Artists I Like: Duane Bryers

I already posted about Duane Bryers here, and this post is largely a re-posting of that same content. Also, it's my birthday and what better thing could I ask for on my birthday than Hilda?

You remember good old Hilda? Calendar girl Hilda? Yeah, she's the creation of Duane Bryers, may he rest in peace.

I think it was the early 2000s when I laid eyes on Hilda, a 50s pinup girl of the finest order. Unlike most other pinup girls, Hilda had some junk in the trunk. She was chubby, and lovely, and fun.

Bryers' style is akin to a lot of painters at the time and, to my eyes, reminds me very much of Norman Rockwell. Because everyone who painted in that style at that time reminded everyone of Normal Rockwell. Rockwell was the Frazetta of American culture painting.

But I think it's more fair to say Bryers was akin to Gil Elvgreen, a contemporary whose style is more similar to Bryers than someone like Alberto Vargas... all of whom are best known for painting pinup ladies. God bless 'em.

I don't know much about Bryers outside of his Hilda work, but here's a great interview with the late artist by another artist I love, Les Toil. I wish I owned some of those old Hilda calendars. I wonder how much they go for on eBay?

Well, would you take a look at this? Les Toil has a bunch of Hilda stuff!

It it interesting to me that though Hilda was often painted in comical situations, such as farting next to the stove, wearing a flour sack for a bikini, and falling off of logs, she is quite often painted in quiet, peaceful moments of bliss or even in overtly sexy poses. There's a shitty trend in media to present the fat girl as comic relief or a figure to be aided by the protagonist to make them look better. How often is the fat chick on TV allowed to just be hot? Or to just be, for that matter?

Hilda is great. I'm happy Duane Bryers created her and dedicated so many paintings to her adventures.

So... In the back of my lizard brain I'm thinking about my character Hymla, who is basically a chubby, rude, violent, but kind of sweet barbarian, and how much she is probably inspired by these classic Hilda images.

GOZR Drawing

Working on some new GOZR stuff.

One thing I loved about making this game was just how liberating it was. I was inventing a new game right there on the page, drawing and noodling and doodling all on the canvas as I went. I didn't have a ton of preliminary thought on this. I just kind of went into it wild.

I created the entire project digitally, drawing it with my Intuos 4 tablet and Photoshop 7. This is old tech, now. Most of you who use digital tools probably use much more recent hardware and software. Hell, PS7 came out in 2002 for fuck's sake. What the hell am I doing using 22 year old software?

Because the shit works for what I do. It's not like they didn't understand how to make drawing software 22 years ago. They did. And PS7 was very good for drawing (the way I do it).

Anyway, software and hardware aside, it is very liberating to draw digitally. I know I've been talking about how much I absolutely love drawing with traditional media for the past several years, but I'm also a big huge lover of drawing digitally. And I'll tell you why.

When I was working on GOZR pages I could let my creativity go nuts because of the great benefit of the medium: nothing is permanent. Lay down a bunch of strokes that you don't like? Undo. Or erase. Either way, they're gone. Do some different ones. You put that d6 table too close to the edge of the canvas? Nudge the whole thing over. Or you can just shove words or sentences or images around willy-nilly. You can reduce the size of something a little bit so you can fit another d6 table. You can fade something into the background so you can put some words over it.

In a word, this is fun.

Not that I'm abandoning all those brush pens I yak about.

You see, that's the beauty of being a free spirit artist. You don't have to marry one thing or the other. You can draw on your tablet, then shove it to the side and whip out a sketchbook. And I do that all the time.

Currently working on some GOZR revisions and a comic. Have a great Sunday.

Artists I Like: Wayne Reynolds

Ok, this entry in the series is a little bit different because I'm not a huge fan of British artist Wayne Reynolds' art. But I do like most of it, I even love some of it. The main reason I wanted to include him in the roster is that he used to get shit on a lot.

