Manic Monday!

It's just another Manic Monday... but me and the wife are taking a much-needed baby-free get-away this weekend. Let's get Manic!

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My sister-in-law is in Paris right now, and just took a bunch of photos of the so-called Luxor Obelisk. It's one of a pair that originally stood in front of the main temple in Luxor. Obelisks are a fascinating piece of Egyptian iconographic sculpture.

In short, everything in heaven should be mirrored, whenever possible, on Earth. A Twelfth Dynasty Pharaoh (Senwosret I think) had the first obelisk erected under the theory that the rays of the sun itself could be mirrored by the construction of massive 'ray' of stone that reaches high into the sky and which terminated in a pyramidion which was itself covered in gold leaf. During the reign of Hatchepsut (subject of much of my research right now) the entirety of the obelisk was often covered in gold leaf! That's a lot of gold!

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The Nunez family just got cable, and man I missed it! We went with AT&T UVerse and while I can't speak for other areas, our service guy was awesome and for that alone I'm sticking with them for a bit.

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I can tell I'm a dad because, while watching the fairly average video (featuring a fairly average song) "Fuckin Perfect" by Pink, I was actually really moved by the redemption of the mom and the love she had for her daughter.

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Right now I feel like the only food blog I need is Francis Lam's at Salon and the only cookbook I need is Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything". Really, I could stop reading everything else and be set for the vasy majority of the rest of my life.

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My comic recommendation for the week: Check out this short story from an old issue of Creepy. It's written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Al Williamson (both are sadly departed now). It's reprinted in its bried entirety at that link, and draws from real-life experiences of both creators involved. Great stuff.

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I started on a Hatchepsut sketch last week, and am continuing it this week. Worked the face a bit more to completion and started on the Serpent Crown, which I can tell already is gonna be a bitch!

Have a good week!

Foto Friday!

It's the end of the week, and I thought I'd end with something a little fun. It's Lucia as an Orange Lantern! Check it out (and then I'll translate that last sentence, for those of you who don't speak Nerd).

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So, in the universe of the Green Lanterns, there's... ah, screw it! Just go read up on it if you're interested. Basically I based Lucia on a comic character who's motivated primarily by an id-like need to possess things. Yes, I do see some overlap. Haha. Don't tell her I said that!

I'd have done a bit more on it, but time's a'wasting. I'll do some tighter pencils and/or inks in the coming weeks.

Enjoy your weekend!

Egyptian Thursday

Welcome back! It's Thursday and (as of last week, at least) that means it's Egyptian Thursday! I'll be doing a piece of art relating to that ancient world power. Maybe photo-realism, maybe comics, maybe something else... whatever strikes my fancy.

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First a little background. Egypt is generally divided into vast periods called Kingdoms (Old, Middle and New). These were divided into Dynasty; usually grouped by families (like say the Tudors or the Hapsburgs), these were listed numerically one through thirty.

The period I'm working in is the New Kingdom, and within that the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Eighteenth Dynasty is in fact the first dynasty in the New Kingdom. It's a time of big conquest, big trading, big monuments... Frankly, it'd be hard to not find a great story to tell in all of this!

Hatchepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh, comes from this period and lies right in the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty. I did a drawing of her a month or so back but I'm pretty unsatistifed with it. Let's try this again!

(Oh, and just an aside: This is an example of the vast spans of time we're dealing with in Egypt. The United States has existed 234 years. The Eighteenth Dynasty (one of thirty remember) lasted for 243 years. Yep, long time.)

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Hatchepsut here is wearing the Blue Crown (also known as the Serpent Crown) and it's generally associated with the Pharaoh as military ruler. This is a pretty good first pass on this drawing. I'll post the next step sometime next week!

The Missing Ink

The Missing Ink is a chance for me to do something inking, whether it be over my own pencils or over some pencils of a different artist. This week is a bit of a catch-up week for me in other areas, so I'm showing off something that's a little older. This is a inked piece I did over artist extraordinaire Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez about two years ago now.

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Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is a great artist blah blah blah, genius, master, "forgotten more than I'll ever now"... all that stuff. He's also incredibly fun. Check out this page. There are so many ways to draw Superman battling some villain and Wonder Woman swooping in. Check out that Wonder Woman in the last panel though. I swear, no one draws WW like Garcia-Lopez. No one.

