Old and New

Here's a really old drawing from the late 90s. Character name is Lutura and I have no memory of her at all. She was either a D&D character or a comic script character who never went anywhere.

I have a bunch of these old drawings that represent me kind of floundering in my 20s, not really hitting my vibe yet. This drawing is OK, but not something I love. I wasn't in love with art at that time. I wasn't in love with much of anything at that time. I was fishing around for inspiration and not finding it. I was barely even drawing, basically never gaming, and not really interacting with people much. This was before I even owned a computer so I wasn't online yet, though I did have a Yahoo email address and went to the public library once a month to check it. Let that sink in, you folks under a certain age.

 A couple of years later I would go through a pretty shitty depression and actually give up on art and game design for a short time. I remember entering 2000 in that way. I spent months only doodling and writing in a journal and thinking maybe I'd try my hand at writing fiction (hint: that went nowhere).

Then, sometime around 2001-2002, I had a break. I had a moment. I had an inspiration. Something changed. Part of it was the internet. I connected with people online and found places where I could show my work. It was the boost of having people react to it that drove me to be creative again.

Here's one of the first drawings I did at that time when I felt the light bulb go off. The date on the JPG file says 2002, but I'm not sure when I drew it. Probably 2002.

Dangerous Idolatry

I enjoy discovering new artists and being amazed by what they can do. The internet has been a magnificent blessing for the arts as more and more folks are practicing and sharing their work. In the old days, you'd find new artists by reading comics and browsing the bookshelves and magazines. Today you can find ten new ones a day and get bored before you run out.

Sean Aaberg amazes me.

The ones that impress me to the most often have copious amounts of work, including a seemingly endless series of sketchbooks in addition to their finished works. And I'm always blown away by that because that ain't me. I'm the artist over here with just a handful of sketchbooks, most of which are not full.

Erol Otus mesmerizes me.

Part of this is because I don't believe I'm obsessed with drawing. I love to draw, and I think about drawing nearly all the time. But I don't actually do it as much as I would like. Another part of the reason is that between 2009 and 2023, with maybe a year offset somewhere in the middle, I drew almost exclusively digitally. So I don't have physical drawings lying around from that period. I have thousands of PSD and TIF files*.

Raven Perez blows my mind.

But that's an aside, really. The point of this post is to talk about why envy is a potentially toxic shitty thing to do to yourself.

Brian Baugh makes me happy.

To be clear: it is good to look at the art of others, marvel at it, love it, and even express the very human "man, I wish I could do that!". This is not the problem, as long as you don't let it become one. That feeling turns dark when you look at their work and compare it to your work, looking for all the ways in which you are not as good as them.

Don't do this.

Evlyn Moreau enchants me.

It isn't helpful to anyone, most of all to yourself. You are not them. The strokes you make are yours. The drawings you draw are yours. You can never do what they do because you are not them.

Bud Root gives me funny feelings.

Also, they are not a representation of perfection. I don't care if their art is the most beautiful you've ever seen and it makes you cry and they have thousands of beautiful pieces and other thousands of pages of sketches. They are not you, you are not them. And you can only be you.

Joe Vaux kickstarts my imagination.

It sounds stupid to say it. Like a "duh" kind of moment. But you gotta realize how urgently true it is. You are an embodied individual tied inextricably to your own personal history and your own personal future, which has yet to be written. Focus on what you do. Look at their work, enjoy it, learn from, take from it what you feel will help you grow and feel more robust. But never do the math on who is better. That way leads only to dread and self-loathing.

Matthew Allison makes me want to get better.

*Honestly, to satisfy my lust for printed material, I am considering doing a "digital sketchbook series" where I collect tons of those drawings into a few print books. I think that could be super fun. 

Vaughn Bodé sings to my spirit.

Kickstarter Schmickstarter?

I still haven't done a Kickstarter. Almost everyone in the indie RPG communities have done at least one Kickstarter, right? And I have had some visibility with Black Pudding and other ventures, so it seems natural I would do a Kickstarter. Why haven't I?

Mainly it's because I dislike committing to something on a grand scale. There, I said it.

I want my freedom to do whatever in the holy fuck I want to do in the moment. If I ever do a KS, I will complete the project before going live. But then you gotta have stretch goals, right? What happens if I have 10 stretch goals that all fund? Suddenly I'm committed to doing 10 more things? Yeah... that's when my dumbass psyche kicks in and says "Don't wanna".

Ah, it's not all that bad. I'm exaggerating. If I was as flighty and random as I claim to be I would not have any finished books. And yet I have several. And I have a slew of commissioned works present in a slew of indie publications. I'm active. Not prolific, but active. I ain't dead yet.

