How to do St. Patrick’s Day Right, Bachelor Version (from Penthouse job, 2009):

9:20 AM- Sprinkle sawdust on apartment floor in preparation for return, smuggle bottle of Jameson to work

10:05 AM- Spend day filling out NCAA March Madness Bracket while hating the fluorescent ceiling lights and working on that Jameson

6:35 PM- First bar, someone tries to put one of those stupid plastic green bowler hats on you. Punch them in the face.

11:50 PM- Third bar where 17 year-olds are drinking Bud Light out of plastic yard glasses. Punch at least one person wearing a Larry Bird jersey.

1:55 AM- Karaoke! “In your heeeeead, in your heeeead, zombie! Zo-ombie! Zo-ombie-ay-ay!”

3:00 AM- Passed out in bed, sawdust on floor pays off.

Text paraphrased from original article by Drew Magary

I had the pleasure of a visit from a group of students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in my studio last Tuesday. They were from Jim Keefe‘s “Pro Practice: Comics” class. I would like to think I imparted great wisdom and advice to them all, but to be quite honest I don’t remember much about what I said . . . I was operating on about 3 hours of sleep and only stopped working on a looming deadline job when they were there. Went right back to work afterward. I am sure I was charming, though. Nobody cried, so that’s a step up from the last time I met with art students. Lots more pictures here.

I forgot to make them put all their change in my Batman bank you see by the window . . . I must have been really tired.

I got this tweet the other day from cartoonist and teacher Chris Pearce:

Chris had run across an old issue of Coneheads at a thrift store, and wrote a blog post about it in a feature called “Thrift Store Finds”, where he says a lot of nice things about my work in it, most of which are not deserved.

My tweeted response is correct—that was an interesting job . . . my first (and only) project with Marvel Comics. It was a four issue miniseries from 1994, obviously based on the Saturday Night Live skit and the (then) recently released movie of the same. The project was short but a lot of fun—in particular getting to work with an experienced, professional creative team and a big-time comic book company. I was especially excited to find out the inker was going to be the legendary Marie Severin.

I was contacted directly by Marvel editor Hildy Mesnick about possibly doing the pencils for an upcoming humorous mini-series. They had seen my work on NOW Comic’s Married . . . with Children title and felt they wanted a similar blend of caricature and comic book style storytelling for Coneheads. I had to “try out” for the job, if I remember correctly, by doing a few drawings of some of the characters including Dan Acroyd and Jane Curtain. I was later told at least one other artist was also being considered, but that Dan Acroyd’s opinions had tilted the gig toward me . . .  I have no idea if that was true but I’ve been going with it ever since. The story itself was basically a sequel to the film, picking up where the movie left off and involving all of the characters that appeared on screen,

Working for Marvel was a lot different that working for NOW. NOW was perpetually behind with all their books, sent me scripts in irregular batches, barely checked up on me and almost never did any art direction—and those were their positives. Marvel was much more demanding, but they were also very supportive and professional. They gave me all the things I needed to do the job to the best of my ability and in a timely manner, right down to the official Marvel bristol boards to do the covers and pages on! Writer Terry Collins‘ scripts were well organized and easy to follow, and Hildy was a great editor to work with . . .  especially considering we had some issues with the licensing people which I will get into in a minute.

I’m not incredibly proud of the work I did on Coneheads, although it was miles better than my Married . . . with Children garbage. My drawing skills were still rough, despite having done about 500 pages for NOW prior to getting this gig. I was encouraged by Marvel’s enthusiasm over the cover I did for issue #1 (image above), which they really liked and reportedly got put up in the office as one of the best covers of the month. That was inked by the great Jimmy Palmiotti, by the way, which was very cool. One thing I will say is that Marie made my work seem much better than it was. She was not afraid to correct or flat out redraw things over my pencils if they were not drawn very well. She left the faces alone, sticking with my pretty tightly drawn caricatures so none of the likenesses were lost, but figures, objects and environments were fair game and she really made it look good. In fact, that whole job was like an expert critique and art lesson. I xeroxed my penciled pages before sending them in, so when I got the printed issue I pored over the pages to see where she tweaked things and where she completely redrew them. In every instance I could see where my drawing was off, weak or downright terrible and how she handled it. Things like drawing trees in a park scene and a goofy dog running to avoid a car, her corrections really showed me where I had been lazy or just deficient, and how much better it could be done. It was like getting paid for an education! The best part was I got to talk with her after the issues went to press, because the penciller and inker split the returned original artwork (I think it was 75% penciller, 25% inker) and they gave me her number so we could discuss which pages she wanted. I got the opportunity to tell her I was a big fan of her work, how honored I was to work with her and thanks for making me look good. She was a very sweet lady, and told me I could have all the original artwork, including her allotted pages. That made sense to me, because she probably had boxes full of original art from The Hulk, Sub-Marniner and God knows what else so what would she want some pages from Coneheads for?? Anyway, she sent me all her returned originals and even signed some of them for me.

