So, I've added yet another blog to my repetoire and have started a new monthly column called Anatomy of a Panel where I pick a scene from a comic and interview everyone involved in making that scene happen - the writers, artists, colorists, editors, etc.
My first interview is with the team behind Vertigo's excellent Scalped.
Hope you all like it.
Also, I just gave my wife this little ink drawing I did of her.
So it's been ages since I posted anything but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on stuff. Amidst all the preparation for the coming of Baby Barrett, I picked up a paint brush for the first time in years and did this series of four paintings that are now hanging in the nursery. It's not the best photo but hopefully good enough to get a sense of what they look like. I had a blast doing them. Click the image above for a slightly larger version
Repo men of the future!
They're running out of mutants!
Darwyn Cooke's Gotham!
The magic of British pop music!
Sammy the Mouse gets drunk!
Every Wednesday we count down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. Today is no different.
Read more at yesbutnobutyes.com
Hulk really really angry (no, really)!
1970s muscle cars!
A hapkido/surfing love story!
Tank Girl gets some new clothes!
Apokolips!
I'm sorry I haven't had the time to do these previews for the past month or so. It's too bad because some really amazing comics came out that I never got a chance to tell you about. But there's no point in dwelling on the past, let's plow ahead to the present and see what are the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out today.
Sketch Charlotte is now on Facebook. Anyone can join the group and find out about our non-online Sketch group meetings and more.
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Here are my drawings from this week's Sketch Group meeting.
Comics are great because as they get older not only do they get more valuable (at least my future children hope so because they ain't going to no college unless a certain Mr. Spiderman can afford to send them) but they also get funnier. Thank god our use of language changes over the years because it makes our old comics look stupid and that's funny.
Here's a collection of the Top 15 Funniest Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels of All Time.
Spidey back in black.
GQ Super Spy
Mignola and Chaykin making magic
Superhero wardrobe malfunctions.
Joining the Hot Zone Club
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself but the new library I'm getting built onto the back of my house to store my vast comics collection isn't done yet so I really need to hold off buying anything more until then.
Bear loves robot.
The perfect weapon: A cat.
The secret history of Abe Sapien.
Hiroshima, ten years later.
And Buffy is back.
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself but I'm still pretty rattled from losing both Kara Thrace and Captain America in one week so I think it's probably best to stay away from escapist fantasy this week until I'm fully recovered.
Tony Stark's Marvel Universe.
Jeffrey Brown's Awesome Jesus.
Jason's zombie apocalypse.
Mitchell Hundred's drug laws.
Frank Cho's busty Avengers.
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself but I need to get a second job if I want to be able to afford 5 comics a week.
Jack's adventure across Middle America.
Kant meets Law & Order.
The complicated lovelife of Matt Murdock.
Growing up in Yop City.
And something completely different.
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself but I gave away all my comics money to Homeless Frank this morning.
A 60ยข head trip
The return of The Joker
The Beyonder kidnaps again
DUI (Drawing Under the Influence)
And Kick! 'Splode!
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I would be buying myself but today's Valentine's Day and it's totally not cool to be buying comics on Valentine's Day. People will think I can't get a woman.
Superman's plans for 2007. Tales from grade school. The United States vs. The Free States. The origin of the Gunslinger. And Talky Tawny the Tiger!
Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself if I was actually leaving the house these days. I mean, there are squirrels and stuff out there. I'm no Marlin Perkins. Indoors are just fine for me, thanks.
Roasting a rabbit. A post 9/11 road trip. The Brotherhood of Dada. Crying while doing everything. And the Harrowing of the Sheeda.
Every Wednesday I run down the 5 most interesting comics and graphic novels that come out this week at yesbutnobutyes.com. These are the 5 books I'd be buying myself if my wife still actually let me buy comic books (I told her I was sorry!)
The next episode of True Celebrity Fiction is up. Click here to read.
I know a lot of my posts these days are directed at my other blog but I only do it when it's relevant. One of my regular features over there is a weekly round up of the 5 most interesting comics coming out each week. So take a look see. And feel free to give me suggestions for future weeks if there's something good coming out that I should know about:
Wolverine vs. Sabretooth. Silver Age Team-ups. NRA conspiracies. Yakuza. And retarded unicorns.
