Misc. Art

AA piece I did for submission to the Kubert school. I had no idea what I was doing, but retrospectively there are a lot of really nice accidents in this piece. Apparently, I was using water soluble markers and somehow got a nice watercolor effect in certain areas. Some of the light on the drum riser are really nice. I'm not sure why I "halo"ed the figures, but it actually works really well despite being a bit intrusive in certain areas. I have long since lost the photo reference, but it would be really insightful to compare the two.

On the left is a character design that was emailed for a proposed project. To the right is my version. I am sure I have a larger scan somewhere. I really like the pose on this except for the left hand. I was in a kind of angular stage at this point. Marker on xerox paper. I love drawing on xerox paper I suppose because it is not as intimidating as an 11x17 page of white Bristol board ( probably because Bristol costs more and we always had to pinch our pennies as a youngster).

Possibly my first attempt at watercolor. It's a bit muddy and there are some strange color choices but the subject matter (Ace Frehley) is a favorite for sure!

One of 2 designs for a contest in the military. I won, but did not get to run with the commander as promised. I guess being 210 lbs. disqualified me (their max for my height was 207, never achieved it. Hell my hands alone probably weigh 2 lbs each!) Obvious influence from Gene Simmons costume. The large scan is very interesting to see after all these years. India ink on Bristol (how I was able to get these supplies in the military is beyond my memory) with mucho white-out. This is perhaps the first time I utilized my "spider" signature (having read that Walt Simonson's signature is actually a dinosaur)

A scan of the xerox of my second submission for the "Blacksmiths" contest. Most likely disqualified for the use of a copyrighted character.

Alright, here are some misc. portraits done over the years. I guess I better start dating these posts as I am not using blogger the correct way. I prefer these "static" pages which do not automatically recieve a date. 3/3/19

 A half finished portrait of my brother and his oldest child mother. I used to love to work in pencil in those days. I don;t have the patience for it now. I think it was more of an exercise for me to be able to "see" what I was drawing more clearly. A way to determine how to extrapolate into blck and white rendering without grayscale.

 This was done for one of my life drawing classes at San Jacinto Community College under Ken Luce.  One of the few I liked and therefore saved. Many of these have been lost to file 13.

 A sketch of my buddy Tim in Carbondale IL. We were all sitting around in the neighbors (Warren) apartment and we all just started drawing each others portrait. Not very creative in and of itself., but it was a very creative environment. It was much artistically nourishing than the Kubert school as there wasa lot of negativity there and wasting of time.

A sketch of the aforementioned neighbor. Him and his girlfriend use to smoke a lot of pot and I recall (probably the same day these portraits were created) I had been flicking my cigarette ashes into an ashtray and all of a sudden Warren was like " Hey, who ashed my pot, man" all stoner sounding. I laughed so hard and still laugh out loud when I think about it. I must have had a contact high. One of those instances where you just had to be there to get it.

 Alright, so here is my buddy Tim's version of me from the same session noted above.

 This was done around the same time in Carbondale. I think I was going to use it on envelopes. This is possibly from a still of Mitch Pileggi in the movie Shocker.

3/3/19- trying to set a goal of spending 1 hour loading and commenting. I still have some time left, so here are some self portraits over the years.

An undated  SP from SJCC. Probably around 1986. It is very skewed as I was using a mirror that sat flat on the desktop and somehow I just couldn't get the eyes placed correctly which then created a problem with the temporal and cheek contour.

I believe I did this on an envelope and I'm not sure what I was going to use it for but it was good brush practice.

I think this was done around 1991 in Carbondale, as I believe that is when I conceived of the "Spider" signature. Probably intended to be used with a bio that would be sent with samples to comic publishers.

A caricature (that no thought looked like me- it's very hard to caricaturize yourself, and I wasn't that good at caricatures anyway) done in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Those were actually some of the least stressful time in the military as there was no "busy work". You did your job and then ya had free time. We probably did like a 12 on 12 off type thing. Hard to recall now.

From a sketchbook. I always hated sketchbooks as the paper had way more texture than I liked, which I supposed is good for tonal renderings, but I always preferred more linear drawings and loved using xerox paper as it had the perfect tooth for pencil and markers and even India ink.

3/7/19

 I did this suggestive piece for ebay as they seemed to sell a bit better. Little did I realize my Aunt would end up bidding on it and winning. It was in her garage last time I visited. Better place than it deserves to be.

 This was a inking practice piece over Jeff Austin's pencils. The pistol and Skull are eerily reminiscent of another piece I inked over Tim Truman's pencils. A common theme in comics I suppose, death and guns.

 All Kinds of good and bad in this piece. There was no underlying drawing created here. I had some brush tip markers I wanted to test out and this was the result. I sure wish they were archival as I could see using them for professional pieces if there were.


3/10/19
This is always fun; adding to this post. I don't go looking for art to post, I just start the post and browse to the folder with all the misc stuff. Never know what I'm going to find in there!

 Another piece I inked for practice over Jeff Austins pencils.

Another piece pencilled by Jeff Austin. As I recall I printed these out on some pretty crummy paper ( back then you had to use fairly thin stock or the xerox machine would jam) so there was a lot of bleeding anywhere I used nib. Luckily, Jeff;s stuff kind of lends itself to brush anyway. There's a lot of good stuff here and a lot that needs work!

 Unfortunately, I don't have a scan of the Pencils for this (Mark McKenna). Mark posted this on an old yahoo group ( that hardly gets used now with advent of facebook). I inked it for fun (and practice). Mark liked it so he asked if he could use it for a charity piece. Of course I obliged.

3/11/19

Unfortunately I cannot find the pencil and inked scan of this piece. It was commissioned by Travis Huffman for our buddy Patrick Yarbrough as a wedding present. Pencils by Hector Avila, Inks by me, colors Juan Romera.

This really more of a quickie con style sketch than a commission. I usually try to include a head sketch with all comic purchases but this one I did a little extra on as it was for a friend.

An oldie but a goodie. Another commission for one of my comic shop customers. His right collar is a little out of place and his right hand is a bit small, but overall I like this piece very much. hindsight, eh...?