Pickled Chuck

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My Christmas/New Years break has been a good and very restful time for me. It has given me time to reflect on this past year and I must say it has been a very good year for me. That is not saying that it has had some bad parts........ I would say that 99% of the year for me was good. I have an amazing girlfriend, a fantastic family and fabulous friends to thank for that. I am very appreciative for all that I have. I hope that the next year will bring me all that is wonderful and more. Here is to a Happy New Year!!!!

In exactly 34 days I will be on my way to Japan. I am very excited to visit there again. I really enjoy getting to see Akiko's family. It is a real treat for me. They are always so nice to me (even when they don't understand me being a vegetarian). Also, I think that I have been able to save enough money so that while I am on my trip I will not have to worry about being too poor.

The image above came to me when I started to think about all of the early cartoon influences I have had in my life. I thought that I would try and illustrate all of those influences in my "Pickled" style. Charles M. Shulz's cartoon strip "Peanuts" was the first image that I wanted to draw. My parents introduced "Charlie Brown" and the "Peanuts Gang" to me very early in my life. I think that I was around 16 months old when I went to Malibu Beach, California with my parents to visit my Uncle George and my Aunt Kay when I first noticed Charlie Brown's dog "Snoopy". My Parents told me that my Uncle had a stuffed toy of Snoopy that I would not leave alone. I would drag him around everywhere by the neck, even through the sand on the beach of Malibu. I believe that over the years my Mother had to repair Snoopy's neck on many occassions. I also remember my Parents buying me numerous book collections of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang before I even knew how to read. The Peanuts Gang was very important in my life and still is to this day. I love taking time and re-reading those comic strips from years past with my old stuffed toy Snoopy. I enjoy reading them just as much or maybe even more than when I read them as a child. It is amazing how timeless that comic strip can be.

I haven't taken the time to illustrate any more more of my early influences in my Pickled style. But when I do I think the next one up will be "B.C." by Johnny Hart.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!!!!!

Happy Birthday Wendy!!!!

Jack

PICKLED CHRISTMAS

I decided to give drawings this year as gifts to members of my family. I went with the PICKLED theme since that seems to be where my drawing style is at the moment. Drawings are a nice unique and rather inexpensive gift. The most expensive part on these three drawings was the frame.

I am very lucky to have a family that understands my art and the thinking that goes behind it.

I really like to draw things floating. I haven't really figured out why............ I saw an image Dave Cooper drew where he made one of his characters float and I have been hooked doing it since.


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This is a drawing of "Sir Preston" my Father's Boston Terrier. I am not as happy with drawing as I thought I would be. I guess I don't like the position of his body. I think it works well in a "creepy" kind of way, but it just didn't turn out like what I had originally envisioned.



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My sister's gift was this violin. My sister is an excellent violin player and music educator up in Wyoming. I thought that a violin would be appropriate for her this year. Last year I did a painting of her cat, so I was in the mood for something different.



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This drawing is of my Mother's dog "Bark-Lee". I decided to just do a floating head on this drawing. I think that is because I was not as happy as I could be with the floating "Sir Preston" I drew for my Dad. Plus, drawing just the head was a little quicker for me to do and I was very limited on time. This one was also a challenge to draw since I was so limited on picture reference. But I compared it to him on Christmas morning and I was happy with how close I came to a likeness.(sans the warts)

Everybody seemed pleased with their PICKLED gifts.

It was a nice Christmas.

Jack

PICKLED: a collection of drawings PRESERVED in vinegar.

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Here we go......"PICKLED" is finally completed. *sigh*

I must say that this has been quite an experience for me, both good and bad. When I got the idea to put this book together I had no idea what I was in for. I did not know how much time and effort it would take to get this book finished before Christmas. Since I don't have any experience with self-publishing, it was a learn as I go process. It was interesting and challenging to figure out certain aspects of the book, like how I would add the vellum insert and have a page that would fold out like a centerfold. I would definitely say that the most challenging part of this book for me was figuring out how to bind it together. After building a few comps of the book with different types of binding, I decided that it would be best to go with staples and then applying a strip of paper to cover the staples along with the black linen book binding tape. I was happy with this simple but effective solution.

When I got the internal pages back from the printer, I was surprised to see that they had collated all of them for me, but I still had to cut out all of the pages myself. The printer had a couple of elderly women working in the paper cutting/book binding department and the printer felt that my imagery might offend some of those ladies. Thankfully, I was able to cut out all of the pages using the paper cutter over at Keech Studio. This allowed me to cut the books in groups instead of cutting them out one page at a time. Once that was finished, I added highlights with white charcoal to all of the front covers and then hand colored with prismacolor colored pencils all of the vellum inserts. I then stapled and bound all of the books. It took a good couple of days to complete all 35 editions.

