Chris Brown's Sketch House

Draw a Dinosaur Day

2012-01-30T20:56:00.000-04:00

Apparently, today is International Draw A Dionsaur Day. I had no idea this day existed til now, and it's too late for me to knock one out, so I'll just re-post this drawing of a Barosaurus fossil I did at the American Museum of Natural History a few years ago.

You can click on it and make it bigger, if you'd like.

Krampus!

2011-12-16T22:21:00.001-04:00

I can't believe I never heard of Krampus before now. I just heard of him last week, and since then I've heard him mentioned like five or six times.

Krampus is the anti-Santa Claus. Whereas I was told that naughty children only received a lump of coal from Ol' Saint Nick, in Alpine folklore they are visited by Krampus, who whips them with sticks and chains, throws them into a bag or basket, and drags him to his lair to be punished and/or eaten.

Here he dispenses his Yuletide vengeance upon three class naughty children from the comics. Re: Dennis the Menace, unlike the current sanitized comic strip, he was originally just as much of a little shit as Bart and Calvin.

Return to Spring Street Studio

2011-12-13T20:17:00.000-04:00

I've been chock-a-block busy with work for the past month or two, so it's been a helluva long time since I've been to a life drawing session. Even longer than it's been since I've updated this blog. I've got a break these days ("break" = "unemployment"), so I got myself back to the old Spring Street Studios this afternoon. I was afraid I was going to be wicked rusty, but these didn't turn out so bad. I was drawing way bigger than I usually do, because I ordered a sketchpad online and accidentally ordered a much larger pad than I usually use. These are on 18"X24" paper, and drawn with a Conté pastel pencil, which is also a change-up for me.

Garments

2011-10-17T23:48:00.000-03:00

One thing that's always been a particular challenge to me is drapery. I've been trying to figure out how clothes lie on the figure, and how to depict folds and draping. I never figured out how to draw clothing out of my head, probably because I learned to draw by copying super-heroes, whose costumes are basically body-paint.

So here's some drawings of dresses. They're copied from photographs. I don't know who the designers or photographers are. Sorry, designers and photographers. They're not fashion illustrations. I don't really get fashion illustration, with their exaggerated, elongated figures and simplified silhouettes. I mean, a lot of them are cool drawings to look at, but I never quite see the connection between those stylized drawings and the actual clothes. There are no folds in those drawings! And folds are what's fun to draw, though super-complicated to figure out.

Holy Houses Pt. 2

2011-09-23T19:40:00.000-03:00

More recent drawings of churches.

A little church out on Long Island. I pass it on my way to my adjunct teaching job. It reminds me of New England.

West Village

Downtown Wall Street area

Nestled amongst the court buildings near City Hall

Holy Houses Pt 1

2011-09-17T15:57:00.000-03:00

I've been drawing a lot of churches lately. Not because I have any interest in what goes on inside them, but because I want to practice my perspective drawing, and a lot of these buildings are really interesting, challenging subjects to draw. When I went looking for them to draw, I was surprised to realize just how many churches there are in New York City. When my parents moved to North Carolina, the first thing I noticed right off the bat was that, down there, there's a church building about every five yards. Maybe it's because this city is so incredibly dense, the multitude of churches (and former churches - converted to other uses) is not as apparent. But there really are a shitload of them around, all over.

A lot of them are really simple, humble buildings (which I, non-believer though I am, believe suits the original conception of 'church' more closely than a grand cathedral), and some have some amount of architectural design applied to what is basically a simple, utilitarian structure. But there are so many with really interesting, complex shapes, planes, and forms to draw. A lot are too much so. There's a church in my neighborhood that I've thought of drawing, but it is so tremendously complex in its gothic complexity that it's hard to take it all in, but less draw it. I may just start sketching it piece by piece.

The Soldiers' Monument at Trinity Church, Lower Manhattan, on Broadway. When I was finishing this drawing, a group of about a dozen little Japanese school girls walked by, saw it, and started saying, "Woooowww! Woooowwww!! WOOOOWWWWW!!!!" Then they all pulled out their phones and cameras and started taking photos of the drawing.

Our Lady of Vilnius. SoHo, near the Holland Tunnel.

Tifereth Israel Town and Village Synagogue. Strangely enough, while there are also plenty of synagogues around, not a lot of them aren't particularly interesting architecturally. I drew this one in the East Village sitting on the sidewalk outside a Duane Reade. A woman saw me drawing and told me that she likes to sketch as well; that it's a calming, meditative, and therapeutic activity for her. I knew what she was talking about absolutely.

Third Church of Christ. Park Ave. Not sure why it's called the 'third' church. Wouldn't you want to call your church the first church of Christ? It reminds me of this diner in a small New Hampshire town where I used to work. It had a sign out front that read "Second Best Breakfast In Town!"

St. Cornelius Chapel, Governor's Island. There are all these unused buildings out there from when it was an active Coast Guard station with a permanent resident community . . . an empty theater, an abandoned little stripmall, a leftover Burger King, etc.

The Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua. West Village. The oldest existing parish founded for Italian immigrants in the U.S. As I drew this, two Franciscan Friars were sitting nearby, chilling out with their dog. One of them was on the phone trying to score tickets to some concert. Several times, people - younger people - stopped by to talk and ask about religion. The friars didn't seem too interested in engaging with them. I was under the impression that the Roman Catholic church had a real problem with an aging and declining membership in America, and I woulda thought that it was one of the main jobs of these friars to try to recruit new members and bring back lapsed ones, but perhaps I was mistaken. Or maybe they were just on a union break.

Hurricane Irene Drawing #2

2011-08-28T13:38:00.000-03:00

The elements marshal their infinite might at my beckoning! Power seethes in the roiling clouds! Now, at my command -- STRIKE!

-Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, Issue 15, Jim Shooter

Turns out Hurricane Irene wasn't so much in the way of infinite might, at least around here. Anyway, here's the other drawing I did last night during the storm ... Storm of the X-Men. Get it?

Hurricane Irene Drawing

2011-08-28T02:04:00.000-03:00

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's molds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man.

-The Tragedy of King Lear, III ii, William Shakespeare

Watercolor pencil over ink

Pre-color black & white lineart.

Classical

2011-08-21T13:10:00.000-03:00

These are some drawings I recently did at the sculpture gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These are great subjects to draw. For one thing, statues are models that can hold any pose for as long as you need. Secondly, the pristine marble, spotlit or under the skylight sun, is great for studying light and shadow. There's nothing better for studying value. The core shadow is so dark, and the brightest highlights are luminous. And the subject matter itself contains so much to study. Form, value, gesture, anatomy, drapery . . . you get it all from drawing these things.

One of the few books I picked up at Borders' liquidation sale was Juliette Aristides' Classical Drawing Atelier. Aristides runs a Seattle-based art school with a curriculum based on traditional academic aesthetics and techniques. A large part of the curriculum consists of drawing from casts, plaster replicas of classical sculptures. The students at her atelier spend at least the first year (out of four) drawing from casts, and in the second year spend each afternoon painting from them.

Copying masterworks dates back at least to the Middle Ages, and was codified during the Renaissance. By the 19th Century, the practice formed the basis of art training. The United States didn't have a respected arts training establishment until schools were able to import collections of casts in the early 1800s. Between 1863 and 1873, Charles Brague and Jean-Leon Gerome published a series of lithographs of drawings of casts to be used in instruction which became known as the Brague Course (I'm not sure why poor Jean-Leon got stiffed in the credits). Students would copy copies of masterworks.

The method fell out of favor in the latter half of the 20th Century, but in 2004, art historian Gerald Ackerman compiled a reproduction of the Bargue course and recreated its instructions, which recommends spending up to 15 hours on each copy. He writes, "It's quite typical, in the schools where the drawings are still used, as in the Florence Academy of Art, to spend three to five weeks of three daily hour sessions making exact copies of the plates . . ."

Man. does that sound BORING. I get bored during the 40 minute poses at figure drawing! I did these drawings over several hours at the Met, and enjoyed it. But I can't imagine doing it for a whole day, day after day, week after week, and spending all that time on a single drawing. Sometimes I'll glance at another artist at a drawing session, and they've spent 40-60+ minutes drawing an arm. True, it is great looking arm. But I like to knock it out.

Still, the results do speak for themselves. I just finished reading Malcom Gladwell's Outliers. In it he writes that researchers have found that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise and excellence in any field. I bet I've spent at least 10,000 hours of my life drawing, but I'm no master. That's because what he's talking about is purposeful, focused practice, not just doodling around or tossing off quick sketches of Batman.

I could use a lot more of that sort of practice. My undergraduate art training was the polar opposite of the classical approach. There was some basic theory and technique taught in the introductory survey course, but the bulk of my time in that program was spent with instructors who felt that codified academic techniques only stifled creativity. I had a painting teacher who had us buy an assortment of paints and brushes and then basically just told us to go to it. Not a single lecture or demonstration on making a palette or manipulating the media, no color or composition theory. At the end of that semester, she told me, "Your work is so interesting, because you're not doing what we'd consider 'good' paintings." Hello! I wanted to make 'good' paintings, but had no grasp of any technique at all.

The same week I did these drawings, I also saw the blockbuster Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met, and he had this quote: "I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them." I think this is what those art instructor missed. Maybe they thought we'd already been trained in the fundamentals, but really I think they just rejected the idea of fundamentals outright. It's a prevalent train of thought that you can't be creative while following 'rules' in art. But that absolute freedom actually didn't free me, it constrained me, because I didn't have the toolset to achieve the creative results I was aiming for. Building that toolset has been what I've been trying to do for the past several years now.

I still don't see myself spending 15 hours on a single drawing of a plaster cast, though. My life is too short, and I'm not getting younger!

Punch Buggy!

2011-08-14T04:30:00.001-03:00

Went out to Governor's Island yesterday for a few hours. There was a bunch of stuff happening, including a Civil War re-enactment, a classical music concert, an electronica music concert, and the NYC Volkswagen Traffic Jam. I sat down and did this sketch of two VW bugs. I tried to get another one in of a rusty old VW bus with a bunch of spare tires strapped to the roof, but a parks ranger parked in front of me, blocking my view, and then the bus drove off.

