My great friend (and great inspiration) John sent me his interpretation of Muffin. John does a thing he calls phony woodcuts, where he draws the subject at hand in reverse and then inverts the white to black and black to white in Photoshop. The results really do have a woodcut look to them. He even added some color to this one. Swing by John’s website and check out his work. He’s got some wonderful real woodcuts, and some beautiful micropointilism paintings that have an interesting process to them. Thanks John!
Some of you may be too young to remember, but back when Ellie was launched into space in 1972, she was super popular. Beyond super popular. She was everywhere and on everything. She even had a balloon in the Thanksgiving parade that made quite a news story back in the day. I know it’s not the season for turkey and stuffing, but I thought I’d share this clipping from the Bonne Isle Bumblebee of November 24, 1972.
I was flipping through my sketchbook and ran across this scribble I did of Chris Grine’s character Chickenhare, from the comic of the same name. Go check out a wonderful comic with great characters, story, and artwork!
This week we opened our email here at Mission Control and found this amazing rendition of Jeff by Denver Brubaker, creator of the fantastic comic-noir Tales of a Checkered Man!
And how cool is it that Denver’s drawing depicts Jeff’s sense of smell the same week we’re focusing on one of his other senses? Denver says, “It’s been a long time comin’ but I finally finished my Ellie fan-art! I have had the pencils done on this pic of Jeff for quite some time now, but wanted to wait until I got more comfortable inking with a brush before I took the next step.” Using a brush is no easy feat, but it looks like he’s settled right in. It’s wonderful work and I’m tickled and touched that Denver’d spend so much time putting this together.
So, speaking of taste, go exercise yours by visiting Denver’s tribute to adventure pulps and caped crusaders: Tales of a Checkered Man! And if anyone else has a drawing of Jeff or Ellie, or even Muffin, send them in to jim@jimcandraw.com, or click on the contact button in the menu bar at the top! We’ll post them right here!
Jeff’s got some weird anatomy and it can be a challenge to draw. Sometimes he’s a quadruped, sometimes a biped . . . sometimes standing on his back leg-like tentacle appendages, sometimes on his front ones. Sometimes balancing on just one. Usually his legs are pretty short which makes it interesting when he has to reach his head. Luckily the Warbling Orange-Crested Quadrapus doesn’t have an internal skeleton (except for a pretty thick skull) so he can stretch those arms far enough to feed himself. Here’s a bunch of sketches of Jeff and his alien anatomy.