A Wizard, A True Star

Recent Randomness

Sketches from recent months and weeks.

Color Page

Had a couple of friends over today to draw and hang out. Here's one of the pages I worked on. Colors are copic markers on the figures and colored pencils for the backgrounds.

My SHOWN'D online portfolio

I've finally gotten around to representing myself online with the sort of work I do for a living - apparel design. From time to time on this blog I've showcased a number of projects I've done at work, but for the most part, everything on my portfolio site hasn't been seen before. It's got girls, boys, mens and ladies designs for sleepwear. You can check it out at
www.shownd.com/justinleiter

Monster Page

Sat down yesterday and started doing some sketching and this is what resulted.

Stephen

Another painting from my days at S.V.A. (1990 to be precise-yikes, nineteen years ago, that's insane...), a portrait of my brother-in-law, Stephen Falvo. This was done for Marvin Mattelson's Illustration class. Mattelson was an illustrator famous for his very tight, super detailed acrylic paintings. He gave that up a number of years ago and began just doing commissioned oil portraits in a classical realist style. He still teaches and holds workshops at S.V.A., though I don't know if his methods are the same as when I studied with him. Back in the early 1990's, he had a very developed system, where he had everyone work according to his steps and technique about mixing colors and working with pre-mixed gradients of tone. Though he used his technique with acrylics, I did my painting in oils. The original measures 10 3/4" X 9 1/4".

The Return of Kooky Mini-Comics

The second Kooky Mini-Comic. The first one can be found by clicking

here

This has been sitting around since I did it sometime last year. Maybe it should have stayed sitting.

Lycanthrope

I've long held a fascination for werewolves, going back even before The Howling and An American Werewolf in London finally realized on screen an amazing Werewolf transformation. In High School, wih a fellow film-making friend, named, I kid you not, Wolfgang (who also had a love of werewolves), we made our own version of An American Werewolf, dubbed Lycanthrope. Basically it was An American Werewolf in High School. Here, in honor of the werewolf, a quick sketch.

Tenement Funster!

My new purple shoes
Bin amazin' the people next door
And my rock'n'roll forty fives
Bin enragin' the folks on the lower floor

I got a way with the girls on my block
Try my best to be a real individual
And when we go down to smokies and rock
They line up like it's some kind of ritual
Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place

I like the good things in life
But most of the best things ain't free
It's the same situation just cuts like a knife
When you're young and you're poor and you're crazy
Young and you're crazy...

Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place

music and lyrics by Roger Taylor

This was done as a project while at S.V.A. in 1990. The subject was to illustrate a lyric from a song. I choose Queen's 'Tenement Funster', written and sung by their drummer, Roger Taylor, for their third album, Sheer Heartattack. I went back into it with some Photoshop fixes, mainly the socks, which I was never happy with in the original. Painted in oils on 15X20 hot press Bainbridge Illustration board. The only two sketches I did for the project are here, where I tried using a different lyric from the song for one of the them.

Bettie Page

Here's my contribution to a blog agreement among a few friends, to draw a pic of the recently passed away, great pin-up queen of the 50's, Ms. Bettie Page.

Speed Racer-The Next Generation

Earlier this year I began doing style guide art for the new Cartoon Network animated series, 'Speed Racer-The Next Generation'. Working alone and in collaboration with some friends we created a number of poses and character art for licensors to use as they needed. These can be used on anything from garments to school supplies to paper plates. IDW Publishing decided to use a couple of my pieces for the covers of their Speed Racer-Next Generation comic. For issue #1 they used some exisiting style guide art, but went with mine on issue #2. There's an ad for the next issue, also using my artwork, in the back. Unfortunately, I didn't get any credit in the individual comic, but I should get a mention in the trade paperback collected edition. The background textures in both were added by someone in the IDW art department, utilizing other style guide art. The leaping Chim Chim was published in IDW's digest sized Speed Racer-The Next Generation Animated, Vol. 1.

