Flame Brushes

I hate painting flames.  Trying to get the look just right is always a pain for me.  That's why I like finding something like this set of flame brushes from DeviantArt user redheadstock.  This will save me a ton of time on the piece I'm currently trying to finish.

Flattry Will Get You Everywhere!

Micropayment service "Flattr" has just opened up to public use, and being a fan of all things micropayment, I thought I'd give it a try.
Flatter is a service that allows you to deposit a sum of money to a Paypal style account, then specify any number of sites to whom that money should be distributed at the end of the month.  The amount you have specified to be disbursed will then be shared equally among the people you have "Flattred". 
It's somewhat abstract for now, but I think it's an interesting idea, so I've added a Flattr button in the sidebar at the left.  If you're a member, just click the button to add me to your Flattr list and a few shekels will be distributed to me each month, allowing me to keep producing the drawings that keep this site moving, and bringing me small steps closer to my dream of eventual financial liberation, shortly followed by complete hermitage in a tin roofed shack hidden deep in the wilds of Nova Scotia. 
If you're not a Flattr member, but produce any kind of web content, why not sign up?  Anything that can monetize creative work is good in my opnion, and it could start you working on your own tin roofed shack.  Just not too close to mine, or I'll have to sic the dogs on ye.

Powers vs. Power V. 2 Now Available

Waiting for a Watchmen sequel that's likely never going to happen?  Read every issue of Astro City and wondering where to go next?  Let me suggest you try "Powers vs. Power" by Robin Reed.
The second volume of this series has just been released in various ebook formats, with my own work gracing the cover.  Each book is a collection of short stories based on a group of original superheroes created by Robin for Metahuman Press.  I enjoyed the first volume very much and am pleased to say that the second volume, so far, is maintaining the same level of quality.
Writing prose about superheroes can be a difficult task because the visual aspect on which the medium of comics depends is missing.  "Biff!" and "Pow" don't parse the same in a non-graphic form.  This means that the stories, if they're not to be entirely juvenile, have to be a lot more character driven.  The problem is then to avoid the pitfall of turning the work into fanfic, making the characters cheap pastiches of existing heroes or winding up hip deep in long descriptions of powers and physiques.  Robin manages to avoid these dangers quite nicely and has created a cast with a fair amount of depth and personality.  Yet, the work does not cross over much into Alan Moore territory, in the sense that this is not a deconstruction of the genre.  Superheroes in this world are a good thing, and there's a good sense of fun and wonder in these stories as well.  I think these books will be enjoyed by anyone who actually likes superheroes.
Powers Vs. Power Book 2 is available in Kindle format from Amazon at the low price of $2.99, and in various ebook formats from Smashwords for just 99 cents.  If you're fan of the genre, or of good storytelling in general, I really do recommend it.

There's Banditry Afoot!

In his latest "Rothland Tribune", Ian McDonald has spilled the beans that we're working on a print on demand edition of "Bruno the Bandit", so I might as well add some fuel to that fire. 
We are indeed going ahead with a POD version of Bruno, but that's not going to be the limit of it, by a long shot.  The plan is to get the work out into circulation through a variety of means.  This includes print on demand, but also includes digital distribution.  Digital comics seem to be growing in popularity, especially now that the big two have embraced the format.  I hope that between POD and digital distribution, we can do something to really bring attention to Ian's work.
And may I say I think we're off to a great start.  I'm in the middle of compiling the first book, and it's jam packed with Ian's earliest and some of his best storylines.  We're going to be including original and never before seen content, and to top it all off, we've got a cover drawn by a guest artist that I won't name yet, but will say that Ian and I are picking our jaws off the floor after being able to get this guy to create some work for us.  And there may be more surprises to come....

But I'm not going to go on too much about that here.  This is meant to be my online portfolio, and I don't want to cross it over too much with that project.  If this works out, I am hoping to expand this project to take in other work, not least of all my own long dormant comic book, "The Journals of Simon Pariah".  So, I'll soon be starting a new blog dedicated to news related solely to that project.  I'll post more about it here when it's available, which will be soon.

In the meantime, if you haven't read "Bruno the Bandit", now's an excellent time to go check it out.  Ian's put the strip on hold for a while (but it's clearly not dead), so now would be a good opportunity to catch up on his extensive back catalog and see what all the hoopla is (and will be) about.

Sky Club Review at Virtuosity

There's a very nice review of "Sky Club" over at Virtuosity today.  The art only gets one sentence, but what a sentence it is!
All in all, it seems like people are enjoying the CD; it makes me very happy to have been a part of it.

