I've been watching the Hammer Film Noirs from the 50's. not great but some fun stuff in them. I quite enjoyed Bad Blonde

My artist pal in Montreal, Pat Hamou, has a special think for old gangsters. He's been working over the years, on putting together a book of his research and ilustrations on the subject. I could tell
you more but you are better of checking his blog which he has just started here
sixforfive

allright this is an old one..
but hey she's wearing a mask

some random sketchbook doodles

train derailment , missing a friends business in a warehouse by about 10 feet.

this new popeye collection from Fantagraphics
is beeautiful!

An old friend, Kenn Brown the fantastic artist behind Monolithic studios was in town
yesterday briefly and unfortuanately due to the small time window he had, we couldn't hook up. As wee guffers being into punk rock some of our earliest published
work was for local shows in town and for my own band as well.
I'm to lazy to dig up old fliers but heres the second album cover I did for a local band called
Rocktopus [the first was for Montreals The Doughboys second album and they
blew up a section of it so I never thought it looked so great]. And the inner sleeve.Ahh vinyl sleeves
no reissue on cd yet.
And the EF poster is not so old but from a couple of years ago, I posted an earliar version in an altered state. Excuse the lousy font
at the bottom.

A couple of books I recommend that I've read over the last couple of month that give an insight into veeeery different
cartoonist lifestyles.
Men of Tomorrow charts the beginnings of the comic book industry in the 30's and forties including the earliar publishers organized crime ties and also the tragic story of Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, and their lifelong battle to
get a piece of the Superman action and make a living.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Charles Addams biography which was quite an eyeopener for me not knowing a lot
of the details of his life. This guy swung in high class circles and even dated Jackie O and a revolving door of New York socialites in between partying at
vacation houses in the Hamptons and car racing and of course creating some brilliant New Yorker cartoons.
Tho not uncommon, it still comes as a bit of a surprise to find out that some of Addams' famous gags were written by New Yorker gag writers. A must read for any Addams fan.
Two pretty different worlds of ink slinging.

No skating yet in these parts

I was happy to find a life drawing class going on 10 minutes walk from my home, and a couple of doors down from a killer curry
place. It had been awhile, heres a couple from the night

My IF invention. Not much time to do the coloring I wanted.
I've been reading the first colllection of Popeye daily strips released by Fantagraphics and the bird in the top is Whiffle bird from it.
I'm lovin them Popeyes! Fantagraphics did a beautiful job on this one.

Hey Folks a
birthday card for my neice... Hope she likes the
remote control tarantula I got her.

My pal and monster artist extrodinaire Dirty Donny has a
shrunken head decanter from Tiki Farm coming out.
They are having a "name the mug" contest here
http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=21656&forum=12&103
I have great memories of trips down to the Chiller Con in New York with Donny,Pat and myself
for Halloween weekends.

From and old Buddhist story.
Going to tidy it up and colour.

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.
After giving out candies we went over to 13th street for our friends Ian and Jennifers annual Halloween party.
Ian [pictured with my smashing wife Alison] is a great sculptor and played bass for many years [Metal on Metal !]
in metal band Anvil! woohooo! And a helluva great guy I might ad. they always have the most killer
lawn in the neighborhood

I'll participating in the upcoming Halloween themed show at Lunar Boy Gallery
called "Apparations"

http://www.lunarboygallery.com/Shows/Shows.html

heres the piece, not the greatest photo,
but I had a to pack it up before I could get a better image.

"A Heinous Incantation"

After trying to coordinate our schedulees for almost a year "The Smook" [reddot in links] and I finally managed to get it together and
sketch at the zoo today. Lots of Fun, Heres some of sketches, hope to post some more soon .







Since last we met Mike got himself a real fancy pants camera,,here he is in ACTION!


At one point as we were heading on up to the Ostrich section I started telling Mike about how Johnny Cash almost got killed
by an Ostrich who attacked him and he had to fight him off. We got closer and saw 4 baby ostriches on a hill and as we walked closer to take pictures, ol Papa Ostrich crested the hill and came charging at us and stood angry and flapping and rearing when he hit the rock wall. I stepped back and Mike kept taking pictures and I think both of us were surprised how close we were. The seperating stone wasn't all that high.
Well someone yelled at us and as it turned out we had stumbled behind restricted lines which explained our good view.











Hopoefully it won't be so long before our next sketching out as its always nice to sketch and catch up with the Smook
and I also left my coffe mugg in his car

And what I happened to be listening to as I loaded up this entry...

My wife, Alison is a chef and recipe developer and this month a book
she co-wrote hit the shelves. Way to go honey!
I can't say it was a tough job being the guinea pig for tastings in this book
Actually during one tasting party we had with friends i got restless
with interval between cocktails and ended up concocting a couple myself.
One of them made it into the book and even snagged a coveted color
photo. Not to take the thunder from my honey but heck it is my blog
so heres a photo of the "FIzzmopolitan"

I had a nice surprise a couple of days ago when I found out artist Franc Reyes had a book out.
I haven't seen Franc in years. He worked at the same studio I did when i was a animation greenhorne and we were designers
on the same show. I loved Franc's bankground designs and he introduced me to lots of work of a couple of artists I still love, Frank Brangwyn and Sorolla. I remember one time he generously brought in some old Phillipine comic books with early work of Alfred Alcala that I still have photocopies of that were just beautiful. These really cool sciencefiction and fantasy stories which were for me ,some of the best work of his. We used to talk about old illustrators something i always enjoy. Frank is a fabulous painter and I remember going to a group show he was in and seeing his paintings for the first time, wonderful.
Watching Franc work at that time is a great memory for me and seeing glimpses of some of his work over the years since he moved away from Toronto is a real treat.
you can see some of it here too.
http://arikstudio.web.aplus.net/

I happened to be digging through some old stuff and I came across some old oil painting life studies,
good fun and something I haven't managed to squeeze in the time for lately

Sketches of the trip to Pennsylvania