Artists I Like: Jordan Speer

I recently discovered artist Jordan Speer. I saw a random post on Bluesky and once I laid eyes on his work I just had to order a copy of his book Umbra.

It is a jaw-dropping work of art, and I have a new favorite artist.

Speer lives in Louisville, Kentucky. I lived in there when I was a kid, roughly between the ages of 2 and 8. I went to school at Lowell Elementary... which no longer exists. In fact my entire old neighborhood is gone because the airport took it decades ago. I still remember my first Halloween memories on those streets.

Much much later I moved back to the city with my new wife and we lived there in our early 20s.

So it is very nice to see a great great artist so close to home whose style is so perfectly suited to my taste!

Whimsical, colorful, bold, cartoony, and FUN. This is the good stuff. So go check him out. And pick up Umbra... holy hell it's affordable and lovely. It's a huge picture book telling a story without words. Very nice.

 

Artists I Like: J. Freels

Another artist I like is Jeff Freels, or J. Freels. I know very little about this creator other than he created Bean! the d2 RPG and he is visually impaired.

Bean is a great little game. The central idea is it's a world of anthropomorphic beans and you use actual beans as dice. See, you get a sack of beans and paint one side of some number of them. When you roll the painted side, it is a 1 and when you roll the unpainted side it is a 0. Or something close to that. It's a coin toss. But unlike lame single coin toss systems (50/50 for everything? Boring.), this is a pool system. More beans = more chances for higher scores.

But that's a digression and unrelated to the meat of the post: the art.

Freels is an artist after my own heart. A great cartoonist! His bean characters are swanky and cool, simple and direct. And I love them.

There isn't a lot to be found about Jeff Freels outside his own website. But he has a nice bio page that explains quite a bit about who he is, what he does, and so forth. I don't care about the Reiki Master stuff, I just like the wonderful cartoon art.

Cartooning the Walk

Hey, you know what's important for characters in a comic book story? Moving around. One of the most common ways that characters move around is to walk. It's a comic, so you have to show that walk, at least to some degree. It's not animation, so you don't need to map the entire walk, but you gotta have some kind of walking motion. How you gonna draw it?

Will you exaggerate the fuck out it the way R. Crumb or Vaughn Bodé did? Or will you reel it in a bit and go a bit more Harvey Kurtzman or Mort Drucker?

To be totally honest, I haven't given it a lot of thought. I've been drawing comics and art since I was a kid and I have barely thought about how characters walk. It only ever comes up when - SHOCKER - I have to draw someone walking. Here's a few examples of how I've done it in the past. Keep in mind: no thought. Just do. Is it good? Do I need to step up my game?

 

Artists I Like: Lee Gatlin

Lee Gatlin is an Alabama artist. I found his work randomly on IG, if I remember correctly. His comics are what caught my attention first, but his sketches and general cartooning really captured me. Loose lines, almost chaotic. No... totally chaotic! Yet somehow cohesive, coming together to form an image that we recognize or resonates with us. It's a skill I'd love to have, being so damn loose and tight at once.

 

Cheech Wizard's Book of Me

My wife picked this up for me for $4 using some kind of voodoo magic coupon. I love me some Bodé and this is a book I hadn't seen before. I'm not the kind of guy who obsesses over collecting everything an artist creates but I'm always giddy when I pick up something new.

This book is assembled by Vaughn's son Mark Bodé and I feel like he did a fantastic job. Lots of very old doodles and sketchbook pages are included. Maybe these appeared somewhere else before and I just didn't see it. But there's a lot of stuff in here I've never seen before. I guess this is also because my experience with Bodé is almost exclusively the Deadbone Erotica stuff. I own very little Cheech Wizard material.

Barely got into this so far but it's just chock full of explosive cartooning!

Artist: Ken Reid

Why did no one tell me long about the wondrous world of Ken Reid's art? Glorious schlock.

The Big Book of Bodé Tattoos

 My wife got me this for the ole birthday and I love it.

