A Gun-Toting Clerk, a Witchy Messiah, and a Fried Whale – More Recent Work from the Drawing Table of J.W.E.

The following gallery features my usual variety of styles, from scratchy brush work to computer-choked color to the delicate burnish of watercolor. I hope you find something to your liking.

How I went from Feathery Fine to Woodring Bold, in just One Week’s Time!

So often I am called upon to create illustrations that ask for color or grey tone fills. I enjoy these, but it does affect the way I use my brush with the original line art, limiting my natural inclination to let the brush hairs do their dance about the paper. These two B&W spots, commissioned recently by The Riverfront Times in St. Louis, gave me the opportunity to let loose and draw in my old-school style. The first went a bit too far in the light-touch direction, the printed piece quite small and not well-suited for such detail. At the art director’s request, I emboldened the line work with the second piece, resulting in a drawing that feels uncannily like something Jim Woodring might knock off between bites of a mystic sandwich. I’m sorry if I borrowed your brain’s hand without asking, Jim. I promise I put it back where I found it. Interested parties, please check Comic Art Collective to see these two pieces now posted for purchase.

Watercolors at the Fairy Tale Factory

Just up, on an internet near you, it’s Seattle-based writer Amy Morgan’s brand-new Fairy Tale Factory site, a unique place where budding writers can connect with other like-minded souls to experience the wise tutelage of Miss Morgan’s classically-structured creative writing workshops. Below is one of the seasonal headers I was asked to create for the site, smartly put together by Kelly Davis of Farm Girl Works.

My TV Will Always Have Rabbit Ears

Call me old-fashioned, call me just plain old, but flat screen televisions are completely boring to draw. The same goes for most of our modern, faceless gadgets, which seem to be getting sleeker and smaller as the days go by. I swear to never stop drawing rabbit ears and radios with cloth speakers. Devoid of such bygone nuances, but nevertheless a pleasure to have illustrated, are the following recent examples of William Steven Humphrey’s I Love Television column, now appearing at The Mercury, in Portland.

A Monkey’s New Year from Albuquerque

Here’s the third irreverent New Year’s cover I’ve illustrated for Albuquerque’s Alibi weekly. Last year it was Bush getting the boot from the planet, this year his close-cousin takes the honors.

When the Biggest Fish is Actually a Mammal

Here’s an ink illustration recently commissioned as a gift for a fan of my old A Sleepyhead Tale cartoon, the pencil under-drawing still in evidence. It was requested that I draw the phrase-themed image in the “Sleepyhead” style, something I found quite illuminating to undertake, going home again and finding my key still went into the front door. No whales were hurt in the process. I even used a brush with synthetic bristles.

Perspectives, Drawn

Finally, here are four recent installments of my editorial strip, A Drawn Perspective, touching upon matters near and wide. For an extensive look at this strip, visit this slideshow album. A Drawn Perspective runs every other week in six Seattle-based papers, including the newly-christened South Seattle Beacon, edited by Erik Hansen.

Ruby, the totally happy dog

Following are several random sample pages I’ve created for a children’s picture book entitled Ruby, the totally happy dog, written by Vanda Solomon, Seattle-based writer and poet, and mother of singer/musician Jesse Sykes. Based on the real-life companion of Jesse, and Phil Wandscher, guitarist in her band, The Sweet Hereafter, Ruby tells a sweet and simple, but potent tale of the bond of friendship and love that can grow between a dog and the people in her life. Ruby, a devoted black Labrador, rescued from a shelter, longs for her human friends while they are away touring with their music and is comforted during this time by a loving dog sitter, whose devotion to the gentle animal completes the circle of emotional reliance about which the story revolves.
Also included in this little gallery of images are several pencil working sketches, and subsequent inked variations, of Ruby’s canine co-stars, Betty and T-Bone, both characters also based on genuine dogs, one of which, the much-loved Betty, has passed beyond even the ethereal reach of fiction. Everyone misses you, Betty.
Vanda is currently searching for a publisher for the proposed book. Any interested parties should feel free to contact me here and I will connect them directly with the author.

Drawing on Drugs

The following is a gallery of drawings (and stories) created under the influence of something other than direct creative impulse. Initiated by an early reading of The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s book-length essay on his experiences with drug-enhanced creativity, I’ve always taken note of such encounters with the overtly-stimulated mind, episodes of ultra-consciousness that seem to compress both time and space, to varying degree, offering the faculties of my brain an ageless retreat, moments out of step with their place in history, realities where clouds race across the sky and clock hands are stuck eternally between the seconds.

