Blue Moon Blog

I did a couple banner illustrations for my nephew’s Scout Jamboree a couple years back. The theme that year for those Chicago troops was The Blues Brothers. These were quick and fun to do, and I’m told stood out at the event and got good reception. These were printed very large, prob ably ten feet wide or some such, and displayed up high.

It’s a cool idea, I think, to have a theme like this for the scouts, to spice up things and make it a little more fun for the kids. Or is it for the scoutmasters?!  How many kids nowadays are that ware of the Blues Brothers, even in Chicago?

I’ve read advice recently that illustrators should stick to one art style, which jibes with suggestions I received when starting out that artists working in the commercial field should specialize. Fellow artists have also shared with me stories they’ve heard the same thing, sometimes expressed adamantly. Well, then I guess I must have been doing something wrong the last twenty-three years, because I’ve followed my instinct, instead working in a variety of styles, and it seems to have worked out well enough.

Now, I understand where the advice is coming from, and know that it can work. And I can see why art reps and agents look at it this way. But I’m proof positive it’s not the only way. Of course, there are benefits or drawbacks whichever way one goes:

Disadvantages to working in many styles:

• An artist can become a jack-of-all-trades; master of none
• Art Directors will remember you less easily
• Artists can lose focus creatively and in marketing their work

Advantages to working in many styles:

• It keeps artists fresh and creatively curious
• It offers up a change of pace and keeps artists from stagnating
• Artists may discover a style or path preferable to a previous style
• Artists may snag gigs they’d not land otherwise (this has happened to me)

But after considering all, one has to find what suits them best. This is similar to my take on an artist’s temperament and preferences. Each artist must determine themselves how to achieve the balance between pure personal creativity and making a living through and with their art.

If an artist follows their own course creatively with that being the priority, income from art may never follow. If it does, that artist calls the shots, having created a market for themselves, but this situation is certainly not one that can be counted on. If an artist stresses the commercial side, they may lean too far towards marketing and lose their way, tailoring their style to what they think and agent or clients may find to be “hot.” Even if an artist happens to be successful in choosing and developing a style that earns them a living, they can get stuck with a type of work they find they’ve grown tired of, or never liked much in the first place. In developing a style, artists should make sure it’s true to themselves, first and foremost.

For my part, I enjoy working in different styles, in different industries, all while trying more to carve out my own creative paths and projects on the side, working to make those a bigger part of what I do for a living. I’ve more to say on that particular subject, but that’s a post for another day.

Work on these Bedbugs ABCs mini-books is going well. I colored a few more to show here. Up ’til this project, I’ve always drawn the ‘bugs by hand, scanning and coloring digitally. For this series, even though I sometimes do tiny roughs with a pen to serve as a guide, I’m drawing directly in Illustrator. The Bedbugs are so clean, simple and graphic, it’s easy and fast to draw them digitally. For certain elements, the brush tool is working great. I’ve always been worried I’d lose a certain expressiveness with this approach, but I may draw these guys this way from now on.

As my pal, Peter Krause has observed, the Bedbugs are “pure expression.” They’re malleable little amoeba-like smiley faces, but aren’t limited to just smiling. Changing their body shape creates unlimited opportunities to convey emotion, and their little “feelers” don’t hurt, either. What fun I’m having!

Done a couple weeks back, this art was intended for the cover of this week’s Scholastic News (4th grade edition), but was instead utilized inside for the feature due to a last-minute marketing department decision. That’s the way it goes sometimes. I can’t believe I got to draw all three candidates; I thought it’d be whittled down to just two by now!

After several years in the comic book industry (at first self publishing, then working for established publishers like DC Comics), I began looking for chances to do comics outside the comics field. With The Adventures in Odyssey Bible, I got my first opportunity. Originally published in 1994, this bible utilized characters from the popular Odyssey series from Focus on the Family, now enjoying over twenty years of audio dramas, CDs, books and cartoon DVDs.

From rough scripts provided, I adapted into comics form eight four-page color story inserts, adding dialogue where necessary, breaking down and laying out the story. Each morality tale features and takes its cue from a verse from the bible. We also provided the cover art, and forty or so black-and-white spot illustrations interspersed throughout the text of the bible.

To begin work on this project, I was provided with a couple animated videos from which to determine character likenesses. Frustratingly, I was finally given model sheets only towards the end of the project. I did small page roughs on 3 x 5 cards, going directly to pencils then in larger 10 x 15 original art, sometimes penciling, inking and lettering more than a page a day. I had to work quickly, so as to keep feeding finished pages to the agency here in Minneapolis to the young guy coloring the pages. I found the coloring of the first story to be a tad too dark, but things improved rapidly after I spent an hour with him talking about coloring in general and how color can be used to aid the storytelling.

