Son of Dane Whitman, The Black Knight and Titania
A very Pull Pile Holiday card for my friends at the Pull Pile Podcast
Batman Beyond with a cape.
Warren Worthington III as a carny
Category Archives: Art
Jam Drawings, and other Drawings.
Filed under alternate universe, Art, Comics, Entertainment, photoshop, pop culture
A few Drawings.
Work has slowed my pace, here are a few Redesigns for Art Jams on CBR. The first is Quentin Quire, Kid Omega, in the trappings of a Greek/Roman god-king.
The following is the offspring of two Avengers. One being Thunder Strike, a guy who stood in for Thor for a while. The other is a chick named Magdalene, who was pretty much a Marvel analogue for Big Barda, from Kirby’s Fourth World. 
Filed under alternate universe, Art, Comics, Entertainment, fiction, graphics, pop culture
Thug-o-Nomics: Tats
Getting back on the wagon. Beeboy back in effect. Starting with Thug-o-Nomics, the delusional gangsta rapper that gets caught up in his own hype.
The Main Ingredient
So, life has been moving at light years per second, lots of things going on around me concerning my family and just dog tired from working one of those necessary jobs. Not necessary like, the world depends on the nature of my work, but like, I guess I’ll take this shitty job because the economy is pretty much the second worse in America’s recorded history. That’s why it’s been over a month between posts, inspiration hasn’t exactly been lacking, but motivation…and energy haven’t been close companions. No new art or writing has been created by these hands, but an old verse that will be lost to the ages because my group recorded it before we has ready access to a CD duplicator and had to rely on tape decks, DATs and an 8 channel digital recorder (maybe even a zip drive), this verse popped into my head at random. You can figure it’s kind of old based on the technology I mentioned, but I feel like I was spitting darts of pure fire. The verse is from a song I recorded with JMS Injah(aka Blu Jemz of the Hardy Boys) in the early 2000s. it was titled the Main Ingredient.
Here goes my verse, that I somehow remember even having not heard it for about 10 years:
The Main Ingredient.
Me on the Mic again, When I spit it’s liquid nitrogen
Moving like the wind, lighter than air, walk on hydrogen
Travel on clouds of nimbus, battle on Mt. Olympus
Shift the orbit, don’t believe me count the inches
That’s how powerful my strength is
Lyrics flood your senses like a tempest
Been resting in the trenches
Knowledge cleanses, flush out the bad like a menses
A week of torture – the speech enforcer – you seek the author
I pen the scholarship anonymous, rip through realms of consciousness
Marx up your Lenin like a Communist
Set the stage for where the drama is with three accomplices
Recite ancient mantras from the monoliths of Stonehenge
Bring the apocalypse, reach the heavens from an obelisk
Raise your hands if you’re sure, pump your fists if your’re positive!!!
Filed under Art, Entertainment, music
Prayer
Another A.B. Do Well Gem, from the “album” A.B. Conversations,” now up on soundcloud.
Lyrics
Verse 1
In the name of the Beneficent, the Most Merciful
Make my voice an instrument to flow surgical,
Gotta make it personal – It’s just introspection,
God I’m asking you to give me some direction
Make the path I walk Straight, already mastered the crooked
Crooklyn Masters wrote the booklet on the hustle
Sons Know how to Push It
Church on every block ’cause we gotta praise here
Can’t have seeds in New York, Hell’s the only we raise here
BX to Bed-Stuy Counting down the final days here
So we can stay up to Speed, New Yorkers, Just a tougher breed
Airs polluted, gotta huff and wheeze just to breathe
Wonder why we spit the sickness, and dabble in illicit business
From bootlegs to blow to get the dough
Get my flicks from the corner box office, not HBO
Kids selling Buddha heads oregano
Take you off the scent throw in stems
Nothings ever gonna change, yo, here we go again….
Verse 2
Cold nights got me dressing in layers, stressing the prayer
‘Cause they cutting off the heat
Gotta pay the light bill earn just enough to eat
Trying to Stay thankful.
Keep my name on the tongues of Angels
Keep my Wax on the tables.
Ask the most high a favor
Keep me out that Fire, Like the Ohio Players
Need stay warm so I bundle up
Surface from the underground railroad tunnel up
Out to win not to be the runner up
– For honorable mention
And let these devils embezzle my 401 pension
And get off scott free, Mr. Miracle, Baqi.