Sky Club on Delicious Agony

Over at one of my favorite prog rock internet radio stations, Delicious Agony, there's a great interview with Mack Maloney about "Sky Club".  I like the comparison of the album to a "Desert Island Discs" compilation.  It makes me wonder what my own desert island disc would contain. 
They get down to discussing the art and the booklet around 14:30 if you want to jump ahead.  The interviewer sounds very positive about it, and I'm also pleased to see that the Amazon reviews of the CD are also saying good things about the art.  I haven't heard anything from or about the other artist for the booklet, but any praise for the visuals goes out to him as much as me. 
You can hear the interview by clicking the "Interviews" link at the left side of Delicious Agony's page, or you can click here to stream the interview directly in your media player.

It's Supersnipe!

My favorite comic shop, Strange Adventures, recently opened a new shop in Dartmouth.  Not only did I visit their grand opening to grab some nifty signed and sketched books by the likes of Faith Erin Hicks and Mark Oakley, but I also took the opportunity to enter their coloring contest for a bit of fun and the chance to win a big ol' gift certificate with which to stock my library.  Line art for the coloring contest was created by Dave Howlett, who's designed some really rocking work for the shop over the years.

I'm happy to say that I was one of the winners at the professional level of that contest, meaning I'll shortly be acquiring all kinds of cool goodies to fill my reading list for the summer.  Somehow I found the time to create two entries for the contest.  The first was bit of traditional digital coloring, like so:

The inspiration and palette for this rendition was inspired by the covers of the classic Marvel giant monster comic "Where Monsters Dwell", #25.

However, as I was rendering the piece, it put me more and more in mind of a piece I had seen by Alex Ross, created for the series "Marvels":

Ross's work fascinates me, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to see if I could do anything in his style.  I took the piece I had rendered earlier and went at it from a different angle, starting off with a more painterly approach in Artweaver.

As you can see from this, I replaced the background in the original with a more photographic layer with a couple of filters aplied to it, then turned the lineart layer of the original piece into an underpainting by doing a burnt sienna color hold on it.  From there I started painting in new layers over the underpainting.

And it was right about there that Artweaver and I parted ways.  I'm sure there are some people out there who swear by Artweaver.  At first glance, it does look like a fun program to mess around with, and has the potential for a lot of nice artistic effect.  However, on my system, I found it nothing but buggy and troublesome.  To begin with, the interface is not nearly as intuitive as it should be.  I've used a lot of art programs -- Photoshop, Gimp, MS Paint, Project Dogwaffle, and many more -- but almost none of them have been as difficult to decipher as Artweaver.  Simple things like layer opacity, brush size and dynamics seem to be present, but fine tuning them is more complicated than it should be.  I'm prepared to admit that this may be a subjective thing, but then I'm hardly inexperienced with this stuff.

A more serious problem for me was the floating toolbars.  I multitask; it's inevitable for me.  As a result, I find myself using alt-tab switching on Windows quite a bit.  Doing this while using Artweaver caused the floating toolbars to either stay on top of the other windows I had switched to, or disappear completely, forcing me to restart the program to get them back.  Either way, this was an unacceptable behavior from the program, as it greatly interefered with the work in progress.  I might try the program again if this behavior gets fixed, but for now, I'll give it a pass.

So, I took the piece to my old standby, Gimp.   The Gimp has long been one of my favorite art programs; it's interface is much more natural for me, and I like its brush controls and customizable keyboard shortcuts much more than even Photoshop.  In fact, if it were not for the fact that I need to use CMYK for finished work, I would probably never use Photoshop at all.  For example, the digital paintings I recently created for the SkyClub CD were all rendered in The Gimp, and mostly just converted to CMYK for printing in Photoshop. 
The end result was the piece below.  While this was the puppy that won the blue ribbon for me, I can't say I'm entirely happy with it.  It's not bad, but it just didn't go where I wanted it to.  I think part of the problem is that I was not bold enough with the color.  Alex Ross is one of the few painters I've seen who's not afraid to paint with black.  In fact, he uses it quite liberally in his work.  When I studied art, I was told never to paint with true black and have tried to avoid it over the years.  Perhaps it is because his work is almost exclusively comic related that Ross is able to get away with breaking this "rule". 
In any case, I wanted to keep the tone of this piece light, considering the purpose and setting of the piece, so I avoided using any black or truly dark colors.  I think this took away some of the depth of the piece, so that it comes off looking kind of flat.  Also, while I avoided gradient fills wherever possible, I think the brush selection I used still makes the piece look very processed.  Like I said, it's not bad (heck, good enough to snag me a prize), but it's just not what I set out to accomplish.  Still, it was fun to work on and a real learning experience.

