My Favourite Cartoonists Part 1: Roy Crane

Whenever people ask me about my influences as a cartoonist, Roy Crane is always near the top of the list. I first encounted his work almost a decade ago, and its been a source of great inspiration ever since. I know there's been a resurgence of interest in the work of early comic strip artists lately, and great cartoonists like Noel Sickles, Frank Robbins and Alex Raymond are being re-discovered by a whole new generation, but sometimes it seems to me that Roy Crane is still being neglected and not being afforded the respect he's due.

As a pioneer of the adventure strip form during the 1930's, Crane was very popular and influential with the first generation of comic book creators and well known in his day. Even the late great Alex Toth often mentioned how much he respected Crane's elegant and refined cartooning. However, many people today seem unaware of his art and writing and just how beautiful and humane it was.


Personally, I learned a lot from studying Roy Crane's comic strips. His strip Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy is a wonderful blend of humour and light hearted, all-ages adventure -- the kind that doesn't seem to exist any more. But his follow-up strip, Buz Sawyer, is even better, in my opinion. Like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes, when I read Buz Sawyer, I get a real sense of the warmth and humanity of the artist's personality. And Crane was an absolute master of adventure continuity writing. If you read a handful of strips, you'll be hooked on the story line and characters for good.

As for his artwork, its a joy to behold. The Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy artwork is a big-foot cartooning treat, but man, that Buz Sawyer stuff is absolute heaven! If you want to know where I get my two-tone sensibility from, the secret is that a good part of it comes from Crane and Buz Sawyer. He drew that strip on duo-tone board, so it was illustrated in black, white and a couple of grey tones -- all of which he handled masterfully. There's some panels I saw early in my career that just completely floored me, and they convinced me to stop working in just black and white and start adding a half-tone or second colour. The illusion of light and atmosphere he created with his duo-tone artwork was incomparable and when it was coupled with his cartooning, which stressed clarity and stripped compositions down to their essential elements, the result was magic.

I can see the influence of Roy Crane in many other cartoonists that I admire like John Severin, Joe Shuster, C.C. Beck and Jaime Hernandez, and I hope that more and more people will discover his art, and the wonderful body of work he left behind.

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 5)

Ok, here's one last image from my recent series of illustrations done for swedish agency, Karnhuset. This one's pretty simple, just a cake and piechart combo -- nothing to it, right? Except for the fact that after I drew it, the nice people at the agency actually got a baker to fabricate a cake based on my design for their promotion! How crazy cool is that?! Now I've designed stuff that went on t-shirts, CD-covers, even toys, but I've never had a cake made based on something I drew! Too bad that they're in europe, and weren't be able to send one to me -- I'd love to know what my favourite green colour tastes like. Yum!

Special note: My thanks to my fabulously talented wife, Claudia, for turning my drawings here into a vector file. She's a wonderful artist in her own right, and an expert at drawing food. I drew the original image in marker, and she converted it all in Illustrator to an eps file -- and even I couldn't tell the difference!

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 4)

Here's two more illustrations, drawn for the swedish agency Karnhuset for their website redesign. Like the other drawings done for them (which I posted here in December), these are portraits of their staff members. As with most of my work, I drew this in marker and ink and then colour corrected it a bit in photoshop. The final artwork on their website has a different colour scheme, but I thought I'd change 'em up before posting them here for variety's sake.

Also, just for fun, I thought I'd post the various concept sketches and pencil roughs that were done for the client on the way to drawing the final artwork and having it approved. You can see it all for yourself below:

Toronto Back Alleys pt. 12

There was a big snowstorm that hit Toronto a week ago, which was great since, up until January, we had a relatively snow-free winter. Personally, I like the snow, especially the way the sunlight bounces off of it at midday when it's really bright. Then its dazzling to me. In my spare time, I've been drawing up some more alley way pictures again, all with a winter theme, so I thought I'd post one here.

Kirby Always Rules

Sorry about the long delays between posts, folks. I've been very busy this year with a lot of freelance work, much of which I can't share or post, which has led to my blog looking a bit neglected lately. However, to make up for it, I thought I'd post this page I inked up for fun one afternoon.

As many of you can obviously tell, the original pencils were from a Thor comic book page, drawn by the legendary creator of Thor, Jack 'King' Kirby. Most people who know me know that I am one truely ga-ga Kirby fan (like thousands of other cartoonists!) and I, like many others, love to occasionally practice my inking over reproductions of his pencils. It's a comic-geeky thing, I know, but I'm not alone in doing so.

