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