stART in the Park is TOMORROW 6/1/08!!

Sunday June 1, 2008
11:00am - 4:00pm
Beaver Brook Park, Mann and Chandler Streets
Worcester, MA
FREE!!



100+ artists and crafters, performers, food vendors, kids activities, organizations and more!

A day long celebration of arts, crafts, culture, cuisine and fun in the sun! Join us for a free celebration in Beaver Brook Park on Mann Street in Worcester, MA. Bring a blanket and spread out a picnic lunch or purchase food from area restaurants and caterers.

Items available for purchase include arts & crafts, produce, decorative and edible plants and more - be a responsible member of the community and sustain local small businesses!

Visit the stART in the Park webpage:

www.startonthestreet.org

I will be selling and signing copies of Diary of the Black Widow and Confessions of a Peculiar Boy... and Other Stories as well as selling copies of my signed prints and doing sketches all day long!!

See you there!

What I feel the next Batman film should be...

...well, I have a feeling the next film will have something to do with Two Face. Which means the character will be done like the comic book and Batman: The Animated Series and not like the crummy second rate version of the Joker Joel "I am a complete hack" Schumacher turned Two Face into in Batman Forever.

Which was the lousiest title this side of "Attack of the Clones".

If you haven't seen Batman Begins yet, you really have to go out and see it. I was really surprised with how much I enjoyed Christopher Nolan's approach at creating a Batman film. Even the Frank Miller style Batmobile grew on me. But what I liked most of all was how they used (spoiler alert... sorry) Liam Neeson as Ra's al Ghul. He was always one of my favorite Batman villains just because he seemed very inspired by the James Bond villains of that time.



I'm hoping that they return the character for a future Batman film. And I think it would be really great if they used the graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon as the basis for one of the films. If you haven't read it yet, it's definitely up there with Dark Knight Returns, Killing Joke and Full Circle as one of my favorite Batman graphic novels.



I'm also hoping that if they return the character of Ra's al Ghul, they also introduce his daughter Talia. And the Lazarus Pit.

If you haven't had the chance to read it just yet and you're either a comic book or Batman fan, go out and get yourself a copy!!

The Bat-Man

Batman is one of my favorite costumed heroes. He was the only reason I would watch the Super-Friends.

I had been toying around with doing an illustration of the Bat-Man for a while now. Ever since I started doing pen and ink work exclusively in 2000. The inspiration started again when I was looking at Andy Fish's Batman art for the upcoming Bat-Man 1939. Which is going to be off the hook!!

I suppose I was going for a Sons of the Silent Age style Bat-Man. I suppose if Douglas Fairbanks was going to star in a Bat-Man film, this is the way it would look in my mind. But a great deal of the influence came from the stiff wings of the first Batman story as well as the two Tim Burton films.

But I was also greatly influenced by the costume from the Batman serials of the 1940's. Yeah, they're awful. But I like them. And I like the whole idea of Batman looking like just a man in a costume.

Most Batman fans know that his costume is pretty much bulletproof and flame retardant and everything else. But I liked the concept of Bat-Man appearing human and having to rely on his own wits to get him out of a situation.

I also wanted to give the impression of the costume being made out of some sort of army canvas. I had gotten the chance to wear my Grandfather's army jacket a while back and I thought about how heavy the material made it feel. So, I kept that in mind when I was creating his wings and even his costume.

I also wanted to make the costume less of a form fitting leotard and more of a uniform. Hence the army canvas look.

Despite having no super powers, Batman has proven over the years NOTHING can kill him. None of his villains have succeeded in killing him.

And even Joel Schumacher two crappy Batman movies couldn't kill him!!

Doctor Who news!!

My love for the classic science-fiction show Doctor Who has been well documented (mostly by me) and trust me it takes a lot to pull me away from the television on a Friday night to miss an episode.

Yes, I am that sadly rabid of a fan.

But for all of you who are fans of the show like myself have probably heard the news that series producer Russell T. Davies is stepping down from his role as producer and handing the reigns over to Steven Moffat.

Which has been done many times in the show's history with the moves from Barry Letts to Philip Hinchcliffe to Graham Williams to John Nathan Turner.

