Lines and Colors – Page 667

Lines and Colors is a blog about painting, drawing, sketching, illustration, comics, cartoons, webcomics, art history, concept art, gallery art, digital art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

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Promoting some friends and some clients of my website design business

Mark Schultz

March 10, 2006

Mark Schultz is a comics artist best know for his creation Xenozoic Tales, otherwise known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, which first appeared in the eighth issue of Death Rattle, a black and white horror anthology comic from Kitchen Sink Press, in the 80’s.

The story was so successful that Schultz went on to produce 14 issues of Xenozoic Tales, many of which were collected into a pair of trade paperbacks from Dark Horse Comics, and several others were published by Kitchen Sink Press. The feature was also made into an animated TV cartoon called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs in the early 90’s.

Schultz draws the aforementioned Cadillacs, and especially dinosaurs, with beautifully rendered pen and ink line and hatching. In addition he draws wonderful lost civilizations, elaborate palaces, beautiful characters and fantastic landscapes.

Initially, Schultz seemed very heavily influenced by Wally Wood, (something I know all too much about ). At some point he was introduced to the beautiful comics work of Al Williamson, and his artistic hero, Alex Raymond, as well as Hal Foster, contemporary of Raymond and one of Wood’s great influences.

It’s fascinating to look through the Xenozoic Tales stories in sequence. Schultz isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve as he goes through a period of studying the characteristics of these great comics artists, digesting the parts he likes and absorbing those techniques into the developing whole of his own work. Recently, he has shown the influence great pen and ink illustrators like Joseph Clement Coll and Franklin Booth.

I saw some of his original pages for Xenozoic Tales at a comics convention several years ago, and they were rendered at an unbelievable level of detail, including details that you can’t even see in the printed comics.

A book of Schultz’s drawings has been published by Flesk Publications, a terrific small publisher who has also done superb collections of the work of Joseph Clement Coll and Franklin Booth, and has announced new collections of the work of illustrator and realist painter James Bama (who did those wonderful Doc Savage paperback covers), illustrator Bob Peake and contemporary comics artist Steve Rude (see my post on Steve Rude), as well as a second volume of work by Mark Schultz.

There are several trade paperback editions of the Xenozoic Tales stories: Xenozoic Tales Vol 1 After The End TP, Xenozoic Tales Vol 2 The New World TP, Dinosaur Shaman: Nine Tales from the Xenozoic Age, Scenes from the Xenozoic Age, and some under the title Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Time in Overdrive.

Michael J. Ryan’s Paleoblog has a nice review of the Flesk book of Schultz drawings.

There in no official site for Mark Schultz as far as I know, so the link below points to the gallery on the Flesk Publications site. Schultz also writes comic books and is currently writing the Prince Valiant newspaper strip.

The Flesk site also includes an interview with Schultz.

www.fleskpublications.com/galleries/schultz/

Categories:
Comics, Pen & Ink
Brom

March 9, 2006

Brom started his career creating commercial illustration for clients like Coke, IBM and CNN. He was soon seduced the dark side (of illustration, that is) and shifted into working full time for TSR, creating wonderfully dark and twisted fantasy illustrations for TSR’s publications (image above). He eventually went freelance again and has continued to do fantasy illustrations for books, games and comics.

His paintings are deliberately horrific and disturbing, often featuring distorted figures with “alternate” body parts, grotesque demons, gothic fetish costuming and unnervingly bizarre implements and weapons.

The painting here is one of his milder ones, and was inspired by a trip to the Tate gallery in London and their collections of Pre-Raphaelite and other 19th Century realist paintings. (See my post on William Holman Hunt.) You can see the influence in his affection for elaborate costume and the surface textures and details of decorative objects like the hanging urn. Brom’s work also shows the influence of classic illustrators, like those mentioned in the previous two posts, as well as more contemporary fantasy illustrators like Frank Frazetta.

Brom has just completed his new project, Plucker, a 160 page illustrated novel with over 100 images. The book has its own web site.

Plucker‘s images deal with many subjects that you might find in children’s books; provided, of course, that you wanted to scar your children for life. What happens to the innocent objects of childhood when the encounter the horrors of grown-up reality? Brom knows.

You may also be able to find earlier collections of his work, Darkwerks: The Art of Brom, and Offerings. He is also featured in Fantasy Art Masters: The Best Fantasy and Science Fiction Artists Show How They Work by Dick Jude, a beautifully illustrated volume in which Brom and nine other fantasy and science fiction artists discuss their work and working techniques in detail.

www.bromart.com
www.theplucker.com/

Categories:
Illustration, Sc-fi and Fantasy
100 Years of Illustration and Design (Paul Giambarba)

March 8, 2006

While we’re on the delicious subject of the great American illustrators (see my previous post about the Kelly Collection of American Illustration, below), allow me to recommend another superb blog. 100 Years of Illustration and Design is a cornucopia of rich, detailed posts about a long roster of great illustrators.

You’ll find fascinating and profusely illustrated (I love that phrase!) posts about Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Charles Dana Gibson and many others. If you can’t get to the Dahesh exhibit, here is a terrific tour of a virtual museum of great golden age illustration.

The real treat is that on this virtual museum tour you have a wonderfully experienced and knowledgeable guide. Author Paul Giambarba is an illustrator, cartoonist and caricaturist in addition to being a designer and former corporate art director for Polaroid. He has lectured on Graphic Design at Cornell and Wellesley.

