.

We also got to make announcements, which was the only fun part of the job, especially at night when all non-residents were supposed to leave the building. "Attention Beck Hall residents! It is now 9pm and time for all visitors to leave the upper living quarters of the residence hall. Any visitors remaining after 10pm will be fed to the giant cockroaches in the laundry room. That is all."

Since I was one of the few who took the job seriously (meaning I showed up and actually did the job) I was promoted to HDA my junior and senior year. This meant doing the same job but also having to do payroll, and ride herd on the other DAs, for another buck an hour. Not really worth the stress and one reason I quit and moved off campus for my last semester.

Age 22-23:

Production artist for a company that made sewing craft kits (crochet, needlepoint, hook rugs, embroidery, etc. Our department drew up the instruction charts and diagrams. Rapidograph on acetate, all day long. We also had the option of submitting designs to be considered for new kits, which paid extra. I sold a few designs, which was a bit of alright.

Age 23-25:

Advertising production. Worked as an illustrator for a co. that produced Yellow Pages ads, drawing tractors and well drillers and tow trucks and tires. Rapidograph on vellum this time. Did similar work for another company that did those Val-Pack ads, back when the inserts were much simpler than they are today and still used a fair bit of B/W art. It was better than working at McDonald's -- at least I was doing art -- but it was dead-end stuff for very low pay.

Age 25-26:

Bum. Looked for work and did some freelance, but honestly, I spent most of my time sleeping, drawing, painting, reading and rethinking my McDonald's theory.

But, through the heads-up of a friend, I 'auditioned' and was hired to do background inks for a Blackthorne comic, the letterer for which was John Clark, who was also an editor at Gladstone. He asked if I'd like to do some color guides for him, which eventually led to...

Age 26-38:

Production manager and colorist, Another Rainbow/Gladstone. Twelve of the very best -- and sometimes, worst -- working years of my career. On the plus side, I met my mate-for-life and developed the skills and contacts that keep me working today. (The only downsides were those that came from working for a manic-depressive publisher/owner, and a couple of thankfully-short-lasting Co-Workers From Hell.)

Eventually doing Disney comics became too expensive, and AR/G shut down, leading to...

Age 38-41:

Freelancer. Coloring for various Disney publishers (Egmont, Disney Adventures), illustration and digital production work for Prescott-based designers, lettering manga for VIZ.

One of the local designers I worked for did nothing but marketing and advertising; she was a good person to work for but I hated the work itself and that cemented my conviction that such work was not for me. But for other designers I worked on trail guides and national park publications, creating maps and illustrations and doing page layout (remember Quark Express?); those jobs were often a great deal of fun.

During this period John, G and I kept hearing rumors that Gemstone was imminently getting the Disney license to do comic books. After three years of 'imminently' it had become something of a running joke. But then in October of 2002 John Snyder came to Prescott and asked if we'd like to come to Baltimore and do Disney comics for Gemstone. We all wanted to do the comics again, especially since it seemed like Gemstone would have the resources Gladstone never had. However, we (meaning me) didn't want to go to Baltimore. But we went to Baltimore.

Age 42-43:

Production Manager/colorist for Gemstone Comics. Let's just say the whole experience was a keen disappointment and leave it at that. Moving to Baltimore on the eve of the worst winter they'd had in 35 years didn't help, but if I ever needed confirmation that corporate culture was, like marketing and advertising, SO not for me, this experience provided it. After 16 long months we packed up the cats and came home to devote all our time to the burgeoning freelance careers we'd kept going on nights and weekends during the Maryland sojourn.

Age 44-almost 50:

Freelancer. Coloring for Egmont, lettering for VIZ, coloring and lettering for Gemstone (until they stopped paying everybody). In the past year I've also done some coloring for BOOM!, and have been lettering a manga series for Dark Horse. And slowly, slowly getting my fine art chops back. If I can devote the same work ethic to my own stuff as I do for paying clients I might, might be able to keep groceries on the table with my own work.

In an infinite universe anything is possible, even self-confidence.

Tyger Tyger...

2010-08-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

...burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

That's about as much William Blake as I am familiar with, outside of some of his illustrations and general reputation. G has a fine annotated collection of Blake, so perhaps I'll dip into it one of these days and familiarize myself with the person behind the lines.

I vowed to spend less time on the computer this weekend, and didn't do too badly, although I fell short of avoiding it all together. Baby steps, like every other thing. But at least I spent some time making art, which I hadn't done for too long. This little beast is the only thing that came out at all well, but one good piece is better than none.

Medium used was gouache (opaque watercolor) on paper. I love gouache, but haven't worked with it in ages. Our local art store was having a sale, so last week I refreshed my supply. Like everything else I need to practice more -- I still overwork everything. But this isn't bad.

Nice kitty.

Happy Birthday, Walt Kelly

2010-08-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today is Walt Kelly's birthday, as I was reminded when I read Mark Evanier's blog this morning. He would have been 97 today if he hadn't shuffled off this mortal coil in 1973.