I suppose the transition from John Nathan Turner to Philip Segal's 1996 Anglo/American production of Doctor Who with Paul McGann can fit somewhere in there too. With that you had a good actor as the Doctor, good set design for the TARDIS and good special effects for the time.

But a really lousy script.

Nevertheless, each producer has brought something new to the table. Good or bad. And what Russell T. Davies did in his time is brought Doctor Who back and made it a hit. Without having it so mired in the past that the show is stale and not having it so far removed from what the show was about that it alienates older fans.

That made him perfect to bring the show back. However, many of the stories he wrote were far from that. But he is such an oddity when it comes to his writing. He can write some scripts that are absolute clunkers and then he would make a complete about face and write an episode that would leave me all wide-eyed and excited!!

Probably one of the best "season finale" writers in my humble opinion.

And now he's leaving the series in the very capable hands of Steven Moffat. Steven is no stranger to the world of Doctor Who. He wrote the very funny (and well written) Children in Need sketch in 1999 The Curse of Fatal Death starring Rowan Atkinson (along with Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley) as the Doctor. And he has written some of my favorite Doctor Who episodes in the current series The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances and The Girl in the Fireplace.

And lastly but not leastly Time Crash which was the first multi-Doctor story on television since The Two Doctors with Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton.

So, I will be very eager to see where he takes Doctor Who when the show returns for a full series in 2010.

Improved Pub Scrawl flyer

I changed some of the text slightly to make it resemble the Narragansett label a little more. I also made the background red so it looks like the Narragansett label and not an advertisement for Moxie ;)

The Worcester Pub Scrawl Sunday June 22nd!!

More news about a potential Drink and Draw style event...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been continuing to chat with fellow Undercoverfish contributor Pete Beaudoin of That's Entertainment fame and other artists around the Worcester County area through Myspace and Facebook about the possibility of starting a monthly (or bi-monthly) event similar to the extremely popular Drink and Draw which takes place around the country. Tenatively, the event will take place June 22nd at Ralph's Chadwick Diner in Worcester MA.

I will have more definitive information up as soon as I possibly can. But mark down June 22nd somewhere on your social calendar because THAT'S when we hope to have everything going.

Until then, stay tuned!!

Attention Worcesteries!! Under the influence of Artwork...

Hi All!!
I had started e-mailing some of you through the space of my to put a bug in your ear on the thought of perhaps starting up a Drink and Draw type of event somewhere in Worcester.

To Check out what I mean, check out the Drink and Draw Myspace site:

http://www.myspace.com/drinkanddraw

But since I know a great deal of talented artists around and about Worcester, I thought I would put my neck in the noose and post a bulletin about it.

I had found out from Pete that there were four or five artists in his group that use to hold an event like this and Doug Chapel has held a very similar event at That's Entertainment a couple years back called Danger! Artists at Work. Although, this was a non-alcoholic version of the Drink and Draw, the concept was very similar.

Like I said, I've gotten to know a lot of really talented people through That's Entertainment, ARTSWorcester and all the great art shows and book signings that have been organized in Worcester.

I felt if I could at least get some people interested I could then perhaps start inquiring with a few of the local establishments that sell beer for $1 or $2 a bottle or pint.

And it shouldn't just be opened to artists. But also to people who are interested in art, writing and music performance and composing.

Okay, well I gave my two cents. Pass this along to anyone who likes to draw or likes artists and would be interested in something of this nature.

Two new prints available for stART in the Park!!

Well, my Tessie print is not that new. I ran out of the first run of prints back at stART on the Street last September and I haven't been able to make any new ones for the last couple of show.

But Tessie's back just in time for stART in the Park along with a new print Alice and the Chesire Cat which I illustrated at Free Comic Book Day on May 3rd!!

Things that amuse me online...

Some little Rembrandt out there managed to capture the essence of every joke in every Garfield comic that appears in the weekly or Sunday paper:



And unlike Jim Davis, this person probably drew it themselves ;-)

Trying out some new supplies

Last week I picked up this Canson "Fanboy Comic Art Board" at Michaels out at the Blackstone Shopping Plaza. I had spied it out of the corner of my eye a couple weeks before when I went out there to pick up some ink.

