Red Means "STOP"!

A few of my CLAW friends met at the comic book store today to sketch, ostensibly on pages for our group's still theoretical anthology comic. It was a bit difficult to stay on task...what with a Magic: The Gathering pre-release tourney going on at all the other tables. So after I puttered on a couple of sketches for pages, I finally broke down and indulged my demented brain by drawing up a sketch of a pun that had been plaguing me for the last few days.

I was listening to my art director at work talking about the rotation of videos and stuff he has to watch with his son and the word "Hellmo" popped into my head with the image above and wouldn't go away. Now, hopefully, it has been purged!

Dragons? NAW! Year of the Flying Monkeys!!

2010 was "The Year of the Robot" and 2011 was "The Year of the Pipe" and I unilaterally decided to make 2012 "The Year of the Flying Monkeys". To that end, this was a piece of art I created to put on the website and the programs for C.L.A.W.'s "Great Yearly Ceremony", which is our annual get-together to celebrate the previous year and usher in the new one. If we continue the pattern of using CLAW's Sacred Truths as inspirations for each year, 2013 will have to be "The Year of the Zombie". That should be an interesting program...

Anyway, this art was a relatively quick piece inspired by the poster for "The Rocketeer". I liked the deco design, and the reason I thought of using that is because I had decided my flying monkey would have a retro-style rocket pack instead of the traditional wings. That kind of art deco layout then seemed the obvious look.

Paper Clowning

Finally, here is the last piece I did for Christmas presents this year, but I think definitely not the last paper sculpture I'm going to do! I am really beginning to enjoy this medium in a way I never did before and have definite ideas about more things I want to do!

In the meantime, the Joker up here was done for my youngest nephew, Brandon! He LOVES the Joker and was also wanting to see zombies and monsters in my sketchbook! I think my baby sister is going to have her work cut out with this kiddo!

Dat'sa Gooda Paper!

Today's paper sculpture is the piece I did for my nephew, Justin! He's a big fan of all things Mario Bros. I had to research this because the last time I played Mario was on the first version of Nintendo...and he was just a blocky little chunk of pixels! Since then he's come a long way--and there are many versions of him floating in the ether.

I considered giving him the raccoon tail and ears, but it was pointed out to me that was from before Yoshi's time and Justin really likes Yoshi and so I wanted him to be in there too.

My one addition was to give him the shoe laces (because they always look cool in paper sculpture, and the little torn area on the knee. Just gives him more personality...so he's not too clean. This piece was also built for an 8x10 frame, so it's all pretty tight. But it came out pretty well, and Justin didn't find fault with my interpretation of his hero!

Paper Cuts!

Today's paper art piece is a sculpture done for my nephew, Jacob, for Christmas. He is nearly 13 and has become a big fan of classic Star Trek during the past year--which naturally finds favor with his geeky old Uncle who's been a Trekkie for nearly as long as there's been Star Trek! Mind you, I came in on Trek as reruns in the mid 70s, so I can't claim to be on original Trekkie, but I was pretty close.

This piece was built to fit the frame I got which was basically 8x10. So it's fairly small. The REALLY hard part was building the Shuttlecraft "Galileo 7"! When I sketched out the design, it was big...but when I was ready to put it together, I realized how tiny it would have to be. Yikes. My big, old, chubby fingers really had their work cut out for them...so to speak!

It's not as close a likeness as I would have liked. I was going for a more stylized, cartoon look, but I would probably change a few things if I were doing it again. Over all, however, it came out pretty nice.

More Paperwork!

This dragon paper sculpture was done for my mom and step-dad for Christmas. We all share a love of the Anne McCaffrey "Dragonriders of Pern" books, and I had given them a paper sculpture dragon mask I had made for Halloween many years ago and I just really felt like that thing needed to be updated! It's old and bad!!

The "Wick's Weyr" title which I cut out of the scroll is in reference to a combination of their last name, (Wickwire) and the Dragonrider books, where the dragons live in 'weyrs'. They had given this name to a boat they had owned a long time ago which was ultimately destroyed in a marina fire. I figured the name could also refer to the house, because, as the McCaffrey books often explain, "A weyr is where your dragon is!"


I wasn't sure what to make for Michelle, my baby sister & her husband Ervin, but when mother was telling Michelle about the panda invitation sculpture I did for CLAW, I learned that Ervin was a big fan of the Kung Fu Panda movies. This seemed like a good idea for a sculpture, but I wanted it to be Christmasy...so I decided to do ornaments. I made the Tigress for Michelle(although I'm sure she would probably have preferred a sculpture of a certain sparkley vampire who shall remain nameless. But I wanted to keep a theme going.)

As an added cute element, I didn't gift wrap them, but instead put them in those folded, paper Chinese food boxes with a bow on top! Turned out very cute. I think they both enjoyed the final pieces, and hopefully they will look good on their tree in years to come.

More paper sculptures are coming to the blog--I've actually done quite a lot of that lately! Happy Holidays everyone!

2011 Holiday Card!

Here is the artwork for my + Bel's + Edmund's Holiday card for 2011. Last year I did a Harry Potter one and what could possibly compete with that other than another enduring franchise. I also considered Doctor Who (and we may still see that in years to come) and a number of other things. I even considered doing a series of "reject sketches" which would show us in increasingly ridiculous themes; for example, the DC Universe, with Edmund as Superman, Bel as Wonder Woman and me as Batman!
I used lots of Tribbles in the design because what could be more festive, or MORE representative of classic Trek than those cute, little, Kilngon-hating furballs?


The nice thing about having a blog to display this kind of stuff is that I can also show this: the final original drawing for the design before I overworked it in Photoshop. I was fairly pleased with the way the actual ink work came out. The intent was to get a bit of a Mort Drucker feel to the line quality, because his Mad Magazine parodies of the old ST series were as beautiful as they were hilarious! (I didn't go quite as caricature-ish, of course.)