BMW R90s

Something a little different here. For nearly 20 years now, i've been drawing tee shirt designs for this motorcycle dealer- A-J Cycles. A-Js is one of my favorite places on this earth. As most people probably know, I'm a big motorcycle freak and I engage freely in all the attendant motorcycle-related activites: magazines, motorcycle forums and often on the weekends during the riding season, I can be found in the parking lot of A-Js, hanging out with the other geeks. My wife teases me mercilessly but she doesn't understand. Now that I think about it, I did tell her that when I'm cremated, I wanted my ashes spread in the A-J's parking lot. That may have something to do with it.
This drawing follows a design that I've been using on their tees for several years now- I just like the boldness of the image of a bike's profile. Interestingly, at least to me, is that many people won't buy a shirt unless it features their bike. It's difficult to make a shirt with broad appeal. The exception to this seems to be to use the image of an older machine. The motorcycle in this drawing was produced between 1974-1976.

Casey and Shadow

Here is the second commission drawing I did this week for David, who gave me the ok to post 'em here before I even sent them to him. Thank you for allowing me to do that and for the business. If you go back and read David's comment on the previous post, you'll know that he and his wife have just had a new baby and and that this idea was his- to show Casey and an infant Shadow to help commemorate this special event. A pretty nifty image and I have to say that I was psyched that it came out rather nice.
David- congratulations again to you and your family.

Raph and Don

I'm still plodding away, pencilling the third issue of the Don mini- maybe I'll try to post a teaser page or two in the near future. In the meantime, this is a commission sketch that I was asked to do, pencilled 2 nights ago and inked last night. It features Raphael and Donatello as they were last seen in TMNT volume 4.

Ghost Rider

Last year at the New York Comicon, Tristan Jones asked me if I would do him a Ghost Rider sketch. It's shameful that it's taken me a year but finally last week I got it done.

Beers in the Hall

Steve Lavigne came down from Maine yesterday, and we celebrated that occasion by knocking off work a little bit early to enjoy a couple of brews in the hall that runs between our studio offices. Hall beers is something that we used to do way back in the salad days of the Turtles, but not so much anymore. As a matter of fact, when Steve came down for Xmas last month, that was the first hallway beer I'd had in many years. A Steve Lavigne visit is pretty much a guarantee of a lot of laughs and wacky fun.
From left to right- Steve, my wife Kathy, Murph in the background and Dan Berger in front.

The Mighty Yakkatoehah

In my vehicle driving experience I've had a long succession of various Toyota pickups and 4runners. All used and in different states of repair and disrepair. The one thing they've all had in common was the name "Mighty Yakkatoehah". This is the latest- my 95 4runner, who just rolled over 150,000 miles this week.
Long may you run, baby.

The Brain Thief 4/Cover Sketch

Man, I'm really jumping ahead, posting stuff from a book that's not due out for nearly a year but I want to show things that I'm currently working on. I generally don't really work so far in advance, but the Donatello mini-series has been an exception. The first 3 covers are done (and I'm right now pencilling 3) but I thought that folks might like to see the cover rough for the fourth issue. I nearly always do covers this way- a small rough then blown up to full size on the copier. I'm not sure this will be the image that I'll finally go with but probably most likely.

Dragonfly

In Japan, dragonflies are the symbol of courage, strength and happiness. This one was specifically done for my wife Kathy as a Christmas present, and hangs in our bedroom. It seemed somewhat appropriate for today.

TMNT Groupshot

Yesterday the artists here were contacted by Gary on behalf of 4kids. 4kids is putting together a 25th anniversary animation special about the Turtles and they were wanting submissions from all the associated artists. This is the piece I did for that purpose.
I had to smile at the similarity to the recent Nobody cover. It seems when I get a composition in my head, I'll sometimes reuse it several times. Notice also, a few shared design elements.

Please allow me to rant a little here. This was done as a freebie. In this year, when Mirage is paying 7 figures to a company to advertise and promote the Turtles anniversary, I find it vaguely insulting that we, the artists of Mirage, are expected to do this stuff without pay. Why is this? I want to know, who else is working for free? What is it about artists, that the work they do, has a stigma of having no value? I'm not sure why this is- perhaps drawing is thought of as common, or they see it as being effortless. That Mirage itself has participated in this attitude, I find somewhat sad and more than a little ironic.

Tales 60/Cover-Inked version

Done this morning, it's now ready to go to Steve Lavigne for coloring.

Tales of the TMNT 60/Cover

Another pencilled cover- this one done yesterday. This is for a Dan Berger story titled "Nobody Does It Better".

TMNT 31/Cover

I hesitated to put up this post. The reason why is that Volume 4 is no longer being published on any sort of schedule and I really didn't want to open a can of worms with regards to when the book is going to appear or why it's not coming out regularly. But as I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that most people already know about the situation with the TMNT title, and either accept it or don't. I honestly don't have any information to give you or even insight to the forces that affect the publishing of the book. That Pete chooses to keep it alive, even in this stunted form- you gotta give him some credit for.
That being said, what I want this blog to be is a public forum for my work and I don't want to edit that.

This was pencilled last Friday.

Paleo: Loner/ Page 5

Years back, I published a comic called PALEO: Tales from the Late Cretaceous. It was a ton of fun- I love dinosaurs and I've always been a fan of comics such as TYRANT and AGE OF REPTILES. Sadly, neither of these books are published any more and PALEO has also been among them. Much like dinosaurs themselves, these types of comics seemed to fade away into non-existence.

But not really.

I had a story that I wrote a while back that probably would have appeared as PALEO 9. I took this story and rewrote it and expanded it and ended up with a 72 page tale that now will be published as a TPB. I'm not sure when this will happen as the book is only half-pencilled at this point but I hope that it will be later on this year. I inked 3 pages yesterday and couldn't wait to share them. This is, of course, the title page- I'll post more as time goes on.

Casey

I do sketches at shows but sometimes I get contacted here at the studio to do a drawing for a fan. This was for a guy from Tennessee who wanted me to do him a Casey as he appeared in Volume 4- Issue 24.