Issuu

#30

SPRING 2015 $8.95 IN THE US

The Professional “How-To” Magazine on Comics, Cartooning and Animation

CHRIS SAMNEE THE DAREDEVIL ARTIST ON EVERYONE’S RADAR

BUTCH GUICE

CREATING WINTER WORLD PLUS! REGULAR COLUMNIST

JERRY ORDWAY AND MIKE MANLEY AND BRET BLEVINS’ 01 1

82658 27764

DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling, as well as such skills as layout, penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, Photoshop techniques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, and a handy reference source—this magazine has it all! NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for figure drawing instruction. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

BL AVAILA

DRAW! #18

DRAW! #19

Features an in-depth interview and demo by R.M. GUERA (the artist of Vertigo’s Scalped), behind-the-scenes in the Batcave with Cartoon Network’s JAMES TUCKER on the hit show “Batman: The Brave and the Bold,” plus product reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and Comic Book Boot Camp’s “Anatomy: Part 2” by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY!

DOUG BRAITHWAITE gives a demo and interview, pro inker and ROUGH STUFF editor BOB McLEOD offers a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, JAMAR NICHOLAS’ “Crusty Critic” column reveals the best art supplies and tool tech, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP gets your penciling in shape, plus Web links, reviews, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #23

DRAW! #24

DRAW! #20

WALTER SIMONSON interview and demo, Rough Stuff’s BOB McLEOD gives a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, Write Now’s DANNY FINGEROTH spotlights writer/artist AL JAFFEE, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the best art supplies and tool technology, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS offer “Comic Art Bootcamp” lessons, plus Web links, comic and book reviews, and more! (84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #25

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, design-inspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

PATRICK OLIFFE interview and demo, career of AL WILLIAMSON examined by ANGELO TORRES, BRET BLEVINS, MARK SCHULTZ, TOM YEATES, ALEX ROSS, RICK VEITCH, and others, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans!

DRAW! #26

DRAW! #27

DRAW! #28

DRAW! #29

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more!

Top comics cover artist DAVE JOHNSON demos his creative process, STEPHEN SILVER shows how he designs characters for top animated series, plus new columnist JERRY ORDWAY presents “The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!”, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, and hit “Comic Art Bootcamp” with Draw editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS!

FAREL DALRYMPLE shows how he produces Meathaus and Pop Gun War, director and storyboard/comics artist DAVE BULLOCK dissects his own work, columnist JERRY ORDWAY draws on his years of experience to show readers the Ord-way of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character designer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(84-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

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THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM SPRING 2015, VOL. 1, #30 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Chris Samnee Front Cover Color • Tom Ziuko

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHRIS SAMNEE

Eric Nolen-Weathington interviews the artist about cartooning in a photorealism-driven field

DRAW! Spring 2015, Vol. 1, No. 30 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2015 by their respective contributors. Views expressed here by contributors and interviewees are not necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMorrows Publishing, or its editors. Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. This entire issue is ©2015 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY!

Butch Guice

comic art bootcamp

The crusty Critic

From your mind’s eye to the page

Winter has come. Mike Manley interviews the artist about winter soldiers and winter worlds.

This month’s installment: Ear, ye! Ear, ye! Let’s hear it for the ear!

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade. This month: A pen nib and a pocket sketchbook

www.twomorrows.com

DRAW! SPRING 2015

-ING AHEAD

hey say 30 is the age of wisdom, or maybe that’s just when you get your wisdom teeth out? Anyway, DRAW! has made it to the 30th issue mark! I owe much of this success and dedication to John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington for being there through the hard days—and like any creative endeavor, there were hard, tough days. There were times I thought this might be the final issue, but then an e-mail or letter would come in telling me how important the mag was to that reader. I’d also like to thank my best buddy Bret Blevins for being there from the first issue’s cover to this issue’s charming little doodle of yours truly. This milestone is also helped by Jamar Nicholas and Jerry Ordway for their great articles and support for the idea that the craft of cartooning needs to be shared, and the knowledge of all those who work telling stories should be collectively shared. That is the continued goal for DRAW! into the future: To share with you readers the knowledge of as many great cartoonists and illustrators as possible! Now go DRAW! something!

