It's Mine!

There are certain artists that I respect and then there are the artists I highly respect. In this latter list is Steve Bissette, Tom Mandrake, Tim Truman, Mike Zulli, Ryan Sook, Guy Davis and...John Totleben. Well I have original art from most of these artists. The only one missing currently is Tim Truman because I just recently picked up this beauty by John Totleben. It's from Vermillion #8, page 5. The description was alien sucker face...consider it SOLD! after that description.

Cheers

Frakkin' Good

The Battlestar Galactica series finale was on last night...It was frakkin great! The attack on the Colony was a Wam-Bam-Frak-You-Man Spectacular!!! I'm happy with all of the resolutions of characters storylines. I must admit after devoting 5 years to watching this series, I got a bit melancholy and misty over the ending of the series and where some of our characters ended up. Now I have to find something else to watch on Friday nights at 10:00 pm. At least we still have the Caprica mini-series and the BSG: The Plan movie coming later this year. It was a great 5 years, my thanks to Ron Moore, David Eick and all of the crew and especially the cast for making me a BSG convert.

So Say We All!

Page 2

Sorry about the pages being out of order. I started drawing page three due to the challenges of establishing characters first before tackling their environment. I think the first panel has that SteamPunk feel we're going for. Of course the dirigible doesn't hurt. My father-in-law is again playing our Jedediah West and I acted as model for the hands.

Cheers

Silent Scream pencils

Here are pages1 & 3 from the Silent Scream concept, plotted by Dennis Webster & Bill Anderson with a script by Dennis Webster. It's a period piece, 1920's, so I'm using a ton of reference material so I get the correct feel of the era. It slows me down a little bit, but I think it will be worth it. I want to thank my father-in-law, Ed Korovae, for modeling for me. He's the sharp dressed Jedeiah West wearing the fashionable overcoat and bowler.


Cheers.

Mr Hart & Mr Montana

I'm a sucker for Golems. When Dennis suggested using them for the book, I was sold.
Here's an encounter between two Golems and Bull Montana and William S. Hart in a warehouse.

Cheers

Secret Project Post

I've been working with Dennis Webster (writer of the macabre) and Bill Anderson (inker extraordinare) on a secret project. No publication news yet, but we are working on it. The Silent Scream concept is very exciting and for me it was an add-on. Bill and Dennis had other ideas and that was the one they wanted me to pick. Some concept work is done and I've got thumbnails done on a 5 page story to help sell the project. I'm pencilling the pages starting this week so I'll have more to post later.
Here's what I've got so far:



Enjoy!

Quick Update and a Purchase

Taking a quick moment to say Hello and to post this great Alex Nino page I bought from a seller in the Phillippines. It's a great example of his brushwork from 1969. I'm working on having the page translated, but until then, it's a joy to examine and enjoy.

Cheers!

NYC Comicon Update

We walked, we talked, we were jostled, we met with reps, we met with publishers, we bought artwork, we bought books, we bought toys. A good time was had by all, but man that was a long, tiring, chaotic show.

Update: I ran into my Massachusetts Amigo Craig (Perhapanauts) Rousseau. We talked briefly (don't forget this was the chaotic show) but I was able to flip through his Canson sketches and I picked up this sweet Etrigan piece. Please wipe the drool from your chins.


Cheers

NYC Comicon and the Secret Project

This weekend is the big NY Comicon and for some crazy reason I'm going. I was contacted by my old inker friend Bill Anderson and he asked me if I wanted to read over some concepts that he's putting together with writer Dennis Webster. I know Bill is a stand-up guy so I said yes. Out of the dozen or so concepts I showed interest in 4-5. The I sent that off and then I added a last minute afterthought. Well it was that afterthought that Dennis and Bill thought I would be perfect for. I'm meeting Bill and we're going to talk to some publishers and go over the meeting that he and Dennis took on Friday. Maybe I'll see something in print this year!!!
Oh and my neighbor Mike Dobbs is going with me to check out the show, buy his wife something luscious and take in the massive nerdness of Comicon.

Cheers

V1 Design

I was approached by Paul Kozub to design some ad concepts for his new vodka V1. He's a new, young entrepeneur cooking up the original wheat based vodka and then having it distilled in Poland. He had some great ideas and I took some of them and ran with it. I did 8 ads in total, but I think these 5 are the strongest ranging from edgy to safe.






Enjoy.

