Sketch Dump: The Pony Book 4

I had some fun with an iconic Audrey Hepburn image from Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Next to that is definitely one of the best of this sketchbook.  It's ASMR artist, Gibi's, "sister," Daisy.  Every so often I do inspired work.  

  

Oh, it's another inspired one.  Don't get spoiled; sketches start sucking again shortly.  That's an anime Black Widow statue on the left and another of Audrey on the right.

  

Here's a "low effort" page.  That's Twitch streamer, Bria, on the left.  She's a chatty little cutie.  It's not a great sketch, but it's kind of a cute drawing of Projekt Melody on the top right.  There's the iconic Betty from the Archie Comics on the bottom.    

That's a poor figure drawing of a model on the right.  Much later, in an attempt to better use the space, I added a sketch of Madelaine Petch, who plays Cheryl on Riverdale.  She's very likeable on her Youtube channel.  On the bottom is a sketch of Betty from Adam Hughes' Betty & Veronica series.    

That's Deren from Crossgen's Meridian on the left.  On the right, that's Twitch DJ, Jessu.  Here's another sketch I like a lot.  At least this post had a couple of good sketches.  

Sketch Dump: The Pony Book 3

This is going to get a bit random.  I didn't sketch pages out with posting in mind.  

On the left is Twitch chess streamer, Alyssa Zhu.  She is amazingly gorgeous.  She also has a surprisingly deep voice.  Next to her is former NM State Volleyball player Autumn Gentry.  I'm sorry she's not still around.  She was my friend, Ron's, favorite.  She was really nice during an autograph session.  Ron should have gone down to meet her.

      

Audrey Hepburn and another of Alyssa.

  

The picture on the right of Audrey Hepburn is the probably the best of my attempts.  I watched Eurotrip around the same time I watched Roman Holiday, so I drew a couple of sketches of Michelle Trachtenberg.  That's her on the top right.  On the bottom is Amy Hendrick.  I don't know who that is or why I drew that.  

There's one nice sketch of a regal Audrey and two really bad ones and another sketch of Michelle Trachtenberg.

That's another attempt at Autumn on the left.  In the middle is Twitch streamer, Sam (Seum).  I like that sketch a lot.  Lastly, that's Sephie from Crossgen's Meridian.    

Sketch Dump: The Pony Book 2

I went on an Audrey Hepburn kick for a while.  Mostly I just watched Roman Holiday and Funny Face.  I drew a bunch of pictures from paused screens.  There's some more, but these are the pages with just her.  I don't think I got close to depicting her in any of these.

   

The one on the right may be the best of the bunch.

Sketch Dump: The Pony Book 1

I didn't quite mean to start posting these right now, but I have not been able to scan more postcards.  I'd photographed these a couple of weeks ago and trimmed and named 103 pics since then.  After all of that, I came to the conclusion these all sucked and I hated.  I named this the Pony Book after what is probably the best series of drawings.

There's Addie from Halocene on the left.  This is the reason I don't usually draw in teeth.  On the right is a red-headed model.  The hand is trash.  

I posted these two sketches of Alan Embry from the NM State Volleyball team before, but I'm doing this alphabetically and scanned the whole sketchbook in the rush.  

On the right top is a terrible sketch of chess streamer, Julie the Apprentice.  This is unfortunately one of many "low effort" sketch days, where I didn't have the time or energy to do my daily sketch.  I held off on photographing this sketchbook for a couple of weeks after finishing it, because I wanted to fix some of the sketches and color some pencil sketches.  This one, I couldn't fix.  Below that is Arwyn from Crossgen's Meridian.    

I thought about inking and coloring some of these sketches, but ultimately I was afraid of ruining them.  That's supposed to be Alex Morgan on the left.  It doesn't look anything like her.  I saw the Stallone Judge Dredd movie recently.  I loved it, but also love the Urban Dredd, which is a completely different take on the character and setting.  Anyway, Joan Chen was in the movie.  I remembered her from Twin Peaks.  This sketch at least looks like her.       

 

That's another Alex Morgan.  It's almost a good drawing, but the eyes are f-ed.  That's sportscaster, Laura Britt, next to her.  She used to be on the Stadium Network.  I miss her.

Postcards From the Edge: Dad's Family Cards 12

Quapaw Baths?  Under Government Supervision?  It's in Hot Springs, AR. 

Children's Hospital, Denver, CO.  Even with image enhancement, the back is unreadable.