So will I ever do a Kickstarter? The answer is maybe. A solid, unmitigated maybe. But it will only happen when I have some idea in mind that truly requires funds. Like... if I wanna do a fancy sewn-binding hardback. Then I'll do a Kickstarter.

All that being said, I love the shit out of KS. My shelves ache under the weight of so many delicious books thanks to KS. The old era of RPGs never gave us nearly this much awesome shit. Even the slickest, coolest TSR package is just not as slick and cool as many of the great things produced today and largely funded through KS. May lord Satan bless Kickstarter and it's many wonders.

Sketchbooking Retro #4: Elfs 'n' Stuff

I went through a big elf phase. The title "Elfbone" still looms large in my mind. Someday...

Sketchbooking Retro #3: Sketchbook Dumpstat

Some of you like seeing sketches, some don't give a shit. Here's a bunch of sketches all dumped on your face all at once.

Lots of ideas buried in sketches. In mine, I can see little images that later became finished drawings and I can see seeds of RPG ideas and what-not. Fun to look back, though I caution you against dwelling in the past. Always move forward. Enjoy the past, celebrate your catalog of stunning victories and spectacular failures. But at the end of the day make sure you are moving forward. Creativity is a process and when you're not engaged in the process you're not doing it. Doesn't matter if it sucks, only matters if you're doing it.

Others will judge the outcome. Let them. Just do what you do and don't be a fucking prick.

Sketchbooking Retro #2

These doodles are from the margins of various notebooks from work. While in meetings discussing the philosophy and metaphysical nature of manufacturing*, I would often doodle in the margins.

These particular doodles are little covers for a mini-comic** idea called Land of Hof. I actually did at least one issue of this comic, a story called "Winter". It lived on my old website until I took the site down so I guess I need to repost it here on the blog***.

Hoo boy... let's see if we can trace down the lineage of this. I guess it started in 2000-2003 as an RPG concept. Land of Hof was from a dumb acronym: HOF = Heart of Fantasy. The gist was to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of what I loved about fantasy. Somehow the character Zarp become enmeshed in the idea and so I had the concept of a series of mini-comics about Zarp in the Land of Hof. I even fancied the idea of a box set of mini-comics, with dice and a game. Because I hadn't yet learned my lessons about biting off more than I could chew.

*Please tell me my sarcasm is explicit.

**What's a mini-comic? Well, that depends on who you ask. In my universe, a mini is a 4.25" x 5.5" folded and stapled comic book, usually made on a copy machine. But this is, as I understand it, a very old definition. Today a mini-comic is just any sort of DIY comic book. Size does not matter. When I say "mini-comic", I am usually referring to the specific 4.25" x 5.5" format.

***Why is the old jwarts website gone? Because I never updated it, nobody ever mentioned it, and it cost me money to maintain. The blog is far easier to maintain and has more recognition across the various nerd populations that I frequent. I am not a dynamo of self-promotion. If you like what I do,
share my shit please. I am but a lonesome polecat otherwise.

Sketchbooking Retro #1

I have a lot of sketching lying around. Some I've shared long ago, others have never been shared. I thought it would be nice to present a series of some of them that are interesting for some reason or another.

Amirlen

This sketch of Amirlen is very old. Definitely 1990s, perhaps from around 1993. I was still in my infancy as an artist and trying my best to look like a proper Marvel Comics illustrator, trained in the schools of Kubert and Hogarth. But that was not meant for me. My fascinations lied with all things undergroundy, Heavy Metal, and weird.

Arzra of Aroora

Here's a sketch of Arzra during the time when they were high on my mind. At this point I was planning a comic series in which the lead character would just be naked and would shift between their male and female form randomly, sometimes from panel-to-panel.

And that's such a weird thing for me to realize because at that time I had absolutely zero idea about any sort of gender discussion that might be happening. This was the mid-2000s and I don't remember anyone talking about gender. My reason for making Arzra a gender-bending character was to express my deep concerns about personal freedom and my strong opposition to censorship and prudish minds. Basically I wanted a character that would make common Christians uncomfortable. Not to piss them off, not to insult them, but to just put this idea in their heads. Because the stories and the character were otherwise fairly standard. Arzra would tool around encountering monsters and crazy zealots and give them a dose of logic and a sword. While naked and gender-shifting.

But, as I said before, my heart wasn't into the idea enough to do the very hard work it would have taken to make it real.

Aside: There's no reason I couldn't dust this off and do a one-shot comic book tackling the character in one story or two. No reason at all. But the same could be said for Zarp, another of my 2000s characters who holds a dear place in my heart.

The name of this sketch is "demoness hick". I have no idea why I drew her other than I really like drawing cute demon chicks.

Hella Nor Devil Girl (Ancient Buried Art XXX) Rated R!