Not everything went smoothly on the project. Anyone who looked over those issues today might notice that, while some of the characters are obviously caricatures of the actors from the film, others do not seem to resemble the actors from the movie at all. That’s because not all the actors would give Marvel permission to use their likenesses, and as a result I had to purposefully avoid making certain characters resemble the actors. This was not a parody of the film like MAD would do, thus making it a fair use issue. This was an officially licensed property and subject to the approval of the licensee. So, while I did caricatures of Dan Acroyd, Jane Curtain, Chris Farely, Michael McKean and many others who did give their permission I had to completely avoid any likeness of a certain few, who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty.

Like I said,  fun and interesting job, where I learned a lot about my skills (or lack thereof) and working on licensed properties . . . although to be fair I had similar issues when working on the Married comics. There the licensing people had no problem with me making Ed O’Neill of David Faustino look as goofy as I wanted, but had me tone down my drawings of Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate until they were little more than cartoon character versions of them. This was true at first . . . later I either got better at capturing their likeness and still doing a real caricature of them, or they stopped caring so much about it, because I was then able to treat them the same way I did the guys in the show. So, in that respect working for Marvel was not that much different than working for NOW . . . except with Marvel I got paid twice as much . . . and I actually got PAID . . . and the issues actually came out in the months they were scheduled to come out . . . and . . .

This past weekend I traveled to Des Moines, IA, to meet up with my fellow members of the National Cartoonist Society North Central Chapter to judge out division for the annual NCS awards (we did Greeting Cards this year). While there we got to hang out in freelance cartoonist/illustrator Buck Jones and his wife Kim‘s house for a little welcome party. Besides the great food, drink and company, the best part was getting to pour over Buck’s great collection of original artwork by dozens of well known cartoonists. You can check out some pics on the NCC blog. Knowing I had quite a few originals myself that needed framing and hanging, I was jealous of how great these looked on the walls in and around Buck’s studio.

After 23 years of marriage, The Lovely Anna has developed a well-tuned psychic connection with me. Somehow, from Buck’s basement in Des Moines, she picked up my thoughts on this subject. Completely unsolicited by me (at least verbally), she spent a few hours the other day framing up much of the original artwork I have been collecting over the years, and rehung several already framed pieces on the wall outside my studio door. I’d call it “The MADropolitan Museum of Art”, but that’s been taken.

Here are some pics, and some closeups of a few of the originals:

Clicky to Embiggen…

This is a prize. A Family Circus Sunday original, signed by both Jeff Keane and the late Bil.

I traded a lame drawing of Pixar story artist Josh Cooley as Alfred E. Neuman (or maybe it was Alfred as Josh?) for this beauty. Sucker.

Chris Browne and his wife Caroll are some of the most delightful people you would ever want to meet. I got this Hagar the Horrible Sunday original from them after they had won a couple of my MAD pages in our chapter’s annual(ish) raffle.

This obviously isn’t an original, but the brilliant Garry Trudeau donated some of these Doonesbury thirtieth anniversary to the NCS, and we got one signed.

One of the benefits of being president of the NCS is that The Lockhorns artist John Reiner does an official caricature of you. John is a tremendously talented and versatile artist and a GREAT caricaturist. You can see many of his caricatures of past NCS presidents here.

I traded another lame drawing of Alfred for this Ask Shagg! original by creator and The Cartoonists Studio founder Peter Guren. HA!… Another sucker!

The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee! creator John Hambrock sent this to me out-of-the-blue, correctly equating the value of a trade of mine as the same as nothing (John’s a smart guy). However he for some reason still wants something, so now he’s going to end up getting what he asks for… he should have left well enough alone.

Stephan Pastis sent me this Pearls Before Swine original also out-of-the-blue… but I think it was in an effort to buy my vote for him for NCS “Cartoonist of the Year”. It worked.

Got this beauty via a silent auction at the MAD, MAD, SCAD Weekend last November. Paul Coker! One of my favorites.

This from the same weekend in Savannah. Anna made me sign it also

I have several other originals that still need framing and adding to the gallery. Some needed odd frames or mattes to work, so plenty more to add. Nice to have a little inspiration on my way into the studio every day.

