What's new with me? Glad you asked…

It has been a wild summer so far, in a pretty positive sense. I've had a major influx of art gigs come my way, to the tune of one caricaturing gig per Saturday for virtually the entire month of June (I'm still holding out for June 30th) with plenty more coming for the remaining summer and beyond. I've also had several commissions for various family portraits, which, along with the caricaturing, has helped out my income greatly.

I've also sent out (finally) those greeting cards that I created months ago to Recycled Paper Greetings in Chicago. They tend to take a month or two to reply so I anticipate hearing from them before summer's end.

I've also decided to accept the offer made to me by the previously and currently unnamed super-secret project shareholders to do some long-term illustration work for them. It will be a gamble, but if their product is a hit, I could stand to make out pretty well.

Lastly, my old pal and fellow cartoonist Adam Talley (creator of the comic book "Pleasant Hymns", currently re-titled "Pleasant Life") has brought me aboard to illustrate an entire Halloween special issue he's writing. I'm already three pages into it, and it's gonna be pretty cool. It will be available in October, and I'll have a limited supply that I'll be selling both here on my website as well as on Deviantart.com. So when the time comes, buy soon and buy often!

This may well be my shortest blog ever. But taking the advice of the fairy godmother from the animated film "Twice Upon A Time", "Call me FGM. I hate excess verbiage." So I'll leave it at that. Take care, and stay close to your computer. More news is heading down the pipeline as we speak.

I just never take enough pictures…

I just spent the best weekend with the love of my life and a handful of my childhood heroes, and I only have a couple pictures to show for it, most of which were taken after the fact. You can stop scratching your heads, I’ll explain.

This past weekend marked the 25th birthday of my best friend and fiancée Laura Tanner. To commemorate, headed down to Novi, MI to the Motor City Comic Con, bi-annual Mecca of comic books, bootleg movies, sci fi toys, anime and manga surplus and plenty of celebrities from movies, television and the cartooning field.

In preparation of meeting my pop culture heroes, I had drawn caricatures of some of the celebrities, one copy as a gift for the celeb and one to get autographed for myself. Amongst those I drew and met were:

Legendary character actor Robert Picardo!

Picardo has starred in some of my favorite sci fi and horror films, such as The Howling (as Eddie Quist), and Legend (as Meg Mucklebones), so I drew his caricature below with him flanked by some of his screen personas.

Picardo was a nice enough guy, but it was obvious that he was there for his Star Trek fans more than he was for us old school guys who knew him before he joined Star Trek Voyager. Our brief encounter felt really rushed, so I didn’t try to get my photo taken with him. Still, he genuinely seemed to enjoy the caricature and autographed it for me. That’s still pretty cool.

I also met veteran voice actor Billy West, seen below in a great photo with Laura and I at the con!

In Billy’s caricature, I drew the man with three of his most famous characters, Stimpy, Doug and Fry. But I also tried to make a statement about how A list celebrities (such as Bruce Willis and others) are stealing work away from professional cartoon voice actors because studios can bank on a celeb’s name to sell their cartoon. I knew West shared my disdain for “Movie star” voice casting, so I figured he’d enjoy this piece. I was right.

Billy was the nicest and most real celeb I’ve ever met. He really took the time to talk with Laura and I, answered our questions, asked questions of us. And he gave me some great advice. After receiving the caricature, he says to me, “Are you humble about your work?” To which I shrugged and nodded. He told me that, essentially, you can't be afraid to have an ego. If you come across as loud and confident you may inspire others who look up to you and your work. His own story of overcoming adversity and accomplishing his dreams is tragic and inspiring, and I feel very lucky to have shared a moment with such an incredible guy.

Possibly the greatest experience I had at the con, though, was meeting cartoonist Sergio Aragones (NOTE: This photo is from another con Sergio attended. I regret not getting my photo with him when I had the chance. But I will correct this one day…).

In my youth, the man entertained and inspired me with his cartoons in Mad Magazine and with his comic book barbarian Groo the Wanderer. Through Groo in particular, Sergio taught me how to fill my drawings with minute detail, how to create simple yet hilarious cartoon characters, and how to tell stories with such visual punch and appeal that they transcend all cultural and language barriers.