That was obviously the focus of the page, and needed to be the focus of my inking. This isn't to say that the rest of page didn't matter as much, just that the last panel needed to matter the most. That's a slight difference, but one that I feel is pretty important in inking.

There's some spots I'd go back and fix up now, in hindsight. I'd approach the grey tones a bit different in the first panel, and I think I lost a bit of the Garcia-Lopez look with Superman's face in panel four. I do think though that panel two came out well, and I stand by that Wonder Woman figure.

Hope you like it. They'll be some new stuff next week, promise!
(First up is the pencils by JLGL and then the inks by yours truly)

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Turnaround Tuesday!

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This week we're doing one of the super-heroes best "equipped" to fight villains. And that's where my boob jokes will stop.

Ladies and gentlemen.... Power Girl!

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Power Girl is, in summary, Superman's cousin from a different dimension. (There's a migraine-level amount of further detail, but go to Wikipedia and don't blame me!) Why Power Girl has such "crime fighting advantages" when Supergirl (Superman's cousin in this dimension) doesn't is beyond me. Maybe it's cause Wally Wood didn't create her!

PG's a great character, with a lot of personality. Big, in-your-face (that's not a joke there. Stop it.) and very engaging in the right hands. If you're looking for some good Power Girl stories, some of those 'right hands' would be Geoff Johns (who wrote a great arc in JSA Classified #1-3) and Jimmy Palmiotti (who wrote the first year of her most recent series). Both writers collaborated with my favorite Power Girl artist, Amanda Conner. Conner gives Power Girl such a range of emotion and expression, while still conveying the action and drama that the story might need.

Do yourself a favor and go check some of that stuff out. After you check out the turnaround, that is!

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Manic Monday!

Last week of the first month of the new year. Already? Did you know that older people experience time as moving faster than young folk. It's true. I'm old.

Let's do this!

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Little bit of art goodness that everyone should check out. First, Brian Bolland did a beautiful (if that's the word) commission a couple of years ago. It's call Joker Trophy Wall and really, just go look at the thing. Man, he's amazing.

Anyways, a little after that Kevin Nowlan was commissioned to do a second in the series. It's called Bizarro Trophy Wall. Nowlan's got a whole blog post up with a couple prelim sketches and the finished piece. He calls it a "peculiar idea which seemed to work". I call that an understatement. Thing's awesome. (Check it out here)

Only question is... which do you like better?

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Little bit of April goodness: A new, deluxe format release for We3! We-freaking-3! Great. Really, like I said of Flex Mentallo last week, this is one of those books that's basically required owning if you're a comic fan. It's like a monk owning a bible. You just kinda assume, right?

Oh, and there's ten new pages of story to sweeten the pot. Swoon. (Mo' goodness here)

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The Australian Open has started and it's making it difficult to focus on anything else going on the larger culture. That's all.

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Last week I did a model sheet of a handful of Egyptian crowns. Bet you didn't think there were that many, did you? Well, guess what? There's more!

Here's round two. Happy Monday.

Foto Friday!

Wrapping up the week here, and it's time for Foto Friday!

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Having just drawn Flex Mentallo for the first time (on Monday) I wanted another crack at him. I decided that I needed to approach it a little more in my style, so I went in search of some photo reference.

I've already said this before but Flex Mentallo was based (pretty shamelessly) on Charles Atlas. That seemed like a natural place to start, and I looked and looked but didn't find anything that jumped out at me. I wanted something a little too posed and dramatic. Nothing.

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I went with seemed to me to be the next best thing. You may know him as the former governor of California, or maybe as the Terminator or Kindergarten Cop, but once upon a time Arnold Schwarzenegger was a world-renowned bodybuilder. Charles Atlas was a big early influence on Arnold, and the style and posing are close enough in era that I thought I could make it work.

If I found the right one. I think I did.



Awesome right? Perfect mix of over-the-top Thinker wanna-be and melodrama. Perfect.

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I started laying out the body for Flex; I'll definitely need different reference for his head, Arnold doesn't have any resemblance really there. Not much so far, but here's how the process is shaping up.

Egyptian Thursday!

