Devil of a Time!

Last week the incredibly talented Mr. Michael Wiggam sent me three more colored Guy a Day drawings! I love what he did with these, as I've loved all the pics. The bottom night scene is particularly beautiful. Thanks, Michael!
This past weekend was the Second Annual Toronto Burlesque Festival! After missing it last year I was determined to see as much of the event as possible this year! And I'm glad as heck that I did! I saw so many fantastic performances that I've been drawing burlesque ladies all weekend. Recently men have started to perform burlesque...called "Boylesque", they've been hitting the stage with the gals! The highlight of my weekend (besides getting to see the delicious Coco Framboise perform live) was seeing the amazing HOT TODDY, not once but TWICE!! He is astounding! Words can't do justice to his act, you've got to see it for yourself. It's no wonder he won Best Boylesque at the Burlesque Hall of Fame 2009 awards in Las Vegas this year.

I saw him first in his Devil act, the end result of which you see here. Two nights later he blew me away again in a pajama and pillow routine alongside Toronto's own Boylesque troupe. The boys were great, but Hot Toddy was clearly the star of the show!

More Hot Toddy drawings are in the works!

best,
j.

Ice Cream!

Ah, Summer! A time for ice cream, days at the beach, nights on a friendly restaurant patio, guys in shorts, beach volleyball, and on and on and on...

Unfortunately Toronto is currently under the crushing grip of a city-wide garbage strike. It's not so horrible in the downtown core but the parks that are being used as waste storage facilities are tragically overfilling! I keep thinking of books like "Blindness" and "Day of the Triffids" where the accumulation of garbage (and corpses) bring on the rat infestation and terrible diseases. Of course, there are worse places to live...so I'll try to focus on my blessings...like living in a neighbourhood with lots of men in shorts and friendly restaurant patios.

j.

Bloody Beefcake!

This month, July 22nd to be precise, the adaptation of Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) first Parker novel "The Hunter" is released in better bookstores and comic book shops! It's drawn and adapted by my buddy and superstar artist Darwyn Cooke! Over on his "Almost Darwyn Cooke" blog (click his name) blog supervisor Cal is running a cool draw Parker contest. This is my entry!

The guy's a pretty ruthless character, from what I'm told. The books have been adapted a few times in film...I cribbed this list from The Violent World of Parker website:

* Made in U.S.A. (based on The Jugger)
* Point Blank (based on The Hunter)
* Mise à Sac [Pillaged] (based on The Score)
* The Split (based on The Seventh)
* The Outfit (based on The Outfit)
* Slayground (based on Slayground)
* Payback (based on The Hunter)

Check out the site for reviews of the films. Darwyn's done interviews all over the net about the book and his favourite screen versions (see above blog link). I'm pretty darned sure that the Lee Marvin Point Blank is considered by Cooke as one of the better movies based on Westlake/Stark's work! I tried for some of Marvin's meatiness in my own drawing...but no one beats Darwyn for drawing tough guys! From Slam Bradley, to Stark (a character in SELENA'S BIG SCORE, who looks more than a little like Lee Marvin) to Flagg and many of the old-school superheroes in The NEW FRONTIER Cooke draws men with weathered faces and hands like meat-mitts!

j.

From Flesh to Photoshop!

Since the last update, right after Pride, I've been doing a lot of sketching from the photos I took of hot Pride men! I thought it'd be more of a challenge to make each drawing an illustration rather than just a sketch of a guy in basically the same pose as my photo. So I'm playing around with cartooning the guys, or putting them in fabricated scenarios. At this point I'm not even sure if the guy in the chair is based on anyone in particular! I suppose loosely he's based on a few different guys I saw.

I'm well into collecting my drawings together for the sketchbook. I'll keep you all posted on it's progress and give some sneak peaks of things as I work up cover ideas and themes. Already I find that I've done quite a few more leather drawings than I ever thought! Is it because leather outfits are superheroic in design? Is it my love of He-Man expressing itself as leather harnesses?

best,
j.