New Work Published: Fresh Cut Tales by Kenneth Cain

Fresh off the digital presses comes "Fresh Cut Tales" by Kenneth W. Cain, a collection of sixteen stories (8 previously published, 8 new) of horror.  Kenneth is a Lovecraft eZine alumni and the author of a long list of dark fiction that you can find at his Amazon author's page.
Each of the stories in this collection is illustrated, and two of them are my work.  There's some other talented people in there too, but it's really my stuff you came to see, right?  Right?
Fresh Cut Tales is available at Amazon and Smashwords right now, and will shortly be available in paperback as well.  Whatever your preferred reading format, you'll find a copy to fit the bill, so head over and check it out today!

New Work Published: Lovecraft EZine #24

Up today is issue 24 of the Lovecraft Ezine, featuring an illustration of mine for the story "Less a Dream Than This We Know" by Christopher M. Cevasco.  This is a surprisingly touching semi-fictional, semi-biographical piece concerning the passing of the Elder One, H.P. Lovecraft himself, and is very much worth a read.

My illustration for this story was inspired by, and is clearly a homage to, Hannes Bok.  Bok is my favorite golden age pulp illustrator of Lovecraft's work, with his picture for "Pickman's Model" being an early iconic influence on my vision of monsters in general, and Lovecraft in particular.  With this piece, I tried to evoke his subtle stipple-tone style in a way that I felt complemented the story.

One of my favorite things about being an illustrator for Lovecraft Ezine, aside from how easy on the deadlines publisher Mike Davis can be, is the fact that I get to switch up my art style for each issue, and often get to play around in the sandboxes of some of the greats who have gone before me. 

Go check out issue 24 of the Ezine...it's free to read online, and will shortly be available for your mobile device.  Either way, it's worth a read.

Meantime, here's my photo-manipulation from issue 23's "Not With a Bang, But With Waves Whispering", featuring one of my family waiting at the shore....for the Old Ones to rise from the deep?  Ftaghn!

New Work Not Published: Tsathoggua!

Recently, one of the podcasts I enjoy, "The Double Shadow", ran a contest in which they asked listeners to submit artistic interpretations of the fictional deity Tsathoggua, created by Clark Ashton Smith.  Tsathoggua is described as: 

"He was very squat and pot-bellied, his head was more like a monstrous toad than a deity, and his whole body was covered with an imitation of short fur, giving somehow a vague sensation of both the bat and the sloth. His sleepy lids were half-lowered over his globular eyes; and the tip of a queer tongue issued from his fat mouth."

Below is my own entry for that contest, showing the frog-like on himself, squatting above a basin of Formless Spawn in his dwelling.  The rest of the entries for this contest can be seen here, but for some reason (likely just overlooked) they did not include mine in the slideshow, so I'm posting it here for your...enjoyment?

Conan the Younger

Sometimes it's fun to just mess around with your own fan art, y'know? 

Here's a piece based on one of the better scenes in the new "Conan the Barbarian" film.  I thought Leo Howard, for his limited screen time, played one of the better characters in the film.  Not that Jason Momoa's any slouch as the adult Conan, just that the first third of that film sang for me in a way the rest didn't. 

So...here's my take on young Conan, making his bones early.

Aces High!

Just for a teaser, here's a couple of preview images from the book project I've just finished. I'll give more information about it as soon as it's officially available, but for now, these will do for a taste. The images you see here will be used in a highly modified form in the finished product.

Yarrr! Up Up and Away, Matey!

A while back, I got a great deal on a copy of Drew Struzan: Oeuvre, and fell into an attention hole over his work.  I've always enjoyed his movies posters, but never really studied his work until I got this book.  Like a very few other artists I can think of -- Boris, Frazetta, Alex Ross -- I occasionally find myself lost in some small part of a Struzan painting, studying the mechanics of the piece more than the gestalt of the thing.  His composition, lighting, and use of color border on the mystical for me at this point.  There's also his storytelling, his ability to capture the essence of a film in a single image, so much so that in some cases, his posters are better than the movies themselves...it's just astounding work all around.
Shortly after finding the book, I got the opportunity to do a pinup for a book called "Sky Pirates of Valendor", and since it is a team book, I thought it would be instructive to me to try and design it Struzan-style.  I can't say it was entirely successful, but still, I think it didn't turn out too bad.  The image below is the greyscale piece I turned in for the book, since it was b&w.  However, I do have a color version of this somewhere, and I'll post it if I can ever remember where I filed it. 
They've changed publishing tactics since soliciting the piece, and have now become a webcomic, so this piece, as far as I know, never got used, which is a shame, since I would have liked to have seen how other artists interpreted the characters.  It's a pretty good comic, and I recommend you read it if you get a chance.

