Studio visitor

I walked down the steps of my studio to find I had a (large) visitor waiting for me.
Sorry the photo is blurry, my hands were shaking and I was crying like an 6-year-old girl.

Canon Rock

I've been listening to Canon Rock a lot. There are tons of variations on it that musicians have put up on YouTube (including an awesome electric violin version), but it was originally arranged by Jerry C, who even made his background track freely available to other musicians. I'm posting the version that first introduced me to the song.

Studio Music This Week

This is what I've been listening to this week in my studio.















These are leaked GN'R songs from their hopefully upcoming album(s) "Chinese Democracy," which they had hoped to debut during the Beijing Olympics.....didn't happen (of course).

I'm a hardcore GNR fan, so this music really got me motivated to plow through some deadlines this week.

What are you listening to?

Warhol Spooner

Faeriescape

Just for fun... drawn in Sketchbook Pro and colored in PS.

Diet of an Olympian vs. Diet of an Illustrator

Michael Phelps' Diet:
Michael Phelps Daily Calorie Intake = 12,000

Breakfast: three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise, two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: one pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread, then 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Dinner: one pound of pasta and an entire pizza, washed down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.


Now imagine eating all that and sitting at your drawing table all day.

Australopithecus Aferensis

I've spent so much time working on computers lately, I just felt like doing a little digital painting. This is Australopithecus Aferensis, nicknamed "Lucy," discovered by archeologist Tom Gray.

Lucy lived in present-day Ethiopia about three million years ago during the Pliocene period. During this time, North and South America became connected, Africa collided with Europe, and the land bridge between Alaska and Asia appeared. The first giraffes emerged in Africa, camels hoofed it to Asia from America, and Rhinos became extinct in North America while mastodons flourished. The Arctic Ice Cap formed, which is now expected to disappear within the next few years.

Eliminating Rich Black from Colored Line Art File

I have recently encountered an issue with "Rich Black" in the printing of color comics on newsprint. This outlines the issue and my resolution.

When I color a comic in Photoshop, I usually scan the original art as line art at a high resolution. Then I convert the image to CMYK, set the line art layer to Multiply, and then do the coloring on other layers. At that point I flatten, save and send the art to the publisher.



The problem with this is that Photoshop automatically makes all the line art into Rich Blacks, which means the line art is duplicated on the C, M and Y channels. What you get is a blacker (rich) black, which causes two problems: one, it creates a high ink saturation, which is not condusive to an absorbent paper like newsprint; and two, if the registration is not perfect (which it rarely is in newspapers), then the line art can become an extremely blurry mess.

I used to send Spooner to American Color with the line art and color as two separate files. However, not all layout artists are familiar with how to handle this, so I've had to work up an alternative method.

This post will document my procedure to solve this issue. It is not as time consuming as it appears, yet I'm certain there must be another method that works better. If you know of one, please share it.

This image shows what the file looks like with the Black channel removed. In other words, this is what the image will look like when it is being printed, right before the black ink is printed on top of it. You can see that all the black line art is duplicated by each color plate, and when each color is printed on top of one another, you already have a pretty dark area where the black ink will go. But if it's not precisely aligned with the black ink, you can imagine how it will break the crispness of the black plate.



The image below shows what the yellow plate (channel) looks like by itself. (It looks gray but this is all actually yellow.) So what we need to do is get rid of the areas where the yellow channel is duplicating the black channel.



This is my procedure:

The art at this point is flattened. I open the Channels palette and hide the C, M and Y channels so that only the black channel is visible, and selected. Use the magic wand tool, with the Anti-alias and Contiguous boxes unchecked. Click any black area and it will select all the black on the screen.

