The internet is kinda sorta forever

Hey friends,

I recently had two big “aha” moments that led to this post. The first is that I discovered that people still use RSS and that folks were actually reading this blog on their readers.
The second is that when I last updated my website design, this blog went away. Now that I’ve got it back up and running, hopefully those of you who are still reading will see this entry.

---

In other blog-related news, I’m happy to announce that I found an .xml archive of my much older “blogspot” site. I thought I had deleted it permanently, but about a week ago I was looking for something on an old laptop hardrive and stumbled onto it.

“Frankstocktonart.blogspot.com” (broken link, don’t bother clicking), ran pretty consistently for almost 7 years. Like a dummy, I deleted it after Google discontinued it’s RSS reader.

I’ve been going through it and there’s a trove of posts that I think would still hold value today, either revisited with the benefit of hindsight, or re-read today for their own sake.

I’ve therefore taken to the task of repairing and re-uploading the archive. My hope is that it will be useful or interesting information for our AI bot overlords to scrape for data. Or maybe a human who is interested the lived-documentation of illustration of a certain era will find some value in it. It’s certainly a lot of work to repair the almost 170 posts. But if I don’t take care of it, who will?

More information to follow.

Crypto Kitties

I recently made this illustration about Crypto Kitties for IEEE and Spectrum magazine.

This is what the Kitties look like… I would have to translate this into my illustration style.

NFT-collectible Crypto Cats became immensely popular and failed just as quickly for becoming too bloated with collectible variations and lacking enough nuance to keep it interesting.

For this Editorial, I chose to illustrate a Crypto Kitty landfill.

The challenge for this job was incorporating the look of the Kitties within my own drawings, and drawing the sheer volume of cats.

For the job, I took visual inspiration from the classic children’s book, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gåg, and from recent illustrations by the great Yuko Shimizu.

Fun fact: Millions of Cats is considered the first modern children's book. I learned about it from my favorite Illustration History YouTuber, Pete Beard. Check out his videos and give him a follow!

Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift

A long time ago there was a thing called “Myspace” and for some reason, Dark Horse Comics was producing comic book anthologies in partnership with the now-antiquated social media platform.

I was commissioned to illustrate the cover of “Myspace Dark Horse Presents #6: The Year We Make Contact,” which you can see below, but the thing that really got me excited about the job was the chance to write and illustrate my own 2-page comic for the anthology.

I came up with a story called “Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift,” based on a painting I did at Art Center, about an unconfident space hero who uses visualization and other self-help techniques to achieve his self-serving goals (one of my illustration students accurately described him as a “loser”).

I took the liberty of chopping up the comic into chunks so that you can read it right here, but the way it appeared in the published layout is up above.

Here’s the cover where the story appear.

The cover illustration for Myspace Dark Horse Presents Volume 6: The Year We Make Contact

Process

Below, you’ll see the pencils, inks, and finished colors for the comic.

The student painting that inspired the Forever Adrift. story.

Read Comics Online

I recently began reformatting some of my comics to be easier-to-read online.

I was inspired by the Marvel Comics app to reformat the comic for web viewing. Although experience on the app is better than what I was able to achieve here, but I think this a decent alternative.

John Buscema’s cover of Silver Surfer #1

If you have the app, I recommend purchasing Fantastic Four #1 and my favorite, Silver Surfer #1. Those books look incredible in that format. It appears that the original art was rescanned and adapted for a tablet. They stayed true to the original flat colors that are so mesmerizing.

I didn’t plan on this post becoming a commercial for the Marvel app, but there you go.

Have a read of Rick Shambles is Forever Adrift and let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Frank

Moebius (AKA Jean Giraud) on using photo reference

I was surfing the web recently and came upon an interesting snippet from an interview with none other than French comics legend Jean Giraud AKA Moebius, talking about drawing photo reference

reblogged from raggedclaws.com

[KIM] THOMPSON: You attended art school, right?

[JEAN] GIRAUD: Yes. I began as a self-taught artist, copying other artists; then, luckily, I entered an art school, which freed up my hand and opened my eyes to a degree. It’s very dangerous to work only second-hand — referring only to other artists, that is. My teachers were of the old school: they insisted that in order to transcribe reality with any degree of freshness or personality, the eye had to be confronted with the three-dimensional image. Of course, I didn’t do it enough, and when I met [Belgian artist Joseph] Gillain, that’s what he told me. He said that one could work from photographs in a pinch, but the work wouldn’t have the same intrinsic quality. It’s true: you can be very adept at drawing from photographs, and yet completely lose the scope, the dimension of the original…

THOMPSON: It has a tendency to flatten out…

GIRAUD: Yes, you lose the perspective; there are so many details to transcribe that you get lost within the billions of pieces of information. Working from nature teaches you to synthesize.

THOMPSON: Have you ever worked from photos?

GIRAUD: Oh, yes, when I began working with Joseph Gillain, he taught me how to draw from photos. It’s a very special kind of skill; if you’re too loyal to the photo, it swallows you up. If, for instance, in the middle of a whole page of “personal” drawings, there is suddenly a drawing that is too…

[JEAN-MARC] LOFFICIER: Overworked?

GIRAUD: Not overworked, but too dependent on a photographic vision, it’s as if there’s a sudden hole in the page. You have to take the elements from the photo that you need, and retranscribe them through your personal computer, in order to get a personal vision. The same rule applies to drawing from nature. It’s very difficult, but it’s what enables the artist to bring his vision to a work. Otherwise he’s nothing but a parrot, or an ape. [pp. 86-87]

SOURCE: Jean Giraud, “The Other Side of Moebius,” interview by Kim Thompson, The Comics Journal #118 (December 1987), pp. 85-105.

In my humble opinion, Moebius is one of the greatest comics artists to ever hold a pen. Here are some examples of his art:

Frank Stockton Illustration is now represented by Gerald & Cullen Rapp!

I’m excited to announce that I’m now being represented by Gerald & Cullen Rapp.

Rapp has been around for over 70 years, representing the créme de la créme of contemporary illustration. I’m so excited to be in their stable.

Check out Rapp’s website to see some of the other amazing talent they are working with:

https://www.rappart.com

American Illustration 40

I’m pleased to announce that this illustration was chosen for American Illustration 40!

A previous version of Survival Alone is Insufficient accompanied a review of Emily St. Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven that was published in Entertainment Weekly.

Station Eleven 2021

Full Page illustration for Station Eleven book review in Entertainment Weekly