Welcome back to my artblog. Today is Thursday, and this week I'm adjusting the format a bit. I've recently been getting more and more into Egyptian art and history (again) and I've realized that a decent number of the pieces I've posted here have been on the subject. I figured that I might as well make it official. So out with Inspiration Thursday, in with Egyptian Thursday.

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During my Junior Year Thesis at SVA I got heavily into the history and story of Hatchepsut, Egypt's first female pharaoh. I've decided recently that I'm going to re-pursue that project and see where it takes me.

Right now I'm doing a lot of research and preliminary sketches and ideas. One thing I remember from this the first go-around is that organization is key. I'll open books and there's something that I can remember wanting to include or thinking about on the R train home, but never wrote down and forgot about it.

The cataloging starts now!

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This is a model sheet I've made myself for the various crowns that Hatchepsut wore. (Or some of them at least, there's a ton) Fun stuff. See you tomorrow!

The Missing Ink!

Get it, missing ink?

Today is going to be a little different, and a little brief. I've got a lot of work that I'm trying to catch up on for various clients, and I'm not doing a comic inking piece this week.

I thought though that I'd show you a little process work for one of the jobs I'm doing right now.

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I'm currently designing a logo for an adjunct business for a catering company, and it's decided that it's going to be a silhouette. Silhouettes are tricky. They're maybe the easiest thing to draw, but then one of the hardest things to draw well. You've really got to convey the point of the picture with just the contour.

One of the things I do when I'm doing silhouette work is get acquainted with the subject by doing quick drawings, but by drawing only with pen. I find that I can start to choose my lines carefully at this point and preemptively stop myself from getting too concerned or wrapped up in any detail work. Just the facts, ma'am.

Here ya go!

Turnaround Tuesday!

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!

After last week's Spider-Woman turnaround, I realized this week was already screaming out at me. It's as iconic as you can get. Ladies and gentlemen...

Spider-Man!

(I, as a card-carrying comic book artist and nerd, of course know this costume by heart. I just wanted to draw him and thought it'd be great. It was also a chance for me to draw a little bit more of an 'open line' Spidey, meaning one where a lot of the detail is left up to the coloring stage. That seems to be where the character is right now. See here)

Enjoy!



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Manic Monday!

It's the start of the week, and there's a lot to do. Let's get started... it's Manic Monday!

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In geek news, there's new photos up for the movie versions of Captain America, Thor and the X-Men. They all look pretty cool. The mash-up/ Photoshop train wreck of the X-men photo is pretty damn awkward, and I'm not really excited about Azazael, the female Angel or Mystique, Jr.

....Other than that, said Mrs. Lincoln, the play was fine...

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Flex Mentallo is a comic from the mid-90's that not only doesn't suck (as most material from that decade does, on average), it also holds up extremely well as one of the Best. Comic. Stories. Ever.

It was written by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly, and really that should be all the recommendation you need. (Really, have they put out anything that was less than excellent? I can't think of anything) The book was in legal limbo for a long time, due to the origin of the protagonist being essentially a panel for panel take on that old Charles Atlas "Hero of the Beach" ad in comics fifty or so years ago.

The rights and moneys have been sorted out for a few years now, and it's a bit of a mystery as to why DC Comics has sat on this book. Well... they're sitting no longer! (The link is to a rather excellent NPR comic piece in whole; the Flex bits are towards the bottom) It's due for release in the fall, and I will be first in line at the store.

I've read the books, which had a minuscule print run and, due to never being reprinted, command big bucks on sites like eBay, and they are really very, very excellent. This should be a no-brain purchase. Put aside some money now and then make room next to Dark Knight, Watchman and All-Star Superman.

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After all that, you had to know that a Flex Mentallo sketch was coming right? It was fun to play with such an over-the-top musculature. Hoorah for Flex! (The bit of dialogue is from the mini-series.

Foto Friday!

Welcome back to my artblog! It's Foto Friday, which means we're using some photo reference(s) to make a nice piece of art. Oooh, purtty...

This post is actually a continuation of one I started yesterday. I was trying to come up with a new design for Egyptian deity Khepri, who got the short end of the stick in terms of deity design.

