3 posts in a row! Bow down for a Boss Playah!

I haven't posted anything even remotely related to the current project in a while (or anything non-superhero for that matter). So here is a panel:



Bad news is that this book is going to have a mega delay even if I finish it tomorrow. I'm not thrilled by that, but it's just how the wheels turn. I hope they announce it soon, maybe SDCC.

Thanks to everyone who's made comments, here, on Dev Art and via Twitter or Facebook. It's a lot of places to check but I appreciate the feedback. I'm going to try and keep this pace up but we'll see.

Anyways, my copies of WEDNESDAY COMICS and ASTERIOS POLYP are waiting on me...

More soon...

Blog posts on consecutive days? Thats right true believer!

I was recently asked to contribute to an auction to help benefit comics writer BILL MANTLO . The theme of the book is centered around his association with the series ROM , which I believe he wrote almost all of.

I was flattered to be asked and more than happy to contribute. I didn't have much time so I hope my final piece ends up okay. Here are the early pencils:



I had one issue of ROM as a kid. And though I never read much of the character I knew his whole story thanks to MARVEL HANDBOOK. Always thought it sounded like a cool concept, I should try and find the time to check it out one day.

LEARN MORE about the auction here and see other great pieces here .

Great collection of ROM COVERS here .

Anyways, wish me luck. More soon...

Woke up the other day and decided to doodle the HULK. I wish there were a reason, sometimes you just gotta draw the Hulk I think:



I went really cartoony with it, but I wanted to push it more. For some reason I just couldn't commit to the full scale Jamie Hewlett hands. I'm a wuss.

I've made no secret that it's one of my long running favorite characters, and in just doodling this I came up with about ten ideas for stories (see the doodles in the margins). I have old sample pages around here somewhere that I'll have to dig up. Maybe I'll post them this week.

Anyways, hope everyone had a great Fourth. More soon...

Found a scan of this 2009 Heroes con sketch I did online:



Hope everyone has a great 4th.
More soon...

I'm my "spare" time I've been helping a buddy out with some concept and character design stuff. This is roughly the direction it's headed in...



It's sort of a sci-fi pulp influenced thing at present. Not planning on drawing it, but I might have few fingers in the pot. More on that as and if it develops.

-Also, If you're looking for copies of my current sketchbook the good folks at HEROES AREN'T HARD TO FIND here in Charlotte currently have it in stock.

-Saw PUBLIC ENEMIES last night. Still processing it... but I think it was worth seeing for academic purposes. Lots of food for thought on presenting a story visually. The (next to) last scene in particular is sort of an amazing little feat. Not my favorite of his films, but if you're into Michael Mann it's definitely worth a look. You know I'll blabber more about it if I feel it warrants it...

More soon.

-J La

A couple of goings on with my art blog posting...

About a week ago I started a Deviant Art page to supplement the regular blog here. Right now it's mostly finished stuff, and nothing I can think of that's not been posted here. But if you prefer Dev Art to the RSS feed blog kinda deal then here is your heads up.

Also, since life has to have some rules I just wanted to let everyone know my intended post routine. I'm still going to update this blog with new art a couple of times a week (hopefully). It will remain the mix of finished art with sketch and process sort of stuff. The Dev art page will be sort of a sketchblog greatest hits until that's all uploaded and then will start to carry much of the same content as this page.

If you do go over there I really encourage you to go check out Chris Brunner's page, especially the stuff he has up for our book LOOSE ENDS. And while you're at it peep our superstar drummer/colorist Rico Renzi's page. I think they also plan on continuing to update their regular blog as well.

And finally, a reminder that if you waste your life on Twitter then feel free to add me: @jasonlatour
I usually announce comics and art stuff there, as well as talk a bunch of nonsense.

Anyways enough B.S. This is an art blog,so here is a little Spidey doodle that's the first step towards an overdue commission



More soon...

-J La

Once upon a time I was a very avid reader of superhero books. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the them now and then. A little chunk of my reading is always set aside for them every month and I don't see myself ever quitting them completely. Without getting too high minded about it I'd say some of the fascination is that I still believe that superheroes at their best challenge and reinforce the beliefs of those who most need to be reassured and challenged. Couple that with the energy and imagination and bottled up sexual energy and it's a potentially powerful mix.