It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage

We had unexpected surprise visitors the other day. Dean Mijka and Todd Lajoie were pals of mine 25 years ago when we all worked at the Mott's Shop Rite in Westfield. We hung around and became good friends. Dean went off to serve Uncle Sam, Todd went to college and I was just finishing college. We all have our own lives now, but while Dean was in town the boys swung by and said hi and delighted my wife with the embarassing stories of our youth. Here we are 25 years ago and now. It's definately the mileage and we won't go into the 1980's stripper shorts on Todd and Dean.



Cheers

Dog Friends

After I had locked in my two core Greyhounds, DeNiro and Posie, I fostered for quite a few years. Don't ask me how many dogs, but there were a lot. Buddy came to me as a 8 1/2 yr old retiree who had been kept at his breeders Tewksbury kennel after he was retired. The State made him surrender a few Greys so we took in Buddy and he came my way. He was scruffy, needed a few extra pounds put on him and also needed to learn manners. After a couple weeks the boy was shining and he was adopted by Gary and Rachel from CT. Rachel just wrote me that the Budd'ster had celebrated his 16th birthday in December. 16 is awesome for a Grey. He's having some mobility issues and he lost an eye a few years back, but the Budd'ster is still hanging on.

Barb and Mark Draa where the first few people who welcomed me to Greyhound Options and they were the proud parents of Pandora. She was a sleek shiny little grey female with amazing eyes. She was a member of the Girl Pack. 4 female greys that roamed the play area together and ruled with an iron paw and even scared a few people too. They didn't let the boys get in their face. I found out today that Pandora had passed. She was the last of the girls; Ivy, my Posie, Jennie and Pandora. Give your furry ones a rub behind the ear today for all of our survivors and those we've lost.


Woof

Upcoming Movies

I'm a movie geek and I do like my comic books. This year has got two comic book movies coming out that I'll be first in line for. The first is The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ultimate graphic novel. When the individual issues were being released I was buying two copies, one to read, one to store away. I also bought the Watchmen watch, the softcover graphic novel, the special HC graphic novel and I even have a couple of the French graphic novels. Wolverine was always one of my favorite X-Men going back to my first new X-Men issue 111 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin. This issue blew me away and I stuck with the X-Men for a long time throughout different creative teams.
Enjoy this image I cobbled together from the Watchmen one=sheets and also this new image of Wolverine and his gang; Deadpool, Gambit, Sabretooth and Silver Fox.


Cheers

Darryl in 4C

Here's the finished piece of Darryl, glorious in all his hues.

Cheers,
Mk

Darryl and the beginnings of color

Coming together rather quick.

Cheers

Here's Darryl inked up and ready for color.

Cheers!

Darryl Pencils

And this morning we have Darryl pencilled and ready for inks.
I think this one came out quite well. People at the real J.O.B. described it as disturbing.

Your thoughts?
Cheers

Darryl

Now this posting has no tie-in to the Bob Newhart show. Instead it relates to a secondary character in the B.P.R.D. storylines. He's one of those funny characters that draws your attention and makes you feel sad for him and his situation. This will be one of the next pieces I work on. I have some great Canadian Birch tree reference so stay tuned.

Cheers

It's My Birthday This Weekend

I'll see you all back here on Monday.



Cheers

The Owl in ink

I finished inking The Owl piece this past weekend, dropped in the title and I've got a great idea when I go to color it.

Stay Tuned

The Owl & The Ood

I finished up the Ood pencils last week but didn't get a chance to scan it until now. The Owl was a quick piece once I found the right photo reference for the owl and downtown L.A. Nastiest part of that piece was finding that shot of the Peacemaker barrel. Lots of side shots but none of the actual barrel foreshortening shot.




Enjoy.

New Artwork

I'm working on a new piece based on Robert D. Forward's cut classic The Owl, so I'll have a scam of the pencils for oyu next week. I also finished pencilling the Ood piece that I previewed earlier. For now though I'm playing fanboy.
I ordered some Guy Davis pages earlier in the month and Guy tells me that the pages are working their way East. I've picked up 2 great BPRD pages and a wonderful all villains page from the Deadline mini-series. I'm also very excited because growing up in the sixties I was exposed to a lot of great comic book talent and one of them was Jack Sparkling and one of my fave comics was Spaceman published by Dell Comics. I snagged a nice page off of ebay from issue 5. That page is paid for and hopefully next week I'll be getting a couple nice packages of artwork.


Cheers!

SCARECROW!!!

To celebrate the premiere release of Disney's The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (Dr Syn), created by Russell Thorndyke, I thought I'd post my version of the good Dr. and his 2 thieving cohorts.

Cheers.

Because Jeff V. Asked

I've been gone for a bit, between work, 2 weeks of the flu and my wife having some surgery. I haven't been doing much drawing, instead I've been catching up on some reading, watching some new and old TV and re-charging my batteries. My old friend Jeff Vella responded to my last post and I felt I had to show a peak at a couple projects I'm working on.