Leave this Apokolypse, the Darkseid of Metropolis
Trying to move up to the East Side
They target apartments in the sky
Got folks afraid to cry while other people pray to die,
It don’t rain no more what we see is mother nature cry
Verse 3
I’m seeking richness and forgiveness
Pray for Paradise, while I live and in the after-life
Keep me out the hellfire’s Fahrenheit or Celsius
don’t need to be the wealthiest, but comfortable
when I’m old I need my brain to be functional
Gotta guide the youth
Too many manipulate and hide the truth
Like the Queen in Snow White with poison inside the fruit
and they provide the fruit
I’m out to grow mine organic
Know my relationship is give and take with the planet
When my people bury me I want to die because I’m elderly
or pass in glory holding weaponry, leave a legacy
I got a plan, but God knows what’s best for me
In the end, who else I really got to question me?
I’m saying, I’m getting on his good side now,
Because too many people in the hood die foul,
Said I’m getting on his good side now
Because too many people in the hood die foul.
Verse 4
To all the non-believers, seeking heat beyond a fever
There’s a place for you, it’s not safe, I’ll pray for you.
Gotta READ the Bible’s lengths
Not HEAR about it in revival tents
The true and authentic word, is bond
Wouldn’t keep my people in bondage
Won’t deny what my people accomplished
Look where civilization is cradled at
The essence of life who gave you that
Hold your breath he’ll take it back
I breathe, for now that’s the proof I need
If I’m looking for the truth I’ll read
The Qur’an in Arabic, ties in to the Celestine Manuscript
The Old Testaments words are therapists
Any faith can breed a terroist
If they don’t follow the text or form various sects, they go Dave Coresh
Take a leap of faith or Baby Steps
I’ll follow God’s words, you can take the rest
Filed under Art, Entertainment, life, music, Poetry, Spoken Word
Project CBRunway Round 4: Breakfast Club
This is from Round 4 of Comic Book Resources Project CBRunway. The theme for the week was John Hughes’ classic teen film from the 80s,”The Breakfast Club.”
We had to make the archetypical characters, the Brain, The Princess, The Basket-case, the Jock and the Criminal, into Super Heros. After selecting a number between one and five I was assigned the Jock, Andrew Clark, played by Emilio Estevez. The character he played was an athlete on the wrestling team in detention because he duct taped some poor saps butt cheeks together.
He looks capable of juvenile evil.
So my approach was to give him the basic super hero strongman look and add a few touches from the movie. He has typical wrestling gear, a mask and his varsity jacket from the film. Here’s the inked drawing.
And the final colored image.
As the Gym Class Hero, Andrew Clark dons his varsity jacket and wrestling uniform to take down the bullies and creeps at Shermer High School redeeming himself for having once been a locker room bully. He asked the “Brain” to soak his costume in “chemical X” to make them more durable, the treads on his wrestling boots are reenforced with a metallic rubber to help him keep his ground and his mask is worn under his headgear, because it looks a little less silly that way. His belt is a novelty belt he got on line, a replica of the championship belt from his favorite pro wrestling company and his fingerless gloves are padded to protect his knuckles, and not leave bruises on wrongdoers.
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment, fiction, hollywood, pop culture
Project CBRunway 7: Round 2 – Gender Bender
It’s been a while between posts, life crept up on me and spun me around for a loop. But I think I can manage this once a week again. Anyway here’s a treat. A two for one shot in the Comic Book Resources, Project CBRunway competition. First up, CBRunway : Round 2 – Gender Bender. In this round I had to swap power sets for two comic book characters, the challenge being the characters are of different genders. One has to be male, the other female. I went with Doctor Doom and Black Canary. It made sense in my head, but the end result wasn’t a voter favorite. Such is life.
The trick was to have the characters switch power sets and costumed identities yet retain the essence of who they are. With Black Canary, I really liked her ponytail look in Birds of Prey. For some reason it made me think of a dominatrix. So I went with that, since she’s not a doctor of any kind. I looked into fetish gear and decided a mask made of leather straps said, “ooh, kinky.” Changed the color scheme of her costume to resemble Doom’s signature look and added some thigh high boots with leather straps and came up with this.
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Dinah Lance as Dominatrix Doom
- For Doom I had to think what it would mean for Him to have a sonic scream. So I modified his mask so his mouth looked like a speaker that would amplify
- the scream to Black Bolt levels. Well, close to it. Doom needs his hood, so I kept that modified the color scheme of his tunic to make him a Wiz Khalifa fan. (ie. Black and Yellow) I kept his armor because I Imagine like his mask it’s seared onto his flesh. I could be wrong, though.
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Victor Von Doom as Black Canary
- For those of you who hate it and say it’s not very “Doom” like, let’s just say he’s a Doombot.
