A Knight in Gotham

Hey...Rev here.

My piece for the upcoming Carol and Johns Comic Shop Batman 75th anniversary party this Saturday the 26th curated by good friend and outstanding fellow artist Ryan Finley. If you were to boil Batman down to his basic essence....take away all the hype....all the crazy nefarious criminals...it boils down to one thing. Batman is just a man. Just a guy that dresses up in a bat outfit. Driven by a relentless desire, a need to avenge the death of his parents who died tragically at the hands of a criminal. Wrong place...at the wrong time. That being said....all he has is his money (being a billionaire and all), his wits and his training.

So I envisioned what it must be like for him at the end of a night, after running around and stopping as many crimes as he can. Muggers, rapists....robbers...taking on all these in one night...only to come home, mend his wounds and go back at it again the next night. 

Ink...ink washes, red ink...and white paint marker. I wanted a really wet look to this as Bats comes in from the rain...so I worked wet. Well....not me personally, but I kept the paper wet as I worked and allowed it to dry before wetting it again.

Batman: Quick & Dirty

Original Recipe

Artist extrodinaire and all around good dude, Ryan Finley is curating an art show this weekend at Carol And John's comic book shop around everyone's favorite orphan. My dadding and drawing schedule keeps me busy, but I squeaked this fella out during lunch breaks.  While it's a faster style than I'm used to, I can see working this way again. Particularly for sketch covers.

Some Photoshop Embellishment

The original will be on display this weekend at Carol And John's comic shop, and red (and pink and blue) prints will be available for purchase as well. 

A worthy exercise

Hi all, so last weekend I too part in Bay Art's 5 hour, monthly life drawing and it felt great!  It's been a while since I've done a pose longer than 20min and I didn't know how much I missed it until I did it.  I'm not 100% happy with my efforts (but honestly who is ever 100% about their own work) but as a return back to academic drawing its a good start.  I plan to go to as many of these as I can.  So get back to class if you can, it's good for ya!!!!

 Favorite part of this one, her shoulder.

Ben: The Monster At The End Of This Book

I was recently asked (months ago) to participate in a gallery show at Bay Arts by my friend Erin Schechtman.  The general theme of the "Old Friends Gallery Show" was to reference a beloved childrens' book.  I immediately knew I wanted to do something for Grover in The Monster At The End Of This Book, I just had no idea what.  Having planned on doing it at the last minute, like all of my projects, I had plenty of time to ponder my approach.  The more I "pondered" the less I thought about the story and more about the title.  "Monster At The End Of This Book" taken out of context sounds much more like a classic pulp novel than a children's book.

And that's sort of what happened.  Here is my Pulp/Film Noire version of Sesame Street.  Work in Progress at my personal site : NeedYourDisease.com  

-Ben

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!  

Retreadsville

Howdy all!  For today's post I've shined up a couple older pieces.  One for experimentation purposes (and to get my brain thinking in an effective, limited color way for future plans, moohahahahaha!) and the other for a gallery show.

First off, Boba.  This guy was screaming for the Kenner action figure coloring, so this happened.

This lil fella is soon to find itself printed on metal and hanging in a local gallery so I thought it needed some sprucing up.  A couple of things I had thought of when I did the piece originally and a couple of ideas I could only get from revisiting older art.

So what have I learned from this exercise? Go back, look at your old work!!  Sometimes it's done but sometimes it's waiting to be done.

Give Up

Hey there rust belt homies! Here's some more stuff happening in my sketchbook, this ones a double page drawing (note the seam) and has lots of lines. Lots of tiny tiny little lines that make my hand hurt by looking at em. I hate those lines. 

Your Pal, 

Randy Crider

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!?