This Weekend

Hit a hiccup this weekend so a bit unsettled, managed to produce the Barbarella pic below for TAB and cracked open the hardcover Johnny Comet collection by Frank Frazetta, which has been on my read pile for over a year now. I can see why the strip never caught on as the strips are written very basically but the art is gorgeous. Beautiful women, sleek cars, sinewy heroes: all beautifully illustrated (I can see similarities to other artists such as Frazetta's EC buddies Wally Wood and Al Williamson, as well as later artists like Sandy Plunkett, Mark Schultz and Dave Stevens).

From that book, I've attached Frazetta's first page for his own 50s adventure Sunday strip: which was rejected! This lo res scan does no justice to one of the most beautifully designed and executed pages I've ever seen, absolutely no need for dialogue...

Life In The Fast Lane

Over at Project Rooftop, they ran a call for depictions of Lois Lane. Mine was previously posted here and I'd say ranks in the fourth quarter of entries. Slightly corrected version of one of my two Loises (?) below but click on a the link below to see all the entries:

http://www.tencentticker.com/projectrooftop/2012/06/08/fan-art-friday-lois-lane/#more-4707

More Quick Art

Had four days off, happily avoided EVERYTHING to do with the jubilee and managed to get through almost my entire list of things to do (housework and setting questions for the pubquiz now wait till the weekend!) but here's some random stuff done recently...

Quick Art

While I've still not cracked open my spanking new Bamboo tablet, here's a few other pieces: an A4 commission, an A3 (the 90 year old pilot) and Medusa, done as an experiment in using the Travis Charest coloured paper and pencil techniques...very first stab is a dismal failure but was only a tester for technique results so not too fussed that it's not great...

Weekend Woes

This weekend has been the weekend from Hell for me, an absolute bitch...but still managed to get a few pix done or finished off, so the pix above have all been done within the last seven days or so...

Shelf Life

Over at Rol's blog is a review of Grant Morrison's Supergods, which got me looking at the tons of books I have on comics. I rarely have time to read novels nowadays (though am about a third of the way through the new Dark Tower novel) but have kept my favourite ones: stuff by Stephen King as well as others such as Matheson, Wellman and even Gaiman. Other than a few reference books, most of my bookcase is comic-related. Kindles are fine for novels (in theory) but less so for coffee table books, of which I have too many...

Anyway, this got me pondering my bookshelves as I ran a bath and thought I'd share my favourite shelf. Now I don't order my shelves in any sort of " favouritist" manner but this one shelf pretty much holds the cream of my comic art collections. Monthlies are all stashed away in boxes, trades on a bookshelf and novels, general books and some comic books on another...but this one shelf houses all my most treasured books. 

So, from left to right: the Alex Ross/Paul Dini collaborations (I know he has his critics but I like Ross' work, especially on the Marvel and DC characters) sit alongside the similar-sized Dave Stevens Vamps and Vixens collection, which is naturally next to the deluxe Dave Stevens hardbacks:  the Brush With Passion biography/retrospective, The Rocketeer Complete Adventures and the Complete Sketches and Studies collection. These will be joined by an imminent collection of all of Stevens' non-Rocketeer comic work, which is one of my most anticipated upcoming books.

Next is a collection of classic Frazetta comic strips before moving on to four Brian Bolland collections (including a signed "Art Of" and again an upcoming collection of all of his Dredd strips, sweet!) and my signed & sketched Cover Run, the collection of Adam Hughes DC covers.

Next up is the Jaime Hernandez book and then a huge wodge of Wally Wood and Al Williamson collections. Two Hal Foster Prince Valiant collections briefly interrupt the flow, which resumes with the Williamson Secret Agent X9 collections, before segueing across to Alex Raymond's first Rip Kirby collection and the complete Raymond and Mac Raboy Flash Gordon collections, plus a couple of other reprint volumes.

It has to be said that some of the collections aren't all the greatest reads but by God, that's as solid a chunk of visual eye candy as you're ever likely to see...

So, what's pride of place on YOUR bookshelves...?

Kinell!!!!

So I finished grey toning the third of three pages for TMSAV today...and accidentally clicked on the wrong x button and lost everything. Wherever you're reading this, you may possibly have still heard the distant echoes of my profanities...

Still, these pages are going to be cobbled together in photoshop but while I like the results (so far), it's very time consuming. I'm considering going a whole different route for my next pages (depending on what I'll be drawing) and challenging myself in a different way...

Pages in progress above...