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment
Project CBRunway 7: Round 1- The Purple Haze
I may have mentioned that I am a member of the forums on Comic Book Resources. There’s an annual Super Hero design/redesign competition on the Artist and Writer Showcase section of the forums called Project CBRunway and this is the 7th “season.” I’ve participated in the competition a few times and it’s something I look forward to every year. This year hopeful participants had to submit basic costume designs for a hero and villain based on ourselves using a basic template model sheet. I went with the basic themes of positivity and negativity because these are drives and attitudes we all share, but when the mood shifts too far in one direction, you aren’t behaving like your normal self. First I got to work on the positive aspects using the mathematical symbol for plus(+) as an insignia and using bright colors, baby blue, white and yellow to show a positive attitude. And I used the minus(-) sign for the villain and inverted the colors on the computer to come up with that color scheme. Anyway, here’s my submission.
Private Positive and Negatory. Great, right?
MattBib, the moderator of this section of the forums acts as Tim Gunn and gives us wild ideas for our weekly challenges. For the first challenge he came up with the name “Sounds of the Silver-Age” wherein the contestants had to pick an iconic Recording Artist from the 1960s and give that person a super hero costume from the silver-age era of comic books. Comic Book scholars and collectors understand the silver-age to be the period between the late 1950s to the early 1970s. In this period comic fans were introduced to the updated versions of the Flash and the Green Lantern over at DC Comics and Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four… well let’s say just about all the really popular characters over at Marvel Comics.
The Flash went from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen, Green Lantern from Alan Scott to Hal Jordan.
This Explosion of Characters came from what Stan Lee likes to call the Marvel Age of comics.
That’s what comics looked like in the Silver-Age, and as for the Music Icon from the 60s, I chose Jimi Hendrix. His look lends itself to the fantastic automatically. His dress was that of a gypsy pirate, with an attitude to match. Hopefully I don’t have to give him too much of an introduction, I’m guessing enough of you are experienced.
To distill Jimi to his most memorable visual components there were a few details I wanted to keep in mind, the Afro, The Bandana, The Goatee and the Vest. There are pictures out there where he doesn’t don the vest or bandana/headband, but in my head that’s what he always wore. A lot of fans say that he was known to keep a tab of LSD in his bandana for storage, but he would occasionally wind up tripping as his sweat dissolved the tab(s) leading the substance to seep into his system through his pores. As with many of the other contestants, I went to the his catalogue of songs for inspiration for his costumed identity. He’s got so many songs that would be great super hero names, Little Wing, Dolly Dagger, Stone Free, Night Bird Flying and Voodoo Child. For a while I was set on Voodoo Child. The lyrics to the first verse sound epic:
“…Well I’ll stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand- Well I’ll pick up all the pieces and make an island, I might even raise a little sand- ‘Cause I’m a Voodoo Child, Lord knows I’m a Voodoo Child…”
With that bravado and cockiness as fuel I began sketching out his look. I tried bell bottom pants for him and frilly cuffs for his shirt sleeves but that was still saying Rock Star and not Super Hero. The one thing from his signature look that I could borrow from to make him a super hero was his bandana. I just rolled the headband down over his eyes and added some goggle lenses and boom, Super Hero. But nothing really came to me though that said Voodoo child and the Internet wasn’t working so well, so researching the symbolism of Voodoo wasn’t going to work out. Also I couldn’t get the Marvel character Brother Voodoo out of my head. Below are some rough ideas/sketches.
Hmmm, none of these really say "VOODOO CHILD."
Voodoo Child wasn’t working out for me as a character and I didn’t have much time to work because the deadline for this challenge was creeping up on me. For some reason I considered Purple Haze. Time was working against me, so I threw together a quick simple cartoony sketch on some Borden and Riley vellum paper without a solid character model and design to work from. As simple as it was I really liked it. I was watching Adventure Time so that world of mirth and excitement may have slipped in and made me feel good about everything. It’s kind of like what I’d imagine an LSD trip to feel like. So from the sketch it was scanning time, soon to be followed by some coloring in PhotoShop. Here are the results.
When working on a character with a purple color scheme, avoid using red.GARISH!!!
I could have gone down the coloring road all night, but it was late and I had to get this in on time for the voting thread to go up. To me A was too much like the Wonder Twins. B was a step in the right direction and C was a step in the wrong direction, ugh. D although it’s basically a simple color swap of A really made things pop for me. It’s what I went with for the challenge. Check out the Project CBRunway: Challenge 1 voting thread and check out the other entries as well. If you’re inclined to vote I won’t stop you. The voting poll allows you to vote for multiple designs so no pressure.
And just for my Ungowa Soul Power visitors here’s a slightly modified image of Jimi Hendrix, The Purple Haze.
Acting Funny, But I Don't Know Why?!? Excuse Me As I Kiss The Sky.
