Sensational Second Issue!

So, second post. Where to begin?

Well, as I said in my previous post, I've been posting the art I like and recreate (some people say copy) on various social media platforms for years. So I suppose I should show some of the old drawings I have completed as an introduction to the sort of thing I will be putting on this blog.

A quick explanation of when and how I drew these before my thoughts on the artist who envisioned and created them. So, the pictures in this post were a combination of traditional and computerised techniques. That is to say, I copied the artist's original with pen/pencil and paper, took a photograph of my version and uploaded it to my laptop, then coloured and completed it using various drawing software. In these instances I used MS Paint to colour(1) and GIMP later to add the canvas effects and blurring(2).

 

Jeffrey Catherine Jones

 A person whose art I adore, Jeffrey Jones had a dual career as a comic artist/book cover artist in the late 60's to early 80's. He primarily worked as an underground comic artist with the exception of a few DC covers and was seen as the best book illustrator after the mighty Frank Frazetta(3). In the mid-70's he was one of the four artists who formed the art group named The Studio, the others being his lifelong friend Michael Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Bernie Wrightson. 

During his time as a member of The Studio and following its dissolution in 1979 Jones garnered critical acclaim for his art, from both comic and high art circles. During his later years, he experienced various setbacks and problems which I will not go into here. During this period of time, Jones began hormone replacement therapy, changed his name to Jeffrey Catherine Jones and became legally recognised as female.

She returned to drawing in the mid 2000's, expanding her fanbase and following as a cult artist. Sadly, she passed away on May 19th 2011 as a result of emphysema and bronchitis. She was 67 years old.

 

About the pictures.

 

I was introduced and became familiar with her work about seven years ago. I was collecting the work of Barry Windsor-Smith(4) and heard of the Studio while trawling through blogs (some still with us, some no more). The first piece I saw of hers was the Second Book of Robert E. Howard cover and from there I set out to find as much of her work as I could. This led me to realise that the artwork of Catherine Jones was not well-represented or easily available online free or to buy. There were some prints; Flame Winds/ Son of the Bear God/ The Undying Wizard and the aforementioned Robert E. Howard series. Yet mostly the only art of hers I could find online were scans of the original books, complete with titles and text. I was not happy about this and began recreating the covers solely for myself, before showing them on forums in a small attempt to popularise her work. These are the first four I recreated and I have arranged them in the order of completion (if I remember correctly), there are more I've not included as I'm saving those for another post although I hope you like these.

If you do like them, be sure to find the originals, for as good or as bad as my recreations may be they are nothing compared to the work of Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

The Second Book of Robert E. Howard (1976).

Sword of the Gael (1976).

Wolfling (1969).

Montage/combination of "Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman" and "Sorcerer's Amulet" (1968).

Footnote time again

(1) which is why the pictures are so large, due to the fact MS Paint looked terrible if used at a small size.

(2) After years of resistance, this year I have finally been forced to submit to using the mighty Photoshop. GIMP is good though (and free), and I used it in combination with MS Paint on everything I created for five years or so.

(3) The debate/argument over which artist (Frazetta or Jones) is best will be dealt with at a future date.

(4) My love of Barry Windsor Smith knows no bounds.