Next I make visible and select the Yellow channel, and hide and deselect the black channel. Only the yellow channel is visible and selected. We still have the magic wand-selected area. In the Edit menu, I select "Cut." Then we are left with the following:



Repeat the procedure with the Magenta and Cyan channels. Once this is completed, if we make all channels visible except the black channel, it should look like this:



So now we're getting somewhere. This file will print only black ink where there are black lines, and we will have no rich blacks. But then I discovered a new issue: The black is not 100% black. You can see in the image below that the black looks weak. So we have one more step.



In the Channels palette, we again hide the C, M and Y channels. Only the black channel is visible and selected. In the Colors palette, we use the sliders to bring C, M and Y down to Zero, and slide K up to 100. Use the Bucket Fill tool, with Anti-alias and Contiguous unchecked, and click on a black area. All the black line art will be "filled" with 100% black. This is almost imperceptible onscreen, but will make a difference in the printed image.

What we end up with should look exactly like what we started out with. Only InDesign or Quark will know the difference:



I saved the image as EPS and sent it to the publisher. The prepress guys said they had to run it through a program called Asura in order to turn it into a PDF, so I am sending a Photoshop PDF this week to see if it'll help them skip that step. I really don't like sending art as PDF since that compresses the image into a JPEG. I don't think JPEGs create good print quality images since it is a lossy compression format, but maybe I'm wrong. I was hoping JPEG2000 would catch on, because it improves the compression and reduces pixel loss, but doesn't look like it will.

If you have had similar issues, maybe you will find some use in this. If you have a better solution, than I would love to hear it. Any questions, feel free to let me know.

P.S. I should point out that this is not a situation where I am doing work for a specific publication, so it is impossible to prepare it in advance under any particular prepress guidelines.

The Goonies

I just finished drawing this movie poster for "The Goonies" showing at the historic Artcraft Theatre.
It's an old theatre in Franklin, IN and our poster operation, Mile 44, has teamed up with them to provide funding for renovation of the beautiful old theatre by creating a series of collectible, hand-printed movie posters for some of the theatre's showings.

The posters in the series are sold in the theatre lobby as well as through our poster website, which itself is under renovation.
If you want to buy one (they're $20 each + shipping), you can e-mail me for availability by clicking here.

If you're in the Franklin, Indiana area, why not stop by on August 22nd or 23rd and see The Goonies on the big screen?

Calvin and (Steve) Jobs

Hat tip to Daily Cartoonist and Gizmodo and MAD Magazine.

Now Safe for Santa!

This has nothing to do with illustration (though I guess a book job did pay for the chimney repairs), but I needed a place to post these pics I took to annoy the bricklayers.
Now Santa can safely go down our chimney this year......last year was a bit dicey.

Sketches

Another darned faun.
Cintiq + Sketchbook Pro

Cintiq + Sketchbook Pro

Rabbit Rocketeer

Finally, a drawing for fun.
I've been so busy with paying work, that I haven't had time to sit down and draw something for the heck of it.
Not that I can complain...

I really wanted to watercolor this, but decided to color it digitally instead. And it's very sloppy.
What do you think?
Wanna see it in watercolor?

Ink on Strathmore Imperial, coloring: Cintiq + Photoshop

Mystic Woods Dragon

When I don't like the way a drawing has turned out, I start adding blacks. And more blacks. And even more blacks. Usually it doesn't help any. I don't think it hurt this one too much, though.

This is much larger than I normally draw, on a 14" X 17" sheet of bristol. Inked with pocket brush pen and a trusty Sharpie.

Drawing Mystic Woods

Faun

Here's another faun sketch.

Ink + Watercolor on Strathmore Imperial (Cold-Pressed)

John McCain caricature

John McCain, Republican candidate for President of the United States of America

Cintiq + Sketchbook Pro

Everything I Know, I Learned from YouTube

Editorial Cartoon

This editorial cartoon I drew appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday.

During a time when Chicago has some serious crime problems, especially shootings as of late, the only thing on the Mayor's mind seems to be the 2016 Olympics.