I have already handed out a bunch of the books to friends and family as early Christmas presents. They seem to really like it, despite the subject matter I like to draw.

I might have a few of these left over after Christmas, so please contact me if you are interested in obtaining one and I will do my best to get one to you.

For laughs I thought that I would show the cover to the "sketchbook" I published back in 2002.



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Pretty scary, huh?

Jack

It is that time of year.......Rudolph and the Grinch

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I was digging through my archive of old illustrations and I stumbled upon this "SEASONAL" drawing I did for Wizard Magazine back in 2000 and I thought I would share. I am a little embarrassed to show this.......... I believe that this was published in one of Wizard's lesser known publications "IN Power" magazine. Back in those days, I drew most of the "Last Man Standing" illustrations while that magazine was published. ("Last Man Standing" was an illustration of comic battles you never thought you'd see). The editors would provide me a script that would out line what needed to be illustrated, I would then e-mail them 3 sketches. The editors would then pick the best one based on composition, placement of characters, etc. I would then try and knock out the pencil inks and colors in the next couple of days. This time in my life was very busy for me. I was working at an advertising design studio and doing a lot of illustration and coloring on the side for various comic companies. Needless to say, I had a lot of very late nights.

I did have fun drawing the "Last Man Standing" spots. It was interesting to illustrate characters that would never be seen interacting together. I was challenged when I had to incorporate the different drawing styles of the characters with my own drawing style when I drew the secondary elements and backgrounds. On this particular illustration, I had colored it a little different than I usually color my illustrations. I had just finished painting the backgrounds for Eric Wiese's "Spaceboy Slim" short and I really liked the style I had created and I thought that I would try it on this piece. When it comes to the drawings of the characters themselves, I did not do very well. I think I was on model with the Grinch and his dog Max, but with Rudolph and Hermey.......... I missed the mark. The characters look very rushed, they aren't very dynamic, etc........ at the time I did the illustration, I was unable to find good reference for the characters. I guess the drawing works in the sense that you can kind of tell who the characters are but that is about as far as it goes. If I remember correctly, I had a quick deadline on this illustration. So maybe that is why they are not as well realized as the rest of the drawing.........

............or maybe I got distracted thinking about Hermey wanting to be a Dentist.

Jack

Pickled Printing Problems Solved.....HURRAY!!!

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Today was a good day for me. I met with my very good and amazing friend Chelli Huffman who was able to find a printer for me that would not be scared of the horrible and evil images that I have drawn. We then went to the paper store and found a nice ivory color for the guts of the book. It should be a very nice compliment to the green paper stock I used for the cover. Chelli said that the printer could get to working on the job right away. So, if all goes well..... I hope to have the pages back from the printer in a couple of days. Then, I will have to trim out the pages, collate them and then bind the books. Since I am doing that myself, it makes the cost per book a lot cheaper (which is good for my trip to Japan). I will be very happy once these are all completed and I am able to hand them out for Christmas. I still need to figure out who I will be giving these things to..... If I would have known how much work I was going to have to put into this project, I probably would have gone in a different direction for the design of this little book.

Anyway........

This drawing above is based on the technician who did the emissions on my truck this year. The only difference between the drawing and the actual guy is the technician did not have his hair tied in a red bow. This drawing will be included in my sketchbook sans the color. I do like this one with color, it makes the image much more dynamic. I really do prefer my images in black and white when I complete an illustration. It is very important to me that the black lines give the image value and depth. I think that is because I colored comic books for so many years. I have seen too many comic art pages that have been "saved" by a good colorist. The color design for this image is based on the old Disney character cards from the 1940's.

Jack

Pickled Printing Problems

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I have been so busy. It is amazing how much work I have had lately. It has been very difficult for me to try and find the time to get my sketchbook published before Christmas. To make matters worse, I have been having a hard time finding a printer to print my sketchbook. I have either had really high estimates or no reply at all. It has been very frustrating........... I thought printers liked to print jobs so that they could make money? I finally found a printer that came in with a low estimate and only a couple day turn around. I was very happy............... until I got a call from the Account Rep. that I have been dealing with. (This guy is a very nice gentleman but seems to be drinking A LOT of alcohol before he comes into work. I almost got intoxicated just from standing next to him and smelling his breath as I went over the pages of my sketchbook with him.) The Account Rep. told me that the owner of the print shop had some issues with the imagery and that he would not print the book. He said that the owner is a little religious and that the images I had drawn were offensive or evil. (Pickled images "bad", drinking while on the job "good") I was a little surprised by this. I admit that the art I create is not for everyone's taste, but I am surprised that he would not print it. It is not like my images are satanic in nature, just really bumpy and pickled. You would think that in this day and age people would be a little more open minded.