Fellow caricaturist Rick Wright asked in the comments on yesterday’s blog post about my 2012 Reuben artwork if I used a 3D program to do the Las Vegas sign in the background, and I got a couple of emails asking how I handled that (one accused me of photomontaging it!). So, I thought I’d post the pencil roughs and inks for a little behind the scenes look:

Clicky to embiggen

Above is the the rough concept sketch. Typically I only take a rough stab at the caricature at this point because I am just working out the composition and general concept. However I did do a fairly tight sketch of the sign in the slight worm’s eye perspective I intended. I had moved John’s header text/graphics over to the right and wanted to use that space on the left for the NCS logo on top of the sign. This sketch was also for “position only” purposes for John , so I didn’t bother drawing in all the characters quite yet… I just knew where I would fit them in.

Unfortunately I didn’t scan in the final pencil sketch before I did the inks, so I don;t have that to show. Here is the final inked version. Note I enlarged the logo on the sign and altered the perspective a touch:

Clicky to embiggen

I inked mostly with a dip pen, but I did break out a brush for the blacks in the suits, etc.

Here is how I handled the sign…

With the lines on their own layer, I painted the background:

Then I painted the sign. Sorry for the big jump in steps, but I flattened all the sign color and lettering into one layer and didn’t have it to separate out for this little demonstration. I did my usual process of painting in flat, base colors first, then selecting the individual colors with the wand tool and painting the shadows/highlights in. I usually avoid the airbrush tool in PhotoShop, but in this case I wanted the smooth, gradated look. The hand lettered “Fabulous” I isolated on the inked layer and then colored the linked lines a flat blue, then added some shadow along the top of them to match that cast by the protruding “drum” objects. Finally I found a font that closely resembled the one in the real Las Vegas sign, and did the lettering using the text tool in the appropriate colors. Then I rasterized the text, and used the transform>distort feature to create the right perspective look to the lettering, which I did using the eyeball method:

I debated whether or not to do the neon-tubing like in the real sign, which I was afraid would be too much. I ended up compromising by doing it on the sign letters but not on the NCS logo, which I thought would make that too busy and hard to see. The tubing was easy. I did the letters by painting in the tubes using a flat, light gray, and then selecting them and creating the darker gradated edges with an “inner shadow” layer filter:

Lastly, I created the circular tubes the same way, but added the connections to the surface of the sign as well:

Fun little illustration, and I’m glad so many people got a kick out of it.

I occasionally interrupt this cartooning/illustration blog to digress on some other subjects of which I have an interest. Some such subjects include bodybuilding/weightlifting, gadgets and technology and the occasional movie or book review. This post is of the latter variety.

Followers of this blog might know I am a pretty big Stephen King fan. I have read everything he’s ever written, with the exception of his non-fiction book On Writing, and I’ll get to that one of these days. The Dark Tower books are particular favorites of mine. The comic book geek in me enjoys his subject matter (usually horror and/or the occult, occasionally sci-fi, sometimes all of the above), but what really hooks me with King’s books is the way he constructs and treats his characters. Sometimes he misfires and they become caricatures or steroetypes (in his earlier books there is always one horrific bitch of a female authority figure with few redeeming qualities), but more often the characters that populate his books are wonderfully flawed people put in extraordinary situations and allowed to find their way into all the corners. His dialogue and descriptions of surrounding life are also vibrant and terrifically THERE. His books are almost always most enjoyable in the journey and not necessarily in the conclusion, although his later books seem to have much more satisfying endings than some of his earlier works.

Which brings me to his latest novel, 11/22/63.

While any person who enjoys great fiction writing could appreciate any of King’s better works for the reasons I cited above, his subject matter does get in the way of that enjoyment if the reader is not “into” those kinds of books. The Lovely Anna, for example, loves great books but doesn’t enjoy King’s work because there is too much horror in most of them. In fact, other than some of his short stories like The Body, Hearts in Atlantis and a couple of others, I don’t think I could recommend any of King’s work to her that I am sure she would thoroughly enjoy.

Except 11/22/63.

This might be King’s most generally appealing work since The Green Mile in 1996, and is certainly a big departure from his usual focus on the supernatural or the terrifying. Oh, there’s a touch of all that here as you might expect, but the driving force behind this book is a timeless (literally) love story and the meticulous examination and exploration of the events leading up to, and the people involved with, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The story centers around a high school English teacher named Jake Epping from a small town called Lisbon Falls, Maine, present day. Jake is shown a secret by Al, a local diner owner… that there is a hole in time in the diner’s back storage room that leads to Sept. 9th, 1958 at 11:58 am in the same Lisbon Falls. Al has been making regular visits back to 1958, always emerging at the same moment in time each trip, and has become obsessed with using his time-travel “rabbit hole” to go back and prevent the assassination of JFK. Al is dying of cancer, however, so he has chosen Jake to take up his quest. A series of test runs to see how the future might be affected occur. Al preventing the paralyzing of a young girl in a hunting accident for one. Jake stopping the murder of an entire young family, save the one survivor who Jake knows in the present day, for another. These lead up to Jake traveling back once again, this time to stay for over five years to wait out the assassination attempt. Al’s research and notes, taken when he himself visited for many years but became too sick to make it to November 22nd, 1963, guide Jake as he watches Lee Harvey Oswald intent on determining if he really acted alone and therefore that killing him would prevent the murder of Kennedy. The past doesn’t want to be changed, however, and resists in many tangible ways. In between, Jake falls in love and finds a renewed life in the small town of Jodie, Texas.

