Baby.

My wife is 3 months pregnant and we are overwhelmed with joy!

In the Studio.

If it isn't obvious from these photos my studio is not the biggest room in the house so making a panoramic of it was a little difficult but Bridge did the best job it could to put them altogether.

Busy, busy, busy...

I have been working on two pretty big sketches for Highlights recently and I have finally completed them. Here is a little piece from each until they are approved and the finish is completed.

Watch the Lamb.

In 1995 I illustrated the lyrics from the Ray Boltz song, "Watch the Lamb" for my comic strip, the Inside Dirt during the weeks leading up to Easter. This is a panel from a revision of that comic made for my church for Good Friday a couple of years ago. We showed it as a powerpoint while it was performed by one of our musicians. The entire comic and an attached music link (so you can listen and watch) is up for you to view here. I hope it brings more meaning to today as we remember that Friday long ago.

Bible Prints.

Please click on the image to see the enlarged view:

The hebrew inscriptions on the above Old Testament illustration are:

1. Left side: the name of God, "Yahweh." The vowels are removed because some Jewish people believe you should not write the name of God since it is so holy, so it actually says, "YHWH."

2. Right side top: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." Deuteronomy 6:4. This is the Shema, considered the most important prayer in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation is a mitzvah (religious commandment).

3. Right side bottom: The disembodied fingers of a human hand appear and write on the wall of the royal palace the words Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin for King Belshazzar. Daniel translates: "And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Daniel 5: 24-28.

The Hebrew in the center of the Gospel illustration above (which really should have been either Aramaic or Greek) is the summary of the entire Bible, "For God so loved the World that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." This verse comes from the famous John 3:16 (I'm sure you've seen it in a football stadium somewhere). The old man pictured with Jesus is Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders who asked to meet with Jesus one night to better understand his teachings.

Now the story behind these (I always get asked lots of questions about them):

One night while I was watching the boring movie, the English Patient, I started drawing parts of the movie and as I drew I overlapped the sketches to form a collage. Months later when I had no work I decided to take this technique further and draw the entire Old Testament. I had no real plan, I used only ink and 9 days later I was complete.

The gospels took a much longer 2 months. Using what I had learned from the Old Testament illustration I planned ahead a bit more and took my time. It's funny, I have been to Israel since making these and now I look at them and think how different they would look if I had gone there first.

Illustration Friday: Talisman

I honestly thought I wouldn't have anything for this one but then I remembered drawing this back in 1994 for my children's book class at Hussian. Each semester we were given the option of re visioning a classic so I choose The Rainbabies by Laura Krauss Melmed and Jim Lamarche, a very strange book.

The one below was the cover.

Through the Years (part 2)

Updated with Toddler Chuck:

Here is the rest. I was tempted to do an Early College years since I had changed so much from then until my later college years but I was pretty much still like the high school version. Oh, I can't really do late 30's until I'm 40, so just wait 4 years.

TMNT comic

Someone just reminded me of this little comic adventure so I went looking for it and was shocked to see that it has been 15 years since this was published in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Man, that makes my back hurt.

After visiting the New York Comic Con with my friend Billy, I had drawn up this comic to post at Hussian (I had been posting up weekly comics for the fun of it at school and this is what lead to me getting my comic strip, the Inside Dirt, published in the Philadelphia Daily News for 3 years). I still find it pretty funny, but I hate those over exaggerated expressions. Apparently I had been watching too much Ren n' Stimpy cartoons, I guess.

This is the issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles it was published in (which is Copyright © Mirage Studios 1993).