Posted here alongside the finished Illustrator files are some of my original pencil drawings and inks for a few of the pieces I did. Most of the art seen here was done this way, with the exception of the Chim Chim ones, where I did all the inking directly in Illustrator. Besides the stuff here, and the Next Generation art that I did in collaboration with friends (they would do the pencils, then I would go in and tighten that up, ink it, and do the final Illustrator art), I also did some classic Speed Racer art, updating old drawings, including two pieces used as life-size standees for display purposes; one of Speed and the Mach 5 and the other of Racer X and the Shooting Star.

All artwork copyright Speed Racer Enterprises.

In With The Old

Pictured here are some pieces I did back in 1990, during my second year at S.VA. These paintings were part of a triptych originally. Unfortunately, the middle pic, of a young kid discovering the gun his older brother has hidden in the sock drawer, was destroyed by the flood I had earlier this year. I played around with the hues in Photoshop for the purple tinted version. Painted in oils on illustration board, the art measures 9" X 12".

Their Uncle

Gouache, Brush Pen and Photoshop. 10" X 15" on Illustration board.

Her Sister

Didn't get to the illustration board this time. This one was done in my sketchbook. Pencil, Brush Pen, Markers, Gouache, Colored Pencil and Photoshop.

His Brother

My first painting (well, sort of) in quite some time...aside from a small experiment or two I might have done in the last few years, this is the first time I've put brush to paint in well over a decade...closer to two. I went to a Dave DeVries painting demo a few days ago at the Kustum Kulture Gallery in Baldwin, NY and I got some inspiration to attempt a painting. I had a piece of some kind of illustration board lying around that I figured I'd test out my gouache paints on. Unfortunately, what I thought was cold press illustration board was actually more like a piece of some kind of backing board, so the paint was really sopped up by it and wasn't working the way I'd have hoped. Still, I was able to move it around somewhat. as for why I say this is a painting 'sort of', it's still got lots of holding lines and only bits of modeling going on here and there....maybe it's more of a 'colored drawing'...if anything, it's an experiment and next time I'll actually get some real illustration board! I added a bit of texture to the background in Photoshop.

Waterlogged Memories

Some friends might remember the flood I had a few months ago, which I have yet to write about either here or on The Collection. A more detailed post about it is due. In brief, the cause was my hot water heater bursting open in the basement. All in all, what could have been a total disaster seemed to turn out relatively well, with only a couple of hundred dollars worth of damage to some not so rare or coveted books and magazines (and a small handful of comics). I got off relatively scott free it seemed.

Recently, I went to look though a large zipped vinyl student art portfolio that had been in the corner where much of the worst damage was done. To my horror and utter shock I discovered that ALL the art in the portfolio had pretty much become fused together, a pile of art around two dozen thick. Sitting for months, soaked through with water, the pages had been reduced to brown mildewy sops with torn stains making up for what was once art, with only slivers along sides remaining of untouched artwork. Thankfully, much of the original art in that portfolio existed in some sort of form, whether it be a stat or newspaper printing, slide or digital scan. Still, a good 5-10 pieces are gone to the winds of time forever. I'll write some more about it on my Collection website, along with photos of some of the beyond repair damaged artwork. It's not a pretty sight and I recommend the faint of heart to look away.

Some of the art that was lost were some of the first art showcaed on this blog back in 2005. Pieces like The Paradox Of Time and No-Meenin' Funnies. A few paintings done for Personality Comics and a science-fiction anthology were lost, along with three pages of an issue of Plasma Baby which I inked over Mitch Waxman's pencils. And then a whole bunch of student pieces, both large and small.

So here, as a last goodbye to this art, are just some of the pieces that were destroyed none of which have made it onto this blog before.




From the top:

The Return Of Captain Democracy-1987
Behind The Wall Of Sleep-1988
Marcos-1988
Salvation-1988
Spacer-1988
Carl-1989/90
Skull-1989/90
Giantess-1989/90
Bobbi-1990