Talk of old comics is inevitable at comic conventions, and as that most people I know who do comics have at least cut their teeth reading a super hero book or two they end up being a big topic of discussion. A couple such post-HEROES CON discussions (particularly one with Dean Trippe and Cliff Chiang over beer and pizza) coupled with an interview with BRUCE TIMM about his influences gave me the urge to go down memory lane. So aided only by my memory and the internet I spent an hour or so compiling some of the issues that really wound me up as a kid. I have a bunch of modern favorites, and my superhero reading has become a lot more esoteric over time (as it did with anyone who's stuck with it at all), but to focus it I decided to go with stuff from before I graduated High school. Some of these are chosen purely for art, some for the stories, others for the ideas. I in no way present this stuff to serve as a defense or condemnation of my taste. This is just stuff I was into, and stuff I still carry around in my skull. If you think it's crap or creamsicle then so be it.

BACK BINS
By the time I opened my first comic I was well aware of superheroes as a genre. 60's BATMAN, SUPERFRIENDS, SPIDER-MAN CARTOONS, you can't be a child of the 80's and not have some memory of this stuff.

A box of my Dad's old books, mostly DC HORROR and WAR comics, was handed down to me and in it were a handful of superhero books. I was completely torn between terror and morbid curiosity with those, and to this day seeing some of those covers sets me off a little inside. But again, the superhero stuff was the key to my comics addiction most notably this MACHINE MAN Jack Kirby issue and a handful of issues where MACHINE fought THE HULK.






Over time I became really interested in all the moving parts, so in that regard MARVEL SAGA and THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL U were invaluable. I still credit those books for inspiring my creativity, helping me to gain an appreciation for some of the artists who were out of favor at the time, and in creating this damnable encyclopedic knowledge of pre-90's Marvel history. Hell most of the time the journal entries and condensed storylines were better than the real thing:






CONNECT THE DOTS
The first major contemporary comic I can remember getting into was X-FACTOR. I'm sure it was because of the MARVEL SAGA stuff which featured the old-Lee Kirby X-MEN. But it was also because I was instantly hooked on WALT SIMONSON.

X-FACTOR


And of course X-FACTOR lead me to the back bins and THOR:
THOR


which also lead to BYRNES FF, which I think really does account for a lot of my interest in Kirby MARVEL. I was really into BYRNE or some time. He was a great torch bearer, even if some of it nearly qualifies as bad fan fic.



CLASSIC X-MEN was not only educational but it had great ART ADAMS covers (Later on early MIGNOLA)


FALL OF THE MUTANTS
X-FACTOR obviously lead to X-MEN. I could post X-MEN covers all day, but the first stuff I really flipped for was FALL OF THE MUTANTS but I really enjoyed a lot of the art around the AUSTRALIAN X-MEN era.

I was a particularly big fan of RICK LEONARDI. This issue still exists in the back of my mind as a great stand alone story:


Silvestri at the top of his game:


Jim Lee on his way to superstar status:


X-MEN lead to NEW MUTANTS. This issue was (I believe) more great LEONARDI interiors wrapped in ART ADAMS


I'm not sure but I think this issue tied into that X-MEN cover by LEONARDI.


I couldn't find any Bill Sienkiewicz that was representational of my memory, but he really sorta blew my mind and freaked me out. I could have posted a ton of ART ADAMS as well. Particularly ASGARDIAN X-MEN and X-BABIES.

EXCALIBUR is a no brainer. This stuff was sort of a tepid introduction to the wild ALAN MOORE Captain Britain stuff. I still love WARWOLVES and TECH NET and ALAN DAVIS drew some mega saucy ladies.




ODDS AND ENDS
Seeing red and silver IRON MAN still makes synapses pop. Great BWS cover (which lines up in my mind with that Wolverine story he did)


This second IRON MAN is notable for the STEALTH armor and also because in 4th or 5th grade I was allowed to do a comicbook for a final grade. So I wrote and drew an issue of IRON MAN that essentially ripped this off. The funny part is that I thought I could do it better. 4 foot boy. 20 foot ego.



More HULK. I think I own more HULK issues than nearly anything else. I'd still love to get my hands on that book someday.





I missed the boat on FRANK MILLERS DAREDEVIL. But the LEONARDI issue where WOLVERINE shows up and they hunt BUSHWHACKER stands among my favorites. JOHN ROMITA JR'S issues also stick out because I loved the rough quality they had.





COSMIC ODYSSEY is maybe my favorite old school superhero book pound for pound. And was the book where I really flipped for MIGNOLA for life.





