…and I mean that literally! Yes folks, unless this is some kind of an elaborate April Fool’s joke being played on me, the monsters that have lived in the apartment above me for the past three years, four months, five days and 18 hours have finally up and vanished into the misty night air from whence they came.
You may recall these folks. I have mentioned them several times here on my blog, along with the random comment on Facebook and Twitter. Here is a photo I secretly took of them after the first year of sleep deprived nights.
When they get home, I’m convinced that my neighbors’ front door is a mystical portal that returns them to their natural forms seen here.
Here’s to all the foot stomping, toilet seat slamming, hammering after 10pm, hour and a half to two hour long showers, two flooding mishaps, music loud enough to understand the lyrics, listening to their movies while trying to watch mine, slumber parties, chalk drawings on my doorstep, bed jumping, Olympic gymnastics practice, track meets in the living room, door slamming, shot-put throwing, bowling, peasant whippings, chains scraping, and I’m pretty sure dragon feeding.
May the new tenants be kind and gentle souls sensitive to those around them.
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
The Messiah
Today is what we call here in the States “Good Friday.” It is traditionally the day set aside to remember the death of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. In a country that continues to turn its back on God, it is amazing that we have a national holiday for this event where banks and government offices are closed, and most people have the day off from work. It is called “Good” because the Son of God’s sacrifice for mankind, in which He took upon Himself the sins of the world, made a way for those who believe to enter into heaven one day.
Isaiah 53 predicted the coming of the Messiah and what He would do for us, and Matthew 27 gives a full account of what happened that fateful day so many years ago when the Messiah did come and fulfill the prophesy. Matthew 28 continues the history of those days by telling us of Christ’s resurrection, which is what Easter celebrates.
The particular moment of this drawing comes from Matthew 27:32 which says, “And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross.” Simon, a man from the crowd, was called out to carry Christ’s cross to the hill where Jesus would be crucified.
This drawing was one of a half dozen or so new drawings recently added to the Generations of Grace Sunday school curriculum for kids. It comes in black and white for the kids to color when they learn this lesson in church. To learn more about Generations of Grace and if you think it would be a good program for your church to use, feel free to CLICK HERE.
With all the ads out there lately for the next couple of big costumed caper movies, it seems like none of our imaginary heroes are playing nice with each other anymore. Marvel has their Civil War, and this week, DC has Batman v Superman. Can’t we all just get along?
SPOILER ALERT! I am about to show you how the epic battle begins between the Dark Knight (Ben Affleck – Batfleck) and the Man of Steel (Henry Cavill). Not having seen the actual movie myself is really of no consequence. I KNOW this is what happens, and by refusing to remove their capes, you can only guess the troubles to come…
Edna Mode knows a thing or two about cape calamities.
I liked how Batfleck turned out, so here’s a close-up for you.
Quite a few years ago I began drawing what turned out to be over 500 coloring book style pages of accounts from the Bible that became the Generations of Grace Sunday school curriculum. They crafted a three year curriculum for kids where not a single piece of art was used twice in that time, and it was designed for several age groups in the elementary grades so that all the kids in a family would learn the same lesson on their level each Sunday. It was a pretty neat approach.
Two years ago, those behind the curriculum wanted to colorize all my drawings for a new published version of the curriculum they intended to do. Some other artists began coloring them, but with so many drawings and a tight deadline, the task was great. So, I was invited back in to color my art as well, having to now follow the coloring style established by other artists. I managed to get about 20 or so pieces colored in-between other jobs I was working on last year, but to even get those done, I was so glad to get my pal and fellow artist Andy Heckathorneto help me.
Andy would first prep the drawings to prepare them for color, then he would go in and lay in all the flat base colors in Photoshop from his studio in Pennsylvania. He would hand them off to me here in California, and I’d add in all the shading. We were a good team!
All that being said, since this week many thoughts are turned to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross with it being Easter here in the United States, I wanted to share with you the one piece Andy and I colored from that account of Christ’s life – the moment when Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus in the garden that led to the Roman soldiers taking Him away to what would eventually be his crucifixion.
The kiss was Judas’ sign to the soldiers that this was Jesus.
If you are interested in this art for your own church, or even for use in your own home, I recommend you check out all the different formats Generations of Grace has to offer for sale on their website. They have teacher lesson books, craft books, activity books, coloring books, and even a family devotional book so the whole family can keep up with the lessons together each day. CLICK HERE to go to their website.
Yesterday I began sharing with you the preliminary steps in coming up with the composition and overall drawing for the John & Abigail Adams illustration published this month in Clubhouse Magazine. Today I will share with you the next step in the process in which the traditional art supplies come out of the drawer to breathe some life into this piece.
Once the art director was pleased with the drawing, as was I, it was time to do the final art. I printed out my line-art drawing (without all the tones in it) onto a thin Layout Bond paper (I use the Strathmore brand). Then using homemade graphite paper under the print out, I traced the drawing onto thick watercolor paper.