This is a fat ass 400 page hardback of Mark Bodé's tattoo flash art. So you're gonna see a lot of Da Bodé babes, Cheech Wizard, lizards, as well a lot of more typical tattoo art such as butterflies and skulls.

If you like Bodé, you'll fucking love this.

So, for personal context, a lot of people compare my art to Bodé. I am a huge fan. But honestly I didn't discover Vaughn or Mark's work until I was 30 years old. And yes, you can certainly see a shift in how I draw before this and after it. I turned 30 in 2000 and it was around 2002-2003 that my cartoon art style really started to gel. Before that I was a stiffer, more boring artist, I believe. Hell, I'm not even sure how I drew shit in the 90s.

But let's peel it back a little more because Bodé's style had an impact on me BEFORE that time. How? Because Vaughn's work had already infiltrated pop culture, which infiltrated me. I watched Ralph Bakshi's Wizards when I was about 17. I watched Fire and Ice around that time, and Heavy Metal. I had issues of Heavy Metal. I owned Richard Corben comics. I was into Mike Ploog and Frank Frazetta. Vaughn Bodé is a large figure in that same lineage, though I wasn't able to land on him until a decade later. His influence was in me via Wizards, which of course was immensely influenced by Bodé.

We artists don't like being compared to other artists too closely. It feels weird. I don't "draw like Vaughn Bodé", I draw like J.V. West. And J.V. West was inspired by Bodé, Frazetta, Corben, and Willingham like a bomb.

Today when people say my work reminds them of Vaughn Bodé I am humbled. I can't think of a better compliment, to be honest.

Mercury Rising

 I've been in a real drawing mood lately. Which is great because I've also been in a terrible slump, creatively. Very spastic and unfocused. I keep jumping from project to project without getting much done. But I have been drawing, at least.

Freddie Mercury was a god damned force of nature.

Vaughn Bode

What can I say about Vaughn Bode that I haven't already said ten times? He was a legend. He was a shooting star. he came along, did amazing shit we're still talking about, and died very young. He was a visionary, an iconic creator, and a damn weirdo. I love him.

I didn't actually discover Bode until I was in my 30s... probably older than he was when he died. I had picked up his vibes as early as 1981 or 1982 through the osmosis of art as other creators such as filmmaker Ralph Bakshi filtered his work into theirs. But there was no Bode for young JV to be had. I didn't know it, I didn't see it, I couldn't have found it in my circumstances. Not until much much later.

In the 2000s I was going through some serious changes, which included an absolute rebirth of myself as an artist. So finding Bode's work at that time definitely left a huge impact on that rebirth. Some of his spirit definitely was folded into the mix that was to be James West 2.0. And I'm glad for it.

Zoot!

Just a space doodle.

Blas-Tar Field Agent

Here's #15 on the Backgrounds table for the Troika! setting book that I'm currently writing. Working title for the project as of now: Hellion Cross!

15. Blas-Tar Field Agent

You had one dream: blow stuff up and get paid doing it. Well congratulations! You’re living the dream as a rep for Blas-Star, one of the most popular arms manufacturers in the Coz. Each day you get to travel with customers and explode stuff, followed by paperwork and Dramurian rotgut. And you like it... maybe a little too much?

Possessions:
-2d6 Blas-Tar Boppers
-Blas-Tar Blas-Ter blaster
-1 random Blas-Tar demo item (1-2 Blas-Ter, 3 QuEF [Quantum Entangled Fist], 4 Pulsed Plasma Pistol, 5 Pulsed Plasma Rifle, 6 experimental Blas-Tar Bopper)
-Company credit card
-Standard issue company saber

Advanced Skills:
4 Knowledge: Blas-Tar Corporation
4 Demolitions
1 Pistol
1 Sword
2 Smooth Talk
2 Corporate Connections

Special:
You can use your corporate connections skill to secure demo products, travel accommodations, and diplomatic immunities (where recognized). But only when corporate bothers to return your pages.