Hash (Hashish), early winter, 1996

This sketchbook page of obsessively compulsive, many-eyed mousetrap physiologies was crafted while occupying the visitor’s couch in the mixing room of Stu Hallerman’s Avast! Recording Studios, an appearance that had me monitoring the creation of the initial batch of singles from Seattle’s cartoon-powered kings of “pussy rock”, The Action Suits, the star vehicle for Peter “Hate” Bagge, Eric “Slime” Reynolds, and Andy “Salad” Schmidt, now members of Can You Imagine?, Fox Hollow, and Hank Adams, respectively. Its serpentine, perpetually-budding trajectory is simply a charged amplification of my normal Byzantine thought patterns.

Magic Mushrooms (Psilocybian), summer, 1995

This madly-animated series of scrawls was the result of a leap into “Wonderland” with a few good friends, a house-bound adventure that began with me caressing an old Aretha Franklin LP on the porch and ended with me hopelessly lost in a downward spiral of paranoia. Between those extremes, I found myself in the basement, sitting before a tape recorder, explaining the metaphysical mysteries of the present tense, while frantically scribbling these fiendishly-eyed faces, creations that appeared to be winking and leering back at me as I drew them.


Acid (Lysergic acid diethylamide), winter, 1982

This ludicrously carnal doodle was applied to the margin of an art school notebook, more a reflection of my sheer boredom with the lecture on art history than a result of my first taste of the notorious psychedelic. Nevertheless, I must credit that Mickey Mouse blotter with what is certainly one of the very best things I will ever draw, even if the rest of the experience is a complete blank, ending how and where I can never remember, a situation I’m quite sure the Die Brucke impressionists would readily relate to.

Pot (Cannibas sativa), spring, 1977

This sophomoric and judiciously overwrought piece of fantasy writing, along with its primal-colored pencil illustration, were both a page of an issue of Firefox, the world’s weirdest hero, one of my many teenage creations, a stable of derivative characters that peopled the DJ Comics Group. It was fashioned at the tail end of my very first introduction to the universally-popular recreational and medicinal psychoactive, a baptismal journey that began on the waterbed of a custom van owned by a real-life hippie. Between that fairly cool start, and the rather lame werewolf conclusion, the experience entailed my twelve year-old self wandering the neighborhood aimlessly, until I found myself suddenly having to empty my bowels, which I did by squatting on the green of a country club golf course. A hole in one, by any other definition.

Diet Pepsi (caffeine, aspartame), early summer, 1973

This example of endearingly violent childhood literature was created soon after my very first pizza party, an affair that offered each child present a bucket-sized container of the sugarless cola. This low-calorie charge was accompanied by the crack! and pow! theatrics of an old, black and white Captain Marvel serial, the two stimulants combining to form a work of gruesome gothic grandeur that clearly puts Edgar Allen Poe to shame, to say nothing of the accompanying illustration, which surely gives Joan Miro a run for his non-conventional money. Or perhaps it’s Cathy Guisewite.

Announcing a HALF-PRICE SALE on all of my original art at COMIC ART COLLECTIVE!

Starting this Monday, Dec. 8, through until Monday, Dec. 15, all of my original artwork currently available at Comic Art Collective is available for just one-half of the listed price. Please have a look through the great variety of styles offered, including new gouache illustrations from the Fairy Tale Factory project. Below are eleven samples of the more than a hundred and fifty pieces to choose from.

Doctored Stuffing and a Poisoned Apple

The following gallery represents a sampling of recent illustrations, a diverse assemblage of style and tone, created for a variety of clients and individuals.

Fairy Tale Icons

Here are three sample gouache illustrations, commissioned by writer Amy Morgan, for her upcoming Fairy Tale Factory teaching site. When the site is running, I will showcase more of the more than two dozen pieces I created for this clever project.

Pot Recipe Icons

Here are seven cartoon characters I created for the Portland Mercury’s recent pre-Thanksgiving section of pot-themed recipes. Enjoy, however you will!

Yesterday’s Slugger

Here is a gouache illustration created for the birthday of a good friend, one of the most avid baseball fans I know.

A Real Bombshell

Here is the pencil rough, followed by the final art, of a recent commissioned T-shirt design.

Television Times Four

Here are four recent illustrations created for Wm. Steven Humphrey’s popular I Love Television column, appearing weekly in papers like Seattle’s The Stranger and the Portland Mercury.