Pen and ink on Strathmore bristol board

Resting Elephant

Couldn't sleep, so I decided to play around with Sketchbook Pro on my Cintiq a little bit more. I'm still loving the pencil tool, it's fantastic.

John Collier

Not the best reproduction, but something about this painting by John Collier that I like.

Watercolor Drawing.

Ink + Watercolor + Cold-Pressed Watercolor Paper

Some Book Recommendations....

I just finished reading a few books I'd like to recommend.


First up is a graphic novel by Frank Cammuso, called "Knights of the Lunch Table, Volume 1: The Dodgeball Chronicles," published by Scholastic/Graphix.

If you're into King Arthur, you'll love the literary references made in this book!

About "Knights of the Lunch Table (from Scholastic):
"Artie King just wants to ease into life at Camelot Middle School. He’s got new lunch buddies, Percy and Wayne, and his science teacher, Mr. Merlyn, is pretty cool. But then there’s scary Principal Dagger and big bad Joe and The Horde, a bunch of brawny bullies who rule the school."
Ages 9-12
Paperback: 144 pages

I love Frank's artwork and the story is just awesome!


If you love Frank's work, I'd also like to recommend, "Otto's Orange Day" written by Jay Lynch, illustrated by Frank Cammuso and published by Toon Books.

About "Otto's Orange Day" (from Toon Books):
"WHEN OTTO THE CAT MEETS A MAGICAL GENIE, he knows just what to wish for: he makes the whole world orange! At first, this new, bright world seems like a lot of fun, but when his mom serves orange spinach for lunch, Otto realizes that his favorite color isn’t the best color for everything. Fixing this mixed-up world won’t be easy though because Otto already used up his only wish. To save the day, Otto will need his family’s help, some quick thinking, and…a pizza?
Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 40 pages

Next up is the book that won the 2008 Caldecott Medal called "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," written by Brian Selznick, published by Scholastic Press.

About "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" (from the book's web site):
"ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come together...in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

This 526-page book is told in both words and pictures. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things. Each picture (there are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!) takes up an entire double page spread, and the story moves forward because you turn the pages to see the next moment unfold in front of you."

This book is just amazing. That's the only way I can describe it. I love the story and the way Brian uses illustrations to help tell this story is just terrific! The Caldecott Medal was well deserved. If you've not read the book, I highly suggest it.

Now get reading!

A convention for posters?

After telling some friends I spent the weekend selling posters at Pitchfork Music Festival / Flatstock 17 over the weekend, the question I got asked most was: "There's a convention for posters?"

So let me explain............yes.

The convention for posters is called FLATSTOCK.
The FLATSTOCK poster show series is presented by the American Poster Institute (API). It is an ongoing series of exhibitions featuring the work of many of the most popular concert poster artists working today. Flatstock shows provide the general public with an ongoing series of opportunities to see fine poster art in person and to meet the artists who've created it and of course, to buy posters and merchandise from the poster artists.

Flatstock is held in conjunction with a music festival, such as Bumbershoot Music Festival in Seattle, Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, TX and Reeperbahn Music Festival in Hamburg, Germany.

The Flatstock exhibition in Chicago was number 17 and only the third one held in Chicago.

The screenprinting company I co-founded with my buddy Dave Windisch is called Mile 44.

Here are some snapshots from Flatstock 17 (courtesy of Dave):

The MILE 44 booth:


Some festival-goers:


Each year, Dave and I create a poster especially for Flatstock/Pitchfork Music Festival we attend.
Here's this year's poster:



If you want to buy any of our posters on our Mile 44 web site or any of the remaining Flatstock 17 posters, please send us an e-mail.
BTW--The Flatstock 17 poster above is $10.

Links:

Mile 44

The American Poster Institute

Flatstock

Gigposters.com

Bird

Playing around with tools in Painter
Cintiq + Painter

Chessboxing Worldchampionship

Chess boxing is a hybrid sport which combines the sport of boxing with games of chess in alternating rounds. Chess boxing fights have been organized since early 2003. The sport was started when Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh, inspired by fictional descriptions of the sport in the writing of Enki Bilal, organized actual matches. The sport has become increasingly popular since then. To succeed players must be both skilled chess players and skilled boxers.

