I received and email from Jeremy which said, in part:
"For the past 13 years I've been collecting sketches/autographs on 4x6 in cards after inheriting my grandfather’s movie star autograph collection on index cards (from Walt Disney, Bob Hope, Shirley Temple). When I inherited his collection, I thought it would be interesting to send “index cards” out to artists to see if they might be willing to make a small sketch/doodle of their most known character on it...The response so far, has been overwhelming. Currently, my art collection exceeds over 1700 drawings and sketches from artists around the world."
It's really quite impressive and you can check it out at: www.4x6-art.com Here is my contribution...
I was going to use my standard gag: a background of bricks surrounding an empty Cerebus silhouette with "insert aardvark here". I like this better.
Here is how the "Cowboy Cerebus" turned out:
I decided to blatantly rip off... uh, I mean... pay homage to... the "Bully for Bugs" Warner Brothers Looney Tunes cartoon.
I hope that's accept-a-bull. (Sorry... that was unpardon-a-bull... sorry again... what an ultra-maroon.)
Here is a commission request that I received from Patrick:
"With my writing partner, I publish a weird little book about how much I love my dog. The series leans on the 'man and dog wander the wasteland' trope to tell a number of different type of stories... I'm looking for a page that sums up a shitty future in one image... The setting for our story is America after a food shortage kills off most people and makes cannibals-of-opportunity out of the rest. Many cities are still intact, but most people have taken to living as far away from others as they can manage... The atomized society, without a single bomb."
After a lot of thought about what the world would look like under these circumstances, and with some thoughts from Patrick, I came up with a kitchen scene - sans zen and feng shui...
I thought: if there's no food you don't need the fridge, then it might make a good gun cabinet; you can store ammo in the freezer.
I wanted one element that contrasted the dim and grim scene and the snow globe idea just cracked me up.
The roaches were the finishing touch: ya just gotta have roaches.
Here's how my inking turned out on Zeck's Kraven piece...
...and here is a quick colour treatment that I did on the computer.
This came out kinda on the purple side and is really just "pre-visualization".
An interesting side note: Charles, who commissioned me to add the backgrounds and colour to this piece, likes the inked version just the way it is and has asked me to colour a print instead. Which is exactly what I was going to suggest to him.
I love it when things work out like that.
I got some more prints back from the printer...
I increased the contrast and bumped up the highlights on the underwater scene which improved it dramatically. The "Regency in Ruins" is still a little on the blue side but much better as far as brightness and contrast goes. The main issue now is the weight of the paper that has been used. I've now decided that it's too light and am going to try a heavier print-making paper.
The panorama view of the room from "The Last Day" is kinda cool; it's 3 feet wide and can be trimmed off and taped together to form a true 360 degree view of the room.
Maybe I could market this as a Cerebus Last Day wastebasket or something.
No! Wait!! I've got it!!!
Introducing the Cerebus Last Day Lampshade!
(You know you want one... you know you do.)