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This process of refining a two thousand year-old(!) character design was incredibly fun. I started with Kheperi, and saw that he's got the basic Egyptian God accoutrement (fancy french word, there): bracelets out the wahzoo, collar, skirt and khat. I moved on to finding a nice image of the Scarab (or dung) beetle. Like so:



Nice looking guy, ain't he?

I tried first just using the head of the guy and plopping it down on Kheperi's body. This didn't really work though. I'm not sure why. It might be the fact that bugs are so much smaller than animals (such as the cow, jackal, even the frog) that were used for Egyptian deities, and so the enlarged head seems 'off'. It could also be the fact that humans seem to relate so much more to animals than we do insects. Insects can seems very foreign or alien when treated anthropomorphically. Either way, no go.

Here's what I did instead. I took the bug, enlarged him quite a bit and draped him over the shoulders of Kheperi. The middle segment (or thorax) became the 'head' of Kheperi, the back segments (or tergites) became just drapery in back of the head) and the head of the beetle becomes just a amulet or jewelry piece. I think it was pretty clever, if I do say so myself (and I do, it's my blog).

The rest falls into place, or at least seemed intuitive to me after studying this stuff for years now. The beetle has three pairs of legs or arms. The back pair just drape over, down back. The next pair, the middle, I stood straight up. It references the Egyptian bull or ram horns we often see. The front pair of arms solved two problems at once. I was pretty sure that if I included the khat, the design would be too busy or redundant. I instead laid the front arms down and in a bit, mimicking the khat and thereby eliminating it necessity.

Whew! Design done, I got down to the fun part. I used a pose from an art reference book I have. It's gone on a walkabout, but I'll post it up when I find it.

Enjoy!

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Inspiration Thursday!

Welcome back to my new and consistently updated artblog!

Today is Thursday, which means I'll be pulling something out of my magic art bag that relates to something that's been influencing me. This week it's Egypt again. In the past few months on this blog I've done a handful of Egypt works- a drawing from a photo here, a comic illustration there- but this week I'm trying something a little different.

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There's a lot of gods in the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. Many of the anthropomorphic (mixed human and animal) are known and referenced still to this day. These include Horus (half falcon), Anubis (half jackal) and Bast (half cat). The image of men and women with animal heads is very striking, still. I drew a couple of them when I did my comic on Hatchepsut a few years ago. (My favorite might've been Hathor, half woman/half cow)

Some are a little less... inspired.

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Take for example our (half) man, Kheperi. Kheperi is the god of rebirth, the sunrise and a couple other random bits. I don't think that he would have caught my eye, except for the fact that he's half Scarab Beetle. Actually no, that's not it. Let me clarify.

Scarab Beetles were sacred to the Egyptians; their young grow and then are born and emerge from a ball of dung that the scarab beetles pushes around town, and this seemed to the Egyptians to be 'rebirth' in action. That's all par for the course with Ancient Egypt.

What's interesting about Kheperi is how he was portrayed. If an Egyptian god or goddess were human, their specific attribute was held or rested on their head (see Isis or Maat) If an Egypt deity were half animal, it was the head of the animal (see my favorites Anubis and Sekmet) In my artistic opinion, the ball was dropped when they got to Kheperi. Check this out:



That's right, they just straight stood a Scarab Beetle on his neck! It's hilarious; it reminds me of the black bars that are used to protect someone's identity. I knew that there had to be a better way to approach this.

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And now we're going to continue this tomorrow. I worked out a sketch on how I thought Khepri should look, and started to work out a sketch. However, I was having too much fun with it and started to actually really draw the thing. You'll have to take my word for it right now that it's looking pretty awesome.

I'll see you back here tomorrow for part two!

Turnaround Tuesday

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!

Last week I talked about the expansion of the Green Lantern universe, and the creation of a multitude of new characters, including the one that I drew, Indigo-1. This week I'm also doing a female character who functioned as an expansion (theoretically) of a male character's corner of the universe. In this case the male character is Spider-Man, and the expansion female character?

Spider-Woman!

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There's actually been a ton of Spider-Women (women? womans? hmmm...) over the years; seriously, go make your head hurt here. The funny thing about Spider-Woman is the motivation for her creation back in the 1970's. What's that motivation you might ask? Why, one of the oldest motivators of all... Money! Indirectly, in this case, as it was actually protection of copyright. It's a funny story, and the details can be found in an installment of Comic Legends Revealed. Funny, right? Not exactly artistic inspiration!

