Terror Dogs need love too

Little piece I did for Ghostbusters Cleveland's APL fundraiser at Wizard World Cleveland.  Always fun to draw the lil' pooch!

I live, I die, I live again!

Mad Max: Fury Road, if you can draw it's really hard not to draw Furiosa after watching.  I did.  Intended it to only ever be a sketch in my moleskin and she turned into this.  Sketched in my sketchbook, cleaned in Photoshop and finished in Procreate on my IPad.  Turned into a fun exercise that I intend to do again.

She started here, watching tv and drawing.  Going to blame the TV watching on the wonky eye I caught in Procreate.

And here, the time lapse exported from Procreate.

Bal Ingenieux: 4th Annual poster

It's that time of year again to unveil the Bal Ingenieux poster!  Each year I try to pay some tribute to the Illustrators who came before me from Cleveland's own, Kokoon Arts Club.  They were a group of Artists of every discipline who band together from the late 19 teens into the 1960's.  Many, fabulously talented Artists exhibited together, studied together and once a year threw these amazing costume balls that quickly became the place to be in mid-century Cleveland.  

The Bal Ingenieux was brought back as a kind of tribute by Ingenuity Cleveland and for the last few years I've had the honor to create a poster for the event.  This year I decided to go a bit more jazz age and kinda Futurist for this piece and it all sprung from this dress.

This photo is from one of the Kokoon Art auctions from the 1930's.  Not exactly the style you think of when you imagine a dress from the Thirties.  It does however fit very comfortably in some of the art from that period.  See Viktor Schreckengost if you would like to see some of the best examples of that style ( proud Clevelander and someone I was EXTREMELY fortunate to meet when I was a student at CIA).   Check out his Jazz Bowl series:  

It's graphic, playful and just moves your eyes all over the place!  

Another inspiration for this piece that may be a bit out of left field but once you see the art I think you will understand, Laura Dumm is another fellow Clevelander who I've also been EXTREMELY fortunate to meet through our regular Drink and Draws. Her and her husband Gary Dumm (himself a GIANT in the Indie comic world) keep churning out some of the most lively art you can ever set your eyeballs on.  What struck me is their use of color and pattern, I frequented dummart.com for inspiration in the early phases of this piece (and you should to!).    She is certainly not a contemporary of the Kookoon Arts club but her and Gary certainly imbibe that spirit!

So there ya go another year's Bal Ingenieux on off the board on on the wall.  As you can see the event is this coming weekend and if you are able to go I would highly recommend it.  For more information check out balingenieux.com

And be sure to check out some of the in process drawings here!

Garnet

"Garnet" from the show "Steven Universe". 
-Tim Switalski

Ben Hale is a WIZARD!!!

Not one of those showy, pointy hat style wizards like Merlin or Gandalf more of a stealthy, do wizardy things and fade into the shadows like Batman.  He is the Batman of wizards.  A quick disclaimer; this is NOT a post written by Ben cause our Bat-zard don't work that way.  Our man does the work, puts it up and moves on to crushing another crazy difficult task! 

Who else do you know illustrates....

Does animation and video production...

.....and is single handedly creating his own video game!!!!

Click here for the current game build.

It's true, we are very lucky to have Ben in the collective.  In many ways he's our secret weapon.  So be sure to keep an eye on his work here,on his blog, needyourdisease.com, twitter, tumblr, facebook, everywhere you can consume media.


I know I'll be watching.

Feliz Navidad

2 posts in a week?  Well yes, this is my sketch cover submission for Carol and John's Comics benefit for the Cleveland Food Bank!  A bunch of Artist have come together, done some amazing work and each cover is being auctioned off and the proceeds go to benifit the Cleveland Food Bank and people in need.  This and many like it will be auctioned THIS SATURDAY, DEC 20th and the CnJ Christmas party!!!  So please drop by and give what you can and have some comicy fun for a good cause.

Info for the event here.

Crazy Catwoman

Every year around the holidays, our good buddies at Carol and John's Comics raffle off comic book covers created by local artists to benefit the Cleveland Food Bank.

Last year, I did a cover featuring Batman and Robin attacked by a swarm of Cat Woman's pets. Since that cover was pretty popular at the event (and I love me some kitties) I decided to do a follow up this year:

Acrylic paint with a touch of watercolor and colored pencil!

Pencils:

Last year's cover:

 

Come hang out at the comic shop on December 20th and win my new cover! Or maybe art by another RBMC member or one of our cartoon pals. Details here. See you there!