NEXT ISSUE IN JULY! DRAW! #31 (80 FULL-COLOR pages, $8.95), the professional “how-to” magazine on comics and animation, busts some new moves, Philadelphia Freedom style! This issue features how-tos and demos by Philly area artists J.G. Jones (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and Khoi Pham (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing Spider-Man, The Mighty World of Marvel). Plus regular contributor (and Philly boy) Jamar Nicholas gives his reviews of art supplies, and we finish this jam-packed issue with Jerry Ordway (demonstrating the “ORDway” of drawing) and “Comic Art Bootcamp” by Draw! editor Mike Manley (yet another Philly resident) and Bret Blevins. Grab a side of cheese fries, and enjoy this artistic belly buster! NOTE: May contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; suggested for Mature Readers Only. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in the US: $34 Standard, $41 First Class, $11.80 Digital Only Outside the US: Canada: $43, Elsewhere: $52 Surface, $141 Airmail Subscribe Now at: www.twomorrows.com

DRAW! SPRING 2015

Chris Samnee

A LEAP OF interview conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington and transcribed by Jon Knutson

C Daredevil © Marvel Characters, Inc.

hris Samnee knew he was going to be a comic book artist at an age when most kids still dream of being firemen or astronauts. But he hasn’t always held that same strength of belief and determination in his natural cartooning style. Editorial resistance to his work led him astray for a time, but with the help of the right projects and the right editors, Chris has taken his cartooning to bold new heights. What do editors know anyway? DRAW! SPRING 2015

Thumbnail cover designs and finished inks for a DCBS exclusive variant cover for the newly relaunched Amazing Spider-Man #1. Spider-Man © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: I don’t know if you remember this or not, but I first met you, I think it was 2003, at the Comic-Con International: San Diego. You came up to the TwoMorrows booth with, I don’t know if she was your fiancée at that point or just your girlfriend, and you were surprised I knew your name, because you really hadn’t had much published at that point. CHRIS Samnee: Yeah, I was surprised. DRAW!: You’d worked with Chris Irving, who’d done some work for TwoMorrows, on this little book that I don’t think had even been distributed, Blackbird. CS: I know he printed some himself. I don’t know if they ever went out to anybody besides friends and family, and people that he hand-sold them to. I had a few copies. DRAW!: I think the idea was to use that comic as kind of a portfolio. Were you doing a lot of that kind of spec work? Whatever you could to get your work out there? CS: I was doing samples all over the place, and I’d kind of gotten to the point where people would look at it and say, “This is good, but we don’t know where we would put you,” and I just kept doing more and more samples. I’d just create my own story that was three or four, five pages. I met Chris Irving, and we got along really well, and he

DRAW! SPRING 2015

was going through pretty much the same thing on the writing side, and we said, “Why don’t we do a few things together?” So, there were a couple of other things we did. I can’t remember what they were. DRAW!: There was a G.I. Joe blog he had. CS: Oh, yeah, I did some G.I. Joe head sketches that looked like the backs of the old cards. [laughs] You’re really digging deep. Most of that stuff I’ve forgotten. DRAW!: Well, that was the early days of the Internet being a way to get your work out there. Were you trying to meet people on message boards at that point? CS: I didn’t even have a computer back then. Chris told me about Batman: Dead End [a short fan film] and I was like, “Oh, that sounds awesome. I’d love to see that!” He said, “It’s on the Internet,” and I was like, “Oh, I don’t have a computer.” He had to mail me a CD he burned of the video. Oh, man, that makes me feel so old! [laughter] DRAW!: If you didn’t have Internet access, what were you doing to find these opportunities? CS: I was just beating the bushes. St. Louis had a lot of conventions back in the day, and every time a convention

would come to town, I’d go with my portfolio under my arm and beg for work, show my portfolio, and try to get reviews from… it didn’t matter who, whether it was a letterer, or a penciler, or a writer. I was just trying to talk to anybody and figure out how comics were made. I wasn’t finding work anywhere. Mostly I sent sample packets through the mail. I’d found a directory of publishers and their addresses, and I’d make tons of copies at Kinko’s and fill packets on the weekends. DRAW!: Your interest in how comics were made started pretty early from what I can tell. I think you said somewhere that by age ten, you knew you wanted to be a comic book artist. CS: Oh for sure, yes.

