If anyone knows Ernie Colon, Sid Couchey, Sid Jacobson or any of the Harvey crew,

could you please ask them if "Irona" is pronounced I-RONE-UH or I-URN-UH? My kids and I really would like to know. Thanks.

Faun Sketch

Pencil, ink and watercolor on 140 lb. Aqvarelle Arches, hot pressed paper, 9" x 12"

Charity projects

How many of you ever get asked to do a drawing(s) by family members or friends?

I've been asked several times and, of course, it's hard to say no, no matter how busy I am.
It's even harder to say know when it's a drawing for a t-shirt for a charity run, drawings for a Vacation Bible School, a drawing for a charity auction ... or anything that's for a charitable cause. And of course, I never charge a family member for one of these favors. Some day, I'll need a big ol' heavy couch or drawing table moved up thirty flights of stairs and then I'll call in all these favors I've done over the years.

I most always say yes to such projects and then immediately feel like pounding myself in the head with a hammer. The project ends up taking twice as long as I thought or a paying job immediately comes in or in the case of last week, I said yes to doing around 30 drawings for my sister-in-law's church's Vacation Bible School and the very next day I got sick with a miserable cold.

The drawings were black & white simple drawings (see the warrior above) and are meant to be colored by the kids at VBS. I suffered through the cold and got the drawings finished up and quite honestly, I enjoyed doing drawings that were much simpler than my usual cross-hatched brush work.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results and am excited to know someone besides me will be coloring them.

Top Three Benefits of Doing Art Favors for Friends and Family:

1. You're almost never going to get into Work-for-Hire or Spec Work pissing matches.
2. It feels good to "give back" and help someone.
3. You get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card ... sometimes literally.

What are your experiences with doing artwork for friends & family?
Let us know in the Comments area.

The Hulk, Spidey and Iron Man

I will tell you now, this little clip is better than the Incredible Hulk motion picture.

THIS is the Hulk. The movie isn't.

Faded Funky

This is what happens when you draw on cheap acid paper with a felt tip pen!

This is a 1977 Funky Winkerbean original I saw on ebay.

Coloring Daily Comic Strips

Lots of differing opinions among cartoonists about whether daily comic strips should be colored.

The cartoonist gets paid no more for the extra work. If they want any control over how their work looks, they take on the extra work anyway.

Reed-Brennan, the main proponent of colored dailies, used to advertise that color sells more papers... until Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) called them on it and they had no evidence for the claim. R-B does charge newspapers extra for colorized dailies, though... a hundred dollars a page or so.

But here's a pretty good argument against the practice:

I only allowed one paper to color Spooner, in Ft. Worth, Texas. They only ran strips in color on Wednesdays, so I compromised. I recently saw this on someone's T-bird website. State of the art printing technology!

Cheesecake

Once in a while I run across an illustrator who makes great cheesecake. I can never quite get it right myself.

Grubbs #2 Cover

I'm not quite sure about this one. Something is not working, but I'm not sure what it is.

How to: Cheesy Promo Shot

As I recently had to provide a photo of myself for a newspaper article, I thought I would share some tips for creating perhaps the most dreaded piece of self-promotional material an illustrator is ever asked to provide.

First off, don't bother to get a haircut. It will do nothing about the real problem: your face. Just wash your face and your hair so they aren't too greasy and reflective.

Find a fairly large drawing to pretend you're painting or inking. Tape it to your drawing board to create a sense of authenticity.

If you have a window in your working space, include it in the background. This will provide natural backlighting so you don't have to take a flash photograph.

Use the flash anyway because the lighting from the window will make your face too dark. Be sure to get some amateur-looking flash shadows in your image.

Do not get anyone to help you take the photo. One, they will get bored before taking the necessary 100 images required to get one decent one. Two, they know what you really look like and will be happy with any result.

Take the photos yourself, but be sure to not use a tripod. This will result in too clear of a photograph. Blurriness is preferred. Using a tripod also will require constantly breaking your pose and create unnecessary exercise, going back and forth to set the timer & press the shutter release. Using a tripod also will result in natural foreshortening, to be avoided at all costs. Instead, hold the camera (facing you) at arms length with your non-drawing hand.