There were some other very nice contributions to the contest, at all skill levels.  You can see the other winners here.  It's nice to see such a selection of talent offering different interpretations of the same piece, and great fun to be able to be part of it all.

Dimension of Pain

Here's a piece I recently completed for Pete Abrams of "Sluggy Freelance".  A couple of years back, Pete ran a Saturday strip called "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain" written by him and drawn by Ian "Bruno the Bandit" McDonald.  I had great fun coloring up a bunch of these strips for them, and now that he's gathering the Dimension of Pain material for inclusion in the tenth Sluggy collection, he needed this last page colored, so I volunteered once again.  It was an interesting exercise, as I had to deliberately dumb down my current coloring style a bit to match the style I was using at the time.  Still, I think the end result looks OK, and it's consistent with the other pages.  Be sure to check out Sluggy Freelance, one of the best and longest running webcomics, and pick up Volume 10 if you'd like to read more of "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain."

Sky Club Winner

Congratulations to the winner of the Sky Club CD, Lisa of Actorz Inc.  Thanks, Lisa...I hope you enjoy the music; I think it's pretty darn good.  Thanks to all those who entered; I hope more of you decide to check out this project for yourself.  They're a pretty talented bunch of musicians and well worth a listen.

Road to R'yleh

Anyone who's read past posts or knows my reading habits knows that I'm a Lovecraft junkie.  I like a good mythos tale, whether penned by the man from Providence himself, or by one of his many worthy successors.  A good portion of my personal library of comics, books and movies is dedicated to adaptations of Lovecraft's work or works set in and around the universe he created. 
Unfortunately, really good Lovecraftian fiction on the net seems to be hard to find.  Not that there's not plenty out there, but when stacked up against mainstream writers like King, Lumley and Alan Moore, the quality's just not there.  That's why, when I find a source of mythos fiction that's worthwhile, I cherish it for the enjoyment I know it will bring me.
One of the few of these, probably the most active one at the moment, is Innsmouth Free Press.  Aside from an interesting (if somewhat too TV oriented) blog that sometimes presents itself as if it were actually reporting events in an around Arkham (a neat literary device), the owners of this site also publish a magazine of mythos fiction that's professional in both the quality of the publication itself as well as in terms of the fiction it contains.  Although the magazine itself is free, IFP is actually a paying market for writers, meaning that they are getting work that is well above the average pastiche. 
Their latest issue has just been made available for free download, and along with it, they are doing their first fundraiser.  Their goal is to raise $1500 in June to pay for production costs of their website and magazine.  I've just made a small donation, and I'd like to suggest to any readers who might be interested in quality Lovecraftian fiction or just quality fiction in general to check out their magazine and, if possible, hit up their Donate button and throw a couple of dollars their way.  It's up to us to make sure that good markets like this not only do not disappear, but continue to grow and improve. Click the banner below to visit their site and see what they're all about.

SkyClub CD Update and a Contest!

My copies of the SkyClub CD arrived in the mail today.  It's a great thrill to have my work displayed for the first time in such a format, and by all reports, the response so far has been a good one.  I always like it when I can realize another writer's vision, and it's great to know that my work is being used to help bring to life the creative talents of Mack Maloney and company. 

Of course, to be fair, I'm not the only artist on this one; there's also several images by an artist named Sherp (http://soussherpa.tripod.com); you can see some of his work at his site.  Still, I managed to present the lion's share of the work for this one, including the images used for the CD website and the cover for the CD.

The CD is available to buy right now off Amazon, or you can purchase it direct from Voiceprint Records at the link above.  You can also preview some music from the CD at that site.  Meantime, I've got one copy of the CD to give away to a lucky reader who sends me an email with "Skyclub CD" as the subject (my email address is in the links to the left).  If your name is drawn, I will contact you to get a mailing address.  Contest closes 31 May, 2010.  No information will be harvested, sold, stored or made fun of behind the school at recess time.  Good luck!

Meantime, here's another sample of the images from the CD, just to whet your appetite a bit....

If you get a chance to listen to the CD and check out all the artwork, I've enjoy reading your opinion on the whole thing.  Drop me a line!

Who's Killing All the World's Awesome?

