2016 is not starting out in any positive way. The first cover I do for The Week Magazine is Iran and Saudi Arabia squaring off. I joked in the meeting that it would be more accurate to have a Yemen guy vs a Syrian or something like that since Saudi doesn't do any of their own work. Syria is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, also America and Russia, and Turkey and Kurdistan, and leastly Syrian people against the Assad regime... OH! and the occasional bombing by France or Britain just for good measure. At least that's what I've been able to see so far. There are a few other groups in there as well I'm sure, but to sum it up it is a chaotic stupid mess. So here we go 2016! AND it's an election year. Oh boy. I have a feeling I'll be doing illustrations about a lot of stupid tings this year, enjoy the first of many.

I'm not sure what the folks at The Week magazine will want to focus on for the cover this week, but it seems a lot of attention has been going to Trump these past few months. I'm aggravated by that. Trump the business man I was more or less indifferent to. But as a politician, he's freak'n scary! I never thought a non career politician would have been so awful. But what Trump's run for office really shows in all it's bluntness is this is what all the other politicians are, and that is the political rep for the wealthiest corporations in America. Take Hillary, donors to her super PACs are throwing in million dollar checks. I'm sure they expect some access to the president if she wins. She might as well wear the company logo on her "president" name-tag. All but Bernie Sanders has a super PAC. Trump has probably donated to several of these super PACs even now to protect his business interests.

I predict Trump will be a footnote by the 2nd or 3rd primary once the real campaigning kick in. Not because I think he's the worst person to be running for president of the group, but because going by past elections, the unorthodox guy who is going strong early usually isn't the one that we see getting the nomination. I still have a nagging feeling the fix will go down and we'll have a Bush vs Clinton choice in November. At least things will "only" continue into a downward spiral.

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

Sometimes doodles just keep going. I was trying to imagine Frankenstein's Monster. I was always blown away from how Bernie Wrightson's take on him. I guess I would have to draw him a bunch to find my own version. The color is one of my early experiments with Photo Shop painting. I don't think I'm any faster although I like that you can edit a paint stroke that might have went off course.