Resonant Fish

1:00am: Page One
There's a fly in my room that I cannot, for the life of me, get out. I think it's driving me a little insane.

But on the other hand,



Black Manta rules my desk.

2:35am: After weeks of plotting


Bless you, 10/0 Loew Cornell Round Brush... we'll be friends yet.

Why can I only be productive past midnight?

11:26pm: ADVISE ME
What pen do you use to create things? What are your top 3 pens?

I must know. These rollerballs are okay for some things, but I know there's better out there.

6:17pm: NEWSFLASH
My ETSY shop is starting to go live. I'll be randomly listing 5 of the 3"x3" superhero paintings a day for the next 10 days. If you have any requests from ones that you've already seen and desperately wanted, let me know now before I list 'em and we'll talk PayPal.

Also, I'm taking commissions for any characters (good, evil, Marvel, DC, real, imaginary, TV, cartoon, movie, spaceman, non-carbon-based) that you might want to get : a scant $20 for anyone you want, plus the obligatory $5 FLAT RATE for priority shipping costs, which will encompass as many characters as you want. Order a whole team, man. A whole friggin' TEAM.

Help me punch this hellhole in the crotch!

Other art is happening, quietly.

7:06pm: Indecision
I'm trying to come up with something of a 'style guide' to keep myself consistent on the next comic, and I'm finding it impossible to decide which 'me' is ME. Maybe they all suck - but I just want something that I can easily brush out that has personality and some resemblance to myself. Maybe I'm just not finding the right combinations of details, because I like small aspects of all of them. Maybe I shouldn't use a brush. Maybe I should pull an Alex Ross and just do quick traces of photos. There's going to be a lot of talking heads - hopefully with some interesting variation and variety thrown in.

Opinions please.

9:27pm: Hellboy 3" x 3"s on eBay!








I've been doing pretty good on eBay. CLICK HERE TO BID YOUR FACES OFF!

I needs me some green.

9:17pm: 50, united
( wide image under cut! )

Didn't start on that comic JUST yet - gotta hit that up tonight!

2:20am: Total Request Heroes
Here it is - #46 through #50. Pretty awesome that I made it this far. These were all requested by LJ friends. I went with the majority, and/or things I'd already sketched and just hadn't drawn yet that were requested.











Next, I start work on my teaching comic. Hello, 4 day weekend!

2:57pm: 5 more Heroes to go!
I have 5 more DC Heroes to go until I reach 50.

First 5 reasonable requests for characters that are at least semi-iconic will get painted. Tonight, most likely.

12:12am: Teen Titans, GO!
I know that there are like, 5000 Teen Titans, but this is a start.









I was only going to do 4, as usual, but then I fell a little in love with Kelly Fenton, a NYC music teacher who's created musical suites based on DC's Infinite Crisis - and most interestingly, an elegy for Ted Kord. I immediately heard the Mingus influence, and a little bit of (probably unintentional) Iain Ballamy. Comic nerds who are also jazz fans are some of my favorite people. This one is for her. Arts teachers unite! You can listen to these on her website, linked above.

9:46pm: The As
I also did an Atom, but he sucked, so I'm hiding him. Good thing he's tiny.










Shhh. Nobody tell Adam Strange that he's in a comic!

10:12pm: Heroes : All My Lanterns Ed.








Plenty more where this came from.

11:14pm: DOOM PATROL!






Okay, so I cheated. I didn't do a quartet - mostly because I love the Drake / Premiani Doom Patrol stories, and the inclusion of The Chief didn't feel right - he doesn't perform any heroics, and as it turns out, he's a big jackass. I could have included Beast Boy, but he doesn't really appear until much later. No, I am a purist.

I also cheated in the costumes - I've always preferred Negative Man's 'First Appearance' greens, and Elastigirl's red & whites from the later stories. Robotman, fortunately, remains the same - except when Grant Morrison makes him wear a leather jacket. Seriously - I tried Morrison's Doom Patrol stories, and they're just not very well done. Poorly drawn, confusingly written junk.

If you've never read the original Doom Patrol tales, they're really amazing. Lots of 'I'll use this power to counteract threat X!' stuff, but the bad guys are totally out there too.

Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man? Monsieur Mallah and The Brain (which Morrison later turned into homosexual lovers & killed)? Madame Rogue (another DC stretchy person I'd forgotten - though a villain)? General Immortus? All awesome.

(PS - This makes 33 hero paintings!)

11:46pm: Heroes, oldskool
Going back to the Silver Age, I believe. What's the next quartet I should do?

I'm thinking Teen Titans, Doom Patrol, or heroes with Animal Powers.

1:07am: Sunday's Progress
I started painting the back (front?) cover for Coptopus #2 (maybe).



And then, I finished it. Nemesquid complements the Coptopus kaiju toy!



This is where I was working today.

2:05pm: The Jack Kirby Special
I love Jack Kirby, but DAMN his costumes are madcore complicated!

I'm also sure you're sick of these.

2:15am: Stretchos








.... was Lobo ever in the Justice League? Aside from that JLU episode? Was he even part of it then?

11:13pm: SO.....
I don't know if this is a front cover or a back cover until the similarly-styled Nemesquid painting is done, but I think it's kinda NEAT.

I like the cover of issue #1, and it was really necessary to put the protagonist on the FRONT of the comic for the first issue, but the back cover? That back cover was AWESOME.



Maybe this'll be neat enough to convince someone to make real Copto-toys someday.

The katakana actually says 'Ka-Po-To-Pu-So', which is the closest one can get to 'Coptopus' in Japanese. I think. 'Ne-Me-Su-Ko-Wyi-Do' is an even bigger stretch.

Even though 'Ka-Po-Ta-Ko' (Cop-Octopus) would have been funny/clever too.

And it's only 11 PM, so maybe I have tome and energy for 4 more hero paintings tonight! They'll all be going on Etsy soon.

NOTE FOR FUTURE COPTOPUS VILLAIN : Don Unagi (an eel mobster), an AMAZING CLEVER (if I do say so myself) play of 'Unagi Don', a Japanese dish of eel.

Where is everyone on LJ and AIM tonight? What's up with the mass internet evacuation?

6:30pm: Coptocover #2?
It is still in progress, but while Brian goes over the thumbnails I sent him for issue #2, I've been thinking about a cover for issue #2 - based on how happy I am with the Reicubas painting.




Maybe.

8:20am: Even more Heroes
I was unhappy with The Flash, so I re-did him.



And while Batman was the first mini-painting, he didn't have the flavor of the subsequent ones. So I re-did him.



Before I do 4 stretchy DC guys, or the Teen Titans, or DC robots, or a Jack Kirby collection, I had to fit my second favorite DC hero in.



And then, one that just looks neat.

11:09pm: 4our more heroes








That's 16, and all four only took a little while.

Next, I think I'll do the stretchy guys. Metamorpho, Elongated Man, Plastic Man... is there another DC stretcho?

4:36pm: Crabmonster thing
This is Reicubas from Ultraman. I try to paint real-ish every once in a while to see if I remember how, because it has a relevance in everything else. It's a far more meditative, quiet process than just going wild on the canvas, which is a whole other kind of awesome.

1:57pm: A thing
After coming back from another city-bound weekend, I've been catching up on writing duties, and/or being at work full time or catching up on sleep. I have a realistic toy-painting in progress that's in its awkward phases and I HATE it, but I'm just waiting for enough time to give it proper life. Right now, it's a sad mess.

In the meantime, Coptopus co-pilot Brian Rubin has posted the Cecilia Tan article over at his website. While it says that my included art was 'inspired by' the author (whom I've never read), the art was in fact 'inspired by' heartbreak and pretty girls asking me to paint things at least 3 years ago, if not more. This 'inspired by' wasn't Brian's comment, but that of the editors. Just thought I should clarify.

10:55pm: It's ladies night!
Back from the city. Renegade Craft Fair was inspiring, the Affordable Art Fair was not affordable, and the superheroes thing at the Met was snooty.

But I did a bojillion sketches, and came home to make 4 more Justice League paintings. I think I want to do a MILLION MORE.

7:49pm: !!!
Occasional Superheroine seems to like Coptopus.

SO SHOULD YOU!

$5 shipped and it's YOURS!