CS: There were certain artists that I liked, but it was so hard to find comics back then. It was like, “I like this guy,” and I’d write his name in my notebook. I had a whole list of names in a Trapper Keeper—it looked like a hit list of guys that I really liked. [laughter] But we didn’t have comic book stores where I lived. Every couple of weeks, my dad would take me to the flea market, and I’d get to buy old comics. There were four-for-adollar comics, but it was random boxes of who knows what that people brought from their houses. So, I never got whole runs of anything, and every once in a while I’d run across something completely random and go, “I’ve never seen this

DRAW!: A lot of people say they want to become a comic book artist when they’re ten, but you really went after it. CS: I started fighting for it early on. I was into cartoons, just like any normal kid would be into cartoons, but one day while I was waiting for Showbiz Pizza to open with my grandma, she said, “Let’s go into Venture while we’re waiting for it to open.” And they had three-packs of comics. And I said, “They made books out of these cartoons?!?” [Eric laughs] It was a threepack of Batman comics, and I was hooked right from the get-go. DRAW!: Do you remember how old you were at that point? CS: I was five or six. It was the Tom Mandrake run, really inappropriate for my age. There was a stripper in it, there was Two-Face… way too adult for a six-year-old. I think that’s why I liked it. I was like, “I shouldn’t be reading this stuff.” [laughter] I started copying Mandrake and [Jim] Aparo, and the guys from the mid-’80s. Those were my way into comics. My grandma bought me a roll of butcher paper, so I’d look at the comic and try to copy it to the best of my abilities, which was awful, but it was fun. DRAW!: You became familiar with the artists’ names early on. Were you following certain artists at that point, or were you just kind of grabbing whatever you could find?

Chris’ finished inks for the variant cover of Elektra #2. Elektra © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW! SPRING 2015

The Right Way, The Wrong Way, and The

OrdWay ! CAPTURING THE PICTURE IN THE MIND’S EYE by Jerry Ordway

’

ll start out this time with an example that shows how things don’t always go smoothly from layout to finished art. I had a straightforward assignment, to draw a Batman piece including Commissioner Gordon, as well as the Bat-Signal. I had an idea, and with my eyes closed, could visualize exactly what I wanted to draw. I rarely capture that mind’s eye picture on paper as perfectly as I see it in my head, but I keep trying, year after year, regardless.

I began to sketch out my image at a reduced size, 5½" x 8", on copy paper. I had my Fairburn System book (Set 1, Book 1) open as reference for a trench coat (see right), which Commissioner Gordon would be wearing. I could have made it up but wanted the added detail only a photo or the real thing could provide. The BatSignal spotlight is in the middle ground, easily cobbled together from various Google images, while the Batman figure is in the background. The story to tell here, since every picture tells a story, is that Batman always has a way of sneaking up on Commissioner Gordon!

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In the finished layout (right), now tightened up, I re-worked the Batman pose. I was still not happy with it, but I committed to it because the other elements worked fine. I was ready to start light-boxing, or tracing the image onto my Strathmore 3-ply Bristol paper.

DRAW! DRAW!SPRING SPRING2015 2015

butch guice

Walking in a WinterWorld Wonderland interview by Mike Manley transcribed by Jon Knutson

rom the Microverse to the DC Universe, Acclaim, and now the frozen arctic of WinterWorld, prolific and versatile artist Jackson “Butch” Guice pulls back the curtain on his process and career.

DRAW! SPRING 2015

Butch’s rough sketch (above) and full pencils (right) for a cover for the recently reformed Valiant. All characters © Valiant Entertainment, Inc.

