Art shows

If you live in  the Boston Ma area you can see my art in two shows. One show is the Batman art show at Hub Comics. You can read about it at http://comicsalliance.com/batman-art-gallery-dark-knight-on-a-dark-night-hub-comics/ and Doodle at the Nave Gallery annex in Somerville. http://navegallery.org/wp/doodle/

More letter tests.

These are more letter tests. The first page has balloons drawn on the computer. The next page has balloons drawn on paper and the scanned into the computer. The last page is just the second page but I ran a light canvas texture on the balloons. Let me know which page you like better in the comments. 

Lettering test and what I am working on.

After Boston Comic Con I needed to reorder some of my comics for MICE in Sept. I discovered that my printer Comixpress has gone out of business. So now it will not be just as easy as pressing a Paypal button to get more comics made. I have decided to re-letter the Monarch Monkey story and add all the unreleased pages in one 100 plus page book. Here is a sample of the new lettering above to the old.

Drawn Words Review

New Review of Monarch Monkey and Other stories by Kevin Cortez:
http://drawnwords.com/review-monarch-monkey-by-doug-de-rocher/

Devil Dinosaur

Devil Dinosaur is one of Jack Kirby's wackiest creations. I come from a period in the 70's when Kirby wanted to make comics without having to deal continuity. Marvel Comics did not want any book to be outside of the shared Marvel Universe. Kirby had to base this book in prehistoric times so he could tell the story he wanted.

This picture is important to me because I made it after a friend James Welborn passed away. James lettered Monarch Monkey and was always very supportive of my work.  It was part of a show of comic book art to honer him. This piece is also important because it was really the start of the texture technique I use now. It pains me James can't see my work now.

Spandexless Review

This is a review of Monarch Monkey and other Stories at Spandexless.

http://www.spandexless.com/2013/04/rethinking-arts-crafts-with-monarch-monkey/

Sequential Underground #62

Doug De Rocher makes collage comics. No, that doesn't mean he's making comics out of photos from magazines -- he makes cut paper comics. It's like painting with colored paper, razors, and glue instead of paint and brushes.

Doug joins Nick Marino and Shawn Atkins to discuss his approach to art. He shares about the creation process behind stories including Monarch Monkey, The Greatest Time of All Time, and more.

After the end theme, Doug and Nick chat about appreciating all kinds of comics and maintaining the gesture of an illustration.

Listen to the full interview here!

Teaser

I will be starting to post some work in progress pictures for my new project. It has taken me some time to get back into the swing of things since the end of last year.

The Amazing and Fantastical Boston Comic Creators

Here is a short film about Boston comic creators. Frank Duran conducted interviews with Jesse Lonergan, Ming Doyle, Jerel Dye as well as myself. Enjoy!

Monarch Monkey

Review and The Greatest time of all Time

The Critiquing comics podcast did a review of Monarch Monkey and other Stories. I feel the critic was fair and will help me with future stories. The only thing the hosts are not sure of is the order of stories in the book are in the order I made them. You can listen to the podcast at Deconstructing Comics. The story they liked the best is the last work in the book called "The Greatest Time Of All Time". This story is indicative of the work I am doing now. These are the pages form that story.

Monarch Monkey

The panel with Monkey yawning is still on of my favorites from the "Monarch Monkey" comic. The sleeping monkeys in the background have an economy of line that will get lost in my newer work. I may try to go back to a more economic style in a future work.

Monarch Monkey

Page 8 is the earliest collage I have in print. I made this page form two or three "Previews" catalogs. I learned that the print quality differed greatly from month to month. I found that that worked in my favor because the different colors added to the textured look of the empty spaces.

Monarch Monkey

Monarch Monkey

These are the next two pages from "Monarch Monkey". Page 4 was a try at making a single image page with multiple panels. I think that if i did this page again I would have added another box showing the meteor closer to the crash zone. On the story I'm working on now I did a better job of incorporating the boxes into the over all composition. The thing I like about comics is that there are always thing to improve be it technique, storytelling or design.  

The Boston Slave Riot and Trial of Anthony Burns

The Boston Slave Riot and Trial of Anthony Burns

by Dan Mazur and Doug DeRocher

Originally published in In-bound #4, USA, 2009

via SAP Comics

Fan art and a robot

I think it is important for a artist to do works outside of the larger projects you are working on. I find that it there is an evolution to my work page to page. As I learn better ways to put work together small changes occur and at the end of a project the work is different from the start. However I don't want to change to much or the project will not work as a hole. When I do one off works I can let go and not worry about the continuity of a project. These works are some examples of the one off works. The robot work is part of a major change in my work I started to use smaller pieces of paper for shading. I took what I learned from this work and pushed it into the story I did for the Greatest Anthology.

Monarch Monkey

This is the first two pages of "Monarch Monkey". This comic was the first time I created comic pages using my cut paper collage technique. These pages where done after I completed page 22. When I started this project I make them on boards about the size of half a piece of copy paper. When I decided to continue this project I started to work in a larger size and wanted the pages to have continuity.

How I started making comics out of cut paper

One day in art school, my professor assigned each student to make portraits using only colors cut from magazines. Until then, I disliked most collages, because the few I had seen consisted of portraits composed of a miss-matched eye from one model with a nose from another, etc. After turning in the assignment, my professor thought it was the best work I had done in the the class and encouraged me to keep making collages. By the end of the semester, I had begun using the technique in all of my classes. After leaving school, I felt it was necessary to work in a more computer-based style because mainstream comics would never hire someone who made comics of collages one panel at a time. I started working on anatomy and coloring and posting images online, but was not being myself as an artist.

About four years ago, after considering quitting making comics, I used the collage technique to make six pages in two weeks and show them around New York Comic Con. I used the origin of the Monkey King as a story. The pages were about four inches by eight inches tall because I did not have time to make full size comic pages. I showed the pages to the great Brian Stelfreeze. He liked the pages talked to me about the work and color theory until the hall closed. By the end of Comic Con, I was determined to make comics in this style. I tried to work with a writer, but did not develop any stories that I wanted to illustrate. Instead, I decided to expand my Monkey King pages into a twenty four page book, titled “Monarch Monkey.”

While I was working on “Monarch Monkey,” I discovered the Boston Comic Book Roundtable, a group of comic creators. I met some very supportive people at the Round Table. Dan Mazur, one of the founders of the group, asked me to collaborate on a story about Anthony Burns for the “Inbound 4” anthology. This was my first publication, and I later published “Monarch Monkey.” I worked with Dan again on the “Show and Tell” anthology. I have continued to produce pages for art shows and websites, most recently collaborating with Hyun Supul for the soon to be published “Greatest” anthology.