I am meeting with another print shop tomorrow. Hopefully, this one will work out. I have less than two weeks to get this sketchbook put together. The clock is ticking...........

The drawing above is from one of the fold-outs I did for the sketchbook. I had the centerfold idea from Playboy in mind when I drew this. You can't have a nice looking book without a centerfold.

Jack

A Pickled Pinhead Poem

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Well, it took me about 2 hours to ink this illustration. I think that it turned out well. There are some things I really need to work on when I draw in this style. I will talk about those things later in future posts.......

Writing poems and illustrating them is something very new to me. I have never considered myself much of a writer. I never did enjoy writing in school and avoided those classes like the plague. As I have gotten older, I have been reading a lot more and enjoying the power of the written word. A couple years ago, Tim Burton wrote and illustrated a book of poems that was wonderful. That book was very inspiring for me. Then I discovered artist/illustrator Gris Grimly. Grimly's illustrations and writing are just absolutely amazing. It has been a long time since I have been so inspired by someone's work. The combination of his visual style and the subject matter that he writes about are a perfect combination. They compliment each other so well.

This illustration is the last piece that I needed to finish before I go off to press with my little book. I have been very discouraged lately with the process of finding a printer for this thing. The estimates are coming in way too high for just 35 copies of a 22 page book. I guess I need to do a huge print run in order to get this at a lower price. That wouldn't be that big of a deal if I was going to try and sell it. But since these will ALL be given away as gifts, I need to watch what I spend. Plus, I need to keep saving my money for my trip to Japan.............

Jack

Pinhead

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I have been fascinated with doing a drawing of a Pinhead for quite a while now. Pinheads are people who suffer from microcephaly or some other mental retardation. They were often favorite and staple performers on the sideshow circuit for their diminutive size, strange appearance, and child-like manner. They were usually promoted as "Darwin's missing link" or the surviving children of a lost civilization (i.e. The Ancient Aztec Children, the Wild Men of Borneo). The tiny cranium was accentuated by shaving the head and leaving a small tuft of hair at the top — a look that was later adopted by the character Bert on Sesame Street. Several pinheads were featured as characters in director Tod Browning's infamous film Freaks (1932). The most famous of these performers was Schlitzie (Simon Metts), who worked on the sideshow platform well into his seventies.

The sketches above were done for a poem that I wrote about a Pinhead. I will post the final inked drawing when I get it finished.

Jack

Sketchbook

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I have been working like a madman to get my collection of drawings printed and put together by Christmas. It has been a very time consuming project for me. I have been wanting to print a collection of my drawings for quite some time. I decided that I am going to limit the printing to only 35 copies. It will be 20 pages long, printed on a light desaturated yellow paper. There will be a centerfold and a vellum insert. The cover will be on a heavy green stock and I will be drawing on each of the covers. This will hopefully make each issue unique from one another. I plan on giving them as gifts at Christmas time.

The last collection I did like this was back in 2002 when I had just moved back to Colorado from Arizona. I was a guest at the annual Comic Convention here in Denver. At that time I thought that it would be fun to put together a collection of all of the drawings I had in my sketchbook and sell them. I priced them at $6.00 and I was very surprised at how well they sold......... the imagery I draw surely isn't for everyone.

The image above did make it into the sketchbook but it will appear black and white. I like to add color to my images once in a while. It lets me see my technique from a different perspective and shows me that sometimes I need to open up and not be so heavy in the areas that I cross-hatch.

Jack

Dauber

My dog Dauber is an amazing animal. He is very intelligent and is one of the sweetest dogs you will ever meet. Dauber loves to play and most of all Dauber loves to play fetch. If you start to pet him or pay attention to him in anyway he will run away from the attention to go and find a toy so you can throw it for him or to play tug of war with him. It is a very undeniable urge that he has. He is focused on one thing and one thing only. He needs to have a toy. That is his priority. He seems to be very insecure without it. He is just like Linus and his blanket.

