My Super Ziggy piece made the paper...and nobody told me.

Well, apparently, during the run of the Ziggy Show at AIP, Kurt Shaw (from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) stopped in to file an arts & entertainment piece for the newspaper (in print and online). And though I'm known as someone who craves constant attention and praise, nobody bothered to tell me my Super Ziggy piece was featured in the article. I guess that's what happens when you're a jerk to all your friends and never kick in for gas money.

Anyway, I did manage to get my hands on a facsimile of the article and I'm posting it here. Not necessarily so you can read it (There's really only one sentence about me, so...) but just to prove I'm not lying. Like I usually am. Because I'm a jerk. -v

Super Ziggy: The Process

So, you know my Super Ziggy piece is hanging in the Art Institute of Pittsburgh's Ziggy Tribute Show for the rest of this month. This is it. Everyone's favorite everyman, soaring high about the city. It's a nice change of pace from watching him lose yo-yo's down sewer grates. If the composition looks slightly familiar to you, it's because it's not just a tribute to Ziggy and Tom Wilson, but a nod to another famously optimistic cartoon character...

The Superman #1 cover by Joe Shuster is iconic and it's fun to mess around with revamps. But in the case of the Ziggy piece, it actually fits perfectly. The brief for the Ziggy tribute show discussed the philosophy behind the character and how his unfailing optimism was his strength and, in the face of the adversities he encounters, downright heroic. There is no more optimistic superhero than Siegel & Shuster's Man of Steel, so the illustration practically designed itself. It was an added bonus that Ziggy had a white dog sidekick to stand in for Krypto. So, let's see how I put it together…

Using the Superman cover as a guide, I penciled in Ziggy and Fuzz, flying above a cityscape. I actually scoured the web for some shots of old Ziggy strips and tried to create a hybrid architecture that incorporated the big-city look of the old Superman cover and the charming building style of Tom Wilson's original Ziggy strips.

Next, I inked the pencils of the figures in Photoshop. The oval frame and marquee were a little too perfect for me to draw by hand (despite them being drawn by hand originally by a much more patient and skilled Shuster) so I pulled the image into Illustrator and used the bezier pen tool to help describe my curves and blends.

Once everything was "inked" I pulled it back into Photoshop to color it. I tried to match the crazy comic book colors on the buildings (green, orange and purple skyscrapers!) but I also needed the colors to be a little washed out so I could make the cover look aged. The Ziggy logo, much like the buildings, is a hybrid of the Superman logo aesthetic and the Ziggy logo letterforms, and I think it worked out pretty well.

One of the most fun parts of doing a revamp like this is coming up with parallels for all the elements of the original. So, as a nod to Ziggy's 40th Anniversary this year, "64 PAGES OF ACTION!" becomes "40 YEARS OF OPTIMISM" and "ALL IN FULL COLOR" becomes "SOME IN FULL COLOR" to reference to black and white daily strips vs. the color sundays. After all the fonts are chosen and the blurbs are in place, I finish the coloring and move on to another fun part -- destroying all my hard work so it looks like a 40-year old comic book.

The first stage in wearing down this image is fading all of the colors. I want this thing to look like it's been sitting in someone's attic for a few decades. I also run a half-tone filter over the image to give it that old printing-press look. We're off to a good start, but I really need to ruin it some more.

I went to a nearby comic book store and dug through their old back stock to do a little more research (while I was there, I also emptied my wallet on a huge stack of Batman comics.) and I noticed a pattern of fading and darkening on some of those old comics that looked like the result of leaving the comics in shafts of sunlight or dirtying up the edges with smudgy little fingers. So I tried to recreate that on the Ziggy cover too.

Next came the binding cracks and overall wear and tear that would occur after years of handling. It's time consuming, but fun, to take a very small brush and etch in all of of those cracks and folds. After I wrecked it just enough, I mocked up some page edges and scanned in the stapled binding of an actual comic to complete the effect (seen in the very first image at the top of the post). If you'd like to see the Super Ziggy cover in person (where it's much larger) you can visit the Art Institute of Pittsburgh before the Ziggy show comes down near the end of this month. -v

The Ziggy Show is Finally Up! Super Ziggy To The Rescue!

I did this Ziggy piece for a Tom Wilson Tribute Show sometime last Summer. Between then and now, Art Institute of Pittsburgh went through some administrative changes, re-organized their show schedule, and, sadly, Tom Wilson, Ziggy's creator, passed on. All the while my Ziggy sat, lonely and forgotten, in a back office at AIP, waiting to pay tribute to a man who'd never see it.

But the Ziggy Show is finally up, and so is my illustration, Super Ziggy. It's a nod to a famous Superman comic book cover and I'll have a work-in-progress for it in a later post. But for now, let's talk about the show.

Ziggy: An Island Of Humor In A Sea Of Trouble runs at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Gallery from March 7th to April 28th and features a nice selection of original Tom Wilson (Senior and Junior) Ziggy gags as well as some fantastic tribute pieces by local artists.

The photograph doesn't do this piece justice, but it's cut paper, highly reflective, and when light hits it the shape casts both a bright silhouette image of Ziggy (and a duckling) as well as an inverse shadow-silhouette. Pretty creative stuff and it captures the essence of Ziggy perfectly.