Most importantly, he has a deep respect and admiration for these artists and their accomplishments, and it shows. His posts are thoughtful, perceptive and endlessly informative; full of rich details and interesting comparisons. He also has a great eye and the posts are chock full of some of best examples of each artist’s work.

I’m sure to be pointing you back to Giambarba’s treasure trove of illustration appreciation in the future as I do my own posts on some of these fantastic artists.

Giambarba also maintains a blog about Cartoons and Caricatures.

http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/

Categories:
Illustration
Stories To Tell: Masterworks from The Kelly Collection of American Illustration (at the Dahesh Museum)

March 7, 2006

I’ve had this exhibition listed in the Exhibitions list on the lines and colors sidebar for months now, and I’ve been looking forward to it for just as long. I was hoping to have a personal report for you by this time, but my schedule just isn’t letting me get to NY (or anywhere else) at the moment, so I want to at least mention the exhibition while it’s early in the run.

The Dahesh Museum in New York has a rare mission; it’s dedicated to 19th century salon and academic art, a branch of art that has been aggressively ignored by the art establishment from the mid 20th Century until just recently, and it’s worth a visit for that alone.

The museum’s current exhibition, however, is particularly appealing; it features selections from a remarkable collection of illustration, with a bounty of masters from the “golden age” of American illustration (roughly 1880-1930).

The works extracted (out of 90 in the show) and highlighted in a gallery on the museum’s site read like a who’s who of the great American illustrators: Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, J.C. Leyendecker, Joseph Clement Coll, Franklin Booth, Dean Cornwell, Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, Charles Dana Gibson, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Harrison Cady, James Montgomery Flagg and several others! Wow!

To my knowledge, the collection is not normally on view unless loaned out, and the exhibition doesn’t seem to be slated to travel. So if you’re in reach of NYC, this my be your only opportunity to see these particular works. I’ve sampled a few of the highlights in the image above. (Clockwise from top left: Franklin Booth, J.C. Leyendecker, Joseph Clement Coll, N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.)

The exhibition runs to May 21, 2006. If you want to see some fine work by the greatest American illustrators, run to this exhibition.

Addendum: David Apatoff wrote in to say that he has seen the show (see comments on this post) and has posted more (and larger) images on his Illustration Art blog.

www.daheshmuseum.org/collection/exhibitions/index.html#current
www.daheshmuseum.org/collection/exhibitions/gallery.html

Categories:
Illustration, Museums
Drawn!

March 6, 2006

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Drawn!, but if not, it’s a blog that would be of interest to almost anyone who reads lines and colors.

Although it bills itself as “The Illustration blog”, Drawn! actually covers a wide range of visual arts, including many of the categories covered by lines and colors: cartooning, comics, drawing and motion design, in addition to illustration.

The emphasis and approach are different, though, and you may find the two blogs nicely complimentary.

While lines and colors places an emphasis on traditional technique and classical draughtsmanship and leans toward realism and realist styles, Drawn! is into the new, modern, hip and more highly stylized artists. Their emphasis is on what’s fresh and what’s current, (although they do pay their respects to the classics).

Unlike lines and colors, which depends on the efforts of your humble writer to produce one (hopefully thoughtful) post a day, Drawn! is collaborative, drawing on a roster of talented illustrators and artists, each with their own discoveries to share and their own knowledge and experience to add to the mix. Drawn! is updated more frequently than lines and colors; new short posts are often added two or three times a day. The ability to add multiple posts per day and to leverage the network of many contributors allows Drawn! to act as a news source in addition to the “What’s cool” aspect.

Drawn! turned one year old on Saturday, and their frequent updating has produced a nice big archive of goodies to look through. The sidebar features a long rotating list of “Random Creative Blogs” in addition to a more steady lst of “More Inspiration”.

Don’t miss the page devoted to the Drawn! contributors that has brief descriptions of them and links to their individual web sites, portfolios, webcomics and blogs. In particular, founding contributor and principlal driving force John Martz has a blog at RobotJohnny.com that has been running considerably longer than Drawn!.

Drawn! was nominated for a Bloggie this year as “Best New Weblog”. (Winners should be announced sometime in March.)

Drawn! has recently added a Discussion Forum, with a variery of topics of interest to illustrators, cartoonists, comics artists and draw-ers of all stripes.

www.drawn.ca

Categories:
Comics, Drawing, Illustration
Mike Wieringo (update)

March 5, 2006

I first wrote about comics artist Mike Wieringo (“Ringo”), back in September. At the time I mentioned that he had started a blog, Mike’s own personal soapbox!, and was posting nice large images of his drawings (in contrast to the rather small images in his site’s galleries).

He’s still at it, frequently updating the blog with wonderful new drawings of comics characters, sometimes his own (above), sometimes other artist’s and sometimes company owned. In every case, he has his own unique take on the character and his style is immediately recognizable.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, although his work looks terrific inked and colored, his pencil drawings are particularly appealing. They have a loose, confident quality and energy that is sometimes submerged in the finished work, so it’s a treat to see lots of his pencil work on the blog.

Unfortunately, even though he’s up over 200 posts, he doesn’t seem to have any provision for permalinks or archives on the blog, so once the current posts are replaced by new ones, they’re out of reach. It’s a good reason to check in often I guess, but maybe if we all write and ask nice, he’ll open up the blog archives and let us have a look at the older posts once in while.

www.mikewieringo.com/html/Blog.htm
www.mikewieringo.com/

Categories:
Comics