During that session, it was the first time I saw my art blown up on a large computer screen, and I was sold. Within a year or two, we invested in a computer set-up of our own, and no longer had to farm out or sub-contract our color work. From then on, we’ve had more control over the work and schedule, and have kept more of the income in studio.

Some sample comic book pages can be viewed in our Major Works section of this site (among work from other projects, so take a gander while there). Now out of print, used copies can still be found at amazon, ebay or half.com, etc.

“With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power — and he has the profile of an eagle.” - Movie critic Pauline Kael, 1968

That’s part of what made him such an icon. His look and aura made him appear larger than life. How many others could fill those shoes, all those great icons he portrayed? But he was a very good and solid actor, too. Had to be, to pull off those big roles. And he did well more subtle roles, just watch his performance in the western, Will Penny, if you don’t believe me.

I saw on a blog last week after Heston died:

When I read “remembered chiefly for his monumental, jut-jawed portrayals of Moses, Ben-Hur and Michelangelo,” I wondered, by whom? I’m pretty old but I’ve never seen those movies. I was alive when they came out, but too young to go to movies like that, and they weren’t the kind of movies I was ever interested in over the decades I’ve spent catching up on old movies…I think most people younger than 60 remember him chiefly for “Planet of the Apes.”

Ask the man on the street to imitate Charlton Heston and I bet he’d say “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!

Well, certainly he is also remembered for Apes, but he was already quite well known by then, having won an Oscar for Ben Hur a decade earlier. I’m fifteen years younger than this blogger and grew up watching those movies when they ran on TV at least annually. My parents saw all those movies on the big screen when they were first released, and passed on to the next generation an appreciation for Heston and his peers, and for those movies from an earlier period. By the time Apes showed up, I was already a fan. It was one of the first movies I saw on the big screen (I was six), which only paved the way for me to love Chuck (please don’t call him Charlie).

A word on the art above: I initially struggled with a few pencils, overworking them and not quite grasping his likeness. Frustrated, I jumped in to ink. The brush saved me. I inked boldly and quickly and achieved the look I was after, finding more of the likeness along the way. The scanned inks were than colored in Photoshop, and I played with “chalk” brushes for the background, but am not sure if I overdid it. What do you think?

This has turned out to be a long post, so you’re probably wondering when I will make an end?

When I am finished.

More Husks. Gosh, I wonder what it is about these characters that would make me think of them on a Monday morning?

“This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.” ~ Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894

Welcome back to the blog; thanks for checking in again. We’re still plenty busy, but have posts at the ready for the coming days (I even jumped the gun with a post yesterday about baseball).

A couple years back, I did ten illustrations for Disney’s Family Fun magazine to run in their April Fools’ issue, with ideas suggested from readers of the magazine. Borrow a prank to fool a loved one today and enjoy the laughs.

I was chosen for that particular assignment as they wanted to vary the illustration styles, while still using one artist. Of course, Mary pitched in on the coloring on most. I scanned these from the printed magazine, and they still look all right. For more April Fools tricks, visit the Family Fun site.

I’ve returned to the blog a day early to ring in the opening of the new baseball season. A few teams played last night, including the Washington Nationals, who won with a walk-off homer in their new stadium .

Though I rooted for the Cincinnati Reds while growing up in Chicago, I was still a Cubs and Sox fan. And now transplanted in Minnesota, I can’t shake that Cubbie Blue; it seems to be in my blood. The Cubs debut this afternoon if the game isn’t rained out (looks bleak). If they play, though I’m working like crazy, I get to watch while I draw, one of the perks of working from the home studio!

When doing layouts for recent caricature, I began with a quick sketch on screen with the Cintiq. Though I was pleased with the likeness, I realized the ratio between the elements was off. I needed to push the envelope and exaggerate the relative proportions.

His head needed to be larger, not only for easier identification, but also to fill space. I also enlarged the clapboard, so the title for this by-line illustration could be as large as possible for readability, and popped it out beyond the border, to add depth and attract attention. This was all a snap to do digitally in Photoshop, enlarging only the head, then reducing in size the director’s chair on which he sits. I tightened the drawing throughout, drawing anew only the arms, which had to be exaggerated to make it all work.

Lastly, I needed to fill space in the lower right, so added a shark swim toy for fun, alluding (in something of a stretch) to the shark in Jaws, as this weekly feature in a local New Jersey newspaper focuses on Summer DVD recommendations. To me, Jaws, more than any other says “summer movie.”

To view the final color art, visit our Blue Moon Gallery.