Dogs and Our Id ~

Here is a comic strip done for the late lamented "Special Report" ~ one of a series of oversized, glossy magazines created and published by Whittle Communications (the remarkable and generous cash cow for many an illustrator back in the 1990s).  Whittle was known for (among other things) their magazines that were created especially to be placed in doctors' waiting rooms.  Don't laugh - it was a great idea! 

Anyway, for this assignment, I was given excerpts of the book and asked to create a light-hearted comic strip, which I attempted to do.  It was published as a double-page spread. 

 I parted long ago with the original art, so these scans are from the actual printed pages.  I'm not crazy about the reproduction -- the main problem, in that pre-digital, era was that the reds and yellows I used often came out way too harsh - heavy and dark - and this is the case here.  But, it's okay, I guess, not a disaster or anything as some of my earlier printed illustrations were...

  Anyway, in my family we always had dogs when I was growing up and I always loved drawing them -  so it was a fun job.

Are You A Control Freak? ~ Illustrations

Samples of illustration work from the 1990s...

"On A Deadline" and other illustrations

From top to bottom:  

"On A Deadline" - promotional card

"Financial Discovery!" (for Kiplinger's magazine)

"Bad Doctor" (for Mother Jones)

"Fear"(I can't remember the magazine! 

 I think it was a city magazine of some kind.)

Ahoy, Newlyweds!

Depicting the perils that threaten those who brave the sea of matrimony ~

Illustration from the '00s. 

I had wanted to put in "In-Laws" depicted as pirates, but that idea got nixed.

Bambi Bembenek comic strip for Playboy

Here is a comic strip I was hired to draw (from a script) in the mid-1990s for Playboy magazine. It accompanied an article called "The Bambi Bembenek Story." Click the image to blow up real big.

On my doorstep this morning...

I just received my complimentary copy of Great Expectations from the nice folks at Penguin Books. I did the art for the front, back, spine and cover flaps. The title lettering that looks black in the photo of the front cover is actually a shiny metallic scarlet that almost looks carved into the cover -- very striking. Thanks to Paul Buckley the designer for that touch. It's really cool.

You can go here (Paul's Flickr page) to see the art laid out flat:

All sizes | great expectations full | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Coming in December...

Here is my cover for the latest edition of GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens, published by Penguin as part of their deluxe Graphic Classics series, which encourages the illustrator/cartoonist to use comic book devices like panels & word balloons over a straightforward cover illustration. It was a lot of fun (especially since it's a favorite book of mine), not to mention an honor to be included with such a great group of fellow cartoonists.

Go to designer Paul Buckley's flickr page (which is where I grabbed the above scan) to see all of the book covers in the series:

penguin graphic classics - a set on Flickr

The Big Score

PULSE was the name of the house magazine for the late, lamented Tower Records. It was free to customers and filled with news and articles about the latest releases in CDs and home video. For nearly ten years, the last page of every issue featured work by a different cartoonist who had been assigned by editor Marc Weidenbaum to submit a strip having something (anything) to do with music. It was a great showcase for cartoonists, especially since it was printed in full-color.

At the time I was listening to a lot of movie soundtracks, particularly the cool, atmospheric soundtracks of thrillers and spy movies, which I found to be inspiring background music to play while I wrote. So that's what I did my strip "about," and fortunately Marc didn't think it was TOO obscure, although, in fact, it probably made sense to only a couple of dozen Pulse readers (maybe less). That was definitely a concern - and I remember being pleasantly surprised when I eventually got on the internet and found that there were actually quite a few people who liked these soundtracks as much as I did.

After "The Big Score" appeared, I thought about doing two more - one featuring Spaghetti Western soundtracks and one featuring music from horror movies, but I never got around to submitting those (maybe for the best, who knows?). For more information about Pulse and the cartoonists who did work for it, be sure to visit Marc's page about it here:

Disquiet » The Index of Pulse! Magazine Comics

Ghost Stories

Recent drawings commissioned for a book of ghost stories.

Kids Stuff - Part 3

Here are some scans of the original art I created for Gallery Ghost (see previous post). I did small portraits of twenty-four artists whose work is in The National Gallery. I have sketches of a few others I did (like Albrecht Durer) who didn't make the final cut for one reason or another. As I mentioned in the previous post, I enjoyed drawing these portraits -- I hadn't really done anything like that before. I always tell clients I don't "do" likenesses -- I mean, I've done them, but it's just not my forte. "A man has to know his limitations" and all that. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed trying to capture the artists in a way that might appeal to kids (i.e. as friendly-looking & cheerful rather than as tormented, desperate or unhinged -- although I may have enjoyed drawing them that way even more!).