Two weeks ago I got a call from my Parents telling me that they had taken my dog Dauber, a five year old Boston Terrier to the Emergency Room at Alameda East Veterinary. It seemed that my Father saw Dauber acting very disoriented and was walking very strange and rushed him to hospital. I immediately left work, got in my truck and sped over to the animal hospital. When I got to the hospital they had already taken him to one of the back rooms to do an EKG and some blood tests. It took about 20 minutes for them to come out to get me so I could go back and see him........... That was quite a long wait for me. I walked back with the vet to see Dauber. I expected to see Dauber laying unconscious on a table with a bunch of tubes in him. To my surprise Dauber was up, alert and the acting like the wonderful dog he always is.
The vet brought us the results from his blood tests and everything was normal. There wasn't anything in his blood test to explain why Dauber had acted the way he did. The vet told us that it seemed that Dauber had a seizure of some sort, but the exact cause is unknown without doing more tests such as an MRI to check for a brain tumor.

We took Dauber home and watched him very close for the next two weeks. Dauber acted normal and was his natural self until the day before Thanksgiving. Dauber had just eaten his dinner and he started acting as if he was disoriented just like he did before, he even leaned up against the stove so he would not fall over. My Mother picked him up and put him on the couch, she tried to get his attention but he just stared straight ahead. After about 10 minutes he seemed to come out of it and started acting normal. Since it was the holiday we had to wait and take him to our regular vet on Friday. The vet checked him over and could not find anything wrong with him. The vet said that based on what we explained to him he thought that Dauber had a petit mal seizure and that he could be epileptic. My cat Sketch is epileptic so this is nothing new to our family. The vet prescribed phenobarbital to help control the seizures. Hopefully, this is the correct diagnosis and not turn into something much worse, like a brain tumor.

Lately, Dauber has been the same crazy dog with only one thing on his mind....... he has to have his toys.

I love my dog,

Jack

Thanksgiving

Around this time every year over 46 million turkeys are killed so everyone can have a "traditional" Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

That makes me very sad.

Jack

Abraham Lincoln

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As we gather with friends and family to celebrate Thanksgiving, let us all take a moment to remember that it was President Lincoln who first declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, even in the midst of the Civil War. On October 3, 1863, the president issued a proclamation that called upon the nation to give thanks for "the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies." He eloquently expressed the desire of the American people for "full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union," setting aside the "last Thursday of November next" as a "day of Thanksgiving."

Abraham Lincoln really was a great man. The drawing above does not reflect that. The reason why it doesn't is because I got inspired to draw Lincoln in my "Pickled" style from looking at Mark Ryden's Anima Mundi book. Ryden's book is a wonderful collection of his paintings and drawings. For some reason a lot of his paintings and drawings feature Abraham Lincoln. This "Pickled" drawing is a result of those images............

I was planning on including this drawing in my soon to be released book. Unfortunately after I went through all of my images this drawing of Lincoln did not make the cut. Because of that, I never inked it. To celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday, I thought that I would post it here and get some sort of use out of it. To make the drawing more interesting for me I added some very desaturated color to it. I like the result but I think that my black and white cross-hatching style is much stronger and more competent.

Jack

Eric Wiese

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I was looking through some old files this morning and I stumbled upon this image. This was an illustration done for Wizard Magazine sometime back in 2000. At this time in my life I was single, working every hour of every day at a small independent design studio. It was a busy time for me. All I did was work............(all work and no play make ME a very dull boy). I got a call from Wizard Magazine and they asked if I could do this illustration for their article on the top 100 cartoons of that year. They wanted me to use the very famous "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" cover by Neal Adams as reference.



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Wizard had this huge list of characters that they wanted included in the illustration. This was a rather ambitious job for me because there were a few of the characters that I had drawn before, but most of them I had never even drawn and a few I have never heard of. It was going to be a difficult task for me and I was given a very short deadline to get it finished.......... Being worried that I would not be able to make the deadline and that I did not want to turn in something that was half assed, I thought I would call my buddy Eric Wiese and get some help on this thing.

Eric and I go pretty far back. He worked with me at "Digital Hellfire", a coloring house that colored a lot of titles for DC Comics and Harris Publications in 1995. After things went sour for me there, I had started my own coloring studio "Color Monkey" and eventually got Eric over there to work for me. Much more than a friend, Eric was the perfect employee. He worked hard, he was good at coloring and the best thing of all, he was very fast. I think that Eric enjoyed the work but deep in his heart he wanted to make pictures move and children smile. Eventually Eric would leave me behind and go on to directing and animating cute little characters for movies, television and video games. It was a very sad day for me when he moved on to the bigger and brighter opportunities.

5 years pass........

