You never know what might turn up when you clean house. I found a small notebook I kept while on a art-class tour of European museums. This is a sketch I made in 1972 of one of the teachers. He’s pretty much the same today …

I didn’t totally goof off whilst I was out of town. I revamped and colorized one of my comix stories from some time ago, and I’m making it available as a high-rez PDF file, right here. Just click on the image above for the download. It’s a meditation on the nature of sentience, evolution and religion. There’s plenty of subtle references throughout. And WARNING — it contains a little female nudity, which in retrospect looks like peculiarly 1970s nekkidness. Much of the text is taken from a poetry fragment by my pal Homily Dingle, who, upon reading my interpretation, said it was not what he had in mind at all, which is pretty funny. More to the point, I’m fond of this particular story because it was the first printed appearance of my best-known character, The Dead Spaceman.

I guess I don’t have to explain that this newspaper cartoon ran several years ago.

It will be interesting to see how this reproduces. We old-timey comic artists often used something called chemical board to add tone. It essentially was two kinds of film developer painted onto the paper that “developed” shading in two different angles. Cool stuff, but you needed a pretty clean drawing, and the stuff got weird over the years.
Anyway, this is a splash page for the last volume in the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ trilogy “The Land That Time Forgot.” This is the best book of the series, full of spooky creatures and daunting escapes. Click two times for bigger.

This is an book illustration for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “The Land That Time Forgot.” I did many for publication, and about two years after they were published, a pair of films based on the books were released. It was fun seeing how Hollywood handled the same scenes. This scene, however, was not in the film, as a gigantic prehistoric bear attempts to eat our hero and heroine by entering their cave, but the entrance is a bit too small. I did want this drawing to have the feeling of a nightmare image. The fun part in this illustration is the lighting and the composition. Alas, my bear looks more like a big dog. Check your references first, kids. (Click on image for bigger)

This was fun. Found a beat-up sketch I made of a proposed comic-book character, rescued it via scan and then added color. Yeah, this is from the epic sci-fi pirate tale that I wrote a massive outline for. Think “Doctor Who” crossed with “The Truman Show” crossed with “The Crimson Pirate” crossed with “Foundation.” Pen-and-ink in 1977, color added in 2010. No one can say I work too fast. In case you’re wondering about how the spatter effect was done, it’s a fairly simple PhotoShop trick, but it starts out with a straw full of India Ink being blown onto a Bristol board. Click on the image for a bigger version, then click again for even bigger — if you dare!