Tag: new pulp artwork

Recreating Pulp Art (in color): A Journey

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Recreating Pulp Art meme

In last week’s ROCKETEER, I premiered a new pulp copy–“The Shadow” magazine cover featuring “Hidden Death” (September, 1932 issue.) I also talk about my journey as a pulp artist and historian, trying to better understand how the original art was created so that I can create new pieces that have the colorful and melodramatic pulp-art feel. In the article I show you some of my original fine art pulp pieces. You can see the new copy and read all about it here.

Two new articles, a story in progress, and a drawing for practice

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Rocketeer alien series meme

There seems to be a lot going on at the moment. For the next few weeks the ROCKETEER is going to highlight aliens in honor of the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party—a local event celebrating everything UFO. (It’s like McMenamins UFO Festival only smaller.) I’ll be discussing pulp-era and slightly later stories with the themes of invasion, alien manipulation, control, and humanity fighting back in stories ranging from the absurd to the deadly. The first in that series came out this week: “Tactical Error: This Star Shall Be Free.”  The story…

Reconstructing Otho

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In this week’s ROCKETEER I’m talking about a character from the “Captain Future” pulp stories, the android—Otho. More people today know him from the Captain Future anime from the 1970’s than the original stories. The anime takes some liberties with the character’s original design. In my post I talk about those changes and how Otho was originally conceptualized. You can read “Reconstructing Otho” on Substack. I’ve been noodling around with some Otho drawings using the original design from the 1940’s. Because he’s supposed to be a master of disguise and…

Inking Round-up May 2023

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Inking Roundup for May 2023

Art is all about practice, and I practice all the time! My father used to marvel at the fact that I didn’t need any impetus to do art, I just do it. This month I’ve focused on improving my line and brushwork with ink. In this week’s ROCKETEER I show you what I’ve been up to, including a short video, detailing my practice pieces for the month of May. You can read this week’s newsletter here.

Linework and New Pens

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Brush and ink after Cartier

Recently, I have become frustrated with the quality of my brush and ink linework. I was aware that  the type of lines I wanted to create should be created with a real brush and ink but I stuck to my brush pens. They are more convenient, certainly more tidy than dipping a brush into ink. Plus, I have good control over them. Decades ago in graduate school I used a dip pen and brushes with ink. Honestly, when good quality brush pens became available I was glad to make the…

Edd Cartier’s Cramped Panels

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I have been in love with black and white interior illustrations for a long time. In the late 1980’s when publishers started pushing for color wherever they could, I refuted the claim that black and white illustrations were uninteresting and uninspiring. At that point it was rare to see interior book art in anything but children’s books and graphic novels anyway. But I never gave up on interior illustrations for all types of stories. Now that they’ve begun to come back around it’s nice to see stories illustrated again. But…

Earle K. Bergey Cover Reproduction

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Exciting Sports Comparison

You all know that I like to make pulp copies as part of my on-going learning process. My goal as a pulp painter is to become familiar with the original pulp covers and understand them well-enough in terms of color, composition, themes, etc.. to be able to create my own book covers and fine art paintings which accurately reproduce the look and feel of that era. I believe in creating the whole “package” for my books. I want to create an experience for readers which is immersive. And so far…

Robert Graef copy

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Graef copy comparison The Spot of Life 1932

Here’s my newest pulp copy, Robert Graef’s cover painting for Argosy August 1, 1932 featuring “The Spot of Life” by Austin Hall. This story is sequel to “The Blind Spot” by Hall and Homer Eon Flint. My painting is mainly watercolor with touches of gouache and pastel. It’s always nice to have an excuse to get back to watercolor, it’s such a beautiful medium and ultimately my favorite. This piece was quite challenging but very fun to do. I worked larger than I normally do for copies — 12″ x…

New Article — “Cleve Cartmill, The Devil’s in the Details”

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Cartmill article meme

Have you ever heard of pulp writer, Cleve Cartmill (1908 – 1964)? If you have it’s probably because of his 1944 story, “Deadline” published in ASTOUNDING. That’s the one that had the FBI knocking on John W. Campbell’s office door. For real! Anyway, Cartmill also wrote pulp fantasy and I picked out three of those to review over at Black Gate. The article includes a brand new illustration by yours truly! Why did I do it? Honestly, the original art for one of the stories was quite hum drum and…

SILVERBLADE – Redux

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Silverblade cover iss 1

Once, a very long time ago in the 1980’s, DC put out a comic “maxi” series called, “Silverblade”. It was written by Cary Bates and the art was done by Gene Colan. The hero was Jonathon Lord, an aging movie star. One day, bitter, washed-up Lord makes a wish that is answered by an uncanny entity in the shape of the Maltese Falcon. The entity gives Lord the ability to transform into any role he ever played on the silver screen, the most notable being the swashbuckler, Silverblade. Of course,…