Not a great SPIDEY COVER but memorable for the interiors being LEONARDI and featuring X-FACTOR. Plus I think I still aesthetically prefer the black suit deep down.



This was kind of old school to my taste but I still responded to the drawing:


Could have picked a dozen McFarlane Spideys. They don't do as much for me now, but I can't deny they're exciting. Really remember loving his Sandman.



BYRNE sort of MARVELED up DC and I was a nut for his SUPERMAN. These are the first two issues I remember buying of it. The second one is MIGNOLA, and was probably my first look at his work:



DARK KNIGHT is the book that I didn't love but couldn't put down. It's a favorite now. I'd be remiss not to post the cover of the trade I had.



Probably the CLASSIEST comic I was into art wise was the MOEBIUS take on SILVER SURFER. I got into MOEBIUS thanks to an article in COMICS SCENE magazine, which was this great (for the era) mag that had lots of raw art in it. There was an article on MOEBIUS with all kinds of movie concept art, looks at Euro comics, and his new foray into some stuff for MARVEL. Blew my mind. These issues are still near my art desk today.




And finally the 90's came and I sort of stepped away for a while. I sort of missed the IMAGE boom for the most part but the Batman Cartoon and books like MADMEN kept superheroes accessible and sort of provided a gateway drug to other stuff.



Anyways, I could have posted ten dozen more covers, and I will admit there was much much more junk in the diet. But this is the stuff that's still in me, actively alive and refusing to let go.

MOre soon...

Another HEROES CON '09 has come and gone. This year was especially inspiring. Thanks to all of the folks who stopped by and said hi. I'm sorry if you came by and I was gone. I get antsy and a show with so many great artists and talents is too good of a chance to talk shop to resist. I'd write up a formal con report but it was just way too much fun to encapsulate in one post. Hopefully I will be in SD and Chicago (maybe twice) this summer, so if you missed me or I missed you in Charlotte I hope we can do it up there.

Here are is a con sketch piece I did prior to the show on Friday. DEVIL DINO vs. Superman and the color study I scribbled with it.




More soon...

About to head back to the show. Little snapshot of a con sketch I'm doing:



Brunner, Rico and myself are at the 12 Gauge booth, which is BOOTH 630/729. There seems to be some confusion about that since we're at a BOOTH and not a table number. We may be shifting things around but if you're looking for one of us and can't find us that's were to ask.

More soon...

My 2009 sketchbooks live!




HEROES CON starts tomorrow and I'll be at BOOTH 630/729 or the 12 GAUGE BOOTH (which are either the same place or directly in front of one another, I don't know because apparently I can't read a map!)

I'll be doing sketches and selling stuff.

-Volumes 2-4 of my sketchbook and the LOOSE ENDS DEMO for $5 each.
-Con Sketches: $30 B&W, $40 COLOR, $15 HEADSHOTS
-PRINTS free with purchase or for a donation.

I have some outstanding con sketches I'm working on, but I am open to taking stuff early so if you want to hop on the list let me know.

Hope to see you guys there. More soon...

This was the last piece for the sketchbook. Done mostly as a style experiment, but I thought the joke was okay so I ran with it. I only wish I had more time to play with this strip.

Books are off to the printers today, so I'm confident I'll have them next week. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

More soon...

Today while trying to compile my '09 Sketchbook I stumbled upon a Con sketch or two that I wanted to clean up and repurpose for the book. The scans weren't great so I started fiddling with THIS ONE to see what I could do in Photoshop and ended up with this:



I tried to keep the pallette pretty minimalist, as I'm working on laying back on the color these days. The blue was a late edition that I'm still not quite sure about but I'm rolling with it for now. I'm debating on inserting a few color pieces into the new sketchbook. If I do this one is on the list of possibles.

I've always been kind of a sucker for WW2 Captain America. I once even pitched an INVADERS book to MARVEL back during the EPIC relaunch in 2002(?)-03(?). I recently found some of those pages and thought they might provide a fun little look at the difference six years or so of tortuous growth can make. Stuff like this is always like year book photos, you wonder "what the hell was I thinking with that hair cut?" Or maybe "Where did it all go?"