I enjoyed Pogo as a kid -- even if I was too young to get most of the social and political satirizing, I was enough of an art nut even then to know the Good Stuff when I saw it. Mr G (aka Stir Fry Lad) is the resident Pogo aficionado of the family, having been old enough to enjoy the humor as well as the arty goodness. He also was the recipient of a family member's book stash of Pogo reprints, some of them quite collectible by today's standards. And he's spent the past several years scouring used book sales and the internet for other Pogo collections, amassing a fine eclectic collection.

I took advantage of that collection in 1998 when I drew his Christmas present. I went through several of his books (the Fantagraphics collections, specifically) and gathered up panels featuring some of his favorite characters. Then I drew (not traced) an 'original' Pogo composition for him, using the panel art for character references. (The backgrounds are all me.) Finished off with inks and watercolor, it now hangs by our front door (and I was sure to note that it was drawn 'after' Walt Kelly on the art itself.)

This is a rather lousy representation of the piece, taken in a hurry through reflective glass. I'll unframe it one of these days and post a better picture.

It was a lot of fun to do, and I really should put together another homage featuring Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah and other stalwarts that didn't make it into this one. For the record, the denizens here are (L to R) Albert Alligator, Pup Dog, Rackety Coon Chile, Churchy LaFemme and Beauregard Bugleboy, aka Hound Dog.

Happy Birthday, Mr Kelly, and thanks for all you did.

Breathe deep

2010-08-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.
Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white.
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?

Ah, Days of Future Past. There was a time my friends and I could recite every line of that album---and did so at at least one basement beer party during college. Now it's a memory of simpler times---not necessarily better or happier, but certainly less technologically cluttered and media-saturated. Says the woman posting this to her blog from an iMac whose computing equivalent would have taken up three floors of an office building back when the Moody Blues recorded this song.

(Photo taken earlier this evening during a lovely late August sunset.)

Vexing

2010-08-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

Despite my best efforts, I cannot get Blogger's text settings to stay consistent. Sometimes a post will have three lines of space between title and body text, other times it adds space at the bottom. Or none. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. The same with text spacing around photos. Sometimes it's jammed right up against the image, sometimes no amount of finagling will get it within less than three line spaces.

It's quite aggravating since good design is important to me. I suspect there is some advanced tweaking I could delve into to get some sort of consistency, but it isn't apparent in the settings tab. Although I have figured out that posts typed up in an external WP and then pasted into Blogger's text window don't get the same text formatting as posts typed directly in the editing window.

Something else to wrestle with, I suppose. But l do wonder if Wordpress or Tumbler are easier to work with.

Two covers and the FX page from heck

2010-08-14T12:20:00.001-07:00

This weekend I have two jobs to finish; a Disney cover and a manga re-lettering job for Viz. The lettering job is a full book, completed and ready to proof -- except for 3 pages. Those pages are doozies. One page alone has 176 sound effects (FX) to be added. 176.

I saved those pages for last, hoping during the past several weeks to think of a solution that will match the look of the original, cover up the bulk of the original Japanese FX without covering up all of the original art and then retouching the art that I can't quite cover up so it matches the (extremely complicated) background, and most importantly, not take 8 hours to do. (Page rates are pretty lean these days.) I think I've figured it out, and two of the pages are mostly finished, but I still have one -- the most difficult -- to work on.

If I can achieve this task, without passing out or throwing myself in front of a bus, I'll post the results later. (UPDATE: Here's that crazy page and one of its friends.)

In the meantime, I've noticed that my older post about Don Rosa's 'Letter From Home' gets occasional hits. Here's the cover art for that story, as colored for Uncle Scrooge 342 back in February 2005.

This was a fun cover to color. I put the background line art into a warm grey to add to the misty moorland look and help pop the foreground. Don left some space between the characters and the trim area, which wasn't always the case with his covers. (Don never really grasped the concept of 'bleed' art.) His layout showcases the interior and exterior settings of the story nicely, with Scrooge and Donald front and center. I feel kind of bad for the one-armed knight, though. (Kidding, Rosa fans.)

For contrast, here's William Van Horn's cover for Walt Disney's Comics & Stories 657, published the same month.

Coloring Bill's covers (and stories) is a different experience from coloring Don's. Both have their distinct charms, but I admit to having a preference for Bill's art style, both as reader and colorist. Don's art is great to look at for his immense detail and clever sight gags, and he weaves a lot of epic storytelling into his stories. But I've always thought his stories were best suited to black-and-white reproduction, as large as possible. Don creates his own color with his line work; with added color and reduced to comic-book size, things can get lost.

Bill's stories and covers are more fluid and open, and marry with color beautifully. The worst thing I can say about Bill's stories from a colorist's point of view is his love of winter stories with lots of snowflakes. Lots and LOTS of snowflakes. And sometime beans. And I'm not a fan of Uncle Rumpus. But aside from snowflakes, coloring a Van Horn story is nearly always a joy.

I've procrastinated as long as I can on that manga page. Wish me luck and send coffee.