Madcap Update

I recently finished the art for a ten page story, "Madcap White Dancing" for the upcoming anthology, Kudzu Comics.  "Madcap..." is a semi-autobiographical / high fantasy story written by Ben Zuerlein.  The anthology is scheduled to be published soon by the Yoknapatawpha Art Council, and the art will be on display at the Powerhouse Art Gallery in Oxford, MS. 
I'd like to be able to be on hand myself, but that's a trip the budget will not support right now.  Nevertheless, if you're in the area, be sure to check out the display and feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think of the work.  Also, keep an eye on Ben's site for availability of the Kudzu anthology.  I'll make another post here when it's available, but I'm sure he'll get to it before I do.
Meantime, here's a small sample of the work I did for the story.  The final art will be colored by Victor Claudio (you can see more of the color art at his site), but this is a 1/2 page of black and white art from the finished project.  Click the image to see more detail.

They Can't All Be Zingers....

Almost finished with my current crop of deadlines; it'll soon be time for some downtime.  I think a lost weekend spent pursing the finer pleasures of scotch and Bioshock may be in order.  That is, unless something else comes along to keep me working.
Meantime, here's a sample of the stuff I'm currently working on.  This is part of a larger piece that I'm just finishing up.  This particular panel ended up not being used, not because it was particularly bad, just that it didn't match what the client was looking for in this shot.  Still, I think it's a nice perspective on the scene.  Click the image to see it in all it's black and white glory.
By the way...this is part of the piece that uses the texture I mentioned in my last post.

Want to be the one to keep me from getting any rest this month?  Use the email link to the left to contact me with an interesting project idea and a fistful of dollars, and I'll consider surrendering sleep, studio time and sundry other pleasures to your demands.

Out of the Shadows...

Here's another drawing to accompany a set of books that will be going up on Ebay this evening.  I've never really been a fan of Valentino's "Shadowhawk"; the art didn't work for me, and I find the costume design impractical and difficult to draw, especially the helmet.  Still, I like the way this one turned out.

With Friends Like These...

Here's the last of the Marshal Law drawings, and my favorite of the lot.

I'm a huge fan of Bernie Wrightson, especially his and Bruce Jones's story, "Freak Show".  I think it ranks right up with "Frankenstein" as being his best illustrated story.  Obviously, that story was very much on my mind as I did this illustration (one of the characters is actually based on Wrightson's "Jennifer" from another short story). 
I like the idea of the Marshal Law having a backup cast of freakish characters to pal around with.  I can imagine an interesting backstory for each of these.
On a side note, at least three of the characters in this drawing were based on people I knew at the time.

 Be sure to click to see the detail on this one.

Laying Down the Law

Here's two more of the Marshal Law posters I designed wayyyyy back in the 90's for the metal band of the same name in Newfoundland.  Pretty basic stuff here, mostly focused on letter design (which always has been a weak point for me).
The backstory for this character involved him being a lawman who had been lynched by outlaws, then returned from hell as a Ghost Rider-ish character to dispense justice in a bloody fashion.  Simple enough, but there's potential in there for any number of stories, and the concept was a good fit for the musical genre.  I'm sure Iron Maiden may have taken issue with this had it gone far enough, but it really wasn't intended as a ripoff of Derek Riggs's work on Eddie.  It's just that skulls and black leather are such iconic features of heavy metal music that it made sense to combine them in this way, and the name of the band suggested the form.

I've got one more piece to scan in this set.  If you like these so far, the last one should really blow your socks off!

 

He IS the Law!

Here's another blast from the past.  Back in the wild, free-rolling days of 1990, I was involved with the local music scene in St. John's, Newfoundland.  I rented an apartment with a couple of local musicians and we spent a ridiculous amount of our time either attending shows at the clubs or just hanging out with other musicians.  One of the benefits of this for me was that I occasionally got to do some design work for the bands.
Unfortunately, a lot of this work has been lost as I never bothered to keep copies of the posters I designed.  However, this one project was a favorite of mine and I still have good copies of the work I produced. 