So like I said these were for a pitch. I wrote and showed the first couple of issues and got what I felt like was a pretty good response from the powers that be at the time. It looked like if this didn't happen I would at least have a shot of getting some work out of it. But then EPIC fell apart, and I got overwhelmed with grad school and the rest is history. It all worked out, but it's fun to wonder what if sometimes. Re-reading it it's a little slow, and could use a little more imagination thrown in with the grit. If I knew then what I know now I think it could have ended up really cool. Who knows maybe I'll pitch it again someday.

More soon...

If a sketchbook happens this summer (I'll know by next week), I think this is the general direction I'm heading with the cover and design of it:



Hopefully for HEROES CON. More soon...

Did a quick headshot of THE DEMON for the Kirby art thread over on Ivan Brandon's message board:



I don't have a scanner here so I had to do it completely digitally. Should have come up with a little rhyme for him... blah I suck.

More soon...

Ugh where to begin. So much on my plate at the moment that the blog has kind of fallen through the cracks. I keep saying I'm going to get back to posting more consistently, and it's a promise I'm trying to keep but... blah blah blah.

Anyways. Since it's not an art blog without art, here are a couple of quick conceptual designs. These are for a comic strip that my buddy Seth Peck and I have been batting around:



The idea is to do something fun and hopefully funny in those off hours when doing more "serious" work has become tedious and I feel the need to exercise the other side of my brain. Seth's a really funny guy and so far I'm pretty excited with the ideas we've been passing back and forth. One of my first loves is comic strips, and aside from the little ones I do on here now and then, I did one for a few years through college and beyond. Looking back I can't help but regard them as something like old year book photos. Lots of learning, some ugly on the job training with flashes of potential. So even if it's only a now and then kind of project I think it'd be worth dipping a toe back in those waters. I just hope that what Ricky Gervais says is true, "No one is funny until they're over 30."

... I MAKE A LOTTA STOPS... ALL OVER THE WORLD

What would summer be without a ramble? So I'm also off to California for a couple of weeks. Hoping the change of scenery serves as inspiration and rejuvenation because when I get back it's straight into con season. Starting with HEROES CON here in Charlotte, then back to Cali for SD, Chicago in August and who knows what after. So if you're doing HEROES and want to get on the sketch list early, or I owe you one, let me know ASAP!

I may also be moving the blog soon. I've been playing with iWeb on my new Macbook and considering a move to a less generic blog/site. So if things get a little screwy that's the case. Same web address though (unless I screw it up).

Okay enough for now. Have a great Memorial day. More soon...

Drawing gangsters with switchblades is my life these days.



But outside of that I think I'm going to try and find the time to do some long overdue commissions. I've got a handful unfinished and with Heroes Con approaching I should have some extra incentive to get to them. I apologize to any one who's been waiting. I've been busy but there's no real excuse for that.

Anyways, I'm off to the comics shop to look for inspiration. More soon..

I'm trying to come up with something to use as art for the HEROES CON book, a print for the show, and the HEROES auction all in one. I have a few ideas percolating, some of them lead me to do this quick study:



Trying to come up with something that's original, attention grabbing and indicative of your own tastes is a hard balance. But I guess nothing worth doing comes easy.

More soon...

Maybe not the best sketch I did at FCBD but my favorite. Not much of a likeness but not awful for something done on the fly with only a cell phone sized photo. Me thinks anyway. (EDIT: Damn it! He had red pants!)



I have vivid memories of the THRILLER video premiere. I was about 5-years-old and being babysat at the time by a group teenage girls. So y'know Michael turns into some weird cat monster thing... I freak out, run in the other room... losing my mind with fear.. Y'know: "how could that happen to Michael Jackson!?"

So I'm under the kitchen table hands over my eyes, my ears, my eyes, my ears. I'm a total wreck. I can't block out the blood curdling screams from the girls. They're all being murdered! Oh god... They're all...

Dancing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8

Seriously, how badass was that jacket? So anyways, I fell in line and in love with the song just like everyone else my age. Though secretly I was still sorta freaked out. But I held it inside like a tough little soldier. Took it to bed for the crying hour.

Man, I wish that guy hadn't gone fruit loops.

More soon...

Here is the finished SCALPED fan art piece. I threw a logo on just for fun. I haven't done a cover in a while so I figured I'd use it for practice, hence how the white stands out. If it were just going to be the logoless second image I'd probably tone that white down. It just didn't turn out as cool as I wanted it too, so I'm a little let down. But for something that I just started with no plan, or idea of what I wanted I guess it's not bad. So I'm letting er go...for now...





Black and White:


More soon...

Progress of sorts:



More soon...