Californication!

Ah, California – “Where the sun shines on the just and unjust alike” – Home to the O.C. and Matt Seneca…

Yeah that Matt Seneca:- 

“Matt Seneca is the rare guy who writes about comics that can make you excited about a medium that’s in the process of chewing off its own legs and slowly bleeding to death.” said Sean Witzke fairly recently

Well it turns out that Matt sent a tweet on his twitter account saying the following:-

"also: this cat is SO TOTALLY my favorite comics artist right now"

Which was linked to this very blog (and brought along a lot of extra views, Hi everyone!)

So I figured Matt must have meant Jaunty Jim Steranko – I mean its fairly clear that Matt is a massive Steranko fan, it was after all his enthusiasm and inspiration that started me off on this project in the first place – but if that was not enough grab two eyes full of his and Sean Witzke’s take on the first issue of “Nick Fury : Agent of SHEILD" 

 But in reply Matt said…

“No man, I meant YOU! Those Outland pencils look incredible, I love the rawness of the first drafts.  You should do some pages straight to ink with no pencils, really nail the immediacy of the off-kilter handmade shapes you're making before you polish them up.  The stuff looks incredible -- Barnard's Outland is looking like it's gonna be my favourite comic of 2011!”

Wow – I mean like, totally wow, what can one say to something like this? Barnard's Outland --- seriously?!!! Hey Jim I am profoundly sorry.

I think I need the rest of my life to recover from that, and I can't even contemplate it for real as that would be one lengthy blog entry,  full of endless soul deep pudibundity -  but instead -- in reply to Matt, I said:-

"Okay I am more than up for some wild experimentation as I suppose its kind of the name of the game as someone like me trying to do Steranko is a bit crazy - so why not got just a little bit further?!

So what I am going to do is the last panel I just done again but this time I have printed out as large as I could its about half A4 size and I will use JUST the rollerball to draw directly from what I can see on my tiny light box"

to which Matt replied:-

"Yes!  This is going to look great: Steranko's obviously got the structure, but what you bring to the table is the rawness, some human handmade element that cuts through the cold I always talk about finding in his comics.  

Can't wait to see it! "

This guy has just completely floored me...!

Well Matt, wait no more - here you go I done this exactly as I said I would!

Here is the large sized original under the white craft card on top of on my tiny lightbox, with the rollerball in view:-

with the base linework this time as well and inking straight onto the card using the rollerball I forced myself to try and do this quicker so it would look "rougher", I will let you judge how successful or otherwise I was

and here is the final product to which I probably have only mildly exaggerated the figure this time around, but the small letters degrade to pieces

Matt, I hope it is what you was looking for -?!

But honestly I love to hear from anyone following or visiting this little blog and  Iam more than happy to have a go at something - especially if its a bit off kilter

And yes my commission rate is zero , no dollars - Matt will be getting the original bit of art in the post hopefully soon

What on earth could possibly top this?!