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

This is the cover for a book for Scholastic that I worked on coming out in the fall. I created 17 black and white interior
drawings as well. A fun project to work on even if the bully isn't a zombie.

Heres a couple of more pics from the kids book I illustrated called "The Biggest Girl in the World" about giantess Anna Swan
that I posted the cover of earliar.

Frazetta Road Trip

'ello 'ello,

Long time since a post but the reasons are both wonderful and sad. Sad because my hard drive had a meltdown and I was without a computer for two weeks. I back up most everything so nothing was really lost except bits and pieces but still a big headache and I'm sure missing things will pop up. Anyway it was quite nice getting a break from the computer screen and having just sent off the last piece for a book illustration and having only hand drawn projects on the table it was as ideal as it could have been.
Last weekend me and a couple of friends, Rich and Serge, went on a short little road trip to East Stroudsperg Pennsylvania
to the home and Gallery of Frank Frazetta. I love driving through that neck of the wooks. A few years back I did a road trip to Norman Rockwells House/Museum and NC Wyeths and the Brandywine and that was a fantastic trip.

Apart from "leadfoot Dannys" landing us a speeding ticked and some lousy nachos it went smoothly. Stroudsberg is a nice little town and
the Frazetta Gallery was wonderful. His wife Ellie was in the gallery but no Frank. It was amazing coming face to face with
with all those images I loved growing up as a kid. The Creepy/EErie covers looked waaay better in person. I wish there was more 50's pen and ink and comic stuff since that and the watercolours are my favourite but its a small complaint.
Seeing all those Conan covers lined up was pretty fantastic.
One pen and ink peice from '51 called beaty and the beast was one of my favourites.

My wife tends to be a tad more organized then myself and she was amused by the fact that Rich [who was driving the rental]
had chosen an atlas from 1962 to guide us down. I admit I did my own bit of eye rolling but who am to tell another fella how to drive especially not doing any back up planning myself, So I had to take this picture of a puzzled Rich and Serge, trying to reastablish our spot while taking the "scenic' route
down to the museum







Some pics of the Frazetta grounds and the museum and Leadfoot in front of one of his favourite pieces









I managed to wake up early and do some sketches around town [as well as in the car] heres a couple of them. I'll post some more later.