I had to knock this sexy illustration out this weekend. Thought I would share.
So I've started doing a semi-weekly (maybe monthly?) cartoon for yesbutnobutyes.com. First episode is up today. Click the link below to check it out and send it on to anyone who might enjoy it. Any fans of celebrity tabloids and/or 1950s-60s romance comics may enjoy this.
Click here to read "Britney Spears in the Deep Throat Liaison"
Sketches from our last outing at South Park Mall, starring Nicholas Cage as "Herc".
A scene from page 9 of Nathan Sorry.
This is a very cool new site that asks various comic book artists to list and describe the tools that they work with. Always interesting to hear what other people use and why. Among the artists interviewed are Hope Larson, Jim Rugg and Ryan Dunlavey.
Check it out.
Getting an extra hour today seems to have made all the difference. Very productive day as I completed two new pages for my comic, Nathan Sorry. Here's the inks for part of page 8. I should be able to put up the full first chapter with text for people to read soon.
Gene Yang, in his first full length graphic novel which is the first GN to ever win a National Book Award, pulls off a story that works on a miraculous number of levels being part folk tale, part coming of age teen drama, part over-the-top race comedy. Each part of this story would stand perfectly on it's own but Yang still finds a way to tell one complete story with each, even going so far as to bringing the seemingly separate stories together in the end.
The folk tale part is a retelling of the Chinese tale of the Monkey King. Yang's Monkey King is cute but also stubborn and belligerent. When he is rejected by the other gods because he's a monkey he goes on a warpath and lapses into self-loathing. A theme continued throughout the book.
The teen drama is the compelling story of Jin, a Chinese-American teen trying to assimilate in his school and smitten with a girl that he can barely find the courage to talk to. Jin tries very hard to fit in, to the point of turning his back on his own heritage and his own sense of self.
And the comedy comes from the bizarre story of Chin-kee, the most offensive stereotype a Chinese person could imagine, complete with yellow skin and mixed up R's and L's. Chin-kee is in America visiting his inexplicably non-Chinese cousin Danny and everything he does embarrasses Danny to no end. Like eating cat stew in the school cafeteria and jumping on the table to sing "She Bangs" William-Hung style. This story is equipped with a laugh track that adds to the surreally offensive tone.
All three of these stories are nothing short of brilliant. Then, Yang throws in a shocker by bringing the stories together into one. I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in this turn of events. It felt a little unnecessary since each part was already building on the same themes and bringing them together doesn't really add anything. Nonetheless, this is one of the best stories of cultural assimilation I have read and Yang's clean artwork, sense of humor and imagination make this a fantastic graphic novel.Boo
My characters tend to be more on the realistic/normal people side of the scale and the story I'm currently developing is very much about normal looking (but emotionally disturbed) people. Here are some sketches I did a while back as I was trying to figure out what some of these people might look like.
This week an abbreviated group of Sketch Charlotteers met at South Park mall to talk about art and sketch the denizens of the Food Court. Here's my page of people sketches.
Amazon recently had a 4 for 3 deal on anything priced under $10 (might still be going on) so I took the opportunity to catch up on 3 trades I had been meaning to buy - Loveless, The Exterminators and Fear Agent. Click below to read my thoughts on the purchases (if you're wondering where the 4th book is, I decided against using the 4th slot for Brian Wood's DMZ and instead used it on a Hard Case Crime novel which I have not read yet.)
As always, I left tonight's Sketch Charlotte meeting inspired to go home and work on my stuff. Although there have been many reasons why I haven't made much progress on my book the last two weeks one of them was this stinking panel that I had completely screwed up inking. You can see how using too much whiteout to cover up my errors only turned it into a cruddy mess. I actually am not that enamored with the redo either but I'm going to power through and just get this page done anyway. There's still some photoshop clean-up work to do but click below to see the revised panel and the nearly completed page it is to live on:
This is a panel by panel critique by the late great Alex Toth of an early Johnny Quest comic by the also great Steve Rude. Toth is unrelenting in his criticism but it shows how much damn thought that guy put into his work. Everything he says is dead-on. Although there's a lot to learn from reading through this I can't help but feel a little depressed by it. If Steve Rude who draws like no one's business could be considered that sloppy then what the hell am I doing picking up a pencil?
