Memory lane PT 2

Ok, let's continue our stroll...

Did this back when Tupac had died and everyone was coming out with album after album of his unreleased stuff. I showed this piece at a High School for at risk youth I used to teach at and some of the boys thought I was making fun of their idol and wanted to jump me. Good thing I have nerves of steel ;)



This is one of my favorites. I got the texture by pouring salt over the still wet colored inks I was using.



This was stolen and used on the cover of a limited release Redman mix CD thing. I even saw a picture of Redman holding one he had signed. They altered it a little and made it look intensely stupid.



When I was still doing advertising work for the Sixers I always had to draw a kindler, gentler Iverson. They never wanted tatoos on him or anything. So, I ended up doing one for my self with the tats to put in my portfolio.


That's all for now.

mike

Memory lane PT 1

I've been working on Hysteria and thinking about when I got started in comics, around 1999. Before I was in comics full time, I did mostly illustration work for magazines and advertising. Thought I'd share some of my old portfolio pieces from that. These are all date from 1999 to about 2001 or so.

McCain. This was from when I was trying to get into political illustration. Eventually got myself an offer to do a political cartoon about PA politics for a Philly paper, but the pay was poor and I was too busy to take on more work for less pay


Paint this caricature of Gore after his switcheroo performances during the presidential debates.


Did this after a story years ago about how fat our kids were getting here in the US. This was promptly stolen and used by a news paper in Arizona. YAY, Arizona!

Did this around the time I was trying to get into political satirical / editorial illustrations.

Years ago I was doing advertising art for this celebrity basketball game. AND1 had this team they would send out to play at events like this. Kinda like the Harlem Globetrotters only they actually played to win and had almost no charm. Two of the guys slammed at once during the game, and broke the glass. Crazy ass thing to see in real life. Anyway, this was going to the the cover to a CD for the event, but it never worked out.


That's it for now. I'll post more later this week.

Mike

Portraits and Color

My last blog post had a couple of paintings I had done in college. They got me thinking about how I've essentially stopped painted after I graduated and have focused almost exclusively on illustrations. I don't have many paintings from those days, most of which I just abandoned or trashed, so I can't look back too much and examine what I was doing. I did find an old study I did of a room mate I had while in college. This was done on a small (about 8.5" x 11") piece of masonite, as was just a study for a larger painting I never got to finish. It's interesting to look at and wonder at what I'd have done had I gone to the actual painting. I loved pushing paint around on a surface, making it describe forms, and I can see that joy in this small piece really clearly. Takes me back...


Then, an old filmaker/photographer friend of mine came to visit from NY and we talked all night about projects we're both working on and ones we WISH we were working on. One of the subjects we touched on was how I need a headshot for the back of all those fancy pants books I make. The idea of posing for them makes me uncomfortable,...just makes me feel fucking vain and dirty. After he rolled back to NY, I began thinking about how much of my painting career was focused on portraits and how I did many self portraits during that time.

That made me starting thinking of my work now, and how most of it is in black and white. I think black and white works a different part of my brain then color work, but it still feels like I can push ink around like I used to push paint. I did this little ink study between pages.I'd like to get to work with more color this year, and that reminded me of this short style test I did a few months back. I wanted to see if I could do a fully fleshed image in under a half hour using rough inking and computer color. Not perfect, there are PLENTY of drawing and color problems with this, but it was an interesting exercise.

Think I got this done in under 20 minutes, not including scanning.

Anyway, no more rambling. Back to he grind.
Mike