Remember the good old days of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition? If not, don't bother looking it up. It was a tumultuous time when the world's most popular game underwent a massive edition change, morphing from the already heavily-modified 3rd edition (that was quite popular) to an even more radically-modified 4th edition that embraced the computer gaming trends of the 2000s. To be specific, it seems to have been designed to play more like World of Warcraft than Dungeons & Dragons.

This change didn't sit well with many fans of the game. But it did mesh with many other fans. So it was a mixed reception. And here's the thing to remember when you fuck around with a beloved nerd culture's shit... they will complain. Loudly. Repeatedly. Often irrationally.

Enter Wayne Reynolds, the primary artist associated with the 4th edition brand. His work had the look and feel of modern computer gaming. I confess when I first laid eyes on one of his paintings I thought it was digitally-rendered. And while I didn't have any bias against digital art, I recognized that such a look contributed to the perception that D&D's new direction was feeding too heavily off the CRPG market... a market that exists because of Dungeons & Dragons and constantly borrows heavily from it!

In reality, Reynolds' art from that time was quite traditional, with real paint and brushes. He was prolific and dynamic. His figures, to my eyes, looked heavily inspired by 90s comic art. You know... exaggerated anatomy, huge weapons, and far too many pouches and belts. But it was cool.

A lot of folks really hated this art. They saw it as WoW art invading the sacred spaces where should reign Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and Brom. But I never quite understood the vitriol. Reynolds did fine work. He was popular with most folks. He went on to be the primary artist for the original edition of Pathfinder, which was itself a clone and carryover of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. So many of the nerds complaining about the changes to D&D, and often about Wayne Reynolds, jumped ship to a game that played more like their beloved classic and was itself heavily illustrated by Wayne Reynolds.

Anyway, that's my perception of the era and how this artist existed within it. My memories are imperfect, I'm sure. Here's some art by Wayne Reynolds that I dig.

 

Artists I Like: Earl Norem

Earl Norem is a legend. From men's magazines to baseball to toys to comics, he has illustrated more covers than I have eaten Milky Way bars... and that's saying a lot.

When I was a teenager I discovered Savage Sword of Conan and, of course, Norem eventually showed up on a cover (he did at least 48 SSoC covers!) and, at that time, I was not as blown away by him as with Joe Jusko or Michael Golden. It felt like I was seeing an older painter at work and his style was out of synch with what I expected.

But he won me over. I kept seeing Norem covers and kind of fell in love with his textures and colors and old school aesthetic. I can't say just how much his work has influenced me, to be honest. Maybe not that much. I don't know. But he's been in my head canon since the 80s so there must be some osmosis happening.

Earl Norem died in 2015 at the age of 92. A WWII vet, and a massively accomplished and respected illustrator.

 

Artists I Like: Sergio Aragonés

Groo is another comic I didn't collect or even see when I was young and it's a damn shame. But it never showed up in my neck of the woods. I think I saw some ads here and there because I knew the name, but just didn't have any opportunity that I knew of to get my hands on it. I guess Flo's Flea Market quarter comics boxes didn't have any Groo.

Of course, Sergio Aragonés is not simply the Groo guy. He was a Mad Magazine guy first, and a hell of a good one. He was known as one of the fastest cartoonists around.

Take a look at any Groo page and just marvel at the little details. The buildings look like they have real form and usage, the costumes are unusual but have a ring of truth to them. They are weird. The people are weird. But not in a "anything goes" kind of way. They are weirdly real. And yet wildly, wildly insane.

Aragonés has a command of form and movement and expression that is beyond superhuman. As a cartoonist myself, I am in awe of his powers. Just flip to any random Groo page and look at how he draws swords, for example. They have so much character. I caution people against holding any other artists in too high a regard. But I find myself breaking that rule and elevating Sergio Aragonés to a godlike status in my mind. And I think he deserves it.

Aragones' sword game is strong.

Hymla?

Here's a drawing I did before creating Hymla the Horn, but she is totally a prototype for the character. All I have to do is black out one tooth and this is Hymla.

 

Hymla the Horn!