Kids Stuff - Part 2

I mentioned this project I illustrated - Gallery Ghost - in a previous post. It was a 9" x 12" hardcover book, but also a clever game, designed to get kids interested in looking at art. It was done in conjunction with the National Gallery and was sold there, I believe, as well as in other museum bookstores around the country. As I say, it was an illustration job and I pretty much just followed the instructions of the designer and publisher. I did enjoy drawing all the portraits of the artists, though. Here is a look at some of the interior pages.

Drawn & Quarterly

Here is a drawing I did for the cover of Drawn & Quarterly back in 1991, when it was known more for being a magazine - and not the quality publisher it has grown into. I don't know why that hard-edged box with the logo had to crop off the top of the drawing -- there was maybe another inch of art up there. I suppose I may have gotten the dimensions wrong. (Yet another of those annoying glitches that became a thing of the past once everyone started designing on computers). They did do a nice job of matching the color of the logo to the art.

Teen Stuff

Does Seventeen Magazine still publish fiction? Anyway, they did back in the 1990s when I did this full-page illustration (top) for a (what else?) coming-of-age story about a girl dealing with her divorced mom (who was romancing a shoe salesman) and her brother (who was benefitting financially from sucking up to their mom's new boyfriend). (See -- now it makes sense... right??).

I actually did a bunch of illustrations for Seventeen back in those days. Articles about embarrassing moms, articles about embarrassing dads, articles about getting busted by the cops (!). I also did work for Seventeen's then-big-rival Sassy. The one shown here is for a story about a Summer Camp romance.

The last picture in this group was for The Washington Post's Sunday Magazine. It was for an article following teens who were learning to drive. I thought it kind of fit the theme here...

Kids Stuff - Part 1

From top to bottom: Original Art for the cover of the comic book section of Nickelodeon Magazine.

Artwork for the packaging of a battery operated toy Hammer Head Shark. (There was also a regular shark with the same packaging.) This was done for the chain of Discovery Stores (aka The Nature Company), which were owned by The Discovery Channel or something.

The front and back of the finished packages, as they were sold in the stores. The designer was Thaddeus Homan (who went to bat for me when the company sneakily tried to use a badly copied version of my illustration for other products; they still did it, but he got me a tiny bit more money for it). Anyway, the toys were great - perfect for use by little kids in the bath tub.

A Gallery of Christmas Cards

Here is a selection of my Christmas/Seasons Greetings cards from over the years, mostly from the 1990s and early '00s. These were made to be sent to illustration/comics colleagues and clients. One of the earlier ones here, from 1992, was done on a letterpress (shown at the top). Others were simply done at Kinkos and some I did using Cafe Press. A couple were actually assignments -- Christmas cards for other people (like Fantagraphics or The Seattle Rocket) -- that I then revised and used as my own.

I did cards every year from 1992 until just a couple of years ago, but I don't have any left in my files from some years. I especially liked drawing Santa Claus for some reason. The one with the magician and his rabbit is from the year I had a strip featuring those characters running in Nickelodeon Magazine (I loved doing that strip, but it only lasted for about ten 2-page episodes...sigh). Nowadays, of course, anyone can create their own cards on their computers and print them out themselves on really nice paper -- that's still amazing to me. It's pretty cool, actually...

Anyway -- HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

A (slightly dated) look at PSYCHO SANTA MOVIES (from 2003)

Here is a strip I did for the Seattle weekly, THE STRANGER in December 2003. Yes, there has since been a surge in Christmas time horror movies and many (!) more have made since then. But at the time these films almost seemed to be the product of a by-gone era, believe it or not. And, no, these may not be the most scholarly (or accurate!) descriptions of the films, since I did this strip mostly from memory (not to mention on a deadline - so please consider that when casting a critical eye on the thing!). Even just six years ago, some of these films were hard (for me anyway) to track down to re-watch, so most descriptions are based on the one or two times I saw the films myself, which was years earlier. I say all of this because I know that nowadays anyone who wishes can find out everything they wish about any of these movies online and there may be some who could find much to quibble about (yes, I know the blonde wasn't actually wearing a green top - or anything actually - when she got stuck on the antlers, etc etc), but I ask you, dear readers, to please consider the spirit in which the strip was done -- with a sense of humor rather than as a serious piece of film criticism (!). Plus - on a deadline -- Did I mention that?

It's Halloween Week

Top to bottom:

(1) Halloween illustration for The New York Times from several years ago.

(2) Monster who originally appeared on an Evil Eye letter page.

(3) Art for the poster of my 1994 Halloween Show at a now-defunct gallery in San Francisco.