Another illustration from the unfinished 1998 Christmas story.
Category Archives: sketchbook
Dancing as One
Another illustration from the unfinished 1998 Christmas story.
Speaking With Passion and Florish
Another illustration from our unfinished 1998 Christmas story.
Knowing the Price, But Not the Value
Whenever possible Nizzibet and I try to do something special for friends for Christmas. Often our ambition exceeds our available time. Such was the case in 1998. Nizzibet started writing a Christmas story, I started illustrating it, neither of us finished our half of the task before we acknowledged that we’d never be able to get it out by the holiday. Now, if we were sensible, we’d have just kept going until we were done and then had a Christmas story ready for the next year. Unfortunately we weren’t sensible in 1998.
I don’t know whether Nizz has any version of the story saved. If so, neither of us knows where it might be. As such, I can’t tell you who this character is. I tend to forget characters created by other people. He obviously has money on his mind.
Serious Hair for Serious Times
In the future we will all have weird hairstyles. Because it’s the future and that’s what people do.
Lion Looking
One of the ideas that I liked about Oz Squad was that the Lion could become human when he went from Oz to Earth. I thought of all sorts of adventures he could have while blending with humanity. So I stole it. Well, played with it. Doing an Oz series on my own, while fun to think about, was and is pretty unlikely.
The human that he turned into in the original series wasn’t terribly impressive. The Lion is a huge lion. Big as a horse. So I made the human a much larger fellow. Of all the Oz ideas I’ve played with this version of the man lion is only one I’ve brought back with me to Oz Squad.
Scraps and Ozma
Portraits of the Patchwork Girl and Princess Ozma. As with the Scarecrow image these are not the Oz Squad versions of the characters.
Monkey Rasperry
I was drawing a chimp. Chimpanzees are actually apes not monkeys. But “chimp” isn’t as funny a word as “monkey”. Neither is “ape”. So apes are going to have to live with being called monkeys until they get it together, organize, rise up and crush their human overlords.
Blockhead and Buster
The top character is primarily an exercise in shading.
The bottom character is a version of the Scarecrow. Not Steve Ahlquist‘s Oz Squad version. This was done prior to reconnecting with Steve. This version gave himself a name (“Buster”) and plays saxophone with a blues band in America.
Monday. Again.
The kid with the earring is one of the flying boys from Bonecage Graffiti in the magazine version of Glyph.
The other fellow was just fun to draw.