Being a headbanger through and through, one of my favorite local bands at the time was a metal band named "Marshal Law" that did a mix of enjoyable cover tunes (from the likes of Metallica, Slayer and Megadeath) and their own, very good, original work.  (This was, by the way, completely unrelated to either the English metal band by the same name, the American country band by the same name, or the comic book by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill.)
The band never really did go anywhere, but I thought they could have if they'd bothered.  In fact, I was so taken with them, that I offered to do a series of drawings for their first CD.  I designed a (admittedly Derek Riggs inspired) character for their band, including a backstory that I was prepared to develop into a full comic book if anyone was interested in going in that direction.  Although the band liked the drawings, they broke up shortly afterwards and the work was never used.  So, technically, this is the first time some of this is seeing the light of day (although I do recall seeing a shot of the character clearly taken from my design used as tattoo in Skin & Ink magazine). 
Here are three of the ink drawings produced to pitch the character to the band.  These were not really meant to be finished pieces, but rather to serve as the basis for paintings for the CD.  I've got a few more that I'll post another time as they're scanned.  Enjoy!

07-01-09 is a PRIME Number!

July 1st marks more than Canada Day this year. It also marks the release of "Prime", the new book by Stoker award nominated author Nate Kenyon. What makes this a landmark day for me is the fact that "Prime" is illustrated by none other than yours truly.

This short novel contains four black and white illustrations produced specially for this first edition from Apex (Note: The cover's not mine, but rather the work of the clearly talented Katja Faith). I'm not just blowing smoke when I say I had a great time creating them; this book was as enjoyable to read as it was to illustrate, and that always helps fire the imagination.

"Prime" is a dark science fiction story with ideas that recall some of the better urban science fiction novels, such as Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", William Gibson's cyberpunk novels, and Neal Stephenson's "Snowcrash". It's a futuristic murder mystery that skilfully avoids most of the cliches of other genre-crossing detective fiction to take an insightful look at where our use of technology may be headed and consider some of the unexpected consequences that may be the result. It is satisfying both in terms of entertainment and intelligence and although it is a relatively quick read, it is definitely time well spent.

As for the quality of the illustrations, I'll let you judge for yourself. Below is one of the four pages produced for this book. (Quick side note: I had originally intended to upload a color version of this page, but either Windows Vista or The Gimp lost its mind while I was saving, and dumped all of my color work. I'll update with a color version as soon as I can).

Be sure to check out "Prime" at Apex Books website. It's available to order now for $13.95 US, and even if you're not a fan of my work, I think you'll find that it will be money well spent.

Local Hero

Here's a piece I did a few years ago as an entry for an SPX collection. For reasons unknown, but probably having something to do with image quality, it didn't make it in. Nevertheless, it's a piece I enjoyed working on, not least of all because it pays tribute to the owner of the best comic shop I have ever set foot in, Strange Adventures. I've frequented the place for about ten years now, and it remains one of the coolest, most interesting shops I've ever seen.
The pages from the story, "Local Hero" are below, but if you'd prefer, I've also created a .cbz file for reading with CDisplay or your favorite comic reader. Get it here. Enjoy.

Cherchez la Femme!

Here's a sketch I did a long time ago. I titled this one "French Class" because it was done in a university French class. I'm an inveterate doodler, and seem to pay better attention to a speaker when my hands are busy with pen and paper. So if you're ever talking to me and think I'm not paying attention because I'm drawing, relax...it probably means I'm deeply focussed on what you're saying!

Return of the Zinja!

