Justice is a B*tch!

Here's a character design of Sheriff Belinda Moon, the lead character of my upcoming comic: "Dogwood Tales", copyright 2012 Mark Brill, etc, etc.

I wanted to see how the characters from the Dogwood series would look using this style of drawing. I'm thinking about doing the covers using this style. So here is Sheriff Moon, looking ready to take on the world with nothing but courage, wit...and occasionally, a Colt Peacemaker.

Rogue Works!

So I saw this post on FaceBook from Dark Horse Comics: "Draw The Goon Art Contest"!
http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1075/draw-goon-art-contest
And I thought to myself, "Hey self, I love The Goon! And I love Eric Powell's art--I need to get in on this action!" So last night when I was busy having insomnia, I did this piece. I had been going through one of my Drew Struzan books for inspiration and really liked this technique of using color paper as a neutral background. I hadn't done it in a while and have been wanting to do some new pieces this way, and The Goon seemed tailor made for this style. Anyway, long story short--I did this and sent it off to the contest. I hope Eric Powell enjoys it--that's what it's really all about! A little love for Frankie and The Goon!

MARS NEEDS TEDDYBEARS!

So, this last weekend the Tacoma Art Museum hosted an event they were calling the Iron Artist Chalk Off! It was held across the street from the museum on a vast stretch of concrete called Tollefson Plaza in lovely downtown Tacoma, and above are pictures of the piece I labored mightily to produce.

As it turns out, "Iron Artist" was a good name for the event because August 4th turned out to be one of the hottest days this year--at least as far as the Pacific Northwest is concerned. And crawling around on 10,000 square feet of brightly radiating concrete, only made it worse! We were absolutely sweltering! There was virtually no shade at all--although I did post myself next to a little tree in a planter so I'd have access to a tiny patch of shade--but after two and a half hours' work, I was about at the end of my meager resources. I should have made the blackness of space around the figure darker and more completely filled in, but by that time my hands were shaky and I could barely keep a grip on the charcoal! When I got home my face was as red as a beet, for all I wore a protective hat. And I paid for this folly over the next couple of days as my leg and arm muscles forcefully reminded me that they are not used to this kind of exercise!

But I managed to finished my "Teddybears Are From Mars!" design, which I did partially in honor of the upcoming Mars landing. It came out pretty good, and considering that this is only my third chalking event ever and that I had no clear idea in mind before I began this odyssey, I was fairly satisfied with the result.

Thanks to Mark Monlux, (www.markmonlux.com) and Vince of Darkain Multi-Media (www.darkain.com) for taking photos which I have shamelessly re-posted here.

Here is Mr. Monlux's Flikr page showing everyone's drawings:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markmonlux/sets/72157630918273184/

Return of the Crypti-Creatures!

Three new sketches that I did at Crypticon this year. I had these scanned but needed to transfer and re-size them and only just now got around to it! "The Creature for the Black Lagoon" drawing is the one I had autographed by Ricou Browning, the Creature himself!

Appreciation to my friend Alexsander von Mausheim (who bought the other two and added them to his collection) for allowing me the chance to scan and present them here!

Last night was not only the 43rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riot and beginning of the Gay Rights Movement, which is now even more appropriately called the "Equal Rights Movement", but it was also a CLAW Open Swim event which I was hosting. In remembrance of the fore-mentioned anniversary, we chose as out theme: "Alternative Lifestyles of the Super-Fabulous!" My fellow CLAW member Anique Zimmer did that schweet poster illustration and I added the text.

Anyway, the idea was to take an established super-heroic character and decide how they might choose to fly their PFLAG as it were. Initially my thought was to do a drawing of a character exactly as he is, after all--gay people are (and here's the big secret of the gay community) just like everybody else! Except for who the hero was dating, there would probably be no change at all. (And another CLAW member, James Stowe, used that very theme to excellent effect with his recreation of the Spider-man Giany-Sized Annual "Wedding Issue" cover, where everyone is the same, but Spidey is Marty James Watson!)

I decided to NOT to be subtle. I was the host, so I wasn't really competing or anything...and I didn't have a clear, good idea going in. So I just took one of my fave superheroes and GAYve him a rainbow makeover! Before he was a crime-fighter, he tried wrestling...and wrestling singlets are hot, so I started there. I didn't think of the perfect tag-line for the drawing until I got home. "With great PRIDE comes great responsibility!" I HAD to add it in. I thought it was clever, even if I do say so myself.

Anyway, it's just a little rainbow fluff for you to enjoy. ^0^

Happy PRIDE!

This last weekend, I attended Crypticon in Seattle. I did some caricatures and some sketches. One of the sketches I did was of "The Creature form the Black Lagoon", which I was able to have signed by Ricou Browning, the man behind the Creature's mask! He is the only one of the original Universal Monsters that I ever managed to meet, and it was a great honor because, at one time in my life, they were a principle obsession--I used to play "Monsters" with my friends (I was always the Wolfman, btw) and we collected the old Aurora model kits and stayed up late on Saturday night sleep-overs to watch them stalking about graveyards on the Late Late Late Show! We even built "Spook-houses" in my friend Brad's garage. I even had the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" model!


All in all, it was fun and interesting as cons always are to me, but I only just broke even. I did however score a totally cool Plush TARDIS for my ever-expanding Dr. Who collection. When all is said and done--I am still a huge geek!

Anyway, I'll post a few more sketches later.

The Meme of Me

I thought I'd make one of those meme posters as a self promotional piece. It is sort of cute, so I'm sharing it here.

^0^