This is the last post in my "old art" series. This was not a comprehensive tour, but literally just me posting the first 30 images in my web art folder sorted by oldest to newest. There's a lot more and I'll be posting that stuff too, just under different banners and at different times.

This one is also very special to me. It's Hella Nor. She's an evil badass. I made her into a DCC RPG patron and handed out copies at Gary Con one year. I used her in a couple of DCC campaigns. But for this post all I'm concerned about is that she's fire. I love this drawing. I feel like I captured something special in a simple little pin-up sketch. In many ways I have moved on from doing pin-up art, largely because I feel like I milked it for what it was worth to me personally and also because of the complications involved in presenting sexualized imagery when you're trying to create RPG content that is ostensibly intended to be be played by whoever wants to play. I can't very well fill an RPG book with half-naked chainmail chicks and make the rules "inclusive" and call it a day. If all the females in a game book are drawn to be sexy and the text isn't written to play it up, then you've got a mismatch on your hands.

And you know me. I'm all for pin-up art. I love the stuff. But as I've said a million times, you gotta know your audience and you gotta own what you do. It still floors me that people can create comics or RPGs that are "about" broad-audience concepts and say they are for everyone, but the imagery involving women is straight out of a Luis Royo or Alphonso Azpiri book. Here's the thing. If you're going to have your book filled with titties then god damn well make a titties book. Don't be a mealy-mouthed milksop unwilling to own their own shit. Don't tell me it's a fantasy RPG that everyone is welcome to play, tell me it's a motherfuckin' titties and ass RPG that everyone is welcome to play. That much I can respect, at least.

/rant

Fawn Rules! (Old Art XXIX)

Fawn Rainchild RULES!

Hella Nor Bio (Oldy Artz XXVIII)

Here's some information about Hella Nor you didn't know.

Princess of Pan-Gea (Old Art XXVII)

Here's a Princess of Pan-Gea.

Echoes (Older'n Dirt Art XXVI)

Page one of Echoes, a Pan-Gea comic written by my friend Jayne and scribbled by me on Paris Paper for Pens.

Fawn & Serpent (Old Art XXV)

More Pan-Gea stuff. This one was cool because a guy sent me a sketchbook in the mail so I could draw directly into it. It wasn't "his" sketchbook, in the traditional sense. He would take to conventions and pay comic artists to draw in it. Most of the art already in the book was from creators I didn't know but there was at least one or two pieces from big names. I just can't remember who the hell they were.

It struck me as a bit odd and risky to send a stranger such a treasure and ask them too doodle in it. But it turned out pretty good, I think. There's a color version of this that will show up in the series later. Since I'm getting old and senile I might forget I wrote this one and repeat the story like a codger telling tales of The Big One.

Sarrow (Really Old Art XXIV)

This guy's name is Sarrow. I think he was supposed to be a character in my comic Pan-Gea: Seven Arrows, but he ended up being cut. He's still bitter about it.

Pan-Gea Logo (Old Art XXIII)

Here's a logo I made for my comic Pan-Gea soon after its release. I was anticipating it to be a series, but that didn't pan out. Never got to use this one except on a tee shirt.

Brig Iceclover (Older Than Dirt Art XXII)

Brig Iceclover was a character from my Pan-Gea comic, a sister to Fawn Rainchild.

Russ Hillborn (Old Art XXI)

Russ Hillborn is a cat person character I created long ago. He's sort of a Gandalf figure who appeared in a short comic called Winter.

Zarp Cover (Old Art of Doom XX)

Zarp! This character came out of the early 2000s and appeared in numerous little comics between then and the mid-2000s. I still sketch and doodle this guy from time to time and I still have lots of scripts and story drafts featuring him. He's great. I wanna do more Zarp comics... but I'm also very lazy and I know from years of firsthand experience that drawing comics is fuckin' hard work. Anyway... I have this idea for a wordless Zarp comic. Well, there might be dialog but it would be in weird alien scripts as Zarp encounters strange races of creatures in his wandering across a Pan-Gea world. Zarp himself would simply be unspeaking. So this would be 100% focused on visual storytelling. Because that would make it easier to do, right?

I really love this drawing. I did it on Paris paper for pens using my standard array of PITT pens and brushes coupled with Prismacolor markers (that was my arsenal at the time). Oh, and the background was drawn with a Micron 005.

Eowyn (Old Art What Clawed Up From Grave XIX)

This was some time after I watched the second LotR movie and I just thought we needed a busty pin-up Eowyn. So I did one.

And here's a colored version. This was colored by a dude named Sean Loftiss. I know nothing more about him as it's been many years since I interacted with him at all. But it's a neat color job. A little heavy on the airbrush FX, but not quite so much as to be a negative. Nice work.

Colors by Sean Loftiss