Not my greatest illustrations, but it's one of the few Santa themed paintings I made for Muscle and Fitness magazine some years ago.

Quick posts of art for a while. Lots of busy work lately and most of it not art. Sometimes that's how it is. When I don't have the time to devote my brain to a fun project I want to create, I revisit things from my past. About twenty years ago I used to ink Dr Strange every month for Marvel comics. It was a lot of work but a great learning experience. I also did finishes on the Ghost Rider story for Marvel Comics Presents every two weeks and penciled Animal Man for Vertigo comics every month. I had no life back then! I always liked the Ghost Rider , but Dr. Strange was the book I would have loved to make. I would think about the character a lot and analyze how he was handled.

My impression was no one looked at it as a book they wanted to stay on. People I penciled had even lifted whole splash pages from other super hero books but changed it enough that the editor didn't notice. Being the guy who was inking it, I noticed it and it was probably the most aggravating part of the job! It was a typical argument that editors always heard from inkers. "I can draw better than that guy!" So I never said anything even though I thought I had a legitimate case. How can this guy be better than me if he had to copy another artist's anatomy, composition, and line-work???

I like the potential for how bizarre and visually psychedelic Dr Strange stories could be if they were handled by Moebius, or Roger Dean, of (what the hell) even me! Instead of some guy whose heart is really in to doing Wolverine, or Spawn, or Superman. Not that they aren't great artists that do that, but there is a subtle difference when the artist is actually inspired to work on the character that will always give it that extra punch.

Inks by me. You might find this very pose in an Image comic book by Mark Silvestri.

An experiment in the old sketch pad.

Truthfully, I haven't thought much about Dr Strange in a long time. I was imagining some strange other dimensional sub-world. Some kind of white globes growing, maybe they are pods or some magical egg that contains either an evil spirit or a good spirit. Also an experiment in my sketch pad with a little ink and minimal gouache.

#Comics #DoctorStrange #surreal #illustration