004
Remember, bid or spread the word on the Batman drawing from yesterday!
003 – Batman
Reading comics in the late 80s and early 90s, especially right around the time of the first Tim Burton Batman film, I would on occasion check out some Batman comics. Usually, they were drawn by either Jim Aparo or Norm Breyfogle. Even though I clearly love me some Kelley Jones Batman, when the word “Batman” pops up, I immediately think of Aparo or Breyfogle’s art. Aparo was a great, surely, but his art definitely encompasses what I think of as “old school”, while Breyfogle has a distinct and memorable voice. It’s odd to me that he’s not a bigger name in comics since his work is so unique. Perhaps that’s why? There’s a tendency among comic fans to like bland and homogenous art, and Breyfogle is defiantly not that. He’s an artist – while I never particularly “picked up” any of his stylings in my own art – that I have greatly enjoyed for decades now, always getting excited to see him working on something. It’s always even better when he’s working on a thing I have an interest in reading (Sorry Prime, hello Spectre!)
So last month, when Norm Breyfogle suffered a stroke that crippled his drawing hand and drained his life savings, I was all set up to donate money to his recovery fund. Unfortunately, as often happens with me, I had a couple financial setbacks that are keeping me pretty poor at the moment. However, being an artist, being a Batman fan and being a Norm Breyfogle fan, I decided to do the one thing I can to contribute: a drawing.
So, in black and white ink on 9 x 12 bristol board, I drew Batman.
This piece is available for sale. More of an auction, really. I’m a total unknown with no fans, and the only people who come here are friends of mine who either a) have no money either or b) have too much of my artwork cluttering their houses as is. So, if you can help spread the word, or, hey, you want to buy this drawing, 100% of anything I raise will be donated to Breyfogle’s recovery fund that I linked above. Since it is for charity (and, y’know, I kinda worked hard on this), I’m not letting this go for less than 50 dollars. I will be taking bids, privately. Email me (eric at shonborn dot net) if you would like this art. 50 dollars minimum and if you can bid more, by all means. If I do not get a buyer here, then I will try ebay in one week from today. Serious inquiries only, please.
002 – Black Panther
Another revisit from the early days of the blog. Drawn on a Post-it, fucked with in Photoshop.
001 – Blue Devil
Sketch-a-Day 3.0 begins! Felt good to take a break, but it feels even better to get back to daily drawing. We’ll see if I can make it a full two years this time ’round. I mean, ideally, I’d like to just go and never take another break, but, yeah, I know me better than that. And, who knows, maybe I’ll get too drunk to draw and post again someday. There’s a precedent.
Anyhoo. Blue Devil! I’ve drawn him once before in the early days of the blog. I’m slowly tracking down the original Blue Devil series. It’s a lot of fun. For some reason, I occasionally delude myself into thinking that I should immediately be a film and television producer, and I’ve got a neat idea to execute a B.D. movie. I should get a lot of money and a some actors and a special effects house to help me make a trailer/promo reel.
Or, I’ll just draw some more for tomorrow.
Welcome back if you’re back!
Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor here was was drawn as a Christmas gift.
Holy F*ck
Fuck Nick Marino, I guess.
The Slasher
See, I told you I wasn’t going away forever. It’s only been 11 days. Did you miss me anyway? I’m glad, I missed you too, baby.
By now you’ve clicked the thumbnail above and embiggened it and perhaps you are wondering what pray-tell brings this monsterous piece to the blog? I’mma tell you. Right… nowish. First, some background.
Sometime back in late 2007, I was perusing a comic book website message board, back when I did such a thing. Somewhere along the line a loud-mouthed internet asshole (on a comic message board?!) was being a loud-mouthed internet asshole, and for whatever reason decided to call out his friend’s blog as an example of… something… (I don’t remember the specifics). Despite being trumpeted by an internet asshole, being about as big a horror fan as I am a comic book fan, I decided to click this link to a blog called “Horror Movie a Day“.
And from that point on, at least once a week (Horror Movie a Day a Week?), I would visit HMAD and read the reviews. I immediately became a fan of this blog and the man of mystery behind it, “BC”. The premise is that “BC” would watch and then write a review of (you guessed it) a horror movie a day. His reviews were well thought out, concise, humorous and entertaining. I watched a ton of movies based on his recommendations, even though there are quite a few of his reviews I disagreed with.
Somewhere along the way, a guy by the name of JB Sapienza contacted me. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but he found me via the HMAD blog comments. Now that I type that out, it’s a little creepy. Turns out, JB is friends with “BC” – aka Brian Collins – in real life, and thought that I also knew him. Nope, just a fan. Anyhoo, JB got me to do some artwork for a documentary he was working on called My Name is Jonah, and we became internet friends, and this odd little community of filmmakers, artists and nerds began to form.
Jump to April 2013, and Brian reviewed his last HMAD, which was also his first (go read the blog). He still reviews movies, just not everyday. Jump a little further to November 2014. JB and I are both working on something I’m not going to talk about yet, and we get to conversing. He tells me that Brian is working on a sort of book version of “Horror Movie a Day” and wants to know if I want to draw an illustration for one of the theme chapters.
I believe my almost instantaneous response was: “Fuck. Yes.”
JB put Brian and I in contact, I was shown a list of topics, I got greedy and picked two.
This is for the currently untitled Horror Movie a Day book, for the chapter on Slashers. The book is due out sometime in 2015, and you can bet I will let you know more when I find out.
I had a blast drawing this piece. I tried to dig deep and tap into my inner Kelley Jones/Bernie Wrightson/Kyle Hotz. I don’t think I was too unsuccessful at that (sidebar: I posted the previous sentence on the Facesbook when I began to work on this. Kyle Hotz responded to it, saying I should just look at Wally Wood and then I’d get all of the influences. He’s not wrong. I definitely need to educate myself further on Wood’s work, beyond the “22 Panels” thing). I drew this mostly at my parents’ house since it was relatively portable and I knew I could work a few hours a week there while doing my laundry. Also mostly drawn while watching “The Flash” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” with my mom.
There are some things I would definitely change in the slasher’s appearance, but I’m okay with it. We can’t use copyrighted characters, so I had to come up with sort of a generic slasher. I figured disfigured/deformed, wearing a jumpsuit and big knife would cover it. The poor victim depicted decapitated is Brian Collins himself, or at least, the closest I could get to a likeness of him. I’ve got one more HMAD piece on the table, maybe I’ll get it right next time.
669. Nova
So, I drew this, like, almost a year ago, back in January. It was a weird time. Which brings me to this, oddly.
I need a break.
With day 669 (my brotha!), Sketch-a-Day 2.0 is ending as I take a short hiatus. I’ve got some projects I need to get a jump on, and I have found that sketch-a-day was so much easier when I was alone and miserable. It got a little stressful trying to balance work (two jobs), being slightly more social, and bigger projects with the daily sketch. For the last couple months, I’ve just been coasting through these things and ignored some of those aforementioned bigger projects.
I’ll still post a couple things here and there, but the daily sketch is ending. For now. It will be back. I just need a few months. For symmetry’s sake, Sketch-a-Day 3.0 will start back up on February 1st, 2015. So, please, stick around. And maybe by then, I’ll have something cool to show and be a little refreshed.
Thanks to everyone who’s stuck around and enjoyed my dumb bullshit. I’ll see you in a few.