When I approached Sergio’s table, at best I’d hoped to get him to autograph my original 1987 print edition of “Death of Groo.” That would have been plenty cool. But I decided to go for broke and asked him if he’d be willing to do a sketch of two of my characters, Dead Duck and Zombie Chick. As I asked, I pulled out my Dead Duck portfolio featuring the duo in full color on the cover. Sergio, in the kindest and gentlest way possible, explained that he really didn’t do that sort of thing anymore, which I totally understood (Rumor had it his sketches were being hawked on E-bay rather than treasured as they should have been. I’d be hesitant to do sketches, too). However, he said he really wanted to look at my Dead Duck portfolio. As he slowly turned the pages, he began to laugh quite a bit, and couldn’t stop saying how much he liked my artwork, and also how cute he thought Zombie Chick was. He just loved her! He even did his impression of what he thought she would sound like if she actually spoke! We talked a bit about how there really isn’t a good outlet for humor in comic books these days, what sorts of pens he used (I touched the pen he draws with!!!), he threw in some advice about drawing backgrounds, and said how he thought Dead Duck and Zombie Chick would work best in color. All these things I took in as best as my fevered mind could manage. It was equivalent to a film student getting praise and advice from Orson Welles! Through it all, Sergio was warm, friendly, quick with a hearty laugh, and ended it all with the warmest two-fisted handshake I’ve ever had. It was like a hug, I swear to god. I want this man to be my godfather. Anyway, that was the all time greatest con moment I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot. Oh, and I should mention that as he autographed my comic book, Sergio still managed to draw me a quick sketch of Groo on the title page, which is just precious.

Much love, Sergio.

Another neat connection I made at the con was with Nathan Kane, the art director of Bongo Comics. Bongo is the comic book publishing house of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons (and named after Groening’s one-eared bunny character from his Life In Hell comic strip). Bongo publishes comics about the Simpsons, as well as their second-tier characters, and Groening’s other major creation, Futurama. I showed Kane some of my artwork and asked him what I guy had to do to get work with Bongo. Kane immediately gave me his contact info and instructed me to send him my mailing address, and he’d send me a pencil test. What this is essentially is a hand-drawn audition to see if you’re good enough to draw the Simpsons. If I did well, I may land a gig drawing Groening’s brainchildren for Bongo comics. As of this writing, I’ve hastily sent off an e-mail to Kane to set the ball rolling and get the pencil test as soon as possible. If anything comes of it, you can bet you’ll read about it here.

The rest of the weekend was just a luxury, with Laura and I basking in the warm glow of comic books, expansive (and expensive) shopping malls and great fast food restaurants that you can’t find here in the tri-cities. It was a much-needed vacation that provided a richer bounty than I could have possibly imagined. I just had to share these wonderful moments with you guys because they were that special to me.

Am I truly back? It feels like I never left…

This has been my expression of angst lately. Thanks to a crudded-up computer, I’ve been out of online commission for roughly two weeks, which for me is a very big deal. A stinky little virus kept me from e-mailing, blogging and accessing such programs as Photoshop and my Kodak program used to download pictures off my digital camera. Had it not been for a conveniently-timed dry spell in my art gigs, the loss of these programs alone would have been devastating to my income. Fortunately, Laura knows computers and made it all better at the zero hour, when a gig came my way for which Photoshop was a must have. So long story longer, all was fixed, I’m back on track and bursting at the seams with a new blog to share. So here we go…

Laura just finished up a two-week run in the show CATS at the Bay City Players. I cannot speak highly enough about this production, due to the remarkable quality of the show itself, as well as the wonderful experiences that both Laura and I had during the course of this show. During the multi-month rehearsal schedule, as I’d drop Laura off at the theater, I was brought in sporadically to create scenery artwork. I also spent a lot of time sitting in the back of the theater or backstage getting to know the cast and crew. Towards the end of rehearsals, when it was still up in the air as to how the makeup for the cats themselves would be created, I offered my limited experience in stage makeup application and design. As it turned out, the show ended up using two extremely talented airbrush artists, respectfully known as The Airbrush Cowboy (known to all of us as just Cowboy) and Greg (seen in this photo, Cowboy in the hat and Greg with the beard), to apply the makeup since they’d already airbrushed color on the costumes (Dig the photos of Laura in mid-airbrush mode, mid-makeup mode and the great end result of each).














































































But I was still brought aboard to do more intricate makeup touch-ups after they applied the main blocks of color (such as on Laura's eyes, my best makeup work probably). These photos show Danielle as the cat Cassandra, whose eye makeup I did with the points going off into her temples...

