DRAW!: You just finished the WinterWorld stuff, right? Butch guice: Just finished WinterWorld, and currently, the main project is a book called Paradigms, which Nick Spencer and I are doing together for Image now. So, that’s coming up, and I’m also doing some work for Valiant, a backup feature in Ninjack of all things. DRAW!: I’m trying to remember, you worked with them before, right? BG: Yeah, in the Acclaim days. I worked for them for three years or so. DRAW!: I worked for them for about a year when they did the big relaunch. Were you…? BG: I was with them too, yeah. I was on Eternal Warrior, and then they yanked me off of that and I was all over the place. As people were going to other companies and stuff, I was filling in on Bloodshot, and Turok, and X-O—an issue here, an issue there kind of thing—for about a year toward the end. DRAW!: Was that hard to jump from character to character if you didn’t necessarily have any feeling for the character? BG: It definitely made it more of a job. It’s hard enough, you

step into the tail end of a storyline, or you just are there for the issue, and you don’t know who half the characters are, so you sort of fall back to—I’m sure you’re well aware—just focusing on the craft of filling in the story, but you just don’t have any inherent emotion involved with it from that standpoint. DRAW!: Right, I’m kind of doing that right now. I’m doing a miniseries for DC, and I’m drawing the Justice League International, the Kevin Maguire days version…. BG: Yeah, it’s not like you have this history with the characters. You know how it is: the more you work with the characters, if you’re having a pleasant experience, the more you get involved with it, you start getting little personal touches in, and you develop personal characters you actually like drawing and try to make your own, as opposed to doing the standard costume designs of this character or that character. That’s a real gravy for the job, is being able to do something special with it. DRAW!: Yeah, exactly. Comparing that to when you were working on WinterWorld, and following the miniseries that Jorge Zaffino did, how did that compare to, say, doing an issue of Bloodshot?

DRAW! SPRING 2015

he ear is one of the great defining features of a character or personality. My mom used to say “little children have big ears” in regard to my ability to sometimes hear things I shouldn’t have been privy to. She also used to say I “heard what I wanted to” in regards to me suddenly being hard of hearing when it came to doing chores and cleaning up my room or piles of loose comic books. We can see how important the ear was to great illustrators like Norman Rockwell and Albert Dorne in helping to define a character type, as well and other features that were often exaggerated, like the nose, head shape, hands, and feet to get a great character type. To the caricaturist, the ear is one of the main features that gets exaggerated to push a likeness.

The hallmark of a handsome head of a male or female are well-defined and well-placed features, including the placement of the ear in its proper place on the head and in its proper proportion. Too far forward or back, too large or too small, and the head will start veering towards caricature. While this might be true, there are well known actors and actresses who are thought of as beautiful or handsome that do have some features one might term “off model.” Cary Grant is a perfect example of this. Certainly one of the most handsome and iconic leading men of all time, his features were striking and distinct, including his rather smallish ears in comparison to another rugged leading man, Charlton Heston, or Clark Gable, who was known for having rather large ears.

DRAW! SPRING 2015

If we take Clark Gable’s ears (center) and put them on Cary Grant (left), well, it just doesn’t work, does it? Photographs © respective owner(s).

Anatomy of an Ear

The ear’s anatomy is actually quite complicated with many tapering and shell-like segments and cartilage. This is of course all designed to capture sound, and unlike many animals, the human ear is much smaller in proportion to the head, and for most people has little movement, though some are able to “wiggle their ears” via the Auriculares muscles. The ear perches on the back of the zygomatic arch. The amount the ear is tilted back (angulation) varies from individual to individual, but the average tilt is about 20º (see the cyan lines on the male and female heads at right). Helix canal Helix antiHelix

anterior Notch

concha

lobe

The ear breaks down into four main segments: • Helix • Antihelix • Lobe • Concha or cymba cavity, the deepest depression, which leads directly to the external auditory canal. Sometimes the earlobes are attached and sometimes not. This little detail can also be played up to express a type of character and define their personality and look. Women’s ears tend to be smaller than men’s, and the zygomatic arch on a female skull is much less pronounced than on a male. Their ears are also more delicate in general. I am stressing this here for the sake of drawing the ideal types of features and relationships. Almost no one has all the ideal features, and no one except identical twins has the same features as anyone else.

DRAW! SPRING 2015

UNDER REVIEW

TWO-FER: OF PEN NIBS & WALLET/SKETCHBOOKS

elcome back, all and sundry, to the corner between the pages of DRAW! where the Commandant of Col-Erase, El Capitan of Eberhard-Faber, the person who puts the prestidigitation back in Presto! Correction Pens, returns! It is I, Jamar Nicholas, your Crusty Critic, back again to give you the what-for and why-izzit on art supplies, tools tricks, and (unfortunately, as the job entails sometimes) traps. I’ve missed you all. During my absence I have traveled the world and back—literally, as I got to visit Tokyo last year and will be returning again, about which I will do a Crusty Debriefing in a future article. But this issue, a milestone issue for sure, the big 3-0, has me returning home to find a pair of treats for this write-up, in my studio mailbox. This column features reviews of two separate products: one is a blast from the past, the other a signal from the future. Let’s get started, shall we?

