31 Days Of Santa: 10th Day- Shel Silverstein

Don't laugh, but um... I sorta nearly... teared up... when I scanned this in and took a look at it. Shel Silverstein holds that much nostalgia and moments of clarity and poignance from my wee youth. His writings quite possibly could've been some of the first that I read that made me 'get it', that underlying moral, or emotional underlying story.

Of course, I'm talking about his articles from Playboy.

Medium: Micron.

The trick to his style (I dunno if he employed this or not, but it worked for me in imitating him, at least), is that my first pencil lines laid down were pretty much the final placement of structure- as in, I didn't sketch any super light form of ovals or gesture drawing underneath. Rather, I went contour to contour. . . Maybe a hair too much stippling for Shel's look, but I think I almost NAILED that face. Hope you enjoy.

31 Days Of Santa: 9.5th Day- Me Again...

Just a sketch that I doodled quick while taking a break from trying to get the style down of a certain illustrator to come (Goddang, that illustrator is hard to do, but his stuff is SOOO simple).

Anypoo, a doodle...

Why do I like such creepy looking Santas?? Then again, many of my drawrins' look 1% evil. Hell, no WONDER I never get requests to work on a happy kids' comic. Frank- get on that.

PS- This sketch has a hint of Thom Glick in it. Don't hit me, Thom.

31 Days Of Santa: 9th Day- Winsor McCay

All I have to say is- THANK GOD FOR PHOTOSHOP. Wasn't too happy about this until this morning when I got to throw in the background and give it an aged look, along with just a couple small edits. Looks a little more McCay-like now. I'm sure he used dip pen for his ink work, but I got home late from roller derby, and wanted to hit this quick. Micron it was.

McCay was most renown for his super popular comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland" as well as being a pioneer in animation- youtube "Gertie The Dinosaur". Crude, sure- but he took steps ahead of others at the time. The man was devoted to his art, and it showed in his great draftsmanship. Absolutely wonderful style that reminds me of a simpler version of another favorite illustrator of mine, whose style will come sometime this month ;)

I definitely want to play more with this style, the colors.... good golly, I love me some McCay.

Medium: Ink, dyes, digital (running theme, huh?)
More later...

31 Days Of Santa: 8th Day- Andy Warhol

I was going to wait until later to post this one, but I felt some who may not know the artists I've posted so far, might be hungry for a familiar style. So...

This is "Dirk Shearer imitating Andy Warhol goofin' around with Haddon Sunblom".

Here's a controversial and ironic one to mix it up. Controversial because some, maybe many, view Warhol as a weener who eventually went the easy way of collecting creatives around him to either help make his art in his desired medium- actors, musicians, gallery artists, filmmakers, etc- or to up the ante of his celebrity.

Others see a revolutionary- THE POPE OF POP ART, and all the inevitable social commentary that goes with it. I'll hold my beliefs to myself, and hopefully you can decide for yourself after reading up from all sides (if you even care at all to hold a belief), but I will say this- Oh, how rad it must've been to grow one's self-celebrity by recycling imagery of other celebrities and rehashing them out in new colors.

When he died, he left nearly his entire estate's worth to funding for future art. That's pretty damn righteous in my book.

What's ironic- 'making a celebrity out of a celebrity watcher amongst millions of celebrity watchers'-  I am an illustrator, and I'm an artist who took great artwork from a great artist (Haddon Sunblom's (who had to have been influenced by the great JC Leyendecker) Coca Cola Santa), recycled it, and rehashed it in the vein of another great artist, (Andy Warhol), who partly became famous for rehashing art (photography) of artists.. and.... and......

POOM!

{...Ladies and Gentlemen- Dirk Shearer's head has unnecessarily blown up.}

Medium: Digital (I know- would've been much more bad ass to have painted this, but I'd like 8 hours of sleep tonight for a change- thanks, buh-bye.

Need a gift for your loved ones? You COULD buy a print of my Andy Warhol Santa (on 8x10) for $10, OR consider purchasing an original or print of one of my previous 31 Days Of Santa entries- David Wisniewski, John Held, Jr, Mike Mignola, Ub Iwerks, Dr Seuss, Sanrio, or Barry Moser Santa.

Print requests go to dirkshearer@gmail.com; compliments, rants, and raves go here under the comments block.

31 Days Of Santa: 7th Day- David Wisniewski

YAWWWWNNNNnnnnnnnn-nuh!

Artist: David Wisniewski
Born: Baltimore. 
Children's book illustrator: The Golem, and oh so many other cool cut paper illustrated books.
Originally trained to be a clown. Found a better way to entertain kids than scaring the poop outta the ones who have phobias of such wretched, vile creatures of the big top. Unfortunately passed away at too early of an age of I dunno (49 yrs old), in... sometime after Jesus' death (2002). Remind me to update that. P.S.- he was Jewish.

(UPDATE: Oh crap- maybe he wasn't Jewish. I thought I had read some time ago that his decision to take on the traditional tale had something to do with his Judaic roots, but I can't find anything now, so I must recant. I won't delete it, for it's an error on my part, and I feel I should keep it out in the open, both as a reminder that what I say over the internet can be in fact influential negatively by false reporting, and because I didn't want to 'dupe' anyone into thinking I simply pretended I never wrote it. My bad. Nothing wrong with Jewish people, mind you. Just something wrong with my memory)

Hey, it's 1:24am! I'm going the **** to bed.

31 DAYS OF SANTA: 6th DAY- John Held, Jr

I've moved half my workstation (mostly my dyes and paintbrushes, really), in front of my computer to shave off some unnecessary time for all the blog art. This... may not end well.

On a stupidly related note, my cats have discovered this, and have begun the whole 'collective species stand outside of window staring in at the protagonist of a horror film' game.


Today's Santa is inspired by the man whose art represented a decade and a personality. John Held, Jr- The Jazz Era, The Roarin' Twenties. He influenced the times and fashion about as much as the times influenced him. He was THE guy back then, and his art was all over magazines, notably Life. Many of his popular cover illustrations were of characters on a flat red background, but Santa would've gotten lost on red obviously. Thankfully, he placed elements on other flat colors, too. His flat colors were much flatter than what I did, but, well... still trying to figure that one out.

MEDIUM: dyes, ink.

Notes of interest- the Roarin' Twenties probably contrasted from the previous generation more than any other since, so today's parents should be thankful as they look forward to their kids growing into awkward adults... awkwardly. Held Jr, was raised around Mormons... and... still became the artist of jazz, fashion...some may say, sin (oooohh- MUFASA!). Held also worked in woodcuts, but didn't carry so much the same style. In the military he did some neat secret cartography too.

31 Days Of Santa: 5th Day- Mike Mignola

I had a dream last night that I was running away from zombies through corridors under a huge hangar with a small group of people. I love when I dream of zombies; I typically get to knock the head off one or two and ker-pow another in the nethers...


So here we go- Mr. Mignola. Should be nary a surprise I respect his art so much- name me a comic nerd who isn't a fan of his neo-German Expressionist noir style, and I'll turn lead into a Lovecraftian demigod. I liked the black and white original drawing as much as I did the digitally colored final, so I posted them both. Two-fer!!!

Media: Pen & Ink, digital color.

I myself laughed my buns off for 15 seconds while sketching this concept, and if I'm the only one to have done so, I'm fine with that. That being said, I think we should all request to Mike that he do a one-shot Santa story the next time we see him at a con. And tell him that scratchboard artist who owes him the Lobster Johnson piece sends his love.