The power of Terry compels you

As you've seen on our Facebook page, it's that time of year again.  Ingenuity Fest in Cleveland, Ohio!  We will be doing our 30th and LARGEST mural we've ever attempted and our friends at Voix de Ville will be pitching the biggest little show in town all next weekend!!!  

I'm one of the featured artists for the Voix de Ville tent.  Last year I created their logo as well as giant billboards that go outside the tent.  For this year's festivities I created this little diddy.  

This little character is Terry the Tinkle toad, he shows up occasionally at the performances, stirs up mischief as well as the audience for the next show.  The drawing is all brushed ink and once it was done I paired it with a photo I took of the back of a rusty sign and it seemed to fit.

 SO!  Come on down to the Port of Cleveland next weekend and partake in an amazing event!

Engine, Engine No.9

It's not commonly known who invented the caster wheel nor that the inventor was a genius of pure evil, exceptionally inept but still pure evil!  This is his Evil Engine No.9, minion and "guy Friday" to Professor Caster for most of his career.  Not quite adept loathsome or dirty deeds, or turning corners for that matter,  No.9 could port heavy loads, mix drinks and developed a knack for all manner of courtly and Gentlemanly behavior.  

Most of the wonders of this massive machine has been lost to time, only the lowly caster wheel remain to carry the Caster name.

The Darkseid High-Five

If you have such hap hazard eye lasers why would you hold your hand up when you were firing them off?  Cause your Darkseid that's why!  

Spider Woman!

We've had a busy summer out painting and such, even so, back to our mini challenges!  This time it's Spider Woman.  I decided to take the opportunity to mess around with my ink brush pen again as well as my exercises in limited color but this time I stumbled across a look from one of my favorite things growing up.

They use to sell these small, plastic pencil sharpeners with puffy stickers on the back of them, diecut out so you could stand them up and play with them like action figures.  Action figures you could have, play with on your school desk and when the teacher got mad you could say they were just harmless pencil sharpeners.  They were great, cost like 25 cents in the school office and looked kinda like this.  Always a yellow background and always limited color, but more importantly secret school time toys! 

If you go out in the woods today you better not go alone...

My Father was a music teacher and many of the books I got to page through as a kid were the music books he taught from.  I remember reading the lyrics to "Teddy Bear Picnic" way before I ever heard the song and it always struck me sinister. 

  
 "If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise

 If you go down in the woods today you'd better go in disguise."

Why do you need a disguise? What would the teddy bears do to you?  The answer I suspect is the title, what else are they going to eat at the picnic?

"If you go down in the woods today you better not go alone

It's lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home

For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain
Because today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic!"

This is one of my entries in the "Old Friends: 20 Illustrators Pay Tribute to Beloved Children's Books" show at Bay Arts.  The opening reception is July 11th and from what I've seen of the work so far its not to be missed!  

Want me to turn this up for ya?

Decided to throw a little color in my brush pen experiments. And why not, old school, limited color screen print style!?  

Erin Boo-Doodle: 5

Week 24: Heroes in a Half Shell!

Sadly, I was a little too young for TMNT, though I remember playing with the action figures a bit (Michelangelo's my favorite). Cowabunga, dudes!

Week 19: For Mr. Sendak

I will miss you sir. Thanks for everything.

Week 15: That deaf dumb and blind girl sure plays a mean pinba...er... Roller Derby

Just don't call her Roller Derby Barbie

 

I had a blast with this one! ... For some reason I had "Pinball Wizard" running through my head whenever I worked on it...

This is all in Illustrator. I used it as an Artclub demo last week and have been working on it bit by bit since then (hence the lateness). Ben Hale took this picture of us when I started.

Art nerds who get to show off are happy art nerds!

BTW... Totally digging the Hubble Space photos right now. I want to put galaxies in everything... including my outfits. The fantastic thing is that all the Hubble photos are free to download and use from the Hubble Website. Awesome! Thanks NASA!

Week 14: Lady Gaga - Drawn this Way

Image by Adrian Valencia. Check out Adrian's amazing work here.

Ever since she came on the scene, Lady Gaga has been bending the borders of music, fashion, and performance in way we haven't seen since 1980's Madonna. In the process, Gaga has built herself into an incredible multifaceted character accompanied by truly legendary costumes. They can be beautiful, compelling, disturbing, and sometimes outright bizarre, but they are always the most memorable part of the performance. Love her or hate her, Gaga brings these works of art into the public eye - and that is simply amazing.

 

We at the Rust Belt Haus of Fashion have been given the (pretend) assignment of a lifetime: Design Lady Gaga's next edgy look. Come see how couture we can get...