Eric just happened to have moved back to Denver from L.A. after a couple year stint on the "Rugrats go to Paris" movie when I got this illustration job. I got a hold of Eric asked if he had some time to help me knock out this illustration with the 90+ characters. I also wanted to give Eric a chance to draw the Rugrats again because I know he missed them so much and I wanted Eric to get some of his work showcased in Wizard Magazine. We met on a Saturday and I went over what I wanted to do. We broke the illustration into 4 parts. Eric would draw Homer Simpson and all the characters on the left side, I would draw Bugs Bunny and all of the characters on the right. It took us most of the day to get all of the reference together and try and find good images of all of the characters. After a couple of days, we had all of the drawing done. I think we drew this at 4X the size it was going to be printed. It took some piecing together and assembling in Photoshop to get it ready to color. Then I had some stuff come up at work and I got behind on the coloring.... So again, I had to call Eric to save me so I could get this to Wizard the next morning. The most amazing part of all of this was that Eric did all of the work for FREE. Absolutely amazing. You don't see that anymore in this business.

I was very happy that we would eventually collaborate together again on his Spaceboy Slim short. You can check out Eric's stuff if you go to the links on the right side of this page.

Thank you Eric for being there for me as an awesome artist, friend, co-worker and all around nice guy.


Jack

Kobeshimi

I did this sketch of the oni (devil) "Kobeshimi" while I was thinking about what I would like to experience while I am visiting Japan in February. I think a Noh drama would be great to experience, especially the Kyogen. Kyogen is the classical comic theater which balances the more serious Noh. While Noh is musical in nature, Kyogen emphasizes dialogue. The two are traditionally performed alternately on the same program and they share a common heritage.

I have also thought about going to a Kabuki performance. I have always been fascinated with the costumes, make-up and set design. I think it would be very beautiful and interesting to see. All of that visual stimulation would help the 5+ hour performance go by really fast.........

Another type of performance I would like to see while I am in Japan is the Bunraku. Bunraku is the Japanese form of puppet theater. Japanese consider it as a serious art form and not as entertainment for children. Bunraku is more than making puppets appear lively on a stage. It is also narrative chanting and shamisen music, by which the Japanese puppet theater is accompanied. This would be exciting as well as beautiful to see and hear. I can only hope I would get to see one of these puppets up close to see the craftsmanship that goes into each and every one.

Jack

Glenn Barr

(pictured from left to right: My wife, Me and Glenn)

Glenn Barr is an amazing artist. Just looking at his art fulfills a need and a desire in my brain and it even makes me happy. Glenn is based in Detroit and paints better than anyone I know (for those of you who do not know, Glenn used to paint backgounds for Ren and Stimpy and many other cartoons). His paintings now hang in galleries all around the country and are always featured in Juxtapoz Magazine. His drawings and paintings have also been on CD covers, Rock Concert Posters and in Mad Magazine, various DC Comics, etc.

I have been a huge fan of Glenn and his work since before 1995. I can remember when I was at the 1996 Chicago Comic Convention signing with Chaos! Comics when I found out that Glenn had a table in artists alley. I was very nervous to approach him and ask for a sketch because he looked all tough and mean in his black leather jacket. (...scary...) I hesitantly asked if he had time to do a drawing. I came back to his table an hour later and there was my masterpiece. I had asked him to draw a character I designed while working for Chaos! Comics, "Li'l E." an animated version of Evil Ernie. When I saw the sketch I was in awe. My first Glenn Barr original.......That was a very good day for me. :) I have been collecting his art ever since.

I was fortunate to be able to have dinner and hang out with him a couple of weeks ago. The photo above represents the end of a great night of food, wine and art. It was very hard for me to not go "fanboy" that night.


This is one of the beautiful Glenn Barr original paintings that I own. I am very proud of it. It is a perfect combination of all of the things I love: Glenn's painting style, Japan, Godzilla, and the Flintstones.

Check out his website at:

Glenn Barr

Jack

JAPAN

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I am getting ready to go to Japan in February and I have been saving my money like crazy. I have been trying to keep myself busy with work so I don't spend any of the money I have saved. It has been a real challenge.........
Anyway, here is a drawing I did after I had made the decision to go..... I have been a fan of Osama Tezuka for a long time. I thought it might be interesting to see what Astro would look like Pickled.

Jack

PICKLED

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This is the start of something new for me. I never thought that I would create a blog for myself. I think that it is a little self indulgent. Oh well, a lot of my friends and family have asked me to have a place where they can see what I have been up to and the art I have been creating. So this is the place where I will do just that. Have fun looking around and I hope you enjoy what you see.

Jack