Sometimes he kids me that he's only a Teddy Bear

The face we hide in

Back in college, I loved to draw many different styles of masks. This was done in Europe, 1999.

Doodles 2007

That was then, this is now!

The picture on top is the first image of Crumbbums, before the strip and the model sheets. The four characters were created on the spot showcasing, Nero (top left), Bartleby (top right), Spartacus ( bottom right) and Orson (bottom left).

I had the idea if Iggy Pop created The Peanuts, this is what it would look like. Maybe too stark for Nero to have human eyes, he was going to be an anti Mickey Mouse but overall I do enjoy the color and the little icons floating around the heads. Mark, a close friend was having an art crawl walk in his studio apartment and I do believe that I brought it over for show. That was 8 years ago.

This came out last year, still having Bartleby and Orson rolling by the corner, I added Rada the cat hanging onto the robot. Much more life in this poster than previous one. I enjoy both contrasts but see the huge improvement over art and being less pessimist. Sorry about the cropping, the last image would of cost me 5 dollars for reproduce all of it.

The Cage

"The Cage" was work on different stages through out the last ten years but never became a painting. Here's a version done in Europe 1999.

Zen

This came out right before the Crumbbum strips, a picture of Tom Yorke (lead singer of Radiohead) for a comic which would of been called ZEN.

Crumbbum Model Sheets

This is a rare find, before working on the first Crumbbums strips I had some model sheets to figure out the movement for some of the characters. During that time (10 years ago), I was a painter living in Wisconsin, having lukewarm luck with gallery shows. I was becoming dissatisfied with gallery process, finding it overall selective in choosing the artists to represent the shows and focusing more on originality rather than quality. I like mass production art, bringing art out to the people. This is one of the reasons why I blog.

I used Animation by Preston Blair, in learning how to draw animated cartoons. Preston Blair associated with the Disney Organization, he animated Pinocchio, Bambi and Fantasia in which he designed the hippos and alligators. Later on for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer he designed Red Hot Ridding Hood and other cartoon shorts. This book is a holy bible for anyone interested in cartooning or animation ( see picture).

Funny for reason unknown these two characters never show up in the first comic series.

Orson was based on Orson Wells, director of a Citizen Kane. Originally the duck's massive head would radiate energy beams that would allow him to move around in his red wagon.

Bartleby for the life of me, i can't remember anything about the little bugger, except he has a big butt and was named after the short story from Herman Melville (1819–1891). Bartleby, the Scrivener.