CW: This post contains a bit of nudity, so you might want to hide it from your granny. A lot of this art is more appropriate for my Blood Red Pinups blog, but I'm in a mood to blur the lines and feeling less interested in compartmentalization.

Theme music for this post: Wo Fat's entire discography, but The Conjuring and The Black Code in particular. I think Hymla's theme song is probably "Beggar's Bargain".

Those of you reading this thing who care, let me know in the comments if you want to see a god damn Hymla the Horn comic book. I'll do what I want, you know that. But it is a strong motivator to know anyone out there gives even one shit.

HYMLA THE HORN: The story of a low class, low brow dishwasher turned slayer.

Hymla the Horn was born from a sketch. I can't seem to locate the original sketch sheet, done in Clip Studio Paint. But I did find a snippet of it that was saved on October 8, 2022, with the name "Hymla" drawn on it. So I must have created her at least by Oct 2022, duh.

Since then, she has popped up in my sketchbooks over and over again. I played an AD&D character based on her. I wrote a comic script. Clearly this brash, brazen ne'er-do-well looms large in my head. Both figuratively and literally. She ain't no wispy little daisy, after all.

The first Hymla drawing I can find, 2022.

Eventually I will make a Hymla comic book. I don't know when. I don't know how. I just know she is inevitable. So far there is one script written: Hymla is introduced as a lowly cantankerous kitchen helper in a tavern dive bar. A cult invades the bar and turns everyone into a mindless cult member, so Hymla brutally and bloodily slays every motherfucker in the place with various kitchen implements. Then she takes the tavern owner's old sword off the wall and walks off into a life of adventure, having discovered she has a knack for slaying.

Hymla is like... what if Conan/Red Sonja but fat and sassy and mean and missing a front tooth? Pure fight comic, violent as fuck, just for funsies. A character that says "I don't give a shit what you think" and means it.

"But why is she called Hymla the HORN?"... Because it sounds cool. I added the tagline "the Horn" right after doodling that first image and creating an AD&D first edition character. One of her carried items was a horn (the kind you blow). She also had a magic sword that she could blow through the pommel to inspire her comrades. None of that Dungeons & Dragons info is canon to the character, though. Just a riff on an idea. But that is the origin of "the Horn". It also ties into the first comic book script because her boss, the tavern owner, has a fancy old horn on his wall that she takes with her when she leaves the bloody mess behind. Unless I change up the script.

Bit of a tangent here, but fuck it, this is my blog... I don't savor the idea of having to draw the same thing over and over. Which is why my relationship to comics has always been slightly at arm's length. Though I was much more of a comics guy before getting into tabletop RPG creation so heavily in the 2000s and later in the 2010s. I used to draw a lot more comics, folks. Anyway... I resist the idea of giving this character a signature sword and horn because I don't want to have to draw the same thing all the time. One of the things I always loved about Conan comics was that in each story he could have a different weapon, different clothes and armor, different everything. All that was consistent was his personality, his long black hair, and muscles.

Hymla's world is Yria, the same setting I've explored in the pages of Black Pudding RPG zine. Well, to be fair, when I use this setting for stories and comic ideas I tend to cleanse it of elves, dwarfs, and halflings. But that's neither here nor there, as the rubes are wont to say. I think it matters not. Maybe those folks all died off in a plague or maybe they are still around, just not showing up much. Can't say yet. But this is the world of the Worm Witch, Blazing Heart, and Hunter Raven and all that jazz. Hymla just walks through it for a good time.

And that's Hymla. What matters is she's a fat, tough, mean, mirthful, belligerent motherfucker who wanders the land slaying monsters, wizards, and other villainous bastards while drinking, gambling, singing, and probably fucking. Not a sex comic idea, mind you, but definitely a hard rated-R. And NOW I'm officially rambling. You are witnessing me working out the idea on the page, naked for the world to see.

Anyhow. Here's the ultimate collection of Hymla the Horn artwork, as it stands in the year of our lord 2024, September 2.

This ended up being the cover for Black Pudding issue 8.

Doodled during a D&D game where we fought a kraken in the middle of the night.