Cars are on my official list of Things That Are Hard To Draw. The basic structure is a cube on a series of cylinders, but they quickly become really complicated forms, all subtle curves and oblique intersecting planes. The Volkswagen bugs are even more curvy and planey, which is what makes them such cool and beautiful machines and such a challenge to draw. I think I almost got them right in this drawing.

I've always liked VW bugs. I was never particularly into cars as a boy, but one of my earliest movie memories is of seeing a Herbie The Love Bug movie. I seem to remember seeing it in a theater, so it must have been either Herbie Rides Again (1974 ... I'd have been 3!) or maybe Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo (1977), or maybe a re-release of the first one, which came out before I was born. And this is the original Herbie I'm talking about, starring Mr. Dean Jones.

I'm not talking about the 2005 Herbie Fully Loaded, which starred Lindsay Lohan and was directed by a woman with whom I went to college, who probably didn't predict that career path for herself when we were working on that queer rock musical for Pride Week. But then, who can predict the future? In 2005, Lindsay Lohan was an actress who could be hired to star in a Disney family film about a sentient car.

Oh, Lindsay ... What happened?

But I digress. So, yeah, there was a bunch of Volkswagen vehicles. Here's some photos I took. You know, photography is a lot less labor-intensive than drawing!

This last one was the subject of my second aborted drawing:

And here's those Civil War re-enactors. They're portraying the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, who had a 83% casualty rate at the Battle of Gettysburg, and were then sent up to NYC to suppress the Draft Riots.

My blogger stats tell me that among the search keywords that lead to my blog are: asphalt paving, lion anatomy, gambit x-men, chris brown sketsh me [sic], how to draw french street scene, drunk horny russian girl, roadtec 900, dead leaves, sketches of houses, chris brown sketches by people, Field of Dreams DVD, tiny hipster girl, and allan dorison. I think this post covers enough random subjects to confound legions of googlers throughout the internets.

UPDATE
My mom emailed me the answer to my Herbie question:

It was Herbie Rides Again in 1974. Your grandmother & I took you to see it at a movie theater that was on Broadway & (I think) 92nd St or close to that street anyway. It was your very first movie & you were so into it! It was summer so it had to have been around your birthday because that's when she always visited. There weren't too many VW's in NY then but when we went to CA the next year they were all over the place & you went nuts over them. I always loved them too & wanted to get one but your Dad convinced me they weren't practical for three plus dog(s) and "stuff".

Thanks Mom!

Columbus Circle

2011-08-01T21:16:00.000-03:00

A relatively quick sketch I did of the pillar and statues at Columbus Circle today, after getting a wisdom tooth pulled. I was drawn to the contrast created by the direct sunlight from the right. I probably shoulda coulda pushed that a lot further.

Here is a drawing of the statue at the column base, done from a different (and closer) angle a few months ago.

Miscellanea

2011-07-31T00:47:00.000-03:00

I went to a figure drawing session for the first time in awhile today, and boy did I suck! I don't think I produced hardly anything worthwhile. I was geared up for drawing, too, but sometimes it just doesn't come. The thing is, it's not like I've gotten rusty. Even though I haven't been to a life drawing session for awhile, I've actually been drawing quite a bit. Lots of buildings and architecture, and random stuff. Here's a sampler:

Finally, here's a card I drew for my good pals Karl and Kelly's wedding this week. Congratulations, you crazy kids!

Captain America!!!!!

2011-07-25T01:11:00.000-03:00

So I saw Captain America: The First Avenger on Friday. I liked it a lot. I think Marvel has been very smart with this series of movies; they're all pretty good as stand-alone action movies, while simultaneously building up to the big Avengers movie. That's not an easy trick to pull off. Captain America: The First Avenger may be my favorite superhero movie of the summer, which is saying something, since both Thor and X-Men: First Class were really good. I seriously think it should be an Oscar contender for all the production design categories.

I haven't seen, and probably won't see (unless it's free on TV), Green Lantern. The only good things I've heard about that one are from people who saw it and said it wasn't as bad as they expected, given all the terrible, terrible reviews from critics and fans alike. It used to be that I would see a superhero/comic book-related movie regardless, even when I expected it to be bad, just because. It really says something about the power of film in our culture that so many people crave having their favorite books, plays, comics, games, cartoons, et al adapted into live-action films, as though that somehow conveys some sort of cultural status on the original material.

For example, two years ago, I attended an academic conference about the 19th century militant abolitionist, John Brown (no relation!). After two days of discussions on the historical legacy of John Brown, the abolitionist movement, the political and economic culture of antebellum America, and the nature of political violence, the final panel was an interview with Russell Banks, author of a fictionalized account of John Brown, Cloudsplitter. It's a bona-fide Great American Novel, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Banks is in general one of our greatest living American writers. During the hour-long interview, he briefly discussed his interactions with Hollywood in optioning the novel. It's in 'development,' which of course only means that someone paid a lot of money for the rights to make a movie that they may or may not actually intend to make someday. The audience was almost all serious academics and historians, amateur and professional, yet during the Q&A session, almost every question was about this hypothetical movie version of the novel. These academics at Yale University were even floating casting ideas just as comic nerds dream-cast superhero movies. They were just soooo excited to see a big-budget movie about their favorite historical figure.