Experiment with several different angles. The best angle will show your face, drawing hand and your drawing in an unrealistic, and preferably physically impossible, manner.

Take several hundred photos using your digital camera. Choose the one that has the best lighting, composition, color and looks the least like you. You want a photo that will not enable the average reader to recognize you if they saw you walking down the street.

Now the fun part: Photoshop. Take the image into everyone's favorite photo retouching program and make the following adjustments: Remove any facial blemishes that your dermatologist or plastic surgeon has been unable to correct, using the "ugly-healing brush." Whiten teeth and whites of the eyes with the "dodge" tool. Remove goiters and multiple chins with the "clone" brush. Add hair with the "grass" brush.

Add a sparkle to your smile, a gleam to your eye, and there you have it. You've created a person just as ugly as you, but one whom no one can prove is really you.

I Love the Dirty Things

Discovery: I Love The World - Click here for funny video clips

Bigfoot Bounty

Bigfoot and lake monsters, beware: There's a price on your heads.

Binocular manufacturer Bushnell, along with Field & Stream magazine, have teamed up to offer $1 million to anyone who can "provide an unaltered photograph/video, verified and substantiated by a panel of scientific experts [including a zoologist and biologist], the evidence required to prove a Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Yeti exists." The contest started a few days ago and ends Dec. 15, but before heading out to claim your million, note that the rules' fine print states that they are not liable for any injury incurred during a Bigfoot attack. A good quality Bigfoot image would make history; most photos are of such consistently poor quality that within the Bigfoot research community there's even a name for a typical blurry "Bigfoot" image: blobsquatch.

Frill article

Designing BLiTZ

Developing a character is difficult - He needs to be distinguishable by silhouette alone. Have the features broken down, simplified, exaggerated. He needs to be graphic, well-designed. Look familiar but unique and distinguishable. I used to think this happens by accident, but now I believe it's done with creatively contrived determination. I still have a ways to go.

Roy Crane

Roy Crane was perhaps the best action strip Cartoonist. Small wonder, since the genre originated with him when he introduced Captain Easy into his Wash Tubbs comic strip. He continued perfecting the medium through Buz Sawyer.

Nowadays, there's barely enough room to set up a gag properly, let alone tell a story. If the comics aren't what they used to be -- and they aren't -- it's not the cartoonist's fault. Give me a little room and no daily gag requirements, and I just might be able to do something amazing.

Thomas Nast

Thomas Nast was not only, still today, one of the best editorial cartoonists and children's illustrators, but produced amazing woodcuts. Some of his work can be seen here.

Update - Orphan Works Act

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

JUNE 2, 2008 An Orphan Works Update

Backers of the House version of the Orphan Works bill are now asking artists and photographers to oppose the Senate bill unless it’s amended to contain at least the “minimum provisions” that appear in the House version.

Although they don’t say so, opposing the Senate bill in this manner is a vote FOR the House bill. We’ve been asked to explain why:

The Senate bill is similar to the bill we opposed in 2006. The House bill (H.R. 5889) is the result of a year and a half of closed door negotiations between Congress and representatives and lobbyists for special interest groups. These groups have agreed to either endorse the House bill or remain neutral to ensure its passage.

The House bill endorses the concept of coerced “voluntary” registration with commercial databases and seeks to make these databases infringer-friendly.

– It would require infringers to file a simple “notice of use” before they infringe.

– It calls for an archive of the notices to be maintained by the Copyright Office or an approved third party.

Why do backers of the House bill want these databases to be infringer-friendly?
Because to thrive, commercial databases (registries) will have to do a robust business in rights-clearing and orphan certification. That means encouraging infringers to infringe.

How will these registries work? No details have been given, but experience with image banks suggests the following:

For unregistered work: infringers will use the registries to identify pictures that aren’t registered. Infringers will probably pay the registry a search fee, then use or market the “orphans” like royalty-free art.

For registered work: the registries will act as a kind of stock house: Users will go to them for one-stop shopping to clear rights to your pictures. The registry will probably charge you a commission when they do.

In other words, urging Congress to pass the House bill makes very little sense to us unless your business or organization expects to become a commercial registry. We believe the only way to oppose these bills is to oppose them both.