Andres as Mr. Mistoffalees, whose mouth, whiskers and eyes I created...

















...and Alyssa, whose whiskers I created.

















This proved to be an incredible experience for me, as it allowed for close working environment with the artists, actors and techies, and I made some very good friends in the process.(These are photos of Rayechel as the cat Jemima, and without her makeup at our after-show party)





























During the run of the show, I drew some colored pencil and marker caricatures of Laura and I couple of the actors from the show. These proved popular enough that a couple cast members had me draw them without their makeup when the show was through. These photos show dancers/singers Danielle and April, sans makeup, in the flesh and in the ink.


































































Being even as small a part of this show as I was made me feel incredible, like I haven’t felt since doing Christmas Story last December and in my days in CMU’s theater dept. So I’ve decided that I’m going to audition for my first show in about three years, “Duck Hunter Shoots Angel”, a play by Mitch Albom being produced at The Bay City Players. That place has really grown on me, like a second home, and to do a show there again would be such a thrill, so I’m going to take steps to hopefully make that happen.

I mentioned in my last blog how my Florida friend and puppet builder Michele had commissioned me to create artwork for her Ebay page. As a sort of barter for my services, she built a puppet of my Children’s book character, Pillow Billy. Which turned out just wonderful. Here’s a couple photos showing the result. I intend to use the second pic (and the puppet itself) as publicity for my Pillow Billy children’s book whenever the time comes.



























On the art front, I’ve had a lot of gigs and commissions in the past couple months. My latest have been pretty unique. A woman and her husband from Bullock Creek (just south of Midland) are starting a pet care business called “The Poo Patrol”, and they hired me to design the logo for their business. When they contacted me to do it, my computer was still all ganked up, but right after I drew it all out, Laura brought my system back to life, and I was able to color it in Photoshop. Here’s the end result.

















Another commission came from a client of my birth mom. The lady wanted a caricature of her friend who was turning fifty. She game me a photo for reference and made some suggestions to incorporate into the drawing. I pulled it off pretty quickly, and I’m happy with how it turned out. See for yourself.


















I’ve got a bunch more gigs coming my way in the next month or so, which is always good news. I’m currently in deep negotiations for a project I’d mentioned before. It’s all very hush hush, but I can say that my potential clients chose me above other artists for the project, and we’re currently hashing out a fair pay scheme. Once that’s figured out, I’ll probably begin creating the art. This has the potential to be the biggest project of my career, with good odds of future work and potentially a steady position with the company if this project becomes successful. So crossed fingers, knock on wood and all the hoohah. I need every bit of good luck hokum I can round up.

Next time I post, I’m hoping to have some pages from my recently completed Dead Duck origin story to showcase, if not the entire story (we’ll see if I’m feeling “saucy” enough). There will be other stuff to share as well, and lots more verbal rambling from yours truly. Until then, thanks for hanging in there with me. I appreciate your audience and friendship.

Jay

News, for lack of a better term...

This is the final version of the cover I’ve just designed for the May issue of Interlude. The third of three versions of what I was assured each time to be the final version of Interlude, I might add. Different opinions prevailed and suggested at three different points that I keep coming up with new versions. This was the final. I’ve really got no complaints, though. The money was green, I was compensated for the changes, and it looks good.

Kind of a bleak period in my art career right now. A couple things that I’d been banking on to pay off have blown up in my face. For the past year I’d labored under the delusion that Interlude Magazine would eventually bring me aboard as a staff employee, rather than using me in my current pay-per assignment freelance position. I even went so far as to hand in a resume to their editor-in-chief, who’d given me a lot of positive vibes that a staff position was imminent. Guess that’s the lesson I’ve learned from this. Never trust a vibe. More often than not, they either turn out the opposite of what you’d hoped for, or are little more than an overpriced station wagon for hip soccer moms who haven’t made the leap to a Hummer. I flat out asked the senior artist at Interlude if I really had a shot at getting hired, since Jean (the ed in chief) assured me they’d know if they were hiring by June or July. I didn’t want to get my hopes up for the next three months just to have them crushed underfoot, so I asked about it. Val (senior artist) gave it to me straight, saying Jean was leaving Interlude for good, and that the Mike the publisher hadn’t mentioned anything about hiring me on staff. So the outlook wasn’t great. But she did assure me that I’d continue to be used for my freelancing. Of course, living paycheck to paycheck was what I was hoping to escape by getting on staff. Guess it’s not in the cards.

