A Better Photo

Here is a better picture of the still life, shown here below the ONLY OTHER STILL LIFE I'VE EVER PAINTED:



This morning I looked again at the photo put in the last post and bleghhh! It's about the smudgiest grossest thing I've ever posted. What is wrong with me? Perhaps I am not a fancy slick magazine photographer.

I hope everyone had and is having a very merry Christmas full of good cheer, good friends and, if it suites your fancy, a spot of egg nog. Me, I can't stand the stuff.

Still Life

The old painting muscles are a bit flabby it seems. The still life below was painted on a wood panel, about 13.5 X 20.5 inches and I worked on it until I ran out of steam. Still life paintings are difficult for me in the best of times, but they are good exercise and so worth doing.



I’m working in a smallish space these days. Perfect for comics, but not so ideal as a painting studio. Nevertheless, my goal is to have a canvas up pretty continuously. And now, since I mentioned comics, I should ALSO mention that there is a Zita the Spacegirl short webcomic posted over that the First Second blog. It’s the first ZSG webcomic I have done in ages. Click on the thumbnail to see!



Oh, Christmas, I can hear you coming this way. Don’t hurt me!

Natural Enemies

In the last post started with a Baby Duck. Today we start bigger, and arguably better, with Baby Elephant. He is, of course, Baby Ducks greatest enemy. Baby Elephant is the good guy, though. Baby Duck is horrible, horrible, horrible.



Last night I started reading a book called Making Money by Jason Kersten. The book chronicles the true story of Art Williams, a counterfeiter who “broke” the 1996 hundred dollar bill which, at the time, was the most advanced and hard to reproduce bill ever made. It’s a dramatic and true tale of high and low crime. I've only read half of the book so far, but that was in one sitting, so I can pretty confidently recommend it.

I always find stories of forgery and counterfeiting interesting. Maybe dangerously so, because I’m actually inspired by the level of craftsmanship and art that can go into creating the fakes. Making Money is every bit as fascinating as The Forger’s Spell, which I’ve mentioned here before. We all love a good caper.

Sketch Like Greased Lightening!

First of all, shouldn’t we start things off with a duckling? I think we should start things off with a duckling. Here goes:



Secondly, and I know you artists out there will know what I’m talking about, sometimes when you’re working on an illustration you end up with a really nice, spontaneous little preliminary sketch. Maybe it’s not much more than a scribble, but you catch something from life, and that is the true joy of art. But then you realize that the final illustration will never live up to the sketch. Maybe it will be competent, but it will never quite have that joie de vivre that was there in your glorified doodle. This one was like that for me:



And lastly, or "thirdishly" I am addng a sidebar link to Ambera Wellmann's blog. She's a Nova Scotian artist who, among other things, fills large canvasses with the drama of the sky.

Try to Play Nice

Well, I hope everyone found something nice in their shoes.

Here are a couple recent Zita illustrations. I'm really working these days on web material, and trying to get the old ZitaSpacegirl.com website back up, as well as plugging along on the second book. Ultimately I'm hoping to get some webcomics back up online!

In the comments section of the last post I mentioned my "dream" of robbing the pogo stick store. I just want to make clear that this was meant in jest I WOULD NEVER ROB THE POGO STICK STORE EVEN IF I KNEW WHERE IT WAS. I just really like the idea of robbing a place like that because you don't need a getaway car, you know? There's a Juggling store in Winchester that I sometimes think about robbing.

Just Make Something Up.

So I'm hard at work on the Second Zita the Spacegirl book. Part of the process, especially in the early stages, is sometimes to just sit down with a blank piece of paper and draw whatever pops into your head. It's a good little exercise in creativity and you'd be surprised what rattling around up there. Like these guys. Where did they come from?