True to most King books, you quickly come to care for the characters involved and Jake’s time between 1958 and 1963 gradually changes from just a waiting game to a simple but enriching life and love he didn’t think was possible since his divorce back in the present day. Unlike most King books, the deep and painstaking research of historical facts shine through every page.  The sumptuous details of the late fifties and early sixties era New England and Texas, the events leading up to that fateful day in 1963, and the specifics of the lives of the Oswald’s are center stage as Jake tries to balance his new-found life/love and his mission. History buffs will marvel at being virtually transported to that time and place, seeing inside the lives of Oswald, his Russian wife Marina and their daughter June plus their extended family and acquaintances as Jake weaves his surveillance about them using his foreknowledge of their movements and plans to keep ahead of them. Fascinating stuff. Jake’s falling in love with fellow teacher Sadie Dunhill is heart-warming and heart-wrenching, as the meddling with time becomes serious. It’s a very long tale, but the journey, as always with King, is an enjoyable ride.

Having just finished the book, I am going to hand it off to The Lovely Anna, confident she is going to enjoy it as much as I did. If you’ve never read a Stephen King book because his usual subject matter doesn’t appeal to you, I’d heartily recommend you give this one a read. It’s got the best of King without the scary, bloody bits getting in the way.

As for me, I’ve only got a few months to wait until I get to revisit Mid-World and the land of The Dark Tower in the novel The Wind Through the Keyhole.

Yep… paying the price for my Maui vacation. I can almost still taste those mai tais now…

We interrupt this blog for a few days while the blog admin gets himself a serious sunburn and combats the pain with copious amounts of Mai Tais on vacation. The blog will resume with the Sunday Mailbag. Mahalo.

Q: I’d like to do freelance illustration and cartooning for a career, but I hate marketing and invoicing and dealing with the business side of things. I just want to draw. How do you handle all that business stuff?

A: There is supposedly a scientific reason for a highly creative person not liking (or in some cases being any good at) the business side of art. Most people have heard of the concept of “right-brained” and “left-brained” people. As the theory goes, people who’s brains are left-side dominant are more analytical and logical, and are generally better at math and other structured concepts. Those who are ride-side dominant are more creative and artistic. Obviously we all use both sides of the brain, so to say either are mutually exclusive is silly, but it does seem to be true that many artistic people don’t get along with math or business. That said, I know of many terrific illustrators that are also exceptionally good at the business side of it, so take that theory with a grain of salt.

Being a professional freelancer takes more that just the artistic skills. You need to have great communication skills to work with art directors and clients, the ability to manage your time and meet deadlines, strong marketing senses and the ability to handle the contracts, invoicing, paperwork and other business things that are part of being a freelancer. I know many very talented artists who can’t make a living freelancing because the don’t have those other parts of the whole that make one a professional. That’s not an indictment of their talent as an artist or cartoonist, but being able to create that work within the demands of the marketplace is necessary if you want to make a career out of illustration. Some artists just don’t have that skill set.

One solution is to find a business manager or rep to handle that end of things. That’s really ideal if you just won’t or can’t do any of the business stuff. I know a few successful illustrators who would not be able to function without that rep. Of course you have to give up a percentage of your fees for that service, but a good rep easily makes up for that in more work and in building solid relationships with clients. I’ve never had a rep, and good ones are hard to find.

Another solution is to get your spouse involved if he/she is willing or able to do so. I also know of a few “spouse teams” where the non-artist husband or wife acts as the manager for the other. It takes a pretty special spouse to do that… I’ve got one of those myself! The Lovely Anna helps me out enormously with paperwork and other business tasks that free up my time to do the artwork.

Finally, as always, there’s an app for that. Actually there are many computer programs that help with the business end of things, from accounting to time management to marketing. I use Intuit QuickBooks to do all my invoicing, accounts payable and all the money stuff. I have a small to-do program called Things that I use to manage my time, setting goals for various tasks and deadline reminders. I know there are some programs out there dedicated to the freelance professional that incorporate several elements together in one place. Mac Freelance is one I know of. I am sure there are others but as I have never used any I am unable to recommend one. That might be something to look into, though.

The reality is there is an art side of being a professional illustrator, and a non-art side. Both are important, and both need to be handled competently for to succeed in the tough world of freelancing.

Thanks to John Larson for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!