high tech finger paints

I been playing around with the Iphone a bit these days. My computer was having its DVD drive repaired, so I had a bit of time to draw with the phone. Strange, to draw with the phone.. Dick Tracy himself could not have predicted that one.

So I got a bunch of drawing Apps and thought I would put each through its paces for a while. Each application has its strong points and its weak, and I should go over in detail each one, but what can one expect for a buck or two? The Rocketo and Luna Lake and the old man, drawings were done with Sketchbook mobile, its a nice app. Great brushes, and very nice control over the layers and colors, although going back and forth between brushes and color is a bit hard on the fingers. I did not do any tight drawings with this program but one can basically draw as tight and as loose as you desire. Its a nice app to play with, again my only complaint is the back and forth, it would be nice to have a more organic way to pick colors and brushes.

The other drawings, that have that charcoal feel are doing with the Sketji app.

Its a great app for those quick and tumble sketches, sadly... no zoom feature, so you can draw anything with any real detail, its all big giant strokes, but the strokes are organic and lovely to look at.

Anyway enjoy everyone and have a great day, back to my Image book.

Frank.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Just wanted to wish all of you a great and happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you all for taking the time to look around in this insane little blog of twist and turns.

Playing around with the Iphone this morning and did a quick little sketch of good old John Carter of Mars, and that other character with the laugh.. When I get my DVD driver working I will post some old Carter drawings I did years ago.

May you all eat well today, and be with your loved ones.

Frank.

Nightmare high tech at twenty thousand feet

In the words of the wonderful Shatner.. "There is an APP at the wing of my plane!!"

Fate finally made me take the plunge. My phone broke down and I had to get a replacement, so I got one of those insane Iphones. Naturally I have now joined the wild horde of app crazy addicts. It happened at a good time, just before my trip to Stanford so I had some good time during the flight to play around with all the gadgets.

Couldn't help thinking what Jules Verne would say if he saw a couple of hundred people sitting in the belly of this giant metal bird that was flying at twenty thousand feet. He would look around and see people reading, sleeping, playing games, his mind would explode, then again, he might just say.. " I knew it all along!"

Imagine Columbus playing with the star app.. or the compass app..

So here I was trying to figure out a way to learn to draw with my giant index finger on this little screen. I have to handed to the designers, because after a while I actually began to understand it a bit.

One of my favorite books is Moby Dick, recently it has dawned on my mind to want to illustrate a version of it. In my opinion nothing beats the black and white illustrations done by the master Rockwell Kent. But I wanted to take a different path, while Kent worked in black and white, I want to work with symbols and colors and shapes. The book is all about symbols and metaphors and my drawings would try to take that to the limit. So here are some very early Iphone sketches of Ahab and Queequeg who is my favorite character in the book. As I get that time I will play around more in Melville's wonderful world.

And to all the Rocketo fans, I have added some concept art for the Mapping Guild, although in the book its going to be ten times more massive than in this sketch.

The girl, well she was just fun to draw.

Enjoy and have a great day everyone.

Frank.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Hello all.

I just got back from Stanford University where I got to meet some fantastic professors, and a great comic artist and fine artist, Marcella Trujillo, who managed to make a quick sketch of me while on a train to visit the San Francisco comic art museum.

The trip was amazing and the scholars who gave their lectures on Latino comics and creators gave me some wonderful insights that I will carry with me for a very long time. So hats off to Hector Hoyos, Angela Becerra, Haerin Shin, Hector Fernandez, Juan Poblete, Vanessa Chang, Ramon Salvidar and Frederick Aldama they made my stay at Stanford feel right at home.

So now I am back and its back to work! I will post more stuff this week.

Wheww...

What a week. Everything just came down to four days. Four days of nonstop painting.

So finally the first book is all finished, and I will be scanning the pages next week.

Now I can play around a bit, get back to some Rocketo stuff, and put up some more stuff for this blog.