Previously, I've posted several other Kirby pages that I've inked on this blog. However, I thought I'd post this one, which was done a bit differently. Namely, I took some small liberties with the art and inked and toned it much like most of my own 2-colour work. It was done fairly quickly and for fun, without any attempt at real finesse, so it might look a bit rushed, but I was pretty happy with the results -- happy enough to share it here, anyway. I hope you'll like it too. The overall effect reminds me a bit of those old british marvel-comic reprints, which were sometimes printed in black and white with one spot colour -- usually red or blue. For comparison's sake, below is the original Kirby pencil art -- which I scanned in from a reproduction found in the excellent The Jack Kirby Collector magazine.

And as always, my thanks to Jack Kirby, who left behind such a wonderful body of work for artists like me to study and learn from. He was the best super-hero artist ever, folks. There will never be another like him.

Gimme Indie Rock!

I drew this one after looking through a recent music magazine. It was done in markers, unlike the last one which was drawn in guoache, so that I could keep my drawing more spontaneous and loose. I find when I paint in gouache, the drying time involved forces me to work really slow, which stiffens up my approach. Using markers allows me to work fairly quickly, but the trade off is that it requires some digital clean-up afterwards, whereas goauche goes on nice and flat -- just the way I like it.

This one goes out to Will Oldham, whose music always inspires me.

Happy New Year

It finally snowed recently in Toronto, so here's a winter themed drawing I did recently. Don't ask why -- it just has that title. This one's dedicated to Gary Boaz, whose book I really enjoyed.

Christmas (shopping)

This is a Christmas themed drawing I did about 4 years ago. I have to admit, the excessive commercialism of Christmas gives me something of an empty feeling every year. That's not to say I don't like Christmas -- I really like the opportunity to see family and friends over the holidays, but the overwhelming emphasis on consumption and christmas shopping and all the advertisments and marketing during the holidays leaves me a bit cold.

As for the drawing, it was done in gouache and ink on water-colour paper and you can see how much I liked drawing big-headed people back then (and still do!).

Christmas time

These are a couple of illustrations I did for a marketing company a few years ago. To be honest, I don't actually remember where these were used, but since they're holiday themed, I thought it'd be nice to post them here.

The first one was a board game (obviously), and the second was the cover for an activity book (I think). They were both drawn in ink and then coloured in photoshop, and they're pretty indicative of the kind of illustration I did for children's publications a few years a go.

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 3)

Here's another of the illustrations I did recently for Swedish agency, Karnhuset. This one is a view of their offices in Stockholm. As you can imagine, this one took a long time to draw, with all the architectural details and such. And I actually drew it twice - once as a small colour rough, and once as a big final image which was to be blown up and displayed poster-sized.

Normally, I'd be wary of trying to draw a scene like this without first visiting the location and shooting some reference photos, but obviously that wasn't possible this time. Thankfully though, they provided me with some excellent photos to work from.

Still, it would have been nice to visit Stockholm...

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 2)

Here are two more illustrations of the staff at the Stockholm-based design agency, Karnhuset, that I did recently. As with the previous two, these were also drawn in coloured inks. Originally, they were all drawn in the same colour, but I decided to vary up the tone here for variety's sake.

Illustration Work: Karnhuset (part 1)

Recently, I did a series of illustrations for Swedish design agency, Karnhuset, for their upcoming website re-design. I was contacted by Jakob Westman, who also happens to be a pretty snazzy illustrator, and he commissioned me to do some fun portraits of himself and his fellow staff, as well as some other graphics and illustrations.

I'll post more images and graphics later, but for now, here's a couple of the staff portraits I drew up. These pretty much drew themselves, mainly because the Karnhuset gang have a lot of style anyway, and working with another illustrator as a contact made it easier, since Jakob drew up some nice concept sketches for me to see what he wanted.

For the final art, I drew these with coloured ink on paper. They were then scanned and and cleaned it up a bit in photoshop. The drawings were all painted in the same colour, but for variety's sake I decided to re-colour each individually here.

Project: Romantic

I recently got my comp copies of the fantastic new Adhouse books anthology, Project: Romantic and I was very impressed. I only have a 2 page story in it, "My Name is Eunice Jung" (which you may have already seen in my blog here), so my contribution is really really small, but its a thrill to see my work in amongst such a talented collection of artists. As I read through the book, I was awed by the sheer diversity of art styles and storytelling approaches. There are some seriously talented comic artists working today and many of them are in this book.

