Naked figure studies from 1995 –
Most of artists by whom I have been influenced have the ability to portray wide varieties of people. I aspire to make each character I draw individual enough that they’d be recognizable stark naked with a shaved head. I’ve still got a way to go before I can do that. Practice, practice, practice.
More random sketches. Mostly. The three fingered hand belongs to a lizard. Probably to Aunt Hortense, the creature smoking the cigarette. What did you say? That she doesn’t look like a lizard? Does Mickey look like a mouse? Does Oswald look like a rabbit?
Aunt Hortense is the matron(? boss? guardian? keeper?) of the five lizards introduced back in 1988. By this sketchbook all the lizards had developed distinct personalities (at least to me) and distinct appearances (at least to me). Aunt Hortense was sort of inspired by the weird uncle/nephew relationships in Disney cartoons. We never know how exactly Donald and Mickey have nephews. Parents aren’t in evidence. The lizards seemed to need an authority figure so the authority figure became an aunt. I don’t know how she’s actually related to the other lizards. Some things just aren’t important.
A design for one of Aunt Hortense’s many detractors. This one appeared in the first issue of Glyph, the magazine version, in the Bonecage Graffiti serial. I just checked the magazine to make sure I got the name right. My memory said that he was a member of the Brotherhood of the Grey Wound. In the magazine he says he’s from the Brotherhood of the Wound. I suspect that, in the process of lettering the script, I decided that “Wound” fit in the space available better than “Grey Wound”.
I usually wrote my scripts 3 times. Once as just dialogue, a second time to fit the thumbnails and the third time as I did the lettering. Sometimes while drawing I’d fail to compensate for all the dialogue I’d written. Usually that meant I’d edit the dialogue down a bit. Sometime I’d just decide that the dialogue was necessary and too bad if the art got covered up. Stupid artist shoulda thoughta that.
1995 sketch – there’s a possibility that this is the portrait of a psychotic Easter bunny. More likely though I was playing with how to make a giant rabbit scary. I have this delusion that at least one decent story can be grown from any idea, no matter how absurd. Whether that story succeeds or not often depends on how the story is presented. In the case of Night of the Lepus, the execution of the story turns it into an unintentional comedy. Giant fleshing eating rabbits could be scary monsters. Fluffy bunnies unwittingly pretending to be giant flesh eating horrors are just silly.
You can find a more detailed exploration of this idea here.
Other than Merriam up in the corner these are all practice sketches – no specific characters. Probably done in early 1995.
A version of August Thyme, circa 1995.
After finishing the first four pages of Bugfuck Palace I didn’t use the sketchbook for a while. I probably picked it up again because I needed a sketchbook and it was available. No point wasting it. The rest of the work in it dates from 1995 after Nizzibet and I had moved to Seattle.
In this particular set of sketches the only thing of significance I recognize is Chainsaw. He was a cat who adopted me back in 1993 when I was still living with the Potter. He hung out on our porch for months, probably stealing food from the other cats I was feeding, but otherwise being friendly and cheerful. I finally gave up trying to discourage him and when the Potter and I broke up I took him with me.
This is from 1993 or 1994. It’s the first chapter of one of my many unfinished stories. The structure of story was to give a series of glimpses at one day in the life of a trio of people living in (of course) a post apocalyptic world. There were to be 24 chapters of four pages each detailing whatever the characters are doing at the beginning of an hour. Yes, one of the chapter is just four pages of people sleeping. I’d intended to fill 96 pages of a sketchbook with the story so I lined out page borders on 96 pages. The page borders can be seen on some of the sketches that will follow in the next few weeks.
All the main characters are in this chapter – Dave, the long haired guy; the Jade Buddha, who is sleeping; and Sister D, the woman wearing sunglasses at night. The two drunks appear a few more times throughout the story.
The title of the story, Bugfuck Palace, was inspired by a place I stayed while traveling with the Potter and the Ranger back in 1993. We’d stopped at Alpha Farm to visit with an old high school friend of mine and the Ranger’s who was living on the Farm at that time. The three of us stayed in an old mobile home trailer on the property. The trailer had screens over the windows that generally had a population of red and black beetles crawling on them. Beetle’s that were often busy mating.
The germ of the story itself is probably in that week as well, what with the three of us all staying on a farm in the middle of nowhere, same as the characters in the story. No zombies, flesh art sculptures or wandering mechanical leviathans at Alpha Farm fortunately. In real life the Potter spent a good part of visit in a state of recovery. Allergies I think. She also got a bee sting that got large and hard. I tried my hand at weeding and bean picking. I was better at digging out tree stumps. I helped make cheese and cooked a meal or two. I don’t see myself living in a commune anytime in the near future but back in ’93 it was an attractive idea. Fun for a week anyway.
This story, on the other hand, is obviously a riff on an old Arabian Nights tale.
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And thus endeth our flashback to 1988. A new sketchbook begins tomorrow.
Out in the present I’m working on covers for The Complete Annotated Oz Squad. Steve is collecting the series in two trade paperbacks for debut at this year’s San Diego ComiCon. The first volume will have 1-4 of Oz Squad, the Millenium Special and Lil’ Oz Squad. The second will have 5-10 of the series. I’m not sure what the “annotated” part will include.
I have great admiration for short story writers. It ain’t easy telling a story economically. At least, it ain’t easy for me. I have a hard time telling an anecdote from my own life. I’m not very good at summarizing books or novels I’ve just read. So I have no idea how I came up with this little story. It might have been one of those lucky occasions when the story popped full grown into my mind.