The concept was envisioned in 1992 by cartoonist Enki Bilal, and a match of chess boxing was a major plot point of his graphic novel Froid Équateur. Iepe Rubingh, a Dutch artist, was inspired by Bilal's book and brought the concept to life in the spring of 2001, fighting under the name, 'Iepe the Joker'. Rubingh decided that the method of play in described in the book, a boxing match followed by a chess match, was impractical. Rubingh instead instituted alternating rounds of chess and boxing.

Sketch

What I'll be doing until November ....

Warm-up sketch

Created using: Cintiq + Sketchbook Pro

Mystic Woods Test

A little experiment.
Drawn in Sketchbook Pro and placed into Windows Movie Maker.

Kems

There are several acquaintances with whom I keep in touch almost exclusively through email. Sometimes a considerable amount of time can go by between communications, yet each of these people is important to me.

The last couple of emails I had sent to my Australian cartoonist friend James Kemsley were not returned. Doing a little internet search last night to see what he might be up to, I discovered the sad news that he died several months ago. I wondered how I could have been so far out of the loop to not have heard about his death. Doubtless, bereaved families don't go to the deceased email address book and send out notices. And I haven't hung out at any cartoonist sites for years.

Kems was an actor and a cartoonist who was asked to take over Ginger Meggs a few years ago, a long-running comic strip in Australia. He brought Meggs to a level of popularity it had never seen before. Kems received the Stanley Award for Cartoonist of the Year, and twice won the Stanley for Comic Strip Artist.

He died from motor neurone disease and was only 59. Last month he was posthumously awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.

Kems was always supportive and helpful and a fan of Spooner. He loved cartooning and was a friend to cartoonists as a whole. I'm sorry he's gone... but cartoonists have a unique way of leaving us things to remember them by.

YouTube Vodka Ads

This is off topic, but I was a little disappointed to see YouTube running vodka ads on their main page. Besides that, the ad features Kenye West, who has a lot of underage fans. Of course, YouTube is owned by Google, and I would expect a little more from them. We tend to have a little problem with minors drinking in this country. In fact, the number one cause of death for teens is automobile accidents, with at least half involving alcohol. So, raspberries to Google and YouTube today.

Comic Books for Kids

One of the things I like about Grubbs is it is appropriate for all ages. My kids, 6 & 9, both get a kick out of it and have even helped. My daughter has been my official eraser, and has worked hard and put a lot of care and personal pride into her work. My son has helped with the coloring and has been a big asset, taking on a big job for his age.

While putting together the comic book, my wife looked through it and startled me with some out-loud laughs... and she is no fan of comic books.

I probably learned to read from the comics, and it breaks my heart that there aren't more comics out there for kids... on the newspaper comics pages or in the comics shops. The comic book companies are finally realizing there is a whole new audience out there, and that they need to reach it or else all they'll have is a bunch of 65-year-old comic book fans before too long. And it is the independent comics creators who showed them that it needed to be done, and how to do it.

There are no more turnstile racks in local stores any more, so it's hard to reach kids directly. Yet even the libraries have finally realized that comics are a great way to get kids to read. Parents are out there as well, looking for comics that are appropriate for kids, but having a hard time. So here are some comics that the kids and I have enjoyed.

First up is The Dreamland Chronicles by Scott Sava who, with Herobear's Mike Kunkle, published the Spooner comics. The Dreamland Chronicles has built up quite a following and Scott, besides being a terrific guy, tells a great story and creates a whole new look with his 3-D animation style. You can also read it weekly online.


Another book we have enjoyed is Owly, by Andy Runton. Owly is mostly a wordless comic and great for younger readers. It's just cute as heck.


