Ahsoka and Aayla - Illustrated by Paul Taylor

I love illustration.

Whether it be comic books, comic strips, commercial design or art for art’s sake, I have been in love with illustration since I was a little kid. For a very long time, I thought I was going to draw comic books for a living. That didn’t work out for a variety of reasons (lack of talent and lack of discipline among them), but it hasn’t stopped me from following the work of other, better artists than me since the first time I laid my hands on a copy of Uncanny X-Men #240 in June of 1989, when I was twelve years old.

That issue featured pencil work by Marc Silvestri, who at the time was one of the top artists in comics and knew how to draw bad-ass guys and sexy women. Add that to the demons-taking-over-Manhattan storyline, and twelve year-old me was hooked. I collected print comics for the next seven years, and I still follow many online. Wapsi Square by Paul Taylor is one of those comics, and I’ve decided to feature him for the inaugural edition of what I hope will be a repeating feature: the artist spotlight.

The first Wapsi Square comic

Paul’s been writing and drawing Wapsi Square since 2001 (September, in fact), so he’s nine years in and counting. I’ve been following the comic since very early in 2002. I own several of his print books, and I also own a signed original — “Triple Shots” — that I won in an eBay auction and had professionally framed. Here’s a pic:

Hung on my office wall

I’ve been meaning to start collecting comic art for several years now, and I’m excited to finally have done it. I really enjoy Paul’s work. He has a great, organic style which he complements with nice gray-scale color and texture work in Photoshop. Plus he draws cute girls in all shapes and sizes. Tall, short, muscular, scrawny, heavy, large-breasted, flat-chested … Paul is pretty intent on making it clear to his readers that there’s no such thing as “the perfect shape” and that women are beautiful in all their myriad forms. I appreciate that, as much as I appreciate the obvious evolution and improvement in his line-work and ink weighting over the years.

Wapsi Square has taken a turn for the dark in the past few years, which I enjoy. While any individual comic might be nearly incomprehensible to a new reader, those of us who’ve been following along for most of the past decade have gotten very familiar with the characters and are always excited to see what happens next. There’s also plenty of humor interspersed in with the more serious stuff, which keeps the comic balanced. My only complaint is that he seems to have forgotten some of the more minor characters (we haven’t seen Owen and Lakshmi in years!), but when you’re dealing with an epic, save-the-world storyline, I suppose that happens.

Wapsi Square is updated five days a week, like clockwork. I think Paul’s missed about three weeks of comics in the past nine years, and in those cases he’s gotten guests to fill in with strips during his absence. He’s professional, talented, and by all indications a hell of a guy. You should check out his work.

Dart Publishing

The personal business project that I moved here to work on is coming along — I’m working on a business plan, which is just about my least favorite thing in the world to do, but I think it’s a good exercise for me. Not only does it force me to think about the long-term goals of the company, but it also forces me to power through something I don’t love doing … which I’ll probably have to do a lot of if we ever get the company off the ground.

The Blood That Bonds eBook

Coming along! A lot of the art is finalized, and I’m beginning a project to also turn it into an audio book (read by yours truly). Just bought a really nice USB microphone for that exact purpose. I’m hoping to launch the site in mid-September. Here’s a sample pic to whet your appetite a bit!

The Fatass Project

Not coming along as rapidly as I’d like, but it is coming along. Down to 208, from a start of 213.5. Last couple of weeks have seen consistent loss tho, so it seems like I’ve reached a point where I’m paying enough attention to what I’m eating. Now to see if I can motivate myself to accelerate that with a gym membership.

Project Asimov

Oh, I don’t know … do you think this counts as “outrageous” yet?

The sideburns are long enough that I can now twist them into three spikes (on each side) using hair goop … tho I haven’t actually left the house looking like that. Maybe if I still have them at Halloween.

On a highly related note, I don’t mind the sideburns at all but I utterly despise the long hair. I cannot wait to shave 90% of it off at the end of September. Might keep the chops tho.

On a semi-related note, be prepared for pictures from the New York State Fair’s demolition derby, coming after labor day weekend. I’m going to dress up like a hick, drink cheap beer, and watch cars crash into each other. Should be ridiculous and awesome.

The key now is to find an illustrator who I love, and who I can actually afford to pay. Who knows … maybe I’ll sell a book or two and be able to accomplish that sometime in the near future.

I hope those of you who are reading the story are enjoying it. It’s one of my favorites, for sure — less personal than Voices (which was an adaptation of one of the oldest stories I’ve written), but I came to like it a lot.

I’m working on a new tutorial – it seems like many of the visitors to this page are coming for that type of contet, so hopefully I’ll have some more for y’all soon!

I think I’m probably going to post Voices all at once, rather than in chapters the way I’m doing with Seph. It’ll make life easier for one and all. Course, it’ll mean I have to come up with actual original content for my news items instead of just alerting people to what I’ve been posting … but maybe that’s for the best!

We continue in this chapter with the art that I’m at least vaguely happy with. Sometimes people’s hair even looks like hair! Also, page 40′s art is pretty crazy. We get back to some seriously craptacular art in Chapter 7, but I had to get back into the swing of things after ending up in the hospital for … I think four days. I forget. It was a while ago.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Enjoy!

The other thing significant about Chapter 5 is that you can actually see the art improve — proof positive that even if you’re a mediocre illustrator at best (which I am), practice and repetition absolutely, unquestionably have an effect on your work. This is pretty much true when it comes to any artistic endeavour, be it illustration, writing, playing the guitar, making movies … doesn’t really matter.

I’ll probably never be happy with my illustration work (in that, it has a lot in common with my guitar playing, my drumming, and quite possibly my photography!) but it’s still fun to push yourself, and to improve.

Anyway … people are reading this story, which blows my mind. It’s getting some traffic every day. Dunno who you are, but I hope you’re enjoying it!

Got some work done on a novel, today, as well. It’s a first draft, but I’m almost done with it and I’m going to focus on getting it wrapped up this month. I’ve got some interesting stuff going on, on the fiction front, so hopefully I’ll more news about all that soon!

Sorry for the quiet this week – my schedule’s been bizarre. People are in town, so lots of late nights.

My messenger bag and associated contents have not turned up at any of the NYPD’s Taxi-Lost-n-Found Drop-Off Locations … so it may be a bit before I post any new photographs. Grrr.

Someday, I am going to pay someone to re-draw this series, whether or not I ever redraft it.

Check it out on the writing page.

As a result, Chapter 1 (the first six pages) of Persephone’s Fall has been added back to the site. I’ll be adding the rest of the chapters over the next few days. You can head on over to the Writing Page or directly to the Persephone’s Fall Index if you want to check it out.