 

Neece Motel, Walnut Ridge, AR.  Great cars in the picture.  

Snowy Range in the Rockies.

Lake Catherine State Park, AR.

Postcards From the Edge: Dad's Family Cards 11

Impressive Yosemite National Park card from the 40's. 

A somewhat generic view of the Rockies.

Pueblo of Red Rock Park, Denver, CO.  A very weird picture.  Strangely, that's what current photographs look like, too.

Obviously the Grand Canyon.

Ruby, ND.  "The scenery is wonderful, but I'm lonesome for you."

Comics and Book Review: Momentary and Starstruck #6 Part 2

 

Part 1.  

Starstruck #6 (Epic)

I’m not sure if this is going to be much of a review, as much as an exaltation.  I got this comic after about 30-something years of searching.  The other reason this won’t be much of a review is because Starstruck is notoriously incomprehensible.  I can say that it looks awesome, it’s incredibly inventive, and is painfully smart and witty.  But, you’re not really going to figure out what’s going on.  This somewhat reflects from all of the characters in the story also not knowing what’s going on.

This could have been called feminist sci-fi in the 80’s when it came out, because it featured mostly female leads--half heroes (?), half villains.  Now, of course, Starstruck would be considered to be thinly-disguised patriarchal propaganda.  The women heroes, Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle, are aggressively heterosexual and there are strong male characters, along with some weak ones.  The best issue of the series is probably #2, which just features Harry Palmer being a bad ass.  (Though he didn’t really seem anything like that in the graphic novel.)  At the end of the series, a surprising amount of sympathy is shown towards Harry’s final fate and even the foppishly, borderline insane Kalif Bajar. 

 

  

“Its science fiction, Jim, but not as we know it.”  The artwork is the selling point of the series.  The technology presented is as incredible, as it is at times whimsical.  It’s almost sci-fi by Dr. Suess.      

If you remember the Stellar Cartography Room from Star Trek: Generations, here’s the upgraded version.

I probably got the graphic novel from a Waldenbooks at the mall in the 80’s.  This included material that had originally been published in Heavy Metal.  I didn’t really understand it, but I loved the artwork.  The story itself was based on a play written by and starring Elaine Lee.  Artist Michael W. Kaluta worked on the production.  The two then teamed up to make a comic story about the play characters’ backstories.  Sometime later on a rare trip to the comic book store in El Paso, I found Issue #4 of a 6-issue limited series.  Somewhere shortly thereafter, I got #5.  So ended the 80’s.

What followed next was a near life-long search for the other issues.  It was an obscure, low-distribution comic, but I was determined to run down every issue by searching the bins of the every store selling comics I went to.  Before you laugh at the strategy, I did find three more issues like that.  Only the final issue was left to get, which probably had the lowest print run.  Of course, I could have gotten from an online source (I even looked for pirated pdf’s), but I enjoyed the chase.        

 

This series was remastered for a hardback edition years later, but didn’t include all of the issues, otherwise I would have bought it.  These pages, along with a bunch of new material, were published on a Starstruck website.  A new comic series was produced, but it’s an expanded version of Issue #2.  (Like I said, it’s the best issue.) 

 

I read an online interview with Lee at that time, who explained the story’s setting in a very succinct and understandable manner that the comic book never did.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think to save that interview and now it’s disappeared.  (So much for, “The Internet is forever.”)  There’s been a radio drama produced, probably based on the play.  I have an excerpt of it.  It’s fun listening to the actors completely twisting their tongues trying to force out the hyper-technobabble in the script. 

 

By coincidence, I had read all of my issues over a vacation week in December before I got the Amazon gift card for Christmas.  Starstruck was already on my mind when I started thinking of ways of using the card.  I finally broke down to order a copy of #6 to satisfy my curiosity as to how the story ended.  This wasn’t driven by my own mortality coming into play before I might randomly find it, perhaps so much as I’m doubting the continuity of civilization in general. 

I was not expecting a life-altering experience by reading it.  I was a little afraid to read it or that something would happen to me or the comic before I read it.  It was like this was somehow the culmination of my entire life.  I thought it would look good and would be incomprehensible.  It was all that, but the imagination in the artwork was stunning.  The story did resolve and was understandable to some extent.  I could simply recommend this series based on the experience.  Don’t try too hard to understand it; just go with the flow. 

 

Well now what comic book am I going to obsess over?