OK, I don't want this blog to start looking like an obit column, but I've just got to comment on this.  It's starting to look like someone's draining all the awesome out of the world.  Just last Monday, I found out about Frank Frazetta, now I start this week by reading that Ronnie James Dio has died?  C'mon, guys, whattaya doing to me?!
Dio blew my mind with "Rainbow in the Dark", and I think I played the sides off my copy of "Holy Diver"; it's still a fixture in my playlist after more than 20 years.  Then I discovered Rainbow, and tracks like "Man on the Silver Mountain" and "Kill the King" became burned into my mind.  Seriously, I can still (badly) sing along with all of those songs.  Then I heard "Live Evil", then "Last in Line", then "Intermission"....and on, and on.....
You know, now that I think about it, Dio was really part of my pantheon of music for a long time, right up there with Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson and a select few others.  I've done drawings and paintings based on his work, and it was always required listening in my studio when working on a piece.  I remember rocking out to one of his live videos with some good friends in those post-teenage years that I go back to in my memory when I'm feeling nostalgic. 
Fortunately, I'm not alone in this.  I think Dio carved a place in the collective memory of a couple of generations.  So, time to queue up some "Holy Diver", throw a devil horn salute to the sky, and rock out for a while.

Ronnie James Dio: An Appreciation | EW.com

"If you suddenly see

What has happened to me

You should spread the word around



And tell everyone here

That it's perfectly clear

They can sail above it all on what they've found

It cries for you

It's the best that you can do

Like a sound that's everywhere

I can hear it screaming through the air


Long live rock and roll"

ronnie james dio, holy diver

The Grey God Passes...

Pause for a moment and recognize that the best fantasy artist of the 20th Century has left the party today; Frank Frazetta is dead.

I've mentioned before how I'm saddened by the passing of a great artist because I know that now I'll never get a chance to meet them.  There is no other person alive of whom this is more true for me than Frank Frazetta.  My earliest fascination with the work of Robert E. Howard came from reading the books for which Frazetta did the covers.  My earliest obsession with fantasy art came from a collection of Frazetta's work.  I cannot count the hours I've spent copying his paintings, reading his comics, cherishing every page of every collection of his art that I've found.  Even now, more than a quarter of a decade after I first discovered his work, I still sometimes pick up a volume of his work and find myself lost for an uncounted time in contemplation of the power, the energy and the mastery of his work.

Frank Frazetta was one of the primary inspirations behind any attempt on my part to ever become an artist, but he was also an inspiration to the way I live.  In photographs of the artist I've seen, he has always appeared as a fit man who could easily be the model for any of the heroes he so often painted, but more importantly, he was always smiling.  No matter how he was photographed, he always appeared to me to be having just the best time in the world, and I always equated that with him knowing --as surely, he HAD to know -- that he was the absolute best in the world at what he did.  That impression gave me the idea early on that true happiness and satisfaction could be found through pursuing work that one loved, an idea that I live by now and try to teach to my children.
More than an enjoyment of his technique, I took from Frazetta's work what Ayn Rand called "sense of life".  There is a scale to Frazetta's paintings, even his personal work like his portrait's of his late wife Ellie, that speaks of a sense of life that is not small or petty or weighed down by monotony, but is instead large, and wide, rich with color and alive with possibility.  That sense serves me as a reminder to sort my priorities at times when things get a little murky.

I know that the work of the heroic fantasy artists like Frazetta is considered corny by many these days, but for me, there was and is a lot of value in it.  I took so much, personally, philosophically and artistically, from the work of Frazetta that it's hard to imagine what my life would have been without it.  It's sad to think that there will be no more of that, but it's great to think that the work is respected enough to be published in such volumes that guarantee that many more will have the opportunity to discover it for themselves.
I can't say I'm going to miss Frank Frazetta, because I've still got everything I learned from his work.  I suppose if anything is really sad for me, it is that I never had the chance to say "Thank you."  I guess this will have to serve as the next best thing.

Frank Frazetta 1928-2010 | The Beat

What of the world
that I leave for ever?

Phantom forms in a fading sight--

Carry me out on the ebon river

Into the Night.
-from "Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die" by Robert E. Howard

Hal was a Green Lantern!

