• 15 Grub Run, digital, Ernie Kwiat •


Happy Birthday Yuki!

• 14 Froth, digital, Ernie Kwiat •


Happy Birthday John!

• 13 Glyphs, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 12 Escape, digital, Ernie Kwiat •


Happy Birthday Dad! This would have been his 90th.

• 11 Summer of Love, digital, Ernie Kwiat

• 10 Eleyen,digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 09 Lazot, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 08 Green Fuzz, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 07 Methane Menace, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 06 Lump, digital, Ernie Kwiat •


Original sketch done in Painter 9 before adding paint layers

• 05 Hay Fever, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 04 Galoo, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 03 Grogg, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 02 Gruff, digital, Ernie Kwiat •

• 01 Sea Hag, digital , Ernie Kwiat •

• Comic books took advantage of the popularity monster and science fiction movies had in the 1950's and early 60's . It seems like any odd idea for a creature could become the basis for a story; but the fellow with the fiery blowholes on this early 1960's World's Finest cover isn't the oddest thing you see. Look at the size that the diminutive Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptlk appear to be. They seem much larger than Superman. I am guessing that they were ment to be in the foreground, like Batman and Robin. Because Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptlk are high in the picture plane, the figures look to be in the background, and giants. If they overlapped the creature's fire jets they would seem closer.

• Marshall Islands, 1958 •

• The image of the atomic bomb exploding over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 is a perfect example of a monster - huge, indiscriminate destruction and, because of its power, compellingly beautiful to look at.

Here is a group of digital drawings I did last year as I thought about the 60th anniversary for the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• Franz Kafka Caricature • digital relief, Uncle Ernie Kwiat

• Edgar Allen Poe Caricature • digital relief , Uncle Ernie Kwiat

• Because I was looking at Boris Gogos' work yesterday, I thought I would try coloring one of my digital relief images as if it were a Gogos. This is a caricature (I call it a caricature because I have amplified and exaggerated the features a bit.) of H.P. Lovecraft that I colored in photoshop by building up transparent layers of color with the pencil tool. It was a lot of fun and I think I am just beginning to understand the play of cool to hot colors on the face.

When I did traditional printmaking it was the blacks that I could achieve from intaglio that won me over. A digital black seems just as dark as those rich intaglio inks did on paper. These digital colors on the screen are so luminous that I could easily fall in love with color too.

• Today I have been looking at a recently published book, Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos. Basil Gogos painted many of the covers for Jim Warren's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Anyone who was a monster kid in the 60's will recognize these images. His painting has that glorious journeyman commercial art style from the mid 20th century. Flat layers of quick flat brush strokes building the form and thinner painted stroked backgrounds add interest, light and vibrancy without adding any time consuming, unnecessary details to the art.

One of the most characteristic elments in his monster covers is his unusual use of color. He prefered to work with black and white photos for reference, for the values and form, and to add his own color in a way he had never seen done before. He imagined the heads lit with , "... four different colors and one from the background... it was a portrait lit in five lights." It is only the faces that get this spotlighted color treatment. There isn't any unnatural color on the torso. It is almost more like the color is glowing from within.

• Wanda Gag, rhymes with jog, seemed to create illustrations and fine art, know for her lithographs, that never had true straight lines. As a child, when I first read Millions of Cats, her illustrations seemed to ooze over the paper like rich pancake batter. I ran into this print on the internet today with no title The jpg was listed as "mia_38854e.jpg." A little detective work lead me to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The title is Stone Crusher. It is a subject that would usually be treated with harsh, crisp lines to emphasize the mechanical power of the machine. Gag chose to see the machine as organic - a dinosaur. I wonder if she believed that all things have a spirit and life. I also wonder if the machine simply looked like a creature to her or did she see it that way because it was a monster crushing the environment or was it an obsolete piece of machinery and, therefore, a dinosaur?

Take a close look at another one of her prints. This one is from San Francisco's Achenback Foundation for the Graphic Arts collection. It is enjoyable to search over the lush litho crayon image, looking for those nonexistent straight lines. Every object seems to have life and a glow. It may take a child's view of the world to see the potential for existence in all things.

• For any Jack Kirby monster fans, Monster Blog is a great site to read some old comic stories from the late 50' - early 60's. Stan Lee was probably the writer/editor on most of these stories from a time when the reissue of the classic monster films to TV had created a boom in the interest of all thing "monster." Comic book publishers are notorious for tagging along with any craze that will help their sales. My brothers and I may have been fighting with each other all day; but when Chiller Theater came on the old B/W television each Saturday night, we somehow wound up sitting closely together on the couch. These monster stories will not change your life; but, if you let them, they will entertain you.

Jack Kirby excelled at designing comic book covers. This cover is a nice example of how many of his compositions worked. The white dialogue balloon is the area of the art with the most contrast ( Kirby may or may not have indicated where the balloons would be placed) so that it is the focal point to enter the illustration. You are guided to read the art in a clockwise circular motion. Your eyes move from the top white balloon to the monster's face, to it's out thrusting hand, down the edge of the wave to the man's face. You next follow his gaze along the horizontal falling figure and to the man in the boat. The front of the boat points you back to the white dialogue balloon and begins the cycle again. As the lower man says, in the bottom right balloon, "WE"LL NEVER ESCAPE IT! NEVER!" - unless you turn the page to read the story.

• I have been continuing to add more images to my online shop. My main focus lately has been to add art for t-shirts, posters and greeting cards , especially graphics suitable for Halloween. CLICK on the image of Uncle Ernie to visit the shop and look around.