I’d also been in contact with a guy who seemed to be trying to promote a new type of boxing glove. I found him on Craigslist.org and responded to his search for a cartoonist. Based on his suggestions (the gloves with human faces on them: a grizzled fighter-type, the sexy chick and the cool young buck), this is what I came up with.

As it turned out, what I came up with was exactly what he didn’t want. He then told me that it didn’t matter anyway, since he was scrapping the whole project. So that was a big waste of time over a stupid sounding product.

Basically, I can’t see where my career is going. I should probably be pushing Pillow Billy harder than I’ve been lately. But Christ, they really make it hard as hell to get your foot in the door. If I have to listen to one more pretentious literary rep tell me that Pillow Billy didn’t “move” them or that they don’t feel it has staying power or a timeless quality, I’m gonna shove a marker up my nose and into my brain just to end this sick charade. I just don’t know what to try next, and the feeling that time is running out for me, that this is no longer a world for cartoonists if it ever was, and how the hell I’m gonna take care of myself and more importantly Laura is just sitting on my head like a two ton gorilla with hemorrhoids.

The few bright spots in all this have been the odd commissions and gigs that have magically fallen into my lap, which is the only way these things seem to happen. The more I work towards furthering my career, the less becomes of it. But the more I just go about my daily routine the more gigs fall out of the sky.

My old college friend Dayle Pivetta is a blossoming actress in New York, and she recently commissioned me to draw a caricature of her for her resume. Here’s a photo-to-caricature comparison of the two.

That was a real blast to create. I just worry sometimes that if I run out of friends that I’ll no longer have any clients, since it seems like the people I get hired by the most are pals from the past or connections to them somehow.

I have taken a couple commissions from people I’ve met online, and that has been fortuitous. Here’s some samples of what they’ve had me create:

















































I’d also been contacted by Michele, a puppet builder who created the Jay and Laura puppets seen on my website (check it out for a full explanation of the project: http://www.jayfosgitt.com/PhotoGallery/jayLauraPuppets.html). She wanted some artwork done to help promote her Ebay page, but didn’t have a lot to spend. So we cut a deal, and I did the artwork in return for her building me a puppet of Pillow Billy. Not only could this be a good promotional tool, but it’s something I’d dreamed of having since I created the story. So it’s a win-win situation. Once I receive the puppet I’ll post some pics. In the meantime, here’s the art I created for Michele.




Laura is currently in a production of Cats at The Bay City players (check this link for info on showtimes and tickets: http://www.baycityplayers.com/pages/season.php). And while hanging around backstage during a couple of rehearsals, I was asked to contribute some artwork to the set. So if you come to the show, you can see a sign I made for T.S. Eliot’s Dog Food and Lloyd’s Junkyard (a snarky tribute to T.S. Eliot, author of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which the musical is based on, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, creator of the musical itself). I’ll try to get some photos posted if I can get to the set. And also, I may be working backstage as a makeup artist for the cats themselves, since the guy who was supposed to do it bailed, and the alternative is having the airbrush artists who painted the costumes airbrush the actors faces, which I think would be a terrible idea. So I may be involved with the less risky act of makeup application.

Lastly, I’m in post production on those greeting cards I’d mentioned awhile back, and am getting ready to send them out to Recycled Paper Greeting in the hopes of getting another gig. Still no word from Mackinac Island Press about Pillow Billy. And I just got a copy of Pillow Billy returned to me that I hadn’t even remembered mailing out. It doesn’t get much more depressing than that; being rejected by someone you’d forgot you’d propositioned.