Here are two pieces I did for the Kirby show, in N.J tomorrow.. I need to take some really good digital shots of them, hopefully before they sell. Although right now the Cap one might not be going up for sale. It just hits the right spot with me. Blasted paintings, how did artists ever get rid of their work? I do a sketch and I cry when it leaves my hand.

The tribute to Jack is special to me, he is one of those artists that not only was a creative genius, but really pushed the enveloped into fine art with his own work. In a way that is why I wanted to take a much different approach. I actually want to do two more pieces that are even more abstract. Who knows, maybe next week.

The Cap piece is titled Classic Colors, I was thinking of those old Marvel comics I own, with all those yellows and gray and greens..

The other piece is called, The Four will save us.. actually I wanted to call it Negative zone superblaam punchout.. maybe I can still work that in.

Anyway letting go of the work should be part of the process, but its a hard one to learn, this is why I rarely sell my work, or even do commissions. I fall in love with the pieces.

Not the art itself, but what that piece taught me.

Well, things are slowly heading back to normal and for the next couple of days I am off in the New World of Rocketo.

Have a great weekend!

Frank

Under the weather...

Been under the weather the last bunch of days, some sort of cold/flu thing. Wow.

One moment I was jumping around the next. Tyson punch.

Anyway hopefully I can add some new stuff soon, but here is more of the pages for the Image book I am working on.

I added some character sketches I did in designing the girl character. You can sort of see the evolution and how it turned out in the finished pages. I like to take pics of the pages as I work on them, for some reason the really crappy quality, helps in seeing how things read. Or if they don't.

The first book has two more pages to go to be finished, so if I could make it to my drawing board, I can knock it out for the weekend.

Also I am going to be displaying some Kirby inspired art very soon at a place in N.J I will give more details as the date approaches. So if anybody is around and wants to come in and chat that would be great.

And there is a lecture at Stanford U that I will be giving so more stuff on that next week, to anybody in the west coast that wants to say hello, that way you can grill me about the new Rocketo book in person.

Best to all. Have a great weekend.

Back to bed.

sketch book stuff.

Excuse the delay, but I been busy working on that Image book and it takes my days in a good way.

Here are some quick sketchbook ideas that were running through my mind these days.

Personally I think the costumes of Superman and Batman are so iconic that to change them is just a mental wheel turn, eventually you wind up back to the iconic shapes that work the best. If it's not broke, don't fix it. But every once in a while its good to play around with these great modern myths.

In the mix are some Doc Savage sketches, mostly very rough and just explorations.. Again just playing around, but the mind wanders and it takes me back to all the Doc books I ever read, and how much fun it was to engulf myself in that world.

So as part of the revision, I was playing around with having Doc, half African American. If my memory serves, Doc was born on a schooner off the coast of Andros Island, which is off the Bahamas. So I played with the idea that here is this African American man in the thirties, hiding his own race, or maybe even not aware, what a fun concept. It adds a whole new level to that great character, something he can struggle with. And there it will stay I guess.

The other day a friend of mine sent me some funny Aquaman stuff, and it seems like that poor bloke, can't be taken seriously. So I played around with his scale a bit, made him the tallest and the widest of the JLA, as well he should be. That insane pressure would have worked wonders on his half Atlantean frame.

Green Lantern was fun to play with, I have not seen the new film, but I think his suit should exist apart from the power of the ring. When the ring power goes out, he will be naked in space, not a smart thing for the Guardians to design. So it should feel more like an alien space suit. Something that can keep him alive if the power goes out, I was thinking the suit would grow around him, while in deep space, freeing the power of the ring and his will power for the task at hand.

Flash needs some protection from little dust particles while running at that speed, and he needs to breathe. Again some protection growing out of the wings on his head might be fun to explore.

So with all due respect to the great artist and friend, David Williams who is by far the man who has drawn the most Batman revisions I have ever witness, and some of the best Batman, Superman concepts. Here you go.