By the way, the general consensus was that John Brown should be played by Tommy Lee Jones, who was excellent in Captain America: The First Avenger. So ... Captain America! Go see it.

Here's the scan of the pencils, and the digital inks.

Imagine a drawing of a boat . . .

2011-07-17T01:41:00.000-03:00

So today I was in downtown Manhattan. I did a sketch of some architecture in the Wall Street area that turned out so-so, then went over to Battery City Park to watch some dance performances by the water (Streb Extreme Action and the awesome Strange Fruit from Australia, and ... a juggler). It's been awhile since I've been down there. I've seen the new World Trade Center rising from the distance, but seeing it up-close drove home how much progress they're making on it. Finally.

Anyway, afterwards, I decided to do a little more sketching. I walked down this pier and started to draw a yacht that was moored there. After awhile, an old man came up to ask what I was drawing. I said, "That boat." He said, "Oh, our boat." Then he went and got his son (who was the boat's actual owner) and the rest of their family to come look at me draw their boat, and on the spot they offered to buy it off me. So I sold a commission on the spot. I should have charged more. That guy was a millionaire, at least. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera to record the drawing before I turned it over. Just picture a big white expensive yacht.

Rich people sure like to look at their stuff. This guy is going to have the drawing framed, and I guess he's going to hang the picture of his boat in his boat. Or maybe, in his office or at home so he can think about it while he's on land. Several years ago, I worked for an events company. We were setting up a birthday party for the owner of a mid-Manhattan skyscraper. It was in a tent with a clear roof, which made it like a greenhouse to work in, in the plaza in front of the building. The skyscraper had a famous five-star restaurant on the ground floor. Why did this guy want his party outdoors in a tent, instead of inside the five-star restaurant? So he could look up, through the clear roof, at his skyscraper, while he ate his birthday dinner. They served lobster and every table had silver dishes full of cigarettes for the guests. F. Scott Fitzgerald sure was right when he wrote: ""Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." Word.

Vadim at Spring Street Studio

2011-07-12T22:23:00.000-03:00

Finally got back to a life drawing session a few days ago, back at the old Spring Street Studio. The model's name was Vadim. I was relatively pleased with some of my drawings, particularly the sixth one of him with the staff, and the fifth one.

Beach day!

2011-07-06T01:54:00.000-03:00

Robert Moses Beach, Long Island

My X-Men First Class

2011-07-02T18:09:00.000-03:00

I still haven't seen X-Men: First Class. I was skeptical when I first heard about the project, but everyone seems to dig it a lot.

In case you're not familiar with the X-Men, the premise is that there are all these mutants around, people born with fantastic super-powers, and the general populace fears and hates and persecutes them. So Charles Xavier, a telepathic mutant, starts a school where he can protect and train them in the use of their abilities. Which, of course, entails them becoming superheroes. (The X-Men exist in the same world as the Fantastic Four and Thor and Iron Man, who the world doesn't fear and hate, for some reason.)

The original team was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1963. The X-Men actually weren't very popular until 1975, when a new generation was introduced, and since then there have been multiple iterations of the group. X-Men: First Class, set during the Cold War, tells the origins of the team - the first class of X-Men. Get it?

I was only dimly aware of the characters as a kid. I was primarily a DC kid, probably because DC had done a lot more media licensing than Marvel, so you were more likely to see their characters on TV and cartoons, and in those pre-internet, pre-comic shop days, I only knew about what I saw on television and at the 7-11 spinner rack. Somehow I became aware that the X-Men was a popular title and bought X-Men #148, and was hooked.

The team at the time consisted of Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Cyclops, and Kitty Pryde. The X-Men were part of the Marvel Universe, but seemed to live in their own little off-the-beaten-track corner of it. The group was multi-cultural and multi-national. Storm was African, Nightcrawler was German, Kitty was Jewish, etc. While I probably wasn't cognizant of it and couldn't quite articulate it at the time, for this non-white kid in a nearly all-white town, that diversity substantially upped their coolness factor.

Unlike the professional associations of the Avengers and the Justice League, or the family unit of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men did indeed resemble a class. You didn't see them actually in class, except for their super-power training in the 'Danger Room,' and except for Kitty Pryde, they were past school-age. But they had the same group dynamics you find in any school clique. There were shifting friendships, romantic triangles, rivalries, and frenemies, the types of bonds that form between random people brought together in the common rubric of a school grouping.

It wasn't until a bit later that I learned that I'd just missed what is still considered the high-point of X-history - and superhero comics in general - the Claremont/Byrne run, culminating in the epic Dark Phoenix saga. And a few years later, I lost interest and dropped the books just before they became even more popular, due to the overall comics boom, a popular animated adaptation, and whatever it is that makes a property tickle the zeitgeist's fancy. That era featured characters like Gambit, Jubilee, Bishop, and Cable. I know their names, but really have no idea what the characters were about.