Homemade graphite paper made by rubbing a woodless pencil onto one side of tracing paper.Taping down the layout bond paper with the drawing, I put the graphite paper face down on the watercolor paper, then trace the art with a pencil. It leaves a decent graphite image on the watercolor paper that you can continue to tweak with pencil & eraser if needed.
I use the watercolor block paper that either Strathmore or Arches makes. Arches is better (I have more control over my paint on it), but it also is waaaaay more expensive. If you are a newbie, try the cheaper Strathmore first. The block paper is nice because it is a thick pad glued together on the edges like a block (thus the name). This means if you paint very wet, the paper can’t curl up and warp. When it is all dried, you peel the top sheet off the pad and you have a nice flat painting.
This is a pad of watercolor block paper made by Arches. You can see how the sides are glued together.
Using a watercolor technique, I painted the whole piece with black ink. Yep, black ink. I used a non-waterproof ink, and mixed four shades of black by taking little plastic condiment cups, putting a few drops of ink into each, and then adding various amounts of water. This process takes a bit of time to finesse because each cup needs to be slightly darker than the last one. I actually paint with 5 shades, but #5 is the black ink right out of the bottle. I use non-waterproof ink because it is malleable. You can still work it with water after it dries. I tend to not touch it after it dries completely, but even while it is still slightly wet, I can push it around, or add more to it and it blends in nicely together.
I use Higgins Non-waterproof Drawing Ink for pieces like this, mixing various watered down levels of ink in 1 oz condiment cups.
If you are not accustomed to working with watercolors, do note that this process is not as easy as it sounds. I’ve been doing this for years, and there’s a lot to be said about the experience of trial and error of manipulating paint that I couldn’t possibly put into words. You just have to practice.
When the painting process is done, I put some finishing touches on it with gray colored pencils, and maybe some white highlights with white gouache paint and white colored pencils. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of this piece before the pencils were put on it, but trust me, it tightens up the piece a LOT when the pencils are added.
Here’s a close-up of the finished art. I love having the texture of the paper in there to emphasize that it is handmade art, and it helps give a nostalgic look to nostalgic subject matter.
So, now you can see the finished traditional piece of art that physically is sitting in my studio right now. It is just a black ink washed painting with some colored pencil lines added for good measure. It doesn’t quite look like the final illustration I posted two days ago, does it?
Here’s the final piece of traditional art. The ink is black, the paper is white. It still will go through another few digital steps before it is complete, such as adding a sepia tone to it, and other colors and effects.
Come back tomorrow when I will show you the final digital steps I used to add some color and to make this resemble something from the past!
This past year all my work came as freelance. Sometimes this can be a scary thing because you don’t know when the next job will be, but God has been good in keeping me quite busy. Unfortunately, as the holidays rolled around, I found myself unable to find the time to make a Christmas card as is my usual practice. So for those of you who have come to enjoy that tradition of mine, please know that you have not been moved to my “naughty list” to use Santa’s vernacular.
So, in an attempt to have a Christmas post of some kind, I thought I would share with you a little Christmassy doodle I did on the back of an envelope for a friend.
A gift that someone could really sink their teeth into.
Thought I’d share with you a super cartoony illustration I put together recently for the LA Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS LA). This piece was used on the invitations for the NCS LA’s upcoming holiday party on December 12.
Why an angel bear? Well, as mentioned once before here on the ol’ blog, Cornelius is the mascot of the NCS LA. As legend has it, he once saved the life of LA cartoonist George Herriman (Krazy Kat comic strip creator) from a runaway toboggan in the early part of the 20th century. Of course, Cornelius passed away long ago, so he is depicted as an angel bear which is appropriate for the NCS chapter located in the City of Angels (Los Angeles).
Jolly ol’ Christmas Cornelius saying NCS LA’s standard greeting, “Hey, Ho, Hey!”
If you are a professional in the creative arts and wish to come to our holiday shindig, by all means, please contact me for details. It will be a great evening on December 12 of colleagues and their spouses enjoying a dinner and some entertainment led by New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Matt Diffee. Cost is $35 per person, and on a volunteer basis, we are collecting new art supplies to donate to the sick kids of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Well, here it is. The grand finale of the week long Sketch Challenge between me and my friend Andy Heckathorne. Since tomorrow is Halloween, and this being the last day of the challenge, it seemed appropriate to break out the ink in grand style with a caricature portrait of the master of the scary short story – Edgar Allan Poe.
I always found it interesting that those tales of gothic woe came flowing from the mind of a man who looked like he could be the subject of his own stories. Perhaps when he wrote in the first person, he really was the subject of his own stories. Hmm, something to ponder.
Well, here he is with the title character of his most well-known story, The Raven, in ink and white gouache on a dark gray shade of Canson paper.
Is there another day in this Sketch Challenge? Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
Thanks for tap, tap, tapping on your keyboards and mobile devices to come see my sketchy efforts. I hope you have enjoyed this week of sketch posts! And thanks to Andy for putting me up to the five day challenge. I hope I met your expectations, my friend.
