Category: Commissions

I’ve been working on concepts and layouts for a few commissions simultaneously leaving me with very little to show here as far as finished drawings go. I can, however, tell you about my progress or lack thereof. The process usually starts with going through Google images, collecting relevant pictures for reference and doing a layout.

So…

Commission #1: 6 reference pics, 1 layout completed, started rough penciling, on hold until further notice.

Commission #2: 18 reference pics, waiting for response on size and pricing.

Commission #3: 121 reference pics, 1 layout submitted, 2 additional rough layouts that I’m not sure work.

Commission #4: 93 reference pics, 7 layouts submitted, waiting for final approval.

Commission #5: 2 reference pics, 2 layouts for sketch covers to be done in ‘Frisco.

Commission #6: 7 reference pics, 1 layout to be finished and submitted.

Commission #7: 11 reference pics, 2 very rough layouts.

Commission #8: 266 reference pics (so far), 3 sample pages submitted. This is for a Grant Morrison story to be printed in Heavy Metal magazine in October. Still a little unclear as to how many pages will be in that issue. I will have to delay some, if not all, of the above commissions to complete this one on time. Stay tuned.

After I finish all of these, I still have 10 other commissions on the list.  That should take me up to Christmas. (AAARRGH!!! I said the ‘C’ word!)

In the meantime, here’s a little thing I did a while ago: I stitched together the tracking shot from Cerebus 249. The images appeared as individual panels over the course of several pages:

This should open in a new window and you can scroll across:

After a transition, the tracking shot continues:

Okay, back to the old drawing board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to do some of the smaller commissions before moving on to some larger projects.

Here are two with a similar theme, they’re both Buddhist statues…

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…and Steven had Don Rosa do a Scrooge McDuck…

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… to which I added this background…

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…okay… what’s next?

(Besides weddings and funerals and an ailing parent with doctor appointments…

…don’t these people know how short boating season is around here?

I respectfully request that no one I know die, get married or get sick until until the end of September, thank you.)

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I was commissioned draw the Regency… again.

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I didn’t want to just redraw it so I thought I could depict the BACK of the Regency and the gardens.

I flipped the image of my last rendering horizontally and did a quick mock-up of how it might look complete with Cerebus and the Regency Elf heading out to play wickets:

This seemed like it could work.

So I penciled a layout for the back of the building:

 …then tight penciled the whole thing…

…filled in the solid blacks…

…and started crosshatching…

…and crosshatching…

…and crosshatching…

…and then filled in all the window frames and the foreground…

…ta da!

I’ll be making prints of this one soon, if anyone’s interested.

Another “Scenes From Cerebus” commissioned by Dean; he also brought us the High Society cover recreation of the Regency; the Church & State courtyard & cannons scene; and the Melmoth street.

Here is six-minute time-lapse video

(click on the lower right corner for full screen, hit escape a couple of times to get back)

with music by Michel Camilo (used without permission):

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…and the final result

(click on image for larger version in a new window):

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Soon to be available as a print in My Store.

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Back in November (I’m still trying to get caught up), Brian contacted me with this idea:

“I am thinking of a somewhat subtle homage to honor courage in the face of the recent events in Paris.
So I see a street scene with an outdoor cafe, in the late, late afternoon, done in color. The place is one of the sites that was attacked, but you would have to be in-the-know to know this. The cafe is off to the right, taking up about half of the background, with the rest of the street to the side, and the cafe sits on a corner, so you see the backdrop of the intersecting street in the background.
A gay male couple are there, they have just walked from behind the point of the viewer, past an outdoor table, and so they are hand in hand with their backs towards us, walking away.
But, the table was occupied by a rather unique individual, and just a few heartbeats after they walk past the table, they both turn towards one another and both are looking back at the person, caught at the moment of “nahhh… couldn’t be, could it?”
The person at the table is Oscar Wilde, who, after his incarceration for homosexual crimes in London, had indeed moved to Paris. He is dressed in classic Wilde garb and sitting with his chin resting on his hand as he was often depicted. A cup of coffee and a newspaper on the table.
The caption below the drawing, in a classic handwritten-diary style, is one of Wilde’s sayings. I could see any of these working well, but I kind of like the last one best:

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.’
or
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
or
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
or
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”

Okay… Brian’s nothing if not precise.

I came up with this sketch:

I mentioned to Brian that, ‘it occurred to me while drawing this to make the background people…well…dead or ghostly.. or subtlety mutilated…or full-on Walking Dead zombie gross… but in a tasteful, subtle way that you don’t notice at first… but I think something along those lines would give more relevance to the last quote.’

He really liked the idea and this is how it turned out:

…and here is Brian’s title and write-up:

1900 Paris 2015

The hotel where Oscar Wilde lived (and died) in Paris,in 1900, with its Ram’s head over the entrance,is located about 3 Km from this Carillon Cafe,where some of the 2015 bombings took place.

This composition is meant to evoke a parallelism between the past ideological war on homosexuality, which was widespread in 1900, and the violence inflicted on others (Wilde is a patron-warrior; we see progress in that conflict over the past few years, as the couple walk openly), with the current ideological wars currently underway that result in other violence inflicted on other patron-warriors (our friends at the cafe die with a more equal opportunity victimization and in a way that is much less self-conscious than Wilde’s).
And yet, still, all of these wars rage on. There are still plenty of circles (“here” and “there”) where the open couple is seen as a flagrant offense against God and Nature, and merely one more mere representation and reason given for a more wholesale violence against Western and/or progressive values that are perceived as threats against some existing ideologies.
The two men are intentionally racially ambiguous.

Quite a bit of a change from, “can you draw me a sketch of a boxing cow?”

 The variety of subjects people ask me to draw is always a surprise to me.

Especially when you see a bunch of them together like this:

This is what I originally thought of when asked to draw a boxing cow:

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