Joannie's Valentine - 2012

Joannie's 2012 valentine. She wanted Tomer Hanuka's Valentine's Day print, but he was all sold out. She asked me to redraw it, and I said, "No way! but I will do something similar." The final will be an 18” x 24” color, archival giclee print that will hang in our kitchen. Apologies to fellow Meathauser Tomer for biting the concept. To see Tomer's prints (including the one I ripped off), please CLICK HERE.

Christmas Season 2011 - Part 4 - The Card

Sorry that I forgot to post this here. I had it up all over facebook in December. This will be my last post regarding work I did during the holiday season of 2011.

I used the same characters on my family Christmas card this year as I did last year (Click Here to see). The elves are Joannie and her sons Brandon (with the ear gauges) and Aaron (jumping). Zoe, our insane puggle (ripping through the snowman's belly). I am the abominable snow monster, of course.


On the back, I added the newest edition to our family - our turtle, Murray. He's crazy.

Christmas Season 2011 - Part 3 - Portrait of John Bosak

I did this portrait for Joannie’s Mom. It is her brother Johnny – Big John Bosak. John passed away last year. He was one of those big, strong, fun-loving Fishtown characters that everyone knew. If you ever met John, you did not forget him. He used to come visit me when I bartended at Moe’s a few years back. Wednesday nights were pretty slow after the pool team left, so John would come in and keep me company.

Joan asked me to draw this portrait and make prints so she could give them as Christmas gifts to all of her brothers and sisters. She also gave prints to John’s kids. We had the archival giclee prints made by Chris Wofford over at Giclee Today. Chris did an amazing job, and I plan on using him to do my giclee prints in the future. I gave Joan the original framed ink drawing for Christmas.

This will also be the drawing I use for the return of the “Sketches of Fishtown” project. I’ve had over a year off, but I plan on picking the project back up in the coming weeks.

I am a patient boy. I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait...

These past couple months I have spent many hours sitting in the waiting rooms of hospitals and doctors’ offices with Joannie, mostly Temple’s Foot and Ankle Institute. I can only play so much “Angry Birds” before my mind starts to turn to oatmeal. And I can’t bring any large-scale drawing projects with me, because there’s just no room for that kind of work. But I have started bringing a small Moleskine sketchbook. So in between bouts of spanking all of Joannie’s opponents in online Iphone Scrabble, I’ve been noodling around with “throw-away” drawings that don’t take too much concentration. Since January, I’ve been very gratefully gainfully employed at the University of the Arts, and also keeping part-time hours at Advance Newsmagazines. I am happy to be working, but my drawing time has definitely taken a hit. With everything around me being so regimented and work-focused lately, these waiting room visits have actually become a good time to come up for air. It’s been really nice to take this time to escape into quick and tiny sketchbook work, especially while sitting in a crowded waiting room. It’s sort of like hiding in plain sight. These moments make me remember that initial joy of drawing I had when I was four.

Anyhow, this piece was drawn in a small sketchbook while sitting at the Foot and Ankle Institute yesterday. I did it with colored Micron pens. It started out as a guy singing with a cat, but I decided to turn him into a gravedigger once I put the bowler cap on him, and the cat became a gas lantern. Please don't ask why a gravedigger would wear a tie. It seems like back in the old days, a lot of fellas wore hats and ties no matter what line of work they were in.

PBR Crate - Final

I finally got a chance to get these photos and scans up on the web here. I finished the Pabst Blue Ribbon vintage crate a couple weeks back. Thanks to my buddy Gravy for his patience and Pabst's generosity for all the sponsorship they've given me and the Philly Cartoonist Society over the years. I drew all the images on sticker paper, inked them with waterproof Micron pens, then colored them with waterproof markers, like Prismacolors. I also used some white colored pencil for highlights. Then I cut out the shapes with an razor and stuck the pieces to various sides of the crate. Then I used waterproof ink for the "Pabst" lettering on the top of the crate and the ink coming from the pen of the "Jeff" cartoon. Thanks to Joannie for challenging me to be a little more careful with the ink and not settle for laziness. When I was finished laying it out, I sealed the whole crate with about five coats of high gloss acrylic polyurethane. Since the sealant was water-based, I had to use all waterproof materials on the initial drawings. I used the water-based so it didn't yellow the sticker paper. Anyways, below are the final scans and then photos of how they look on the crate. Now I just have to get it back to Pabst...

