Will Elder -- R.I.P.

Sad news today. Will Elder, possibly one of the greatest artists ever to grace the comic book page, has passed away.

Will was blessed with a staggering ability for jamming a million little gags into his pages ("Chicken Fat", as he called it), most notably in his collaborations with fellow indelible legend Harvey Kurtzman, on their comics Goodman Beaver and Little Annie Fanny. He was greatly responsible for the very language of modern humor comics, thanks particularly to his contributions to Mad, Trump, Help!, and other great humor comics of the 1950s and 1960s.

He was among a dying breed of comics creators, as well -- he was trained for commercial and fine art at a time which predated so many of the "cheats" that artists now use, from Zip-A-Tone and Letraset to modern markers and mechanical devices, to Photoshop and Illustrator. Elder did it all the old-fashioned way, and it outshines damn near everything on the comics racks today.

Will was not only a spectacular comics creator and innovator, he was also an accomplished painter with a breathtaking facility for a certain glowing realism that must be seen to be believed. His humor often still bubbled up in his paintings, but it never diminished the power of his work, it only enhanced it.


Rest in peace, Mr. Elder.

Finally! Something!

Managed to drag myself out to San Francisco last week for SketchCrawl, and also managed not to meet anyone, or participate in the 'Crawl in any way, except with regard to sketching things. Next time. In any case, here are a couple of watercolor sketches from that cold, blustery Saturday -- one of Aquatic Park, and one of -- duh -- Alcatraz.

Excitement!

Scribbles!

Paint!

Wow, that worked well...

Okay, so it's been MONTHS since I started this blog, and I've managed to post nothing at all. Yeesh. There are many reasons for this colossal failure -- sudden trips to France, soul-crushingly heavy deadlines on various projects, a break-up, blah-blah-blah -- but the main reason is that I've just managed to neglect the blog, plain and simple. Am I making guarantees from here on out, and turning over a new leaf? Nope. Too much is in the air right now, and I'm very much hoping to be extremely busy working on at least one of the "big maybe" projects in the very near future; failing that, I suspect I'll be very busy working a day job of some sort soon. If I was of the sort who chewed their nails, I'd have nothing left to chew right now. All that aside, I'm optimistic -- the odds that I'll be drawing a well-known superhero character for a major corporation in the coming months are pretty good, plus the Super Scary Monster Show TV program still has a good chance of happening (just not soon enough for me!). Anyway, I'll try and do a little better than posting ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but I guess we'll see how that goes...