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Tuesday, May 30, 2006
I got a phone call tonight telling me that one of my cousins had died. It was Henry Bumstead. Only a true cinemaphile would probably recognize that name. He was the art director on a good number of films. He worked on most of the films directed by Clint Eastwood. I can't say that we were especially close but I did enjoy the few times we talked. Usually at family gatherings. I always wanted to be an artist and he would tell me stories about flying around in small planes with Eastwood scouting out rugged terrain for a film or some such. He knew his stories weren't about drawing but being creative in a different way. About solving problems and seeing relationships between things seemingly unrelated. Ans so he would detail those aspects of the anecdote.
Aw just go here Henry Bumstead
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Monday, May 29, 2006
OH MAN.
You have to read that sentence with a disappointed whine. That is how I said it in my head when I read that Alex Toth had passed away.
http://www.tothfans.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1028
This makes the book I plugged a few posts back somewhat bittersweet. I hope you will still go out and order a copy.
I like the part about the bags of mail praising the man. I can believe that the cards and letters helped to make Toth feel good. In fact I will go one step further. If you have a favorite creator (and not just someone who is getting on in years) find a forum, email or address and write them a little note telling them that you apppreciate them.
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Friday, May 26, 2006
So my friend John Villalino is a bit of a culture vulture. We wind up attending a bunch of museum exhibits frequently. There could be worse habits. Our last foray took us to the LACMA for the Gustav Klimt exhibition of his controversual paintings.
Controversial in that the paintings have only recently been returned to their "rightful" owners. I use quotes because the owner never actually owned them but would have supposedly inheirited them had the Nazis not taken them back to Germany. I am not standing up for Nazis I am just not sure if the connotations of the word "rightful" imply what is meant here.
But the controversy itself is quite fascinating. It all reminds me of a musical play I am working on. It is about a little girl who is forced to live with her family in the attic of a factory in order to hide from the Nazis. It is told in the form of her reading from her journal. Tired of her situation the girl fashions a giant mechanical savior from the spare parts from the factory. It's called "The Diary of Ann's Frankenstein"
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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
IF I HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO THEN I GUESS I WILL
I updated my website just the the other day. You can now see a few new comic pages as well as some more commerial illos and commisions. I even put in some new inking stuff I did. And I did it all by myself. After having friends update my site off and on since it's inception I have finally broken down and started to learn Frontpage. Hopefully this means I will be updating content on a much more regular basis from now on.
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Thursday, May 18, 2006
Hear ye! Hear ye! I am hereby unashamedly plugging a book being put out by a friend of mine's company, Octopus Press . But it is not a book of his work but of...Alex Toth. If what Jeff Parker has described to me over the phone is accurate then believe me when I say you should do yourself a favor and preorder a copy. June 06 Previews. Do it.
Why? This is one of those books that true comic book artists and true comic art aficionados drool over. A book filled not only with sketches by a great and respected artist like Toth but presumably with sketches done in perhaps an even more casual and relaxed manner. Not even a behind the scenes compilation or sketchbook edition such as we have seen from others. A collection of drawing that apparently Toth had no intention of ever seeing the light of publication. A peek into the relaxed inner workings of a master's mind.
You might say that I discovered Toth a little late in life. When I first may have come across some of his work I was too young to really appreciate it. But now when I see anything by him I just marvel at the cleanliness and precision of communication. Think of the first time you saw a Picasso. You said, "Wow, this guy paints funny". But if you have ever tried to be any kind of artist then you start to see what he is doing. Toth very much is the comic version of Picasso
Get. This. Book.
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Friday, May 05, 2006
THAT'S USING THE OLD GOOGLE NOODLE
I totally swiped this photo from somebody's vacation site. But it shows the handiwork mentioned in the last post in action. Here is the piece installed at Disneyland Tokyo. That archway has got to be a good twenty feet in the air.
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This post goes with my rant about Disneyland two post back. I came across this photo while looking for something. It shows both the type of stuff I used to work on as well as just how silly it can be to complain about small details that no human patron will be able to ever notice.
And just for scale I have included this pic of buddy Brian Bock pretending to be a double amputee painter. Someday I will write a book (OK a pamphlet) about the characters that worked at this studio. Some nutty in the good way and some not so.
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