Filed under Art, Comics, Entertainment, graphics, history, music, pop culture
Pull Pile Podcast – Design
At my good friend Rah Unique’s (@rah_unique) recommendation I began following the Pull Pile Podcast on Twitter and Facebook. Okay for the uninitiated a pull pile (or pull list) is a list of comic books that collectors subscribe to at their Comic Book Store. Most of you may remember being able to pick up comics at your local candy shop, super market, news stand or 7/11. That distribution model is long gone, Comics are primarily found in specialty Direct Market and Hobby stores. So the podcast is about the new releases the two hosts pick up every Wednesday, the day new releases of comic books are sold. They also discuss films and television series and other related media.
So the hosts of the Pull Pile Podcast The Head and Winthrop Chesterton wanted to create a new identity and presence online with a new logo and some original artwork. They reached out to their fan-base and followers on various social media platforms. I answered the call and they got in touch with me and told me what they needed. Here’s what they had a friend put together to give me a rough idea for what design challenges I had to meet.
The great thing about this is that these guys knew what they wanted and were able to clearly demonstrate what they needed from me. So I pretty much hopped on this as soon as I could, because although I hadn’t met them personally I felt like these were kindred spirits, I saw their tweets, listened to their podcast and there was even some interaction online. They use the hashtag #letstalkcomics to ask fans questions about comics, the characters, the creators and the industry in general. So as I said there was already a bond, a sense of fellowship. So I showed them some roughs that I worked on in Adobe Illustrator.
I started with the familiar old DC Comics logo as inspiration. Then I modified it to a series of Ps with the number three taking up residence in the curve of the letter P. Being comic fans they went with the DC bullet, and the masthead was a simple design with layered bold letters reminiscent of the silver-age of comic books, which is around the late 50s/early 60s, where the Justice League of America formed and The X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man and other well known characters were first introduced or revamped.
I was told to move forward with these designs and gave them a swatch of these designs with different color schemes. Here are a few that they liked.
I used the banner on their podcast as inspiration for a few color schemes. They really seemed to appreciate that.
With that done it was on to the illustrations and the mock comic book cover. The characters were definitely interesting and fun to draw, one has no face, like The Question and the other, an over large cranium, like Megamind. I feel a bit longwinded at this point, so I’ll just show the final product. I know bandwith is a little crazy in some places and too many images can slow ya down, so here you go.
I put the comic on a bed of classics and maybe spent too much time rendering the headphones, but I like the work and more importantly so did Winthtrop and The Head.
And that my friends is that.
Hopefully I get more (paid) work in the future to showcase, it was fun and I wish these guys all the success in the world. If you’re a fan of comics follow them on twitter, listen to the podcast and tell ’em @Countbaqula sent you.
A.B. Do Well – Logo
I’m still going through the missing files I have to replace. The logo I’m posting today is the one I used as a solo rapper. A.B. Do Well was the name I went by, and occasionally still use when in the company of those that remember and respect the name. Not a huge group of people, but definitely a sincere group. The name A.B. Do Well was a combination of things, it was a play on my actual name and a mission statement. A.B. is Abdul-Baqi, the name my mother gave me. It’s Arabic and Islamic, Al-Baqi is one of the 99 attributes of Allah, it means The Eternal/Enduring. Abdul is a title in arabic meaning (devout) servant or slave of God. So my first name translates to The Servant of the Eternal (God). Do Well is my intention and/or practice of making sure I put my best into all of my endeavors. Whatever I do the goal is to do it well. A.B. Do Well when pronounced all together sounds an awful lot like Abdul. That was the thought process behind the stage name way back when I was 19 or 20.
As for the logo I was keeping with the esoteric/mystical theme from the group Sight Beyond Light. For that I took the initials from the group name, SBL, and fashioned them into the All Seeing Eye, which is usually associated with the Eye of Horus and typically is a symbol for the sun. It also alludes to the Third Eye, which is a symbol for higher understanding and enlightenment. For A.B. Do Well I borrowed the symbol of the Masons, a very widely known fraternal order that is for some reason considered a secret society. Their symbol is the compass and the square, tools for designing and architecture. The roots of the Masons is in building, generally with stones. But the compass and the square to me represent taking the long view and exercising proper and precise planning to achieve wondrous and dynamic goals that leave an indelible mark on society. That’s a great symbol and philosophy to adopt. A but lofty, but if you don’t dream big, you don’t achieve big. Anyway, here’s a pic of the recreated A.B. Do Well logo.
Nice and simple, but I didn’t use the square because I was saying I had a more rounded view. YOu know how it is, you think you know everything at 20. More than people that have been around long enough to know better. More than ancient orders that have had centuries to think and plan. But like I said, lofty.
I was thinking this is a little to basic and played around with a nice new image based on a more modern logo for the Masons.
I kind of wish I played around more with the logo when I first created it. I’m really liking the update. I guess I have an excuse to start rapping again. This logo shows some growth and refinement. Pretty slick.
Well I’m sure I’ll have another lost logo up soon. Until then, Peace, be well and Do Well.
Ungowa Soul Power 