Of May and Merch

Hey there sports fans, Al here with the latest;

Blue the Bulldog. 16”x20” scratchboard 2023. Alan Bennett

It’s been a little while since I had a chance to post a blog, but I’ve also been working on Photos as well as selling retail shirts a couple of times a week, which is been a really fun time, currently, I have a "Love Machine" print that I need to get printed for a person who had wanted to get the original before the show it was supposed to premiere in.  I’m gonna be talking to Brian in pearl printing next week, specifically this Monday morning, and see if I can also get a set up for a couple of other prints to be made as well. Blue the Bulldog T-shirt and the sticker seem to be selling well but I’m not sure how well a Blue the Bulldog print will work. I’m gonna hold off on that one for right now, my piece of artwork for my friend, Lynnie Peterson called "Equal Opportunity" with Sadie Starkiss, being the hero of the peace instead of being the hapless heroine that she’s been depicted as a while will come to pass. But now leaves me with a quandary. How do I make her more of an action-oriented heroine, along with Heavy Metal any of the other characters? I did throw in a spot as an ode to Johnny Vega with the symbol on her belt, so she may be part of that particular universe to some degree.

16”x12” Scratchboard 2024

But I’ve been having fun working on the commissions, and we have some more commissions, but as it always turns out commissions are a one-time kind of thing lots of people talk about them, but only ever if you ever pay for them. It’s also a problem that I ran into. Is that all run and do an actual image before the people pay for them I’m very just get very excited about working on a new piece of artwork for somebody, but then they always fail as far as payments go. It’s something I need to get a hold of the pieces are good but not regularly in my wheelhouse but we’ll see I’ll just continue to keep working on my space pieces, my heroes, my villains, my robots, and keep cranking piece after piece after piece but I’ll tell you this, though, every single one of them is gonna be fun and.

On the Horzion

Hey there, sports fans, Al here with the latest;

Well, I wanted to keep you all in the loop. I've already shared some of this with you in the previous blog, but I wanted to bring up the latest piece with you regarding the poster design for the Pasquinade Project. Regarding how pieces of artwork are moving forward, I've had two individual pieces and two commission pieces coming together fairly quickly. 

Yesterday, as a side note, I was showing a piece of artwork for the poster I was working on for the Pasquinade and showed it to my friend Jacob. He had told me, "Hey man, I'll pay you for that poster." I wasn't going to sell him a poster. I'm not worried about that. 

So we agreed on a trade. "I'll do you a trade when it comes time for me to take the big pieces for the Pasquinade show to be photographed and copied for prints. You can help me take them over, and you get the poster for free."

This way, he helps me out with my show. I get the artwork photographed and moved from one place to another, and he gets a free poster from the deal.

So it works out best for both of us. I'm excited about that, so now I have someone who can help me out, and I'll also help someone who enjoys my work.

On the topic of the show, nothing sells my artwork better than freaking robots (maybe with the exception of a brain in a jar)!

Using Heavy Metal as a character and part of the poster builds up his side of the Sady Starkiss/ Heavy Metal connection.

So there you go, little text, but the art is rockin'!

An I am outta here.

Commissions coming out of the woodwork!

Hey there, sports fans, Al here with the latest:

It's been a while since I've had to post anything about commissions, but I recently had a couple of them come in very short succession, so I decided to post those right now. Because I’ve been bitten by the commission bug!

I switched over to a different size of scratchboard to accommodate these particular commissions. I moved up from making 9" x 12" s to 12" x 16"s.

The reason for the size is purely a sizing issue. Getting more bang for your buck, as they say. The second reason is it's easier for me to see.

I've had to resize some of my images because I'm having a more challenging time seeing smaller and smaller details in my work.

It's just getting older, and my eyes are getting weaker.

Don't worry. I'm not going blind or anything like that; just the age of the creator coming up these days.

But the work looks really cool, and it happens really fast when I get started, so I can't knock that. Firstly, I’ve got three new pieces that I wanted to show; two are already completed, and one is in the works. The first one is “Sady Warrior.” This is my first for using the 12” x 16” piece of scratchboard. The results actually turned out really well on this one, and I wanted to add bigger pieces to any other show that I was going to have the 9” x 12”, but I need to have something more significant to catch people’s eye. 

The second one is called “Outer Worlds.” It’s a commission piece for my friend Steve Coppin’s wife, Darcy. She wanted an old-school robot, and I just modified an existing picture from a calendar that she had seen. And there you have it, including a little bit of color to its eye. 

Lastly, it’s a piece that I have yet to entitle for my friend Felix Sanchez. He wanted the “Radioactive Hornets” piece, but I wouldn’t let him have it, so I said I would make him one that was uniquely suited for him. This is the outline in Transfer.

And before I forget, I'm meeting up with a framer to see how much a setup is going to cost me for future work. Hopefully, by then, I'll have a show a little bit later this year.

All in all, I think that this is gonna be a good year to get things done and printed. And the Kid is outta here!

Who is Sady Starkiss?

Simply put, Sady Starkiss was a product of a conversation and a single commission.

In this commission, the idea was to have what my friend referred to as a "Space Nubile." And that was as much information as he gave me. He wanted something with the '50s feel to it. So, I combined a classic Vargas girl pinup and a Wally Wood space girl.

I'm a sucker for old 50s pinup girls, to begin with. And Wally Wood had such a flair for the ladies of the time.

A questionable combination, but I needed the challenge of something new and not just my traditional superhero schlock. I ended up with an old-school control console and some deft gravity-defining clothing. The inside joke was Sady couldn't keep her clothes on.

Of course, this commission led right to the creation of Heavy Metal (an old-school robot based on the old black and white movie The Mysterious Doctor Satan).

Then there was talk of a crossover between the two. There have been a couple, but the best of the crossovers between the two was the piece called "Blast Off!".

Of course, there is also the crossover call entitled "Oh Yeah?" between heavy-metal and CD star kiss, dealing with a Fu Manchu type of character. Even mentioning that there was a Fu Manchu type of character would get me in trouble with people of today, so I will plan on redesigning my version of Fu with a slight change to color and look. He will be villainous, though. That's a mainstay of the character.

But back to Sady.

Initially, she was just eye candy, to be honest, but as I continued to draw her in different situations, I realized that I needed something more for her. I wanted a personality that would encompass her physically with some of her other mental attributes.

I wanted a strong woman who could fight when push came to shove and yet now always overpower her "detractors."

Another female character I found to be of interest is Una Persson from the Micheal Moorcock fantasy series. I felt she was someone I could base some of Sady on.

So I wanted her to be sexy and adventurous. She is the pinnacle of what my Fu Manchu character is looking for, and Heavy Metal always gets in the way. Of course, others want to be with her as well. Robot Monster is one; Corpse Cop is another.

And all of this chaotic craziness is going to be rendered in scratchboard.

What else?