If you agree, now’s the time to write Congress or write again. You can urge Congress to oppose these bills by linking here to a special letter. Tell Your Senators and Representatives to Oppose the Orphan Works Act at:

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11442621

Don't Let Congress Orphan Your Work!

BLiTZ!

Yet another project "In Development." Pocket brush pen & Photoshoppe.

Grasshoppers.

If I never draw a grasshopper again it will be too soon. 

Spooner Comics Back Online

Spooner comic strips are again running on the Web. I'm still tweaking the site, but you can now read "classic" Spooner comics daily here.

"Mountain Slide" Animation with Flip Boom

This is an animation that my nine-year-old son made tonight with a new program that ToonBoom Studios is now offering for kids, called Flip Boom. Check it out!

Rare Uncontacted Tribe Photographed

Members of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been photographed, with striking images released on Thursday.

Full Story

Retro Spidey

Just wanted to draw something for the blog & this is what came out.

Comic Book

Here's one of the final covers for an upcoming project. Pen & ink, colored in Photoshop.

Curse of the SKULL Bottlecap

Apparently, there is an underground secret society of pirates who have bestowed a limited amount of bottlecaps to honorees of their band of buckos.

I happened to receive this skull bottlecap in the mail this afternoon along with strict instructions to follow.

I'm not sure what I have done to deserve such an honor.....I'm just not sure how I got brought into this secretive society.

Anyhow, I'm hoping showing the bottlecap on our blog isn't somehow violating one of their rules.

Smallest bee in the world.

In a drawing for my upcoming book, I unexpectedly drew the worlds smallest bee.  It measures really tiny by really really tiny. I am more proud of this bee than i should, um, ...Be.

Failure

Splash!

I took the digital plunge yesterday and bought a Wacom Cintiq.
I got the Cintiq 20WSX model.
I couldn't wait to get it home, unbox it, hook it up and test it out.
I had a little issue hooking it up because I lost the adapter that came with my iMac (doh!) and then I found out my iMac didn't have the capability to support a dual monitor setup. I downloaded a patch and everything is in tip-top shape.

So I drew the drawing above on my Cintiq tonight.

Special thanks to Tom Richmond and Darrin Bell. for their advice on buying a Cintiq.

If there's enough interest, I may post a video or two of me drawing on the Cintiq and a review once I break it in.

For the record, I'm not saying I'm completely moving over to working digitally, I still love sitting at my drawing table with my paints, a fresh sheet of watercolor paper and a big ol' jar of water. I see the Cintiq as being another tool for me to draw with...I have several coffee mugs filled with brushes, pencils, pens, etc. and now I have a Cintiq sitting among them.

BEST SELLING PICTURE BOOKS

CHILDREN'S BEST SELLERS: PICTURE BOOKS: Sunday, April 6th 2008

(Please note that we have a total of four exclamat!on po!nts included in the titles of three of these best sellers! Something to consider when you submit your next p!cture book.)

GALLOP!, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder. (Workman, $12.95.) Animals seem to move when you flip the page. (Ages 4 to 8)

DIRT ON MY SHIRT, by Jeff Foxworthy. Illustrated by Steve Bjorkman. (HarperCollins, $16.99.) Poems of childhood by the comedian and TV host. (Ages 4 to 7)

DON'T BUMP THE GLUMP!, written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) His first collection of nonsense verse, originally published in 1964. (Ages 5 and up)

GRACE FOR PRESIDENT, written by Kelly Di Pucchio. Illustrated by LeUyen Pham. (Hyperion, $15.99.) A girl decides to run in her school's mock election. (Ages 5 to 9)

SMASH! CRASH!, BY JON SCIESZKA. ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID SHANNON, Loren Long and David Gordon. (Simon & Schuster, $16.99.) A truck named Jack and a dump truck named Dan love to smash into things. (Ages 3 to 7)

THE JELLYBEANS AND THE BIG DANCE, written by Laura Numeroff and Nate Evans. Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. (Abrams, $15.95.) Cat friends work together to prepare for a recital. (Ages 4 to 8)