Enjoy.

Basic Things Color

Here's basic color laid in on the Things piece. I sampled some photo reference of Louisiana swamps and I made the effort of making sure that all three Things each have a different color palette.

Enjoy,
Mk

Things inked

Finally. It took a bit because of the detail and coverage, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I also designed a quick logo and threw it on. Now it's time to color, however I've three more ideas kicking around in my head so maybe I'll start coloring and then break off to do some coloring.

Muck!
Mk

Pencils finished...inks await!

To quote JScott from the HellBoy Forum, "you might be sacrificing a few nibs for that one."
I'll be in inking Hell tonight.

Cheers

Muck Monster Progress

A little more progress on the THINGS piece.

Enjoy

Pencilling under way

Here are the beginning pencils for THINGS. I light boxed my photo reference for the skull and then used the light box again to layout in non-photo blue lines based on my marker sketch that I scanned and enlarged to size.

Cheers

Things

There's nothing I like more than zombies than muck encrusted swamp monsters. I've been a fan of Swamp Thing since the first series created by Len Wein And Berni Wrightson, then afterwards the revival of the character by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben and later Rick Veitch. Man-Thing appeared shortly after Swamp-Thing. The creature whose touch burns! I wasn't a big fan at the time, but I grew to like the creature, even though magical aspect of the later stories weren't my cup of tea. The Heap, being the one of the original swamp monsters, along with Theodore Sturgeons IT! were also top of my list. The Heap has a great backstory involving Baron von Emmelman, a World War I German flying ace who was shot down in 1918 over a Polish swamp. He arose from the muck decades later as The Heap and met the Allied ace Skywolf. Another much monster would appear later on TV as part of the Night Stalker series, The Spanish Moss Murders. The Louisiana based Paramafait", a legendary boogeyman would send chills through my young mind when this series first premiered in the 1970's. I've been pulling together images for this new piece that I've finally put down on paper. I have immense respect for the talents of Berni Wrightson, Frank Brunner, Mike Ploog, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben so I want this piece to shine. Stay tuned for THINGS.

Cheers

Jack Kirby's The Demon, Etrigan

Growing up in the mid-sixties exposed me to the revival of comics led by Stan Lee and Jack (The King) Kirby. Now I wasn't an FF or Spidey fan. No, I was more of a monster/sci-fi fan and the one comic that I latched onto was in the early 70's was Jack Kirby's solo effort, The Demon published by DC Comics starting in 1972. Jack's story and pencils and Mike Royers inks drew me to this book. The over-the-top drawing style and big and bold story made this one of my favorites! Here's my take on Etrigan and Jason Blood. Pencilled, inked and digitally colored.

Yarva Daemonicus Etrigan

Ectoplasmic Color!!!

Here's our pal Johann Kraus in all of his gorgeous color.

Enjoy,
Mk

How to spend your Saturday evening

Here in the North country we spend it with family and good friends. G. Mike Dobbs has released his second book of the year, this one, a pictography of Springfield, MA utilizing his vast postcard collection of the area. It's a beautiful book with some amazing images. My favorite of course was the postcard depicting the monkey that burned down Springfield's City Hall. It's a true story, it's actually been published so of course it's real. Mike and his lovely wife Mary invited us over for a hearty cookout which also included Mike's mother Sue, Mary's sister Jo and family and also the likes of our Northern bretheren Mark (not the race car driver) Martin and Steve Bissette. They were accompanied by their wives Marge and Jeannie. The evening was filled with laughter, odd stories and wild accusations about Thomas Kincaid, Painter of Light ™. A good time was had by all, including Lucky the Wonder Bischon.

Woof!
Mk

Pencils awaiting ink

Here's one of the first pieces I did to get used to The Thing and Ulik. I'm not happy with the Troll Princess. I think she should be a little more Troll like but still come across as femine, but the writer wanted be to beautify her. I worked on another piece that you can see below with HellBoy and a different troll where I made the Troll Princess a little more attractive.

You decide!
Mk

Ben Grimm is tough to draw

That's all I've got to say about it. I worked up a third piece based on Bob Smith's Thing/Ulik proposal and I like how it turned out. I'll probably ink it over the next day or so. Tonight I'm off to see The Dark Knight (finally).



Enjoy,
Mk

Ecto and Sunny in Ink

Finished up inking the SunLord piece and I cruised through inking the Ectoplasmic Man piece. I love both of them and they are both good examples of my design style and how I approach different characters with a different style.




Cheers!