Anyways, despite her...uninspired origin... the character has gone on to achieve a decent amount of love from both readers and creators alike. Part of it's that awesome costume. It's a great use of a spider motif without being at all a swipe of Spider-Man. She's starring monthly in The Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson. It's a good book and I recommend checking it out.

Anyways, enough jibber jabber. Here's your turnaround for the week!

Manic Monday!

It's the first time since before the holiday season that I'm starting a week off not even a day behind on my blogging.

Let's do this!

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The Simpsons ripped off by Usher and/or The Hologram Formerly Known As Will.I.Am?
Believe it!

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This weekend I finished the biography on Nefertiti that I'd been reading. It's a good read, it is after all written by Joyce Tyldesley, but it's striking how little we actually know about the long-dead Queen of Egypt. How did she die? When did she die? Was she in fact Pharaoh after her husband died? Was she an actual believer in her husband's monotheistic religion (the first in history)? All of these questions are unanswered, and there is a good chance that most of them will remain so.

In fact, it seems to me that most of what we 'believe' about Nefertiti is actually an attempted articulation of feelings we have and reactions to seeing the famous bust of Nefertiti, which was shockingly recovered from the Egyptian desert less than a hundred years ago. I say shockingly because the piece seems such an ingrained part of Art History in general and Ancient Egyptian specifically that it's strange to think of its 'modern life' being no older than that of much of Art Nouveau.

One of my favorite moments in the book is when Tyldesley quotes from another of my favorite authors, Camille Paglia, from her book Sexual Personae. It's so good I'm reprinting it in full here:

As we have it the bust of Nefertiti is artistically and ritualistically complete, exalted, harsh and alien... This is the least consoling of great art works. Its popularity is based on misunderstanding and suppression of its unique features. The proper response to the Nefertiti bust is fear.

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Veering sharply from high to low, I saw Tron: Legacy this past week. For what it is, I thought it was pretty well done. It's a big, action slick Hollywood movie. But it was done well. Plus the soundtrack by Daft Punk is awesome. I've been drawing to it for a few days now and it really builds a mood and sticks to it nicely.

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A couple weeks back I posted an Iron Man bust (there's that word again) that I did on commission. This week I've done the companion piece for it. It's Black Cat, longtime adversarial love interest of Spider-Man.

Sound familiar? Yeah, well you're right. She's a Catwoman knockoff in a lot of ways. Still a heck of a lot of fun to draw though!

Foto Friday!

Well, it's the end of the week, the fin de semana, and that means here at Pop/Life that it's time for another installment of Foto Friday!, where we do some art using reference in some way, whether that be a realistic drawing or a more graphic/comic style work using reference to guide and inform.

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I've talked a lot about this Daken drawing that I'm about to post (and I mean a lot; previous posts are found here and here) so I'm going to save a lot of the talking. I'll let the piece speak for itself. I thought it turned out rather well, and I'm officially petitioning to draw Marvel's "Daken: Sexy Son of Wolverine" starting...now!

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Inspiration Thursday!

Welcome back to my new and consistently updated artblog!

Today is Thursday, which means I'll be pulling something out of my magic art bag that relates to something that's been influencing me.

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You'd be hard pressed to find me a better singer than Aretha Franklin. It can be almost too much sometimes, the range, depth and power of her voice. It's nearly impossible to shuffle her into an iTunes playlist, because whatever pops up after her is only going to sound light and amateurish in comparison.

Ms. Franklin isn't particularly known for her photos, but I found one recently that really struck me. It's cast mainly in shadows and half her face is receding back into the darkness. It's a moody shot. I decided to have a little fun with it and try to approach it in a modified realistic fashion. I first laid down a very loose sketch of the photo and then, rather than trying to parse out the contours and shapes from the darkness, I decided to let the darkness dictate my approach.

I started just crosshatching very minutely, trying to keep a rhythm with my pencil and not erase unless necessary. I then built up the layers, using only this crosshatching and not using lines per se.

It was a fun little exercise. I might have to use it again!

The Missing Ink!

Get it, the 'missing ink'.