Among my favourite stories in the collection: "Romantic" by Doug Fraser, "Scary Thoughts" by Mike Laughead, "Lovers on a Flying Bed" by Junko Mizuno, "Sweetie 'n Me" by Joel Priddy (a real charmer), "The Romance of the Skies" by Paul Rivoche, "Imitating Life" by José Garibaldi (man, what a draftsman!), "Even Monkeys Know About Love After A Hundred Years" by Randall Christopher (hilarious and touching) and "Kingdom Animalia, Ilustrated" by Josh Cutter (just plain hilarious). Though I have to say, my favourite story here is "Trouble" by T. Edward Bak -- a four page story about teenage crushes, younger brothers, and suburban life all written and drawn in a very understated, honest style.

But don't take my word for it, pick up a copy of Project: Romantic and see for yourself!

Super-Deformed Forever!

Here's another old drawing, this one combining two of my favourite things: 1) drawing big headed people, and 2) Bruce Lee!

Seriously, there was a time when I drew almost everyone super-deformed/bigheaded/3-heads-high! I think it was because it made everyone look so friendly and cartoony. Or maybe it's just because Ihave an gi-normously large head myself. Either way, I still find myself having trouble resisting the urge to make everyone's head just a little bigger in my drawings -- as all my friends will attest!

And it really does make everyone look friendlier! As another example, here's a drawing of everyone's favourite bad-ass mutant, Wolverine, done in my big-headed style. See and judge for yourself...

Hulk Says...

I often leave the TV running in the background when I'm working or doodling. Its a bad habit, and more than a few times I've found myself annoyed by whatever's on (especially daytime TV -- a total wasteland), while at the same time being unwilling to change channels 'cause I'm so immersed in what I'm working on. Then my drawing gets all aggressive and frustrated.

I think I drew this while an episode of "Dr. Phil" was playing in the background, so go figure.

The Third Eye Knows

Here's a really, really old piece -- I drew this one way back in 2000, for an ESP Home-Testing-Kit that I designed with my wife as a fun art project. This illustration served as part of the back cover artwork for it. Someday, I'll have to post to the rest of the art from that, but for now you can see for yourself at how much or how little my work has changed in 6 years.

Sketchbook Heroes

I'm trying to post a little more often to this blog, so here's a few quick super-hero sketches I drew up recently. I've been trying to loosen up by doing more of my drawing in ink and not pencilling as much, so these were actually drawn completely in markers with no pencil drawing at all. I first sketched out the figure in a coloured marker, and then inked over it on a light-box to arrive at the final. All in all, each sketch took about 10-20 minutes of time --a quick doodle break in the middle of the day!

Incidentally, all three heroes (the Black Panther, Captain Victory and Iron-Man) were created by Jack "King" Kirby -- I just find doodling Kirby-designed heroes to be so much fun.

And the Winner Is...

Well, folks, it took a while, and the result was very close, but we finally have a winner for our Write a Caption Contest !

After a lengthy and highly subjective judging process, the three person panel of me, myself and I have chosen Jason Chalker and his witty entry as the winner! I think it was the Planet of the Apes reference that sealed it for me. You can read his genius above and see for yourself.

Jason will be receiving the semi-awesome prize-pack of my recent Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook children's comic as well as a selection of ultra-rare mini-comics by me.

Congratulations, Jason! And my sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to enter. Clearly, there are some very funny writers among you. This was so much fun -- I think I'll run another contest soon.

Bad Inking Day

The "write a caption" contest is still going on (see previous entry), but I thought I'd share a gag I doodled after I had a bad inking day recently. It was one of those days where every line I set down was shaky and no amount of warming up would get rid of it. I don't usually get like that, and most often I just work through it and it goes away, but this time it stayed with me the whole day! It was especially frustrating because the day before, I felt like I was on a real roll and every line came off my brush with a "zing!"

Anyway, I drew this up after I finished up the day's work, to try and cheer myself up. And what do you know -- in the course of drawing and lettering it, my shaky line went away!

What is this monkey doing?

Sometimes, I'll doodle while watching TV. This is one I did while watching a recent press conference from the White House.

I hereby apologize in advance to anyone offended by sketches of apes giving the finger.

Wowie Special Contest!
Ok, here's an idea -- I've decided to run a contest to see who could write the best caption for this picture. So, if you're the creative copy-writing type and/or the compulsive contest-entering type, take your best shot in the comments section and I'll pick the winner at the end of October (or thereabouts).

And what does the winner recieve for his or her efforts? Howsabout a free copy of my recent Max Finder Mystery book and a rare stash of my mini-comics (so rare that I have to go deep into my closet to find them!). Is that enough to entice your creative juices? If your answer's no, well...that's all I got. But you answered yes or even "ehh..maybe, whatever", then enter today!*

*offer void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Some contestants may be asked to answer a skill testing question relating to the Jack Kirby era Fantastic Four. Well, maybe not.

