Goodbye Group

After an 11 year run (pretty good, by any estimation), the comic strip I drew for Group Magazine has been discontinued.  The last one will appear in the upcoming issue.  They are in the process of a redesign…and I’m sure as any print magazine is doing, they are looking for ways to cut corners.  The idea is, they will check on reader feedback, and if there is a call for it, they’ll recommision the strip.  I have serious doubts that anyone will miss it.

Anyway…I thought I’d throw a few of the strips that DIDN’T make the cut…stuff no one ever got to see.

First is one that almost got me in trouble with the editor, who felt I was being too close to disrespectful toward pastors with it.  Go figure.  (click it for full size)

The next one is an earlier attempt at re-vamping the strip, maybe even dropping the main character (Brian, named after the youth pastor at Eastgate from the late 90’s to about ‘06, who was my very first introduction to what a YP goes through.  The character looked nothing LIKE Brian though…he looked more like a guy named Vance who was the only YP I knew at the time I started the strip).  Anyway…this one was without Brian.

Finally, for this morning…here’s a rough of another (albeit, ridiculous) attempt at re-vamping the strip:

I’ll try to get around and post some of my favorite strips that have appeared through the years.  If you’re a YP, please feel free to use any of these.

Logo Design

A friend of mine is starting a recycled book company and he asked me to monkey around with a logo for the bookplate. I drew the whole thing in Photoshop.  I’m really beginning to enjoy inking in Photoshop, now that I can rotate the canvas while I’m working.

REV! cartoons

Whilst I sit here anxiously awaiting word on a batch of roughs I sent to the art director of REV! magazine…I thought I’d share a few of the cartoons I’ve done for past issues.  They may be too “insider” to be funny to most people…so pity laughs are acceptable. 

 

Some Work I Did Recently

Ken Raney over at Clash Creative commissioned a piece of art about a story proposal.  It was a lot of fun, and I sure hope it comes to fruition.

Here’s a detail:

Coron Island

Hey hey…thought I’d upload another Google Earth sketch crawl entry!  This one is from Coron Island, in the Philippines.  My sketches don’t do justice to the beauty of that place.

Aleppo Citadel Tower, Haleb Syria

So…my Google Earth adventures took me to Syria…and a landmark that I was heretofore unfamiliar with…the Aleppo Citadel in Syria.  While the 360 photo had some interesting structures in it…I found myself drawn to the faces that were so prominently displayed there.  So…my sketches are mostly of faces and people.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Here’s a painting I did for my daughter Janelle last Christmas.  Kind of a fuzzy photo…but it’s all I was able to grab before she left with it.

China Trip

Here’s another page from my Google Earth Sketchbook…I dropped into China…some place called Xinjiang Kashishi…it’s in the SW corner of China, and these are a few people who were around a mosque that is located there.

Broome, Australia

I just got done with a Google Earth adventure…this time I landed in Broome Australia.  I appeared on Short St., at what looked like a roundabout, or a small town square.  It was a street that dead-ended into a mangrove forest.  It actually reminded me of where I live in Florida.  Except for the mangroves, of course.  I ambled down the road to a point where the Broome Lighthouse is, and did a little drawing there.  All in all it was a nice trip.  Cheers Broome!

Alexandria

I’m a big fan of Google Earth.  I could waste hours going over all the amazing sights that have been cataloged there.  It’s the poor-geeks version of being a world traveler.  So today, I thought of a cool sketching exercise I’m going to do.  I’m going to spin the globe in Google Earth, close my eyes, and stop it randomly.  Then I’ll zoom in (if I’ve stopped on a land mass, obviously), and find the closest street view, or 360degree photo…and sketch what I see.

So this morning, I took a quick trip to Alexandria, and did a few random sketches from Cornish St, and out at the coast.  What a fascinating place.  The sketches aren’t very good…but maybe if I keep at this, I’ll get better as I go?