Gambit and Rogue. Superheroes in the 90s always wore jackets

with lots of pockets. I know he's Cajun and throws

exploding playing cards, and that's about it.

It's been said that the Golden Age of comics is whenever you discovered them as a kid. I found the X-Men books of the early '90s unreadable, crushed under the weight of Chris Claremont's increasingly overwrought stylization, byzantine mythology, escalating spin-offs and crossovers, and over-rendered Image-influenced art. But to a certain generation, that is the quintessential X-Men. For kids right now, it's probably the movie franchise version. For me, the cast of X-Men #148 was always be my 'first class.'

urban drawbridge and stone cherubs

2011-06-29T20:07:00.000-03:00

I didn't have anything to do today, so I did this. It's a drawbridge over the lovely Gowanus Canal.

Yesterday, I drew this after a dentist appointment.

I've had a helluva schedule the past month, and haven't been to life drawing since I don't know when. Really gotta get back into the swing of things.

Coney Island Baby

2011-06-18T16:38:00.000-03:00

"In Coney Island, the things that are NOT there are more THERE than the things that ARE there."
-Carol Lipnik, The Singing Mermaid

Today is the annual Mermaid Parade, one of the funnest NYC events of the year, but I'm missing it again. My last comic was about the first time I went to one. It's a story that involves deadbeat friends, a drunk Russian nympho, and a jealous Mexican.

Coney Island is one of my favorite places in the world. I spent much of my childhood by the beach, so the oceanside atmosphere really feels like home to me. Beach communities always seem so casual and relaxed, and Coney Island is one of the most casual and relaxed places I've ever been. I'm hard-pressed to think of a less self-conscious place. And talk about a mix of people! Hipsters, yuppies, homies, mamis and papis, beach bums, and old Jewish Russian immigrants all elbow-to-elbow along the boardwalk.

Much of its charm comes from its dilapidated grandeur, scattered remnants and ruins that hint at its past glory: faded terra cotta bas-reliefs of Neptune and sea serpents, an abandoned shipwreck of a roller coaster (the Thunderbolt, torn down by Rudy Giuliani in 2000, leaving an empty lot), the worn and weathered Space Age decor of Astroland, the ramshackle clam shacks and bars that line the boardwalk, open-faced sheds that are barely standing with hand-painted signs above their entrances, including Ruby's Bar and Grill, my favorite bar in the world.

(Site of the old Thunderbolt roller coaster)

For years, there have been plans to redevelop it, and now it's finally underway. Many people bemoan these plans, as they usually do. I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'll miss the casual, no-frills, not-for-tourists, 'people's playground' vibe when places like Ruby's, Cha-Cha's, and Paul's Daughter inevitably succumb. And, in general, I distrust New York real estate developers. Most of them have shown stunningly poor judgment in the urban planning of their massive projects. (Exhibit A: Bruce Ratner)

At the same time, I think there is way too much romanticization of urban decay. In my neighborhood, there are now a lot of nice restaurants, coffee shops, and boutiques, and of course it's increasingly expensive. Long-time residents bitch about the changes, but when I arrived about 12 years ago, there were mostly empty storefronts and a lot of crime. I hate the sanitized, Disney-fied Times Square, but I don't miss the hookers and crackheads that used to clog the sidewalks. I always hear people talk about the lost 'character' of the city, but I don't remember them showing much love for the squeegee men and the homeless camped out in every ATM vestibule back in the day, or for the swarms of drug dealers circling Washington Square Park, whispering "smoke smoke smoke smoke" to every passerby.

Singer Carol Lipnik said, "In Coney Island, the things that are NOT there are more THERE than the things that ARE there." One of the things that fascinated me on my first visit to Coney Island was the walls of Ruby's Bar, every inch or which are covered with photos of Coney Island from the first half of the 20th century. There were three enormous amusement parks, and the beach was literally filled with people. It was the premiere amusement center of the world. I'll walk past the ramshackle food stands of the Boardwalk, the aging kiddie rides of Astroland, the seedy game booths on the midway, and picture the towering spires of Luna Park, the undulating slopes of the Steeplechase ride, the grand archway of Dreamland. Very little of that world remains, the inert Parachute Drop being the most prominent artifact.

Something great will be lost when Coney Island is completely redeveloped, but something great was lost over the decades it was allowed to decay. I'm sort of optimistic about the changes being made. The current developer of Coney Island - an Italian company called Zamperla - is better than the last one, Joe Sitt's Thor Equities. Zamperla is actually in the amusement park business. Joe Sitt just wanted to build condos and casinos on the old amusement park. The new park seems fun, a bit reminiscent of the great parks of yesteryear - Luna Park, Steeplechase, Dreamland. It's not too different than the old Astroland, but it's bright and clean and radiates new energy. I love Coney Island as I've known it, but 'new energy' is not the phrase that comes to mind when I think of it. While I love its tawdry seediness, whole swaths of the Boardwalk have been rather sad and moribund for a long time. I hope Ruby's Bar and Grill manages to stay, though this is likely their last summer. I'll miss it terribly. But I won't miss the big open lots, filled with trash and weeds, or the gaping holes in the Boardwalk, and as hopeful as I am that the feel of Coney can be maintained, I'm excited for its future.

