Tuff-Girl- Action!

This is the 2023 Tuff-Girl Poster print.

In keeping with the 1960’s - early 1970’s era of inspiration I drew upon 2 sources of inspiration.

First is the 1969 cover of Action Comics No. 373. Pencilled by Curt Swan and Inked by Neal Adams. It was after a little internet research, that I had learned to whom to credit the art. I think perhaps with Superman in the bottom right corner, that one could spot Swan’s style. What I think threw me off that scent and into thinking that the penciler was emulating Swan’s style was the not-typical-Curt-Swan’s-Supergirl face of the central figure. Knowing what I know now, that’s Adams’ style bleeding into the face render.

In my original, concept sketches, you can see me attempting to stick closely to the Supergirl design with a skirt, inspired boot designs and the same hair do. I would have added a cape if that was something with which Tuff-Girl accessorized her costume.

The secondary inspiration is the promotional poster for the James Bond movie Dr. No by artist, Mitchell Hooks and designed by David Chasman. 

 

As I have developed and improved as an artist, the more that I like art styles that are rougher and incorporate peeks of the art processes or, as they say, the artist’s hand. In the poster version with five different spot colors for the figures, the black screen is Hook’s drawing.

For my base drawing, I broke Swan’s Supergirl pose with more asymmetry and contra-posto to have her stepping out of the hole instead of her hands and feet holding open the hole. The torn hole, is less the white framing device of the DC Comics cover, and as a result is a stand-in for a sun burst motif. To make the rough drawing feel communicate, I used a black Prisma Color art pencil on a 9” x 12” piece of water color paper, expecting to enlarge the image of the print.

In my digital color of the art, I soon jumped away from borrowing the monochromatic or spot color look, and settled with playing with the idea of the interaction of only printed magenta and yellow screens underneath the black screen of the drawing- no cyan screen. With different levels of magenta and yellow there are ranges of pinks, oranges and reds to play with. The direct painted version seemed to be lacking. So knowing that I was playing with the 2-screens idea, it was a short creative leap to have Photoshop create coarse half tones of the magenta and yellow.

Siding with the Dr. No poster, I silhouette Tuff-Girl against white rather than the black of the Action Comics cover for a back-lit effect. The triangular page tears working with the white background further implies the sun burst motif, intentional or not.

For my convention exclusive version, I recolored the surrounding “page” to a near-black, deep rose color and pulled back to fit the top-left tag while revealing more of the art.

I often try to have my Tuff-Girl posters feature her with her dog Wichita. I’m sorry that I opted not to include Wichita in the final image. She threw the composition off balance.

Heroes Convention 2023

 

After a three year absence, I will be returning to Heroes Convention, Charlotte, NC this coming Father’s Day weekend.

HEROES CONVENTION

Charlotte

Friday, June 16 - Sunday June 18, 2023

Charlotte Convention Center

 

501 S. College St.

Charlotte, NC 28202

Artist Alley: AA-68 & 69

Featured offerings:

- Unstoppable Tuff-Girl Comics -

- Original Art -

- Art Prints -

- Commissions -

- Sketch Books -

- Miscellaneous Merchandise -

This was a late decision on my part to go this year. I had not been able to go to last year’s Heroes Con, which was the first following the COVID having shut down the previous two shows. Other than the loose art that I’ve drawn and collected for sale, I won’t be arriving with much new stuff.

If you’re curious, Issue No. 4 of Unstoppable Tuff-Girl is still rattling around my head.

I hope that I remember how to do this and pack everything that I’ll need and want to sell.

See you there!

monstergram7 - Top 3 January 2022

 

The monotonae blog has been a current-works portfolio. It has also been neglected for quite a while. At the end of 2022, I thought that I would at least do some sort of Top 9 or 10 liked postings from my instagram account, monstergram7. There are phone apps that will filter that kind of thing, but for reasons I didn’t like the results, not the least of which is the inclusion of the 2021 “Top 9” post. I felt that the pool ought to be limited to the original posts. So in brute force manner in went back through my posts to see what the top 10 were, and in the process I could determine the tops by each month.

And now here I am, beginning a month by month accounting of the top 3.

#1- Cinderella’s Broken Coach (ballpoint pen ink on paper napkin). 

I had drawn this in a Carl’s Jr. one morning while waiting out work being done on my car, so the vehicle repair theme was at the forefront of my mind. Playing around with stylizing the Disney princess is a frequent part of my 9-to-5 job.

 

#2- World Pictographic Icons from a D23 Map (digital). 

This square of 3 is just one of many that features the pictographs that I designed to embellish a map for the D23 Disney Fan Club. The map that I had created is just the backing board for the real prize- a set of enamel pins each representing a different Disney resort plus the Disney Cruise Line. The inspiration for the style was Rolly Crump’s animals for “it’s a small world” attraction that compliments Mary Blair’s  fanciful designs.

#3- Poppy Jean, Tiger (black ink and color pencil on paper).

Poppy is another of my attempts to develop a pin-up/cheesecake character design in my own style, whatever that is. Many successful artists can be identified by how they draw and paint beautiful women: Dan DeCarlo, Frank Frazetta, Alberto Varga, Olivia Berardinis, and the list goes on. However, I get in my own way because so much of my 9-to-5 job is to be a style mimic, and not a style originator.

I think some time in 2021, I had drawn a loose princess character, which I thought could be the basis of that pin-up. Even now, I’ve not settled on a distinct design, but just to be contrarian, she’s keeping the glasses.

I had explored perhaps two dozen different names. I perhaps settled on “Poppy” because I frequent do my initial sketches with a Poppy Red Col-Erase color pencil. The second name, Jean came about because I liked the three syllable rhythm. It won out over Poppy Anne, Poppy Jo and several others.

The costume is a nod to the Lunar calendar Year of the Tiger for 2022.