I didn't pick it up the first time around. I have never had much luck working on the Blue Line Comic Book Pro's Pages in the past. I've always found it to be a terrible surface to ink on.

But I noticed this particular brand of Pro's pages were being put out by Canson. Pretty much I do most of my illustrations and comic art on Canson Smooth Bristol Board. For me, I find it to be THE BEST bristol board on the market.

So, that alone made me want to give these particular comic book pages a try. I was going to be starting work on a Sherlock Holmes project. So, I thought this would be the best time to give it a test drive as it were.

Honestly, I think they're great!! Like all the other Canson bristol Board I've used in my past projects, it's a great surface to ink on. And two pages into the book, the results are great!!

I definitely recommend Canson's version of the Comic Book Pro's pages to any aspiring (or seasoned) comic book artist out there.

Definitely worth the $19.99 I spent!!

Projects in the Works

My homepage doesn't seem to be working at the moment. But I just added a page that listed some upcoming projects I'm working on. Either in collaboration or by myself. So, here they are:

The Adventures of Polly and Handgraves: A Sinister Aura written and art by: Bret M. Herholz painted by: Rori Shapiro

Representation story by: Bryan James Smith script by: Ainsley Waller art by: Bret M. Herholz graytones by: Rori Shapiro

A Yet (but soon to be) Untitled Book of Sequential Poems from poems by: Joshua Michael Stewart art by: Bret M. Herholz graytones by: Rori Shapiro

Sherlock Holmes from the play by: William Gillette based on the characters created by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Come on out to stART in the Park on Sunday June 1st!!

I will be selling (and signing) copies of DIARY OF THE BLACK WIDOW and CONFESSIONS OF A PECULIAR BOY... AND OTHER STORIES as well as signed prints of my illustrations. So, come on out and see me sometime!!


Hosted By: stART on the Street
When: Tuesday Jun 10, 2008
at 11:00 AM
Where: Beaver Brook Park
the corner of Chandler and Mann
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
Description:
stART on the Street

The never-ending battle...

I just finished up finishing touches on the new book last night and I'm preparing to send it off to my publishers this morning. This is kind of the first time I did a book by myself. Usually I've had some very talented and very kind friends help me out with cover coloring and lettering. But I've been feeling under the gun to get the next book out and continue work on the other books. So, I made the decision to do somewhat the same thing Paul McCartney did with his first solo album McCartney and do it myself.

More info about the project will be coming soon. As for now, you'll have to wait and see.

I was very happy to find three books I've been looking for for what seemed to be ages. Understanding Comic by Scott McCloud, Graphic Storytelling and Comics & Sequential Art both by Will Eisner. These were books we were told to get for our classes in college. I couldn't find them for the longest time and I feared I sold them to get a little extra money once classes were finished. But I was very happy to find that they had been stored away.

Which is great because I really wanted to use some of the information from the books in my comic art classes at the Worcester Art Museum.

Speaking of which, I'm going to be doing an Intro to Graphic Novel class for the Museum in October. And this will be a class for ADULTS!! That's right!! I'm finally making the leap and I'm going to be doing some adult art classes for the Museum come October!! Hopefully, this will be the first of many.

But if you've been looking to take a comic class by me and you're over the age of 17 years, now's your opportunity!!

Cartoonist Ted Key, creator of `Hazel’ and Mr. Peabody, dies at 95

I vaguely remember both the comic and television show Hazel. But Ted Key created probably one of my favorite cartoon characters Mr. Peabody. A dog who travelled time in his Wabac Machine with his pet boy Sherman for the show Rocky and his Friends (later the Bullwinkle Show).

He died Saturday at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Tredyffrin Township after a 1 1/2-year battle with cancer, his son Peter Key said Monday.

Thank you for Peabody and Sherman Ted Key. Still probably my favorite cartoon characters.

Alice and the Chesire Cat

This was an illustration I created at Free Comic Book Day at That's Entertainment in Worcester on May 3rd!!



T-shirts and prints of the image are available for purchase at HORRID COLLECTIBLES:

http://www.cafepress.com/horridclltbles

Free Comic Book Day

I had a great time at Free Comic Book Day!! Thank you everyone who came on out to That's Entertainmet in Worcester to say "Hello"!!