My Goddamn Upstairs Neighbor: The Movie!

2011-06-01T00:48:00.001-03:00

My pal Ali King at animoto.com created this cool animated version of one of my comics, My Goddamn Neighbor. I generally don't like motion comics, but I think this comic lent itself well to this treatment. You can check it out here. Thanks Ali!

American Museum of Natural History

2011-05-16T18:30:00.000-03:00

Sketches done a while ago from the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, plus a dinosaur fossil. Drawing animals is a great exercise in realizing the discrepancy from what you think you know and reality. That is to say, I like to think that I could just sit down and knock out a sketch of a lion out of my head, but such a drawing certainly would not match up to the reality of a lion's anatomy, the pattern of its mane, the position of its features, and so on.

The Mighty Thor

2011-05-06T17:58:00.001-03:00

About to see the new Thor movie. I'm not the hugest Thor fan, though I did love Walt Simonson's run back in the day, and I liked the way he was treated in the initial Ultimates run. I have moderately high hopes for the film.

Here's Thor versus the Wrecking Crew. You gotta love these guys. The leader - The Wrecker - has a magic crowbar! And his lackeys all have construction-related shticks. They don't make 'em like this any more. Drawn and colored in Photoshop.

The Lives of Housetops

2011-04-30T01:02:00.001-03:00

"Houses, housetops, like human beings have wonderful character. The lives of housetops. The wear of the seasons. . . The backs of tenement houses are living documents."
-Robert Henri

Society of Illustrators Sketch Night

2011-04-27T20:24:00.000-03:00

Last night I went to the sketch night at The Society of Illustrators. I've known about the Society and its sketch nights for awhile, but after fifteen years in this city, I only first made it up there a few weeks ago to see the R. Crumb exhibit. The museum is great for people who are into classical illustrative art. Like me.

I had a good time. There's a bunch of places to do figure drawing in New York. My most frequent haunt is Spring Street Studio. They have great models and it's a good atmosphere, but it is serious. Dead silence and strictly timed. There are a few other places that are a lot looser, hipper, with loud music and sometimes booze. Some of them are as much a social event as a drawing session. I like music and booze, but sometimes it's hard to concentrate on the work in such an environment.

This sketch night was a good balance. It reminded me of Spring Street in that there was a mix of younger and older people, and you could tell the older people were really seasoned art vets. People were serious about working; they were there to draw. But then there was a live jazz duo, and there's a full bar, so there's also a relaxed, social atmosphere. It was fun.

Quick, two minute sketches:

Longer poses:

One more MoCCA Pic

2011-04-26T13:16:00.001-03:00

I'd forgotten about this sketch. A young woman bought some of our books, and requested a sketch for her teenage brother. She said he liked legos and naked girls, so could I draw a naked lego girl. Thus:

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

2011-04-22T15:32:00.001-03:00

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
-Willa Cather, O Pioneers! (1913)

In honor of Earth Day, some drawings of trees.

Trees are fascinating things to draw. As children, we draw a brown rectangle topped by a green circle or triangle and call it done. But to observe an actual tree is to find a wondrously complicated arrangement of twisting forms and textures. Each one is as unique and individual and possessing of a specific personality as any human. And trees make great models. They can hold a pose for hours!

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
- Bill Vaughan

Most of my drawings are of trees sans leaves, because I've yet to crack the code on how to draw a mass of leaves. It's the same way with hair. I'm still searching for the way to depict the sum mass of thousands of individual components.

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats. -Woody Allen

Flowers are great to draw, too, but I find them difficult. Their leaves and petals are just as complex as the limbs of a tree, if not more so, but require a delicacy and grace I usually fail to capture. I guess delicacy and grace don't come naturally to me. I was relatively pleased with this one, but it's still pretty stiff and solid. It has kind of a Rockwell Kent vibe to it.

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if the screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handy

Project CBRunway

2011-04-21T15:58:00.000-03:00

I see from my statcounter that I've been getting lots of visitors from the Secret Identity podcast. And they're probably all saying, "Uh, so where's the comics?"

Well, first of all, you can see a couple of my 24 Hour Comics, including the one that Brian mentioned having gotten last year, Crazy Lady, here. The two he reviewed aren't up there, at least not yet. I haven't updated that site in like forevers.

It seems like the Secret Identity podcasts are mostly about superhero and genre stuff, and I love that stuff, too. So here's some things I did for the online costume contest CBRunway at comicbookresources.com. It's patterned after 'Project Runway,' but with comic book characters. I did it two times; the current contest is going on now. I didn't win, but made it to the finals once.