One person I shamefully overlooked in yesterday's post about Free Comic Book Day was local comics artist and sketch tablemate Gino Collins.  An expatriate Newfoundlander like myself, Gino had a very nice portfolio of work with him, and seemed to be having great fun meeting the challenges of the kids looking for sketches...and I know there were some real challenges in that crowd. 
Gino is also a member of the Friends of Hal Foster Society, a group dedicated to promoting the work of Nova Scotia born artist Hal Foster, the creator of Prince Valiant and the Tarzan comic strip.  "Friends..." is currently fundraising to have a statue in Hal's honor erected in Halifax, which I think is a great idea.  If you'd like to help out with this initiative, donations can be made through Strange Adventures comic shop.
I hope Gino will forgive me for posting a piece of his art from his brochure "Who Was Hal Foster?"; it's a funny piece from a cleverly done brochure.  If you'd like to see more of Gino's work, you can find it at his blog, "Draw It Like You Mean It".  Take a look.

Sketch-a-riffic!

Free Comic Book Day 2010 was a blast!  I'm pleased to say that I had a slight case of artist's cramp at the end of the day...from the moment the doors opened until the end of the day, I was drawing nearly non-stop, as were the other artists in attendance.  The hosts kept me plied with cookies and Dr. Pepper...a sure way to my heart...so I was happy to keep blasting out the sketches for any and all.  My only regret is that I didn't have time to do more.
My favorite drawing of the day was a portrait of The Tick challenging Batman...with a spoon (that's a reference you can only get if you've actually read The Tick, and you should).  That sort of thing was the real fun of the day....taking challenges from the attendees to draw things I'd never considered before....Princess Fiona from Shrek, Sonic the Hedgehog, Iron Man vs. Astro Boy; fun stuff all the way.
Of course, it was also great for me that I was in some very good company.  I had the chance to briefly meet Faith Erin Hicks, the creator of the brilliant "Zombies Calling" and "The War at Ellsmere", Tim Larade, creator of the webcomic "One of Those Days",  and several others who (I'm ashamed to say) I did not write down names, links or other identifying information (sorry, guys!).  Apparently Darwyn Cooke showed up at some point, but I must have been hip deep in a drawing at the time, as I didn't spot him.
There's some pictures of the day up at Strange Adventures website; you can see the gallery here.  I'm the one doing the drawings of Deadpool and Iron Man, among others.  As you'll see, there was quite a crowd there...I'm told some people stood in line for over half an hour just to get into the building, and nearly as long to get a sketch. 
So, thanks to all who attended and dropped by the table for a sketch.  It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to doing more of these events.

Oh...and to the guy who I spoke to about the Green Lantern drawing....I haven't forgotten, and will deliver.  Drop me a line.

Sketchy Character

For anyone who's in the area, I'll be doing some sketching for the kids at Free Comic Book Day in Halifax this Saturday, 1 May. 
The event, as usual, is being hosted by Strange Adventures comic shop  and is being held at Saint David's Hall from noon to 4 pm.  Go here if you'd like more information, including a map to the location. 
Drop by and pick up some great comics, on the house, and maybe nab a piece of original art or two.  Judging by past years, I'm going to be in good company, artwise, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Hope to see you there!

Sky Club is Flying!

Skyclub, the new album from Mack Maloney and friends, is now available from Voiceprint Records.  I've mentioned this here before, but it's changed homes since then and has a new producer and distributor.

I was pleased to be invited to be one of the contributing artists to the booklet for this CD, a concept album based on a science fiction premise by Mack Maloney, author of the Wingman  and Spacehawks series and numerous other novels.

The cover I designed for the CD is below.  If you'll click on through to the CD's website, there's a nice Flash-based flip book there that shows the rest of the illustrations used in the booklet.  A little more than half of the illustrations are mine, as is all of the fontwork.  That's also some of my art being used for the backgrounds.

I've had the chance to preview some of the tracks on this CD, and I think it's a fine piece of work.  It features covers of some classic tunes by the likes of Pete Townsend and  Mike Rutherford, and a rockin' piece of original surf music with some great horn work by Amadee Castenell.  I think any fan of classic science fiction or progressive rock will be pleased by the total package of this CD; it's a delight for both the ear and the eye.
Be sure to head on over to the site to see how to get your hands on a copy.  Of course, I'd love to know what you think of it, especially the visuals, so feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment with your reviews.

Raven Lunatic...

Here's a thing I'm testing.  Testing this thing I am.

Here's a thing I made.  Purty, ain't it?

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.

FYI...

Because nobody asked....
You'd think that I'd own my own name as a domain, but I never thought to do it.  So if you go to www.mikedominic.com, it redirects you to this site.  Which is not me.  And slightly creepy, in my opinion.  But still...not me.