Click here to see Steve Rude get his ass handed to him by a master.
So I'm about to order a copy of Scott McCloud's Making Comics on Amazon. Anyone else planning on getting this? Any idea if Charlotte is going to be a stop on his 50 State Tour?
Illustration Friday is a great weekly exercise that we should be participating in ourselves. Every week a one word topic is posted and you have all week to illustrate that word and send them a link to your image. This week's topic is "Safe" and here are the entries.
This is definitely something I'd like to try one of these weeks.
I finished page 4 of my story this week and although it is not the masterfully-inked page I wish it was I definitely had a major breakthrough in my process of trying to become a better inker. Halfway through this page I pulled my old Crow-quill pen nibs out of a drawer and found that not only do these ten year old things still work but they come much closer to giving me the type of line work I'm trying to achieve.
Click below for the full page, minus tone and lettering.
Continue reading "Page 4 of my as-yet-unnamed-comic and the Crow Quill pen" »
SketchCharlotte.com is about 2 weeks old now and it was starting to show it's age so I updated the design a little bit. It's all a work in progress. Suggestions are welcome.
I think I will be going to Figure Drawing this week and wanted to remind anyone that might be interested in joining me. It's Tuesday night from 7-9 at:
Tony Griffin Studio
118 E Kingston Ave
3rd floor
Get there early so you get a good spot and see you there.
Okay maybe I'm going overboard with the tutorials but since Herc and I were talking about inking techniques last night and I just ran across this brand new inking tutorial today I figured I would share.
Tom Richmond seems to be a MAD! Magazine artist and he is pretty thorough with his descriptions of techniques and tools that he uses. Some of the key takeways for me:
- Draw with the ink, don't trace your pencils lines or else all the life will be drained from them
- Don't be afraid to constantly re-work a line (apprently Hirschfeld did this and still made it look like one bold, confident line).
- If you're going to cross-hatch, use it sparingly
- tricks to creating atmosphere in your backgrounds is to keep your lineweights light and dont' run your lines of different objects together (you'll have to look at that part to see what I'm talking about)
It's a pretty good tutorial, worth taking a look at: Tom Richmond's Inking Tutorial
I found this tutorial on scanning and using Photoshop Channels for coloring under your line art to be very helpful. As for the coloring I was previously just creating a separate layer for the line art and setting it to "Multiply" and coloring underneath it. I think that works as well and involves less steps but the Channel method is working well for me so far so the jury is still out.
Here is the tutorial. Some other comic-related topics are covered like planning your pages, covers, etc.
What do you guys do?
I drew this in front of the TV a couple of weeks ago during one of Condi's too-little-too-late press conferences on the Israel-Lebanon war.
Just as useful I think. Click below to see the larger image. (found via The Beat)
Continue reading "Ivan Brunetti's 22 Panels That Always Work* (*sometimes)" »
Wally Wood's "22 Panels" is a famous collection of little tricks that you can use to make your comics panels more visually interesting. Wood was a master of comic storytelling and shows it here by breaking down his craft to a few basic tenets in a way that informs other less experienced artists but that also shows how effortlessly this came to him.
Joel Johnson, a writer in NY, bought Wood's drawings in an auction and shares hi-resolution scans of them for the first time here.
I went to my first night of open figure drawing at Tony Griffin Studio and it was everything I hoped it would be. One model, multiple 10, 20 minute poses. I definitely felt a bit rusty and need to get into a groove but it felt good. Hopefully some of you will be able to join me next week and we can all post up our drawings.
Click below to see some of my drawings from the night. Oh yeah, some of these may not be safe to view at work.
A couple of drawings I did last week while on vacation at the beach. The beach is a great spot to catch people sitting still just long enough to get a decent sketch of them. The trick during last week's heat wave was to finish the sketch before needing to run back to the ocean to cool off.
The woman on the right was leaning against a bike. I got to the pedal when I realized that I didn't feel like drawing a bike.
Rich Barrett is a web designer and an illustrator who moved to Charlotte two years ago from New York City. He is currently working on his first comic book, Nathan Sorry. To see more of Rich's work visit his website.
This page contains an archive of all entries posted by Rich. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.