The challenge here was to take an Avenger, a specific make and model of automobile, and combine them into a Transformer. This is Thor + 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

Challenge: Steampunk version of a JLAer

Challenge: Elseworlds-style adaptation of a JLAer into a fairy tale. This is Aquaman a la Beauty & The Beast.

The Challenge: Create a super-villain based on a kitchen utensil. I was assigned a whisk. For some reason, this was perhaps the most popular character I ever had in that contest.

The Black Rose. Just some random character I made up for the audition. The CBR judges liked it, except for the guns. "No guns!!!" they all said. Because I guess no comic book characters carry guns these days.

And this following bunch of a team I came up with for the final challenge. It was a Japanese-based team; the challenge specified one had to be a super-patriot-type character, and I wanted to stay away from the stereotypical Captain America-type trap, so I made the lead character a Captain Japan-type of guy and the rest followed. I'd been reading a bit of manga at the time, including Urasawa and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. In my head, I had a whole backstory and storyarc laid out for the team. I never was happy with that final character design. Japanese goth-lolita costuming is surprisingly hard to get the gist of!

MoCCA 2011

2011-04-18T19:40:00.001-03:00

So, last weekend was the MoCCA Art Festival. It's an annual comics art festival here in NYC that's a showcase for independent and alternative comics artists and publishers and a fundraiser for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. It's about 80+% non-genre material, so the crowd is a lot more hipster than cosplay, though that didn't stop a few people from showing up in their homemade superhero costumes. It was unfortunate to see that one guy walking about in his Superman outfit. It was actually a pretty good one, but he looked like he'd come to a formal black tie event thinking it was an 80's theme night costume party.

I used to volunteer for the festival as an AV guy when Ken Wong (the guy on the right) was the president of MoCCA and Allan Dorrison (the bald guy in my lap) ran the panel room. Ken does these cool origami comics and Allan has an online comic strip, and last year I was invited to share a table with them at the festival.

I'd done the 24 hour comic book challenge a few times, so I had three comics complete and ready to print. I knocked out another - My Goddamn Upstairs Neighbor - and printed them D.I.Y.-style, in other words, on a photocopier and stapling them myself. I had no expectations of selling anything, but wound up doing pretty well. I got a couple of short reviews and mentions online, and in general people seemed to like the books, especially the reality-based Neighbor and Crazy Lady. The comics on the left side are mine.

In addition to the three of us, Lee French (the sleepy guy) did sketches, and Sharon Ma (not pictured anywhere here, but from whom I stole a couple of these photos) had a couple of mini-comics out.

The view from the table. The Mr. T piggy bank has kind of become our signature, for want of any other common identifier. I was psyched to be back at the festival. I had a new book - My First Mermaid Parade - which I was proud of and thought would do well. And there's a real satisfaction to just doing the work and having a completed comic in hand, regardless.

That said, sales were not great this year. I sold about a third of what I did last year. At the same time, I'd printed about twice as much as I had the previous year, so it felt like I'd sold nothing! I don't know what sales were like overall for the festival. I've read some reports that people had a great weekend, and some that said it was lukewarm. But then, one guy who reported great sales sold about the same number of mini-comics that I did. I'm still too new to this to be able to gauge what constitutes good, bad, or great. We did make our table costs back out of our collective profits, with some beer money left over. Since I produce my comics d.i.y. with very minimal outlay of cash, it's not like I have a huge financial investment at stake. I don't know how people who get their stuff professionally printed and travel from out of town do it. The Field of Dreams theory, I guess.

Just because I didn't sell a lot, that doesn't mean there was no interest in the stuff. Lots of people would come over to the table, pick up a comic, read the whole thing, tell us they liked it, and walk away. When I was a kid, the guy who ran the local comic shop would yell at us, "This isn't a library!" I guess that wouldn't be cool in this setting, though. One older couple stood there for about half an hour and each read every single one of the dozen or so comics we had to offer. They did buy a couple at the end. I wish I could do that with movies, just walk into a movie theater, watch a movie, and then decide if I liked it enough to pay for it.

I know, bitchy bitchy. The truth is, even if someone didn't fork over the two dollars for a copy, I still get a kick when someone just reads my work and likes it. Today I got a surprise: this guy Brian LeTendre gave me a rave review of two of the books on his podcast! (Skip ahead to the 51 minute mark to hear him talk about me.) I remember meeting him last year and at this festival. We had a discussion about Turbo Teen. Besides being extremely flattered by his complimentary review, I think it's really cool that he devoted a large chunk of his podcast - which generally covers mainstream, commercial comics - to indy stuff. I kind of don't get the people who come to a festival like MoCCA looking for the books you can now find in any bookstore or online. Myself, I look for all the stuff you're never going to see anywhere else.