Fire Siren Drawing for "Dirtballs in Love" Art Show...

On May 7, 2010, I have a solo art show at Proximity Gallery called "Dirtballs in Love". All the drawings are romance pieces, each one in some way inspired by romance and my gal Joannie (to whom I was just engaged). Click HERE for more information and to see more art from the show.

The following piece, entitled "Fire Siren" is a remake of a painting my Dad did when I was a little boy. He sold it at a flea market many years back. But he had a passion for the Philadelphia Fire Department, where he served for 27 years before retiring.

I wanted to have something that connected all the drawings and made them hang well together as a show, so I used a lot of colored inks as the common thread. This following piece was done in three layers to start. First I drew a woman, made of fire, surrounded by smoke in colored ink and marker as the background:

Then I drew and cut out the firefighter in colored ink. I fastened him to a piece of acetate. The back of the acetate was misted with spray paint, gray mist for the smoke and red and yellow spatter to imply embers in the air.

I laid the top sheet of acetate over the bottom piece, fitting them together. I had to scratch off some of the excess spray paint so you could see the fire woman clearly.

The drawings together...

Then I took a lighter and burned the inside edges of the mat. After the fire was completely out, I coated the mat with water-based acrylic polyurethane:

The final piece in the frame...

Sendak Tribute Envelope, October 2009

Anybody who's ever spoken to me knows what a big influence Maurice Sendak has on my work. Ever since my Dad read "Where the Wild Things Are" to me as a boy, I've been mesmerized by Sendak's work. We are very lucky to have the Rosenbach Museum here in Philly, because they always have something of Sendak's on display.

Sendak's work has a perfect blend of the joys and fears of childhood. His line work is calculated but also playful. I know a lot of people are skeptical about Spike Jonez' film adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" coming out next week, but I am very hopeful. So far, all of the music videos Jonez directed have been visually brilliant. Also, "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" were two films that were catered perfectly to my taste.

So this week's envelope for Joannie was a tribute to Sendak's book that carried such a profound influence on my work. It's a blatant ripoff, but I had fun drawing it. I rip Sendak off a lot. Joannie is going with me next week to take my neice to the film.

Jim Henson's Fantastic World Exhibit...

Last weekend, I got out of town with my gal for my birthday. We stayed at a really cool horse farm in Dublin, PA. As part of my birthday present, Joannie also bought tickets to the Michener Museum's exhibit, "Jim Henson's Fantastic World". It was a bullseye of a gift. Henson is a lifetime hero of mine. When I say that, I am not only referring to the work he's done, but his reasoning behind it as well. I believe that even though he seemed to be a perfectionist, his main objective was to make people happy and spread joy in this world. I once saw a televised interview where Henson was talking about the purpose of his work. He quoted a French writer named Antione de Saint-Exupery, "We do not inherit the Earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children." Hearing that as a young man, I was struck by the potential that human beings can have on one another. Teaching and cartooning, I still try to keep that quote in mind in my daily work.

If I were to carve out my version of Mount Rushmore, Jim Henson would definitely be one of the faces.

Mail Art for Joannie...

Over the summer, I started seeing an amazing gal named Joannie. She is a sister of an old friend, an unbelievably great mother, and one of the strongest women I've ever met in my life. At first, I thought Joannie was going to stay a platonic friend, because I had my mind made up to spend some time alone for a while. But that didn't last. If you ever met Joannie, you'd understand why. She's that awesome.

Unlike myself, Joannie is not an artist, but she does seem to genuinely appreciate my work. So aside from the work I do for freelance and the local paper and my two jobs, I have been trying to make as much work for Joannie as possible. Every week, during breakfasts, lunch breaks, etc, I make and send her mail art to let her know I'm thinking of her. Mostly, they are just small envelopes drawn with ink and marker and colored pencil.

I don't think that any of my work is earth-shattering or groundbreaking in any way. I know that it's only cartoons. But in the past, I've had a hard time balancing the work that I do with the rest of my life. Making cartoons, as mundane as it may be, is a huge part of who I am. But I shouldn't let it get in the way of living a balanced life. It's taken me almost 34 years to find that out.