KNUFFLE BUNNY TOO, written and illustrated by Mo Willems. (Hyperion, $16.99.) One of Trixie's classmates has a bunny just like hers. (Ages 4 to 8)

ZEN TIES, written and illustrated by Jon J. Muth. (Scholastic, $17.99.) A panda encourages his nephew and their friends to help a grouchy neighbor. (Ages 4 to 8)

STAR WARS POP-UP GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, by Matthew Reinhart. (Orchard, $32.99.) A pop-up look at Luke, Leia, Lord Vader et al. (Ages 7 and up)

LADYBUG GIRL, by Jacky Davis and David Soman. Illustrated by David Soman. (Dial, $16.99.) Creativity and the right outfit let a little girl feel bigger. (Ages 4 and up)

...Jeff Foxworthy?

Huckabee Willing to be Vice President

Former GOP frontrunner Mike Huckabee announced he is willing to run with McCain as his vice presidential candidate. It appears to be the first time the evangelical candidate has shown a weakness for any kind of vice other than rock 'n' roll music.

Obama: Lay off my wife

The Tennessee GOP stooped to dirty politics by posting a video on YouTube, questioning Michelle Obama's patriotism. Says Barack, "Lay off my wife."

Ya gotta defend your lady.

June

The lovely month of June is almost upon us. It only comes once a year, so to commemorate the event, here's a calendar page. Go on, print it out and color it, you know you want to!

Drawer Geeks

One of my favorite sites to visit is Drawer Geeks. Each week a diverse group of talented illustrators give their take on a selected subject. Some of the work is amazing. This weeks subject is Dinosaurs, which prompted a good turnout. Their work always makes me want to sit down and have a go at it myself.

Dr. Seuss Ford Commercials

Genuine Ford Parts & Service
by DwightFrye

Hat tip to Charles Brubaker

Art Lessons by Norman Rockwell

My wife managed to find a great Norman Rockwell book for me at the latest homeschool swap. It's called Rockwell on Rockwell, How I Make a Picture. It's a compilation of lessons that Rockwell did in the fifties or sixties for the Famous Artist School. (You know the one... "draw this mouse or pirate"... and yeah, they're still around but I'm not sure why.) Imagine having a book on how to draw or paint by someone who can actually draw and paint... better than practically anyone. It's an awesome book. Will it help? That's another issue entirely. But if you can find a copy, it's definitely worth your trouble.

Charles Dickens on International Copyright Law

"It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose words went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there had existed any law in this respect, [Sir Walter] Scott might not have sunk beneath the mighty pressure on his brain, but might have lived to add new creatures of his fancy to the crowd which swarm about you in your summer walks, and gather round your winter evening hearths.

"As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that touching scene in the great man’s life, when he lay upon his couch, surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed. I pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the phantoms of his own imagination - Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson - all the familiar throng - with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland chiefs innumerable overflowing the chamber, and fading away in the dim distance beyond. I pictured them, fresh from traversing the world, and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow, that, from all those lands into which they had carried gladness, instruction, and delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly hand to help to raise him from that sad, sad bed. No, nor brought him from that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one grateful dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave. Oh! if every man who goes from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in Dryburgh Abbey, would but remember this, and bring the recollection home!"

Charles Dickens, February 7, 1842, excerpt from a speech delivered on his twenty-ninth birthday, during his first visit to the United States, to discuss international copyright. The United States had refused to enter into a reciprocal agreement on copyright with England. Publishers in this country were freely issuing Dickens's novels without paying royalties to him or his British publishers. It was another fifty years before the U.S. passed a comprehensive copyright law.

One might today replace Sir Walter Scott with Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, who died in poverty.

Cartoon Postage Stamps

A couple hundred cartoon postage stamps from around the world.

Stay Tooned

John Read was nice enough to send me a copy of the premiere issue of Stay Tooned magazine. It is in the tradition of Jud's Cartoonist Profiles, but has a district voice and look of its own. John is able to get some great interviews out of the cartoonists, and the lead interview with Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace) is a gem. Also in this issue:

John (Snuffy Smith) Rose

Greg (The Buckets) Cravens

Scott (Prickly City) Stantis

Steve (The Times-Picayune) Kelley

Marshall (The Clarion-Ledger) Ramsey

Steven (Sonic X) Butler

John (The Toon Factory) Deaton

Rob (Funny Pages Productions) Corley

With columns by:
Tom (MAD Magazine) Richmond

Norm (Retail) Feuti

I think John will make this a worthwhile and indispensable magazine for cartoonists.

