Friday, May 23, 2008

Greatest Show on Earth (for May)

I plan on making this a regular feature. I will call out an art show I plan to see or would like to see, but can't. I am proud to start it off with a show of my very own wife's work.
click here to check it out or here to check out here for her website

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Help Gene Colan

Mr. Gene Colan and his wife could use your help
http://thecliffordmethod.blogspot.com/
Gene Colan was one of the premier artists for Marvel back in the seventies working on books such as Daredevil, Avengers, Captain America, and Doctor Strange. However, his most lasting impact on comics(at least for me) was his 70 issue run on Tomb of Dracula and his co-creation of Blade with Marv Wolfman. Not to mention he was a student of Frank Reilly

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Friday, May 9, 2008

Shameless Plug


"More Bones" is a children's book in the vein of "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" . I did the illustrations for this little diddy of folktales retold by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz. It is now on sale at Amazon
Click Here

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Pulp Noir tonal comp


And further comments from Mr. Ardai
Nice! The pointing gun makes a big difference, I think (for the better). I might have opened the woman's eyes, and possibly would have put her in a slightly more modern outfit -- that one looks very 1920s rather than, say, 1940s-1950s. The man's head and hair are of course much too neat for someone who's just been shot in the head -- I wouldn't propose turning it into a mess of gore, but I might at least disarrange his hair a little. On the whole, though, I like it...
--Charles

Pulp Noir color comps


Here is a crit I got from one of the ADs at Hardcase Crime and thought it may interest some of you.

"The sketch and comps look nice. Good composition -- not a lot of action to it, but some tension. I tend to favor golds and browns and ambers and reds rather than blues, greens, and purples, personally, but there are plenty of examples of both in the pulp tradition. (Back in the day, the pulp publishers discovered that bright yellows and reds sold particularly well -- but that doesn't mean they always used them.) I like the line of the woman's arm; on the other hand, there might be a bit more drama if she were pointing the gun at the man. I could also imagine rotating the woman clockwise a bit on the pivot of her waist so that she was at more of an oblique angle to the viewer. If it were me I might also make her bustier and her blouse lower-cut...but I'm just a lech, what can I say."

"I mean away from the viewer, so we see more of her left side and less of her right. I'm imagining that her extended left arm might then almost or actually be aiming at the man (a good thing in terms of the story content of the image), and meanwhile you'll have moved her out of being in a parallel plane to the man's, which would automatically make the image more dynamic. (Right now you've got four rigidly parallel planes: desk, man, woman, wall-with-window, plus a lot of explicit straight lines emphasizing how orderly everything is. I'd be inclined to rupture that order in some way -- and the woman holding a gun would be a natural agent of disorder.)"
Charles Ardai

I found this very helpful, and thought you might as well


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I'm guessing everyone has probably given up on this blog, but I am finally getting around to this project so here we go.
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