Wired 2010


This is the last of four redrawings of a series of images I originally drew in 1990. I’m tempted to make this a tradition and redraw these images every five years or so.

We’ll see how I feel (or if I remember) in 2015.

Wired 1990


This is both the last of the four cover illustrations I submitted to a forgotten zine back in 1990 and it’s the last illustration from the 1990 sketchbook that I’ve scanned. My next series of posts will feature sketches I’ve done THIS YEAR. I know, shocking.

Headed Off 2010


And this is the second of four redrawing of those cover illustrations that I submitted in 1990 to the zine whose name I have forgotten. One of the difference between the 2010 redos and the 1990 originals is that I now use Photoshop to tweak my illustrations. I couldn’t have done that 20 years ago. Computers couldn’t do anything remotely like what they can now. And I didn’t own one anyway.

Black Suit 2010


As I was scanning that sketchbook from 1990 it occurred to me that it might be fun to redraw some of the images. I decided to redo the four illustrations I’d submitted for the cover of the Forgotten Zine. When the idea first hit me I thought I’d redraw them in the same style that I used in 1990, brush and pen and ink with stippling and crosshatching for the shadows. After thinking about it a bit I decided to just redo the images in the style I’m using today. Number one, I haven’t done much stippling in years. Number two, it’s a fairly time consuming process. And number three, stippling was part of my style in 1990 and it’s not in 2010. If I’m going to redraw an image now I might as well draw it the way I draw today.

One of the first things that hit me when I was sketching out the image was that I know more about anatomy now. I can’t just copy and improve on what I did twenty years ago. I had to start from scratch.

Black Suit 1990


Once I’d discovered the small press underground I was pretty active. From 1989 until about 1992 or 1993 I published 19 minicomics and contributed to countless minicomics and zines. (I also drew five issues of Misspent Youths in 1990/91.) I should have samples of most of that work in the stack of boxes that sitting my “library”. If I ever sort those boxes I might find the title of the zine this illustration was submitted to. It and three others (to follow) were submitted for cover illustrations. I know at least two of them were used but I don’t remember which two.

Lifeforms Unlimited 1990


This was a logo done in 1990 for a friend for a t-shirt design. Lifeforms Unlimited was … not exactly a company. It wasn’t a club or an organization. It was sort of the handle of a group of people who hung out and partied together. I still know most of them. The friend who commission the logo however, him I’ve lost track of.