Hard to believe it's been 8 months since my last installment of "Diggin' Through the Vault", an occasional ( very! ) feature of this fershlugginer blog wherein I root through my big filing cabinet o' old art and pull out some usually unpublished ( or not widely published ) treasure from the past. In fact, my last two installments of DTTV are almost old enough to qualify for the vault themselves!
On to the content! From roughly 1997 until 2003 I often worked with well-known comic book artist, illustrator and author Ken Steacy, on projects ranging from Star Wars kid's comics and books to educational texts. During this time, and as a favour to Ken, I illustrated this poster for a fictional demolition derby. He had friends who published a small, local newspaper, catalog thing ( chime in if you read this Ken, the details are a bit fuzzy ) and had requested it. Ken supplied me with a quick thumbnail of the general layout and I took it from there, doing the pencils and inks. The final piece was printed in ( I think ) black & white, but I added colour so I could put this in my portfolio at the time.
And as such, it's a bit of a relic. This is one of the last pieces of any size that I coloured with markers, before my switch over to compositing my work on computer and colouring ( mainly ) with Photoshop. When I first started working professionally in the late 80s I would use acrylics, then watercolours to colour my pen & ink work. By the early 90s I had switched to felt tipped marker, with some pencil crayon. Markers suited my more precise methods, but they had some real drawbacks. Possible brain damage and memory loss from years of inhaling toxic xylene not the least among them!
Oh, and the possible brain damage and memory loss from all those years of inhaling toxic xylene couldn't have been good for me.
But my brain cell loss is your entertainment gain! It hasn't stood the test of time as well as some of my other work from the time, ( there's an especially high Mad Magazine quotient on this one ), but it's still fun to look at.
Enjoy!
3 comments:
Exquisitely rendered headlights!
Fun poster and great work! I wonder if the Malachi Brothers from Happy Days showed up!
Thanks folks.
David: I'm sure I slaved over them for weeks.
Todd: My Happy Days recall isn't as good as yours,but I'm assuming that's a demolition derby reference. Since it was a fictional event, let's say they did!
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