In support of “Heroes & Villains: The Comic Book Art of Alex Ross” now on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, the museum has recently released this video with a tremendous interview and biography of Alex Ross at his own studio.

This Alex Ross Art Exhibition is on view at Norman Rockwell Museum from November 5th, 2012 through February 24th, 2013. Video produced by Jeremy Clowe for Norman Rockwell Museum. Exhibition organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

At just three years of age, Ross was drawing TV commercials from memory. By the age of 13 he was scripting and drawing original comic books. Ten years later, Ross was hired by Marvel Comics to illustrate Marvel’s central characters in the comic book event, “Marvels” (1994). His impact on the comic book industry became so powerful that his hugely successful comic book series, “Kingdom Come” (1996), marks the close of the “Dark Age” of comic books, in which pessimism, violence, and gritty stories ruled, into the birth of the “Modern Age” of optimism and strong superheroes. Ross would go on to win the Comic Buyer’s Guide Award for Favorite Painter so many times the award was retired.

Here’s a quick post to share some of the process that goes into making a DC Comics Graphic Novel. As an example we’re using BATMAN: DEATH BY DESIGN, which was written by Chip Kidd and beautifully drawn by UK Comic Book Artist Dave Taylor. This example mainly focuses on the Joker!

OK, the graphics are being shown in order and they should explain their self pretty good. Here, we get to see how the scripted page starts out as a simple layout and then it grows into a final page.

The first page shows the script sketched out by Chip Kidd and it’s also sort of mapped out with basic dialogue. By the way, this was done on Quark! Then, we get to see Dave Taylor’s blue-line ( non-photograph able ) artwork. This gets approved and then he does his light pencil work in black. Then the next image shows a lot of the deep blacks that are added on top & the art is cleaned up a little bit. OK, this is now scanned into a computer and some digital coloring is added. The last photo is the finished work sort of as it appeared in the book. Pretty cool, huh?!

Here’s quick post to share some pretty eye candy! Shown here is a nice collection of Chris Ware’s artwork that has appeared on the covers to a few issues of THE NEW YORKER Magazine, enjoy.

This week please be sure to pick-up the recent issue of The New Yorker Magazine ( Jan 7, 2013 ). For two reasons: 1. It’s an insanely great publication, and 2. Our Friend, the Artist, Chris Ware did the cover art and his artwork, as always, is totally amazing! The “message” of the cover was inspired by the recent Newtown Shooting Tragedy. Plus, it also responds to a previous cover that he did that had a “Back To School” theme and now, the recent event changed his feeling on that. OK, am I making sense here? Sorry, actually Chris Ware wrote a very excellent article explaining everything and how he came about the idea for the new cover and it’s over at the New Yorker website ( link down below).

You can read Chris Ware’s article by visiting this link, THE NEW YORKER.

Oh yeah, here’s an image of his previous cover we mentioned:

Here’s a quick post to share some amazing artwork we came across the other day. This is a recent drawing of Batman and The Joker done by the ultra-talented DAVE TAYLOR. He did this art for a Fan at a recent Comic Book Convention. Now, for the few people who don’t know, Dave was the official Artist for Chip Kidd’s recent Graphic Novel (DC Comics) titled, “Batman: Death By Design”. The art shown here is slightly different than the version seen in that book but it is still a lot of fun. To view more of Taylor’s stuff just CLICK HERE!