We also offered a free sketch to anyone who bought a couple of our books. People really like to get sketches; it seems like they don't believe you're really going to draw them something, and when you produce it their eyes light up with glee like kids on Christmas morning or the last day of Hanukkah. Allan had an idea to do Mad Lib sketches, where people would give us a noun, a verb, and an adjective and we would base a sketch around them. What I learned from this exercise was, our educational system really sucks. It was pretty shocking the number of people who didn't know what sort of word a noun is. "Give me an adjective!" "Uh ... dog?" Other people would make requests, and they were fun because people come up with the most unexpected things to draw. This fetching young woman wanted a punk-rock angel. Another dude (and boy I wish I'd gotten a picture of this one) wanted a dragon and a unicorn, with the unicorn smoking a crack pipe and the dragon lighting it for him. That guy flipped when I showed him his dragon and unicorn with crack pipe drawing. But later I had an epiphany. I'd drawn the dragon lighting the crack pipe with a lighter. He's a dragon. I should have drawn him lighting it with fire breath!

The bunch of us have two other shows lined up; one in the Bronx and one in Connecticut. I'm curious to see how they go; I'm not sure they'll attract the best audience for my work. But at least I have a lot of inventory ready to go, so no late night folding and stapling for awhile!

Sabrina

2011-04-16T22:57:00.000-03:00

These were done after photographs, of some model. I'm not usually one for portraits, but she had very strong, striking features, especially her huge eyes and the curls of her hair.

The Roadtec RX900

2011-04-14T21:26:00.001-03:00

I have no idea what this thing is. They were doing roadwork down by Fort Greene Park, so I assume it's some sort of asphalt/paving machine, but it was parked so I didn't see it in action. Maybe the asphalt is heated in the back, and then travels up the front part and gets dropped onto the street? I don't know, but it looked badass and interesting and a challenge to draw.

By the way, if you click on the image, you can make it BIGGER.

Process/Preview

2011-04-08T17:22:00.000-03:00

Here's a few pages from my new comic book which I'll be selling at this weekend's MoCCA Art Festival, and my process in making it. It's called My First Mermaid Parade, and it's the story of the first time I went to Coney Island, saw the famous Mermaid Parade and visited Cha Cha's Paradise Lounge and Ruby's Bar and Grill, and involves a drunk, horny Russian girl, a Lower East hipster girl, her dog, and a jealous Puerto Rican.

It's a story I've told so many times, I didn't have to do much in the way of writing, so my script looked like this:

Mainly it's just a rough breakdown of panel action and dialogue, with occasional tiny thumbnail layouts on the side. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense to you, but it makes sense to me and that's all that matters.

Lettering is the hardest part for me. It's tedious and makes my hand hurt, and also I tend to overwrite and can't fit it all in. So I've taken to lettering first, so I can edit on the fly and get it out of the way. I also lightly sketch in figures and layouts; but they're so light they don't even show up in this scan.

Then I get to penciling. This is mostly a 2H pencil. I mostly concentrate on figures and important scenic elements at this point; most of the backgrounds I'll deal with later.

Finally, the inks. For these mini-comics, I generally use micron pens. The original art is larger than it'll be printed, but I'm doing it on 8.5X11 paper so it'll fit my scanner, so it's still pretty small. Then I scan it, clean it up, reduce and position all the pages in printing order on sheets, and then print, fold, and staple. D.I.Y. indeed.

So there it is, the behind-the-scenes magic of comic book-making!

MoCCA Festival

2011-04-07T13:52:00.001-03:00

Busy busy busy getting my new comic ready for this weekend's MoCCA Festival. I'll be sharing a table with my pals Ken Wong and Allan Dorison. Behind the schedule I wanted to keep, but at least I won't be pulling an all-nighter tomorrow night. I'm pretty proud of this one. We'll see how it does at the show. It's called "My First Mermaid Parade." Here's the cover illustration.

Prospect Park

2011-04-06T11:36:00.000-03:00

I've heard it said that Central Park was a warm-up for Frederick Olmstead and Calvert Vaux's design of Prospect Park. They also designed Fort Greene Park, where I go to draw when the weather's nice enough. The thing I love about these parks is the use of classical sculpture and ornament everywhere. It makes the spaces seem really special, separate from the usual urban environment. I give Bloomberg credit for expanding the amount of green public areas in the city, but most of them have the aesthetic charm of a shopping mall.

Hello, Internet!

2011-04-04T01:19:00.001-03:00

I've been drawing all my life, majored in visual arts in college, and by now have stacks and stacks of sketchbooks from life drawing classes, sketching excursions, and plain old doodling around, and they just sit there. I've been thinking about putting some of my artwork online for awhile now, and recently a variety of things have given me the kick in the ass to go ahead and do it. So here it is.

One of those reasons was that in a week, I'll be selling some of my mini-comics at the MOCCA Art Festival. I did this for the first time last year with no expectations. I received a few online reviews, which was way more than I'd expected, and they were positive, but one gave me a lot of shit for not having a website of my work.

Also, I follow this guy Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog on the Atlantic, and everyday he has an Open Thread where people can discuss anything. Last week, this guy Andy posted about committing to blog every day in April, and when I mentioned I'd been thinking of starting a sketchblog, he and some others encouraged me to do it. So, thanks, Andy. Here's his blog. I doubt I'll be posting every day, though.

And now, to kick off my sketch blog, here's some sketches. These were done at Spring Street Studios and the Drink-n-Draw at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn.