Artist Signatures: Jeff Krell

As promised here follows a series of posts about artist signatures and better yet, original art that I collected at the 2011 Emerald City Comicon last March. I'm starting with Jeff Krell, who's work I've read ever since I came out. I first discovered his funny Jayson comic stories in Gay Comix, back in the mid-Eighties. He continued publishing in the Meatmen anthologies in the Nineties. Later Jeff collected the stories together and re-published them through Ignite! Entertainment the publishing company he started to publish his translations of German cartoonist Ralf König's works. He has continued to write new Jayson stories and publish them in their own publications.

When creating my comicbook, Loren and Sylvia, I took a lot of inspiration from Jeff's simple line work. He manages to present just enough information to allow the eye to skim over the page without too much interruption, which makes for a fun and easy read. He also is inventive with his backgrounds which are often similar for whole sequences, but manage to maintain the continuity between panels.

Here we can see Arena, Jayson and Robin, the three main characters of Jayson, enjoying an evening of television watching.  Hot in Cleveland is a new property offered on the TV Land cable network, which usually features reruns of classic television comedies. It stars Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Levees, and Wendie Malick and Jeff is a big fan of these actresses and the show.

Artist Signatures: Roberta Gregory

I've been a fan of Roberta Gregory's since I encountered her groundbreaking, Dynamite Damsels. Roberta has written a little about the creation of her first comic book at PrismComics.org and she includes a link to the Queer Zine Archive Project where you can currently download and read yourself. This book set the tone of all my comic book reading since I entered collage, which is to say I was reading primarily underground and independent authors and works relating to sexual politic and Gay/Lesbian lives. Which is not to say there was a lot to read, but thankfully by the mid-Nineteen Eighties we did have the Gay Comix anthology which lead to other things being published by progressive and innovative independent publishers.

I met Roberta in the early Ninties in Seattle at an art show featuring cartoonists held by The Center on Contemporary Art Seattle when it was down on First Avenue. She drew this sheep in my sketchbook and signed it right after the cartoonist's panel where the Bros. Hernandez and other artists discussed their works. Later I got a job in the Fantagraphics circulation department for a couple of years when she was working in their art department. She was publishing her Naughty Bits comic through Fantagraphics which I collected and thoroughly enjoyed.

This post is something of a departure from posting my own artwork, but I've recently acquired several more pages of original artwork with artist's signatures at the 2011 Emerald City Comicon, so I will continue with those for the next few posts.

Heads

I often sketch in coffeehouses, at least I did when I frequented them often.  The denizens of the coffeehouses then often become the subject of what I draw. I'm rarely a quick enough draw to capture them accurately. I don't know what was different on this day, but I had a ballpoint and the urge to capture haircuts and headgear. Then I began to doodle inspired by a face I saw in a magazine made up of letters. I didn't have a clear idea of what word I was drawing, so I guess it is just shapes inspired by facial features. You sometimes come up with the most amazing ideas when in coffeehouses.