I hate mosquitoes.

Right now I have all my windows open. In about three months the monsoons come to the desert and it's more of a mosquito fest than most people realize over here. One year I think AZ had the highest number of "West Nile" outbreaks.

This was done with watercolor on imperial strathmore 500 hot press. the size is about 15" tall by 21" wide. -W.

BTW, I'm having a heck of a time uploading in safari 3 on tiger. Firefox seems to work just fine.

James Garner - Spirit

James Garner would have made a great Spirit.

I used to have a '74 Firebird like he drove on The Rockford Files. It was a beautiful, scary car. It would scratch rubber if I punched it going 60. 455 horses. *sigh* If you happen to see it, let me know. It was an Esprit.

Recession

This is an older cartoon, but seems appropriate once again.

Jump!

Early Garfield Original Comic Strip

For only $4,499.00, you can be the proud owner of this very early Garfield original!

Never Too Young

Yes, the times have changed a bit. Don't laugh too loudly, though. I have seen baby bottles out there shaped like 7up soda bottles. Half the "juice" they sell for kids is high-fructose corn syrup with water and coloring added... soda pop without the bubbles.

But gosh... can you imagine giving a baby a bottle of Coke? I dunno Our kids don't drink pop, except the very occasional Sierra Mist or, when we go to the old general store downtown, they'll get a glass bottle of grape Nehi. I can't imagine what the caffeine booster would do... to me, not to them!

Google me this

If you're bored and want to do a quick run-through on just about every pic we've posted on this blog, here are about two dozen Google pages. Or should that be "Googled" pages?

Tango Tops Banned Books

NEW YORK - A children's story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again tops the list of library books the public objects to the most.

And Tango Makes Three, released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, [and illustrated by Henry Cole] was the most "challenged" book in public schools and libraries for the second straight year, according to the American Library Association.

"The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that," Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Associated Press on Tuesday... full story

-- I guess we can at least be thankful they're not burning the books.

Beijing 2008

Trio

Just a sketch. I like the feel of drawing in Sketchbook Pro. Very natural.

To Bee or Not to Bee

The honey bee is quickly becoming extinct. In China, it already has. We are importing them by the millions from Australia. Unfortunately, the Australian bees brought a disease that destroys the immune system of our honeybees. Besides making honey, honeybees are the only pollinator of clover. What a tangled web...

Corporate Dingbat

Rainbow Girl

The Tongue & the Teeth

Once upon a time there was a boy who had a bad habit of talking more than was necessary.

"What a tongue!" sighed the teeth one day. "It is never still, never quiet!"

"What are you grumbling about?" replied the tongue arrogantly. "You teeth are only slaves, and your job is merely to chew whatever I decide. We have nothing in common, and I shall not allow you to meddle in my affairs."

So the boy went on chattering, very impertinently sometimes, and his tongue was happy, learning new words every day.

But one day, when the boy did some damage, and then allowed his tongue to tell a big lie, the teeth obeyed the heart, sprang together and bit the tongue.

From that day onward the tongue became timid and prudent, and thought twice before speaking.

From Fables of Leonardo da Vinci

Indiana Jones IV

Looking forward to the new Indy movie, especially since Spielberg says they're filming it Old School with a minimum of CGI. The previews look promising. Of course, it'll be a weekend blockbuster even if it sucks raw eggs.

Lupine, Orchards, Mountains.

This was a bit tricky because I had to draw fields of lupine flowers, an orchard, and the beginnings of a mountain on the same page. I managed to come up with something that did all three rather poorly. Oh well. I like the car and the bird. 

Iron Man

The movie rocks!

Three Men in a Hot Rod Tub

This is a little sketch of an idea I had for a new blog header. It won't work for that purpose, but thought I'd post the sketch anyway.

Warm-Up Sketch

Just a quick warm-up sketch.

Watercolor and ink on Strathmore 500 bristol board