-ahem-

Welcome to another installment of my new and improved art blog. I'm your host Alonso Nunez. It's Wednesday and that means it's time to 'sketch' a nice bit of inking (hopefully a nice bit of inking anyways) over some pencils (usually by another artist but sometimes over my own).

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I will never, ever get tired of doing inks over Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. This week is a Superman piece by him, the other part of a page from which I got another Superman that I did about a month ago (that one can be found here). Pretty straightforward.

I do think this one turned out better than the last one. I was aiming for less; I wanted something more like an 'ink test', like the one I did a couple weeks back of John Romita Jr.'s sketch of Hellboy and Batman. There might be something in that...

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Turnaround Tuesday!

Welcome back to my new-and-improved (or at least consistently updated) artblog. It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. Last week I drew Batman; not the 'normal' Bruce Wayne, but rather his momentarily replacement, Dick Grayson. (He was the first Robin, if you didn't know) This week I'm sticking to the DC universe, but doing a character who is pretty far from iconic, at least at the moment.

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Geoff Johns, one of comics' most notable writers at the moment, has helped bring a renaissance to "Green Lantern" in the last five years. He was the mastermind behind last year's big crossover "Blackest Night", which was a lot of crazy, super-hero fun. One of the things that Johns has done during his tenure on GL has been to introduce the idea of various of colored power rings besides the green ones worn by the Green Lantern Corps and the yellow ones worn by Sinestro (and, as of recently, his own corps). We've know got red, orange, blue, indigo and violet laterns all traipsing around the universe.

Most of these 'Rainbow Lantern's' stories were told pretty completely during "Blackest Night", but Geoff Johns has left, so far at least, the Indigo Lanterns as a bit of a mystery. They are described as a tribe rather than a corps and they are powered by the emotion of compassion. (All the power rings are powered by some emotion or other) They don't ostensibly have a leader but their main representative is the enigmatic Indigo-1. She's who we're tackling today.

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I'm going to draw the turnaround and then drop some thoughts that I have, but right off the bat I can tell that this costume breaks the Ron Frenz Rule of comic costume design. You didn't know there was such a thing? Well, go read that link while I finish up this turnaround and then we'll meet back here.

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So, did ya read it? Pretty straightforward. Anyways, yeah... kinda weird costume, but I think it fits the character. The Indigos are described as a tribe, and the makeshift look of Indigo-1's costume (the tattoos, the torn elements, the bandages...) add to that and reinforce it. Speaking of the tattoos... I don't think anyone's decided where they go, and what goes where. Every book she's appeared in gives me something different! So I winged it.

The Indigo emblem on her chest doubles as a lock for the collar she's wearing, which is a nice little deviation for the Indigos. (I thought this was new, and in fact its' only been portrayed this way her last few appearances. It's a good change.) It's touches like that (and also her braids, the emblem on the head, and a few others) that made this more interesting than I figured. You get a lot of her personality from the look, and I think after this I'm going to go immerse myself in some Indigo-1 comics.

She's a fun character to draw, Ron Frenz rule be damned!

Manic Monday!

It's Manic Monday! Let's start this new year off right and talk about some random shi-.... Shut your mouth!

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We just got a new TV (yay, us!) and finding a stand for the thing is proving a bit more difficult than I'd expect. Everything's either too small, too big, or wall mounted. I don't quite know why but I've got something close to a moral opposition to wall-mounting our television. Weird.

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In ancient Egypt, women were allowed to pay taxes, own property and collect income from businesses. Just in case you wanted to know.

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I've been talking a lot about John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson individually lately, though I did make mention of the fact that Janson is one of Romita Jr.'s best inkers. They are though, for my money, one of the best penciler/ inker teams in comics ever. One of their earliest collaborations was 1991's "Hearts of Darkness". It's a fine enough story by Howard Mackie, but the art... Man! The interplay between the individual talents of Klaus and John in this book are amazing. It can be had for really really cheap and is well worth the money you'll pay.

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Our cats love to eat poinsettias. Almost as much as they love to throw up poinsettias.

It's their way of saying "Happy Holidays" I think.

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I was looking through my sketchbook for some loose ends and I realized I had a piece that was meant for one of my original 'Foto Friday's. It's of a model that I've been using for some poses for my comic work.