Today I'm digging deep into my filing cabinet to bring you some of the oldest artwork of mine that I still own, and one of my first true comic book attempts.
Back sometime in the 1980's, when I was still in high school and living in a small fishing community on the arse end of nowhere, two of the things that kept me within some reasonable bound of sanity were books and comics. I was literally addicted to both, consuming them as fast as I could get my hands on them.
For a brief while at age 15, I studied kung fu with a local instructor, and developed as well a strong fascination with all aspects of martial arts, including Eastern philosophies. For a time, my reading was dedicated to this kind of subject matter, and I discovered many good books and ideas as a result.
One of the books that stood out at the time was "Shike" by Robert Shea (perhaps better known as the co-author of the Illuminatus series with Robert Anton Wilson). In two hefty volumes, this was the story of the "Zinja", a group of Japanese warriors somewhere between ninja and Shaolin monks, and of the Mongol boy Jebu who was raised among them.
Shike stood out for me not only because it played into my fascination for martial arts, but also because it contained elements of high fantasy that engaged my imagination, and more importantly, it was a very well written story. In the years since I left that small community, I have acquired and disposed of thousands of books. Outliving all of them, my first paperbacks of "Shike" still sit amongst the 100 or so books that are displayed on my shelves right now. It's been a while since I read them, but I know that if I were to sit down with them again, I'd find them just as engaging and enjoyable.
At one point just before I left high school, I attempted a comics adaptation of "Shike", partly for the exercise of it, and partly because I considered that if I did a good job, maybe I could use it as a portfolio for approaching the big publishers. For reasons that will shortly become evident, my attempt languished in a drawer for the past 20 years.
However, yesterday, "Shike" was brought to mind once again, thanks to that repository of wonderful things, BoingBoing. In one post yesterday, it was announced that Michael Shea, the son of late author Robert Shea (who died of colon cancer in March, 1994), has made "Shike" available to the internet under a Creative Commons licence. This means it's now free to read, copy and distribute. Michael Shea is doing this in hopes of reviving awareness of his father's work, and his generosity is your gain. If you would like to read "Shike" for yourself...and I heartily recommend that you do...the full text can be found at bobshea.net (direct link to the text here). If you do enjoy it, and I think many people will, do yourself a favor and go find some of Robert Shea's other work. I have to be honest and say that I have not read any of his other novels yet, but I will definitely make a point of doing so soon.
Upon learning of this, I emailed Mike and asked if he would have any objection to my posting some of the pages from my early attempt at adapting this story to comics. He happily agreed, and you'll see the result here.
I'll warn you...these pages are very rough. They're the very definition of "warts and all". They're pencil only, as I didn't have access to proper inks at the time, and done on bond paper...which makes it a miracle that they survived at all. What's more, they're not terribly original. Much of the artwork was shamelessly lifted line for line from issues of "Masters of Kung Fu" and "Savage Sword of Conan". So if you think you recognize something by Paul Gulacy, Mike Zeck or Gary Kwapisz, it' because you do.
What it does have going for it is that it is sincere. It was a labor of love at the time to put this together, and I think for all its flaws, it's a pretty good adaptation (if you don't count the lettering...I still can't do hand lettering to save my life). Also, it taught me a lot about the process of putting together a comic book, lessons that are invaluable even now.
Every now and then I think that I'd like to take another crack at this, but so far time has not allowed. Maybe one of these days, I'll get around to it. In the meantime, here's a blast from the past for your amusement. What you have here is the first 1 1/2 chapters of the novel, up to what I thought made a logical breakpoint. For some reason, for chapter two of the comic, I made a jump to chapter 18 of the story. Those pages are not here, but if you would like to see them, I am including a link to a cbz file containing all 16 pages I've drawn. This is perfect for reading in cdisplay or your favorite comic book reader, of you can unzip it and view the images individually.
Enjoy!

Memories of Fleetcon

In 2004, I attended a local science fiction/fantasy/comic book convention called Fleetcon. I've done a couple of these and always had a fun time doing sketches for convention goers and generally showing off about art and comics in general. Unfortunately, when I gave up doing Simon Pariah on a regular basis, I also gave up attending Fleetcon, and I don't think these conventions are still held. Every now and the, I miss it. Like this afternoon, when I thought about the piece I did for auction at the 2004 convention. The original was bought by the owner of Strange Adventures comic shop in Halifax, and my scan of the piece has been missing until now. I had run the drawing on my webcomic site for a short time, but took it down shortly afterwards, and couldn't find my saved file. Now, thanks to the power of the Internet Archive, I've recovered the drawing to share with readers.
This was a large piece, 20" x 30" on illustration board. The characters depicted are heroes of the DC Universe past and present, some of whom have not really been seen in stories in the past 50 years. If you think you've got what it takes, try to name them all...I guarantee you'll miss at least one.

Image is Everything!

