SLAY HIM, TROLL KING!

Hey, I really like this Dave Cockrum THOR cover from 1979. I think it's the purple bell bottoms + the word balloons full of ridiculous:




Also, a heads up, I've got a piece in this event: ART FUR ANIMALS, a benefit for The Friends of The Cleveland Kennel. You here in Cleveland should come out and buy some art. The list of contributors is awesome.

Here's what the piece I gave them looks like, it's actually kinda big, 15 x 20:



Originally I had planned on using this as a wrap around cover to this CLEVELYN booklet I'm working on, but now that I'm looking at it small I think I'll do something else. I tried to use three point perspective, but I'm not sure how successful that was. Those kitties in the foreground are actually my cats. Rider is the big one, Challa is the smaller one. They're probably thinking about how many mice are loose in that big decayed city. Mice they could chase and kill.

Necromantic Primordial Growler

CONANAGRAM, INDEED.



I've been reading the living bajezzus out of The Savage Sword of Conan Volume 1, published by Dark Horse. For those unfamiliar, it collects the first fifteen Conan The Barbarian stories from the Savage Tales and the Savage Sword magazines that Marvel published in the mid 70s. So, we're talking 544 pages of glorious black and white sword and sorcery by Roy Thomas and a host of amazing comics artists. It starts off with Barry Windsor-Smith and after a few pieces by a couple others (including Gil Kane inked by Neal Adams), quickly turns to John Buscema.

The stories are relatively standard D&D faire, which is to say that they're goddamn motherfucking great adventure pieces about big tough dudes with big weapons fighting monsters and dark magick and evil wizards trying to capture and subjugate beautiful young supple maidens and princesses and shit. The art is really something to behold. Whoever put this thing together should win a medal and have it pinned to their chest by Robert E. Howard's conjured up ghost. It's printed on newsprint, and the black and white line art looks incredible for some reason. John Buscema was a goddamn maniac when he threw down on these pages. Hundreds of awesome awesome pages where all the panels are pieces unto themselves, yet it never once hurts the layout or pacing, ever. I think most of the actual magic from these pages really comes from the illustrative and really intense inkers like Alfredo Alcala and Pablo Marco that give Buscema's pencils their full blown face melting due. Seriously, these guys were riffing intense Doom Jams over The Drums of The Dead.

Here's the B and W (original line art: $35 por favor, email jgritty@gmail.com for details):

Behold...

Hey, Clan of the Cave Bear is going on TOUR, into the South then across the east coast-ish area. The tour schedule is on their myspace page, so go check them out. I don't know who reads this blog but they're playing Baltimore on 5/13, and Brooklyn on the 15th. They kill, so go see 'em.

The tour wraps up with this show at Now That's Class, with Behold... The Arctopus, and my favorite metalheads, Insurrect.

Here's some sketch love I did in my Cinema class while I was supposed to be taking notes.

Narcotic Patented Gasmask

=Just a couple sketches today. Busy trying to finish this website made of Flash. I'll post it up when I get it done. The hardest part is sitting and working and not getting distracted. Oh, and the actual planning part. Planning things out before actually trying to do them is a novelty, I think. Not exactly something I'm practiced at. Usually I just "do".



Rafeeq, of CLEVELYN. Drawn in Spanish class.



Mostly done digitally, I drew a sketch with a crummy crummy pen during a history class, and then scanned it, added most of the blacks and the sky and played around to make it non-so-shitty. Halfway inspired by The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford. I really liked that film. A lot. I recommend it. It's a long slow burn, though. It's good movie to just watch and spend time with. Here's one of the posters... not that I was really trying to imitate it or pay homage or anything. I don't think I had even seen this one until just now. The cover of the DVD I had was a little different.

Novelty Prankster Gentrifiers

I've pretty much decided not to continue in school after this semester. Not that anybody cares. I certainly don't.

Here's some more CLEVELYN characters...

Rafeeq:


Raquel:


Solomon:


I think I'll probably redraw Rafeeq and Solomon for the booklet I'm putting together. We'll see, they're not as terrible as I initially thought.