So, such is my career as it is. I’m still paying the bills, but I’m not really where I want to be, career-wise or geographically. And sadly, the two rarely see eye to eye. But on a brighter note, Laura’s 25th birthday is coming up (May 18th. Mark your calendars and make sure to wish her a happy one!), and we’re planning a weekend trip down to Novi for the Motor City Comic Con, where I plan to get some caricatures autographed by some of the celebs in attendance. I’ll post ‘em after it happens. And I know you must all think, “Oh, real cool. He’s dragging his lady to a comic book nerd fest for HER birthday.” But it was her idea! Laura loves comics, and it’s what she wanted to do. So in that respect, having such a woman makes me luckier than I could ever aspire to.

A Hard Goodbye to Johnny Hart...

One of my childhood heroes died recently, and I don’t know how to feel about it. This isn’t because of some inability to grasp death as an abstract concept, or due to a poor foothold on my emotions. It’s because as he found his faith I lost my own, in the man and his work.

Johnny Hart was probably the second most revered cartoonist in my short list of artistic idols, right after Charles Schulz (Jim Henson is in a whole other category of worship).
As a kid, I’d be hunkered down on my grandma’s living room floor, trying and surprisingly succeeding to replicate Hart’s unique cartooning style, using Sunday comics and an old battered bargain basement collection of Hart’s early B.C. strips as reference. A slightly newer collection (newer for 1981, at least) of Hart’s Wizard of Id comics only strengthened my resolve to canonize the cartoonist. Ironically, the term canonize, to consider or treat as sacrosanct or holy, possesses such definition as to explain my decent from Hart appreciation as I grew older and came to distance myself from the man as did he from his readers.

The Hart I had known from my childhood was a brash and bawdy man of bar room burlesque, described to me through the previously mentioned dog-eared (and seemingly chewed) collection of B.C. strips. In those early days of Hart’s career, he showed us that the caveman invented the raunchy joke right alongside the wheel and fire.

But in 1977, as has been boastfully reprinted in countless religious publications, Hart found god.

So as to sidestep any misunderstanding, I stress that finding god isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Schulz had known god all his life, even so far as to having been a street corner evangelist in St. Paul prior to finding his cartoon calling. Schulz never lost touch with his religion prior to his comic strip success, and managed to subtly incorporate it into his cartooning without sacrificing his characters, content, or humor. The man who revered god in one Christmas special was equally adept at creating his own holiday icon in the Pagan-rooted celebration of Halloween.

Hart, however, proved incapable of such balance. Shedding his “sinful” past and offering up his work as a religious sacrifice, B.C. became a heavy-handed, pulpit-pounding Christian eulogy to a once genuinely funny comic strip. Lines were crossed that I couldn’t accept, and my readership, like that of countless others I’d read, was lost to Hart indefinitely.

In recent years, turning 30 brought forth the nostalgia of pre-1977 Hart for me. And though that weather-beaten tome of B.C. strips was as extinct as the characters within, the memories were still there, strengthened by a recent acquisition of vintage Arby’s collectible B.C. glasses. Soon I found myself going back to Hart, avoiding his content but paying full attention to his artistic style, as fresh and fun as the day he began the strip in 1959.

Of course, by the time this wave of nostalgia passed over me, Johnny Hart, age 76, passed away from me, dying, as all us cartoonists truly dream of though few but Charles Schulz have managed, at his faithful drawing board. In an equally all-too-appropriate ending, Hart died the day before Easter, wanting perhaps to touch base with the Christian significance without stepping on the toes of the Man himself.

Now the nostalgia falls cold upon me, like revisiting your old family home to find that it’s no longer yours, and knowing you can never truly return. Did I do Hart a disservice by abandoning he and his work rather than adapting myself to their evolution (or more appropriately, creationism)? And what does it say about me that I idolized a womanizing, hard living and harder playing cartoonist rather than the pious creator who preached sermons though his strips? These questions and more fill the void that is left by the passing of Johnny Hart, and in the end, the answer to it all is suddenly clear.

Johnny Hart was a cartoonist who chose his own path, and regardless of what anyone else thought of his decisions and creative product, produced work of the most personal nature to the best of his ability, attempting to satisfy and unwilling to justify to no one but himself, save for perhaps god. I couldn’t see that when I was younger. But I can see it now. And for that strength of conviction, and for a level of talent and dedication that never faltered, even to his dying day, the man is again worthy of my respect and admiration.

I just wish he were still around so that I could tell him.