That's not the case (nor the intent), though, with Mark Bender's expertly rendered Hug Life colored pencil illustration which re-imagines Wison's lovable loser as a tattooed thug. Mark Bender's an amazing illustrator, an instructor at AIP, and a friend. But he's also a bitter, spiteful individual who just couldn't resist driving a rusty wheat thresher over and over a beloved childhood icon for giggles. With great precision and artistic skill he's managed to run roughshod over everything that Ziggy ever stood for and I don't know how he lives with himself. And now we'll see if Mark really reads my blog. : )

There are some other very nice pieces in the show, as well as a start-to-finish display about how newspaper comics get from the artist's brain to your breakfast table. If you happen to be downtown, you should consider stopping in and basking in the glory of the quintessential luckless everyman. -v

PSI's Drawing Under The Influence Show Rides Again!

...and this time, I'm in charge! I've been working with the folks at Art Institute of Pittsburgh to help organize Pittsburgh Society of illustrator's second exhibition of our Drawing Under The Influence show this December. The show, as you may recall, is comprised entirely of the artwork from PSI's latest illustrator directory -- which doubles as a handy mixed drink guide (perfect for all you art-loving tipplers out there). We had a successful run with the exhibit in Shadyside this Summer, but this time I'm chairing the show. So, really, disaster looms.

You've seen my Shirley Temple and Sleepy Hollow pieces on my blog and website, but now you can see them up close along with fifty other illustrations from some of the most talented artists in Pittsburgh. As well, since AIP is an art school, after all, we'll be setting up a few displays that outline the process some of these illustrators took to get from the idea stage to finished art. If you read this blog, you probably enjoy work-in-progress stuff (or long-winded artsy-types). Either way, the exhibit ought to be right up your alley.

Opening reception for the show is at the Art Institute Gallery, Friday, December 2nd, from 5:30 to 8:30. There will be some sort of hors-d'oeuvres (Ah, nertz, I still have to call the caterer!) and a few drink samples straight out of our Drawing Under the Influence directory. It's a nice way to kick off the holiday season and, frankly, the more people that show up, the better I look. I, myself, will be there. Most likely, at the book table, selling copies of the directory for a measly $5. Stop by and see me. And if you catch me embezzling funds, you get a free directory! -v

October's here and the countdown to Halloween begins!

October blew in with an icy rain this morning and I couldn't be happier about it. This bodes well for a chilly, grim Halloween season -- just the way I like it. The leaves are changing, there's woodsmoke in the air, and a few of the houses on my street have already got their cardboard jack-o-lanterns taped to their front doors.

So, in keeping with the season, I decided to do a quick breakdown of my process for my Sleepy Hollow piece. This illustration was done for the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators directory, Drawing Under The Influence and will be hanging in the gallery at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh this winter. As well, the directory is still for sale at the venues where the show hangs. Ok, on with the work-in-progress steps...

Step 1) I start with a pencil sketch. I'm targeting the children's market so it's a fairly cartoony sketch. But it's a ghost story, so it has to be spooky too. Hopefully, my choice of colors will help that.

Step 2) Next I lay down a base color to help establish an eerie mood. There's gonna be a lot of deep indigos and midnight blues -- I want the forest to have a sense of foreboding -- so I work from dark to light, starting with the shadows.

Step 3) With all those brooding blues and greens in the background, Ichabod and his headless pursuer -- the focal points of the piece -- have to be rendered with contrasting, warm colors. So, layer upon layer, I build up some reds, browns and yellow-greens on Ichabod and his horse, Gunpowder. The Horseman's warm tones will come mostly from his fiery pumpkin.

Step 4) That flaming gourd also serves as one of my two light sources, the other being the moonlight. I keep all of that in mind while I'm painting in highlights and shadows -- the direction of the cast shadows, the temperature of the highlights and how the forms shift color as they move from light to shadow.

Step 5) I decide the Headless Horseman needs a ghostly mist swirling around him, so I paint that in with a soft brush at low opacity. A few more random shadows to add mystery and I'm done.

Drink It In! Shirley Temple Illustration at Gallery Show and in PSI Drink Directory

My Shirley Temple piece is hanging in a couple shows this year (details in a minute, hold your horses) as part of Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators Drawing Under The Influence media blitz. The group just released its latest artist directory and this year it also happens to be a bartender's guide/drink mix recipe book. It's a handy little guide to both mixed drinks and some of Pittsburgh's most talented illustrators. I have two spreads in the book -- both non-alcoholic -- and I'll be breaking down my process for the Shirley Temple in this post.

First, more on the shows. There are, at this point, two planned shows. Drawing Under The Influence is going on right now at Gallerie Chiz in Shadyside. The opening was last night and it was very crowded and very loud and I barely got to talk to anyone. So, if you came out to say hi and I missed you, my apologies. Crowded rooms make me feel like Dr. Banner fixing a flat in the rain. The show at Gallerie Chiz runs through October 1st and features a lot of fantastic illustration by local artists as well as my Shirley Temple and Sleepy Hollow pieces. The next show will be at Art Institute of Pittsburgh and I'll post details about that when they shore up.

Now, more about the book. Close to 60 illustrators from the Pittsburgh area have spreads/drink recipes in the book. The range of contributors runs from some newer talent to some of the most seasoned illustrators in the business. Most of the time, when I work on an illustration, I'll share my early sketches and progress with other illustrators to get their valuable opinions. It invariably makes for a better piece in the long run. Lots of the illustrators that I bounce ideas off of have spots in the book and they look great -- talented illustrators like John Blumen, Pat Lewis, Jamie Huntsman and Craig Mrusek to name a few (Craig doubled as bartender/mix master at the opening last night and did a great job). These books are available at Gallerie Chiz while the show is running and will be available at our AIP show as well.

Below are my Shirley Temple work-in-progress images and some shots of the directory. Cheers! -v