See No Evil

Here's a spot illustration I did recently for Canadian Business Magazine (Tim Davin, art director). It was to accompany an article on stock regulators. It might sound pretty dry but really, how could I ever turn down an opportunity to draw monkeys?

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Who is Max Finder, you ask? Well, he's the 7th Grade detective who, together with his friend Alison Santos, solves mysteries and crimes around his neighbourhood in Whispering Meadows. He's also the star of the popular Max Finder Mystery comic feature that ran each month in Owl Magazine for the past 3 years. Now those you-solve-it stories are being collected up into a trade paperback series with the first volume hitting the shelves this month.

I'm thrilled to see it collected up in a paperback, as Max Finder Mystery was the first ongoing comic feature I ever drew, and I enjoyed working on it so much that it made me want to write and draw comics full time. I learned a lot about drawing comics in the 3 years I worked on it, and I had a great time illustrating the scripts by writer Liam O'Donnell.

For more information about Max Finder Mystery:Collected Casebook, you can check out the links below:

Visit the Owl magazine webpage for Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook

Read a sample Max Finder Mystery online at Owlkids.com

Read an interview with me on Silverbulletcomicbooks.com discussing Max Finder and other upcoming projects

Check out the website of Max Finder creator and writer, Liam O'Donnell

Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook is available at your local bookstore, but you can also order it online directly from the publisher, Owlkids books, or through retailers like Chapters.ca and Amazon.com.

Finally, here's a promotional Max Finder poster I drew for the launch and Owl Magazine's 30th Anniversary Kids Day event at the CN Tower, here in Toronto:

Toronto Back Alleys Pt. 11

For those who asked, here are two more ink drawings of the alleys near my home in Toronto. The first was drawn earlier, at the start of the summer, while the second was drawn a week or so ago. As you might be able to tell, I was bit rusty when I drew the more recent one, and my markers were a little more worn down.

Fear Agent Part 2

This is a pin-up I did recently for Rick Remender's Fear Agent comic. Actually, it's the 2nd pin-up I've done for FA (you can see the first one here.) and it took way longer to draw than I originally thought. I drew the rough sketch for it fairly quickly, like under a half-hour, so I thought I'd probably knock out the final in markers over a couple of hours. Of course, sometimes things don't go as easily as planned, and after deciding to change up the lighting for more accuracy and added drama, I spent a full day learning how to draw double-lit figures in two colours. I still see a lot of problems/mistakes in this piece, but I thought I share it anyway.

Commissioned Heroes

This is a recent commissioned piece I drew up for a nice fellow who asked for Green Lantern or Doctor Fate. I threw in Superman and the Flash for the extra "Superfriends" feel, but being the geek I am, I decided to draw the old "earth-2" Superman (fellow geeks will get it). I think I just like the idea of drawing Superman with grey hair.

Anyway, the drawing was done is markers and then scanned and cleaned-up in photoshop. The original colour was green (surprise), but I changed it up for variety's sake. Below is the original small pencil rough.

The Grasshopper Part 3

Sorry about the delay between posts -- I had some snafus with blogger and my mac, which kept crashing. Anyway, here are a couple more pages from the Grasshopper. These were part of the preview/sample book I brought to the San Diego Comiccon. Thanks to everyone who's commented on this project -- I appreciate the kind words!

San Diego ComicCon Wrap-up!

I'll post more Grasshopper pages in a bit, but first, since I'm now sufficiently recovered from the experience, I thought I'd post some pics of my first visit to the San Diego Comic Con earlier this year. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had no idea what to expect, and went down to sunny california with a great crew of fellow canadian artists including Ramon Perez, Rob Coughler, Andy Belanger, Cameron Stewart and my hotel-mate and fellow Kirby-obsessive, Steve Manale. These are actually Steve's photos that I'm posting, since I didn't snap a single picture while I was there! Thanks, Steve!


Sometimes you just gotta read the instructions...


Never mock the power of the Yellow Stripe!


Stylin' and Profilin' at the beach...


...ah, the beach!


Frank Cammuso and his lovely wife, Ngoc, demonstrate their musical-theatre background with an impromptu display of jazz-hands. Ramon Perez is mildly amused.


Our fellow Canadians miss their flight. Ramon feels a migrane coming on as Andy B. prepares to optic-blast Cameron Stewart from across the cramped hotel room.


You know its time to leave when you get this jaded. Kill your idols, Steve!