Now back to the work at hand..

Best to all!

Frank.

stay safe East Coasters.

To all of you on the East Coast, stay dry and safe. Here in NYC its raining and a bit windy.

Stay safe.

simple heroes

A little time to play led to my simple versions of the classics. There is a lot of room to play with this concept.

This might also be the shortest blog I have ever written.. A bit wiped out today from painting.

Best to all!

Frank.

The project with no name.

Just thought I would share some bits of my current project for Image comics. I can't really say to much about it, because the writer would come after me, and it really is his baby. But I can share some of the artwork in a semi rough stage. Semi rough because the pics you see are taken with a cell phone, while the paint was still drying.

The double page spread is for the inside and back flaps and will most likely be in a muted sepia or toned down quite a bit. Its a great project and putting me through some interesting paces as any good project will do it will make you grow. Or at least teach you how to paint faster.

Thank you all for the commissions orders that I have received this week, every one of them have been tons of fun to do!

Have a great day and some more stuff coming this week.

Frank.

You are a strange man, Dr. Strange.

I remember reading Doc Strange when I was a kid, the Steve Ditko ones. Those were some odd, creepy tales. I had a friend who used to bring in tons of comics to school, can you believe this?!! His dad owned a newspaper store, and whatever didn't sell he was nice enough to hand to the kids. Imagine our hungry eyes, young, fever racked brains, feasting on the early X-Men, Early F.F.. early Avengers! They went like hot cakes.. Every went! everything but Doc Strange.. the kids around that school didn't dig him. So I wound up getting the left overs, and journeying into the mystic realms fighting the dreaded Dormammu!!

What a wonderful character, the Doctor, who loses the ability to operate on people journeys into the land of Tibet and learns the mystic arts. Comes down the mountain to kick demon ass.

there is a rumor that a Doc Strange film is in the works, which would be wonderful to see if they keep some of that insane fun and zany, dark, weird energy that Ditko brought to the pages. Lets all hope so.

As far as the Daredevil sketch goes, it was quick but I really liked doing it. I like to do a larger painting of that sketch. Stilt-Man was one of my favortie DD bad guys, he must be the lamest bank robber of them all. A ten stories high, slow moving, unbalanced target for Daredevils' kicks.

Thank you all who have asked for information and for commissions!

Best to you all.

Frank.

KRAAKATABBBOOMM!!

Some of you have asked for original art, and what I can say to that is: if there is anybody that would like a commission piece, of either a Marvel, DC, or Rocketo let me know, you can send an email to rocketocomics@verizon.net and I can send them a range of prices.

Well its been a good week, had a good push on a project I been working on, and had to cap it off with a off the top of my head Rocketo piece, called.. " That just did not end well.."

Have a great weekend everyone..

Will post some more tomorrow.

lunch time funnies.

Sometimes after a day painting, there is a bit of left over paint on the palette that looks really nice and you do not want to throw it out. Or it happens that after loading up the palette with paint, something else needs your attention and not much painting is done, in both cases you get paint that you do not want to discard.

So.. I do these little playful sketches, I try to keep them small and loose and fast and the rule is, no pencil just paint, so that it flows out.. Anyway here are some of this weeks Lunch Doodles.

When I was doing the Shazam sketch I was picturing this little kid saying the magic word and becoming huge, since Marvel has the powers of the Gods, I was thinking he should be a giant that can contain the power of Zeus, Mercury, etc..

The first time I ever saw the adventures of Superman on Television, I was a kid and the television had colors that were all faded out. So I got to see Superman with this really light suit.. which is still blue but lighter.. gives him that feeling of a savior. Not like the dark Superman we have now.

Well I added todays lunch time funny, which was Spidey. I like the weird creepy Spiderman that Ditko used to draw. I was painting to fast for my own good here but hey, have to post it.

Anyway have a great weekend everyone.