My son and I really enjoyed the second Gasoline Alley collection, Walt and Skeezix. It collects the third and fourth years of Gasoline Alley comic strips (1923-24) after baby Skeezix was left at bachelor Walt's doorstep. Frank King was one of the best cartoonists ever, and I've never read a classic comic that holds up so well. It's just perfection.


I'm not real enamoured with DC's Tiny Titans, but the kids like it. The stories are as simple and silly as you can get, but the art is fun, with drawing chores by Art Baltazar, who also creates the comic Patrick the Wolf Boy. My son prefers the in-between version, Teen Titans Go!, but it was canceled in May.


Another fun, well-done comic is Power Pack, a sisters and brothers team of superheroes reinvented for Marvel in an anime look. Libraries usually have hardback copies of the limited run, and the series is supposed to start again this year.


You can also check out the link to the right, Kids Love Comics. And of course, you can find lots of old Archie, Richie Rich, Casper and Disney comics on ebay, even though ebay sucks.

And keep your eye out for Grubbs.

"Raymond & Graham Rule the School"

The first book of the new Raymond and Graham series is out!

It's called "Raymond and Graham Rule the School" written by the hilarious Mike Knudson and Steve Wilkinson, illustrated by myself and published by Viking (Penguin Group).

About "Raymond and Graham Rule the School" (from Amazon.com):
A hilarious new series for middlegrade boys!

Best friends Raymond and Graham have waited their whole lives for fourth grade, when they’ll rule the school at East Millcreek Elementary. But things don’t go quite as planned when Raymond gets stuck with the most embarrassing line in the class play! Can he find a way out of it, or will he be humiliated in front of everyone? Filled with memorable characters, side-splitting moments, and goofy black-and-white illustrations, this series is sure to tickle kids’ funny bones!


Order the book by clicking here.

The second book in this series, "Raymond and Graham: Dancing Dudes" will be out in September.

Blitz

Goofing off with a ball-point pen. For about three decades I mostly drew with a ball-point or rollerball and hated the idea of pencilling and inking... it seemed like doubling the work. When I started doing Spooner I decided to do it the proper way, as demonstrated in my cherished 1973 paperback edition of Charlie Brown and Charlie Schulz, a biography with tons of photos and drawings. So I bought some nibs and India ink, and the Hunt 512 seemed to be just right. And a Speedball Flicker FB-6 did a pretty good job for lettering. I don't think they make the Flicker series any more. If you see any, let me know.

Say, did you know Speedball makes left-handed pen nibs and pen holders? I'm not lying. A little trivia: In the days before computer lettering, the Hunt Hawk Quill #107 was the Marvel Comics standard lettering pen. A Speedball A-5 nib was used to draw balloons, captions and borders.

'Course , now I tend to use my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen for most every thing. I've had this one since December, 2006, and it still works like it was new. Bristles are in great shape, and I have easily inked over a thousand drawings with it, and have probably gone through about a dozen ink cartridges.

A bunch of the drawings I post are drawn on my Motion Tablet PC. The precision isn't really there like Stacy's Cintiq but it's good for sketching and color work... some inking but not much. And I can sit in my old worn-out recliner to draw.

Well, that's the best post I can muster on a Sunday night.

Another Faun Sketch

Sketchbook Pro + Cintiq

Grubbs #3 Cover

Sketchbook PRO + Photoshop

I downloaded the trial version of Sketchbook PRO and it's wonderful for sketching/drawing. The pencil tool has a nice feel to it. Though the interface of the program is a bit confusing, it's still fun to draw with.

Here are some sketches:

Black and white drawn in Sketchbook Pro:


Drawn in Sketchbook Pro, colored in Photoshop:


Drawn and colored in Sketchbook Pro:

Jes a Dawg.

This is Bud. I'm finally starting to learn how to draw him now that the book assignment is coming to a close.  I'll feel a bit lost for a while, I'm sure. 

-Wes