Back in the early days of Image Comics, some of the creators ran "fan art" pages in the back of their books. Readers were encouraged to send in their renditions of characters, with the best ones being picked to be printed. As this was in the prehistoric times before email was common, this naturally had to be done via snail mail. Being an ardent buyer of Image at the time, I produced a couple of drawings, but by the time they got where they were going, the books had stopped running those features. Nevertheless, I think the drawings were pretty good, and still hold up now. Here, then, is my take on a couple of favorite Image characters.

First up, Spawn himself. Arguably the most successful Image creation, and certainly Todd McFarlane's best work (while he was still doing it all himself). Spun off to a movie, cartoons and no end of merchandise, the character is proof of the potential that lies in comic books, if there's a good business mind behind the pencils.

Next, naturally, there's Spawn's nemesis, Violator, in Danny DeVito evil clown mode. This guy is just pure fun to draw, as he's somewhere between a leering gargoyle and a bigfoot cartoon. To this day, I have no idea why someone thought John Leguizamo was a good choice to play the character in the movie. Anyone care to enlighten me?



Finally, a couple of WildC.A.T.S. characters, Warblade and Voodoo. This is a series that has been brought to life by some of my favorite creators...creator Jim Lee, artist extraordinaire Travis Charest and so-brillint-I'm-conviced-his-head-is-full-of-stars writer Alan Moore. The 'Cats was the Image series I kept reading long after I had quit all the rest. While it has not reached the marketing potential of Spawn, it seems to have held to a more consistent vision, making it more of an artistic triumph...well, as artistic as you can get with a group of "underwear perverts", anyway.
Here, Warblade rebuts the possibility that his morphing metal claws bear any resemblance to a certain adamantium-laced X-Man:


Maybe one of these days, I'll be fortunate enough to have a book picked up by Image. It would be a fanboy's dream come true to be counted among such a talented group. Meantime, I'm content to mess around in their sandboxes when time allows.

Comic Book Follies

Update: Just for fun, I've published this book on Scribd. Now you can download the issue in pdf format from this page.

OK, to make up for my tardiness last week, I've got a full comic book for you this week.
Back in the mid-90's, I developed a character named DeathMask that I fully intended to turn into a limited series of comic books. At the time, in the wake of the launch of Image Comics, there was a glut of characters named "Death--" this and "Blood--" that, but this was meant to be a bit different from the rest. The catch to this character was that he wasn't a superhero, nor even an antihero, but a flat out serial killer who chose the concept of the superhero as a stage and rationale for his behaviour, sort of an ironic counterpoint to the trend that comics was taking at that time.
The concept was born in, of all places, an anthropology class at University. The course was on war, genocide and violent behaviour, and was taught by Elliot Leyton, who remains one of favorite teachers and authors. Dr. Leyton is a world-renowned criminal profiler who has had a huge influence on the way we perceive serial and mass murderers. As part of the course, he taught his book "Hunting Humans" and the excellent "Aesthetics of Murder" by Joel Black. Studying these texts got me to thinking about the possibility of a serial murderer who acted out his fantasies using comic books as his template, and DeathMask was the result.
Despite its apparently simple beginning, seen below, if developed the book would have gone on to explore Dr. Leyton's theories of the formation of the serial murderer's psychology, as well as the cultural impact of violent comics books and other media, and would have attempted to depict a realistic view of this deviant behavior as opposed to the glorified villains seen in films such as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Halloween" (fun they may be...accurate they are not).
I was pretty determined to make this book happen, and ended up submitting it to several publishers, all of whom rushed forward to roundly reject me. I think my biggest mistake was submitting it to Fantagraphics, thinking they might catch up on the literary aspect of it, only to have Gary Groth suggest to me that I might want to actually read a few of their books before submitting to them again. My greatest hope was for Caliber Press, but unfortunately, they folded up soon after I sent this.
Looking back at it now, I can see how amateurish the art was. I haven't exactly taken comics by storm since then, but I can see that I have learned a few things that I should have known before attempting a project of this scale. Even so, the story is still dear to me, and the book remains one of my favorite projects. In addition to this first issue, I've done two ashcan prequels, several pages of book two, and a ton of concept sketches. Maybe one day if I can ever drum up interest, I'll try tackling this again from a more mature point of view. Until then, here's the complete first issue for you to enjoy.