Ark-style archival vault, but there is some stock that exists out in the wild. One of my Crusty Agents in the field hipped me to Brandon’s Etsy store, where he sells classic stock of Esterbrook nibs, and even though this Crusty Critic doesn’t use nibs in my daily practice, I jumped at the chance to buy these, which were affordable, and worth delving into the great history lesson.

THE “CRUSTY CRITIQUE” SYSTEM

These product reviews will be judged under my trusty beret scale—from one beret (not worth the time/money/effort) to five berets (a Crusty success! Buy it immediately, as much as you can carry).

ESTERBROOK RADIO PEN #914

First off, a tip of the beret to my new friend Brandon McKinney, a collector and history buff of the Esterbrook line of pen nibs who runs a top-flight Etsy store where I purchased the product. Most cartoonists worth their salt know the legacy of the Radio #914: Charles Schulz, after his love affair with using the #914, bought out the entire stock from Esterbrook before the company was sold to a pencil company. Some say that whatever Sparky didn’t use is sitting in a Raiders of the Lost

DRAW! SPRING 2015

The steel pen in the flesh—the infamous nib that made Peanuts pop.

DOES IT WORK? Even though this critic doesn’t expect to inherit the cartooning traits of Schulz, it is a nicely balanced nib, which works a little heavy, but is flexible and can take punishment on the page. HOW MUCH DID IT COST? A steal at $4.00 a nib, and then Brandon was great enough to toss in some freebie nibs, the transaction highlighted by his personalized labeling in an elegant hand-written script, showcasing the descriptions of the new nibs in my Crusty Clutches which added a great touch of class.

WHAT DID YOU USE IT ON? As of this writing, I haven’t had a chance to use the product during a pressure-cooked project, but I did test the nibs in warm-up drawings and enjoyed the experience. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF IT? More of a nostalgic purchase. Beyond the nibs, I’m more impressed with Brandon and his love of the history and collection of classic writing instruments. I want to go back and window-shop and perhaps have a sit down with him for a tool talk conversation.

Enter: JAWNS. Now, luckily for the DRAW! Readers, myself being a Philadelphian in good linguistic standing, I have a familiarity with the strange name of this product. “Jawn” is Philly slang and a catch-all word that means anything and everything at the same time, people, places, and/or things, and though I found the name familiar, what this new company has produced is a wallet that is also a notepad. The JAWNS wallet—an innovative My prayers have been solution to a Crusty Conundrum. answered… almost. Read on about these JAWNS!

Taken from original stock. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

Unfortunately, when I went back to see if he had any more of the #914s to sell, I couldn’t find them on his impressive store page, so perhaps he ran out. But I would be remiss to not recommend checking out his site. I’m sure you’ll find something that will catch your eye and make you hit that purchase button. Go to the White Apple Multimedia Etsy shop for the Radio #914s, stay for art history lesson, and fill your cart. CRUSTY CRITIC SCORE:

JAWNS HYBRID WALLET/SKETCHBOOK

One of the biggest issues I deal with is finding and maintaining a way to collect thoughts, notes, and notes about thoughts. Also, a place to put my Crusty Currency (when it’s a good month and I have some at all). I could fill an elephants’ graveyard with the tens and tens of wallets I’ve gone through over the years, always trying to find exactly the right vessel for my credit card(s), Crusty Credentials, and other urban ephemera. It’s never easy, no? One is the right size but doesn’t have enough card slots. What about a place to put my gym membership ID? What about the little plastic window thingy to hold the pictures of my cat? Any man can explain to you how attached they are to their wallets, and how precious they can be. But what if you need that, and you also carry a notepad around town? Your Crusty Cohort has been known (on occasion) to jam his wallet, cellphone, comb (being well-arted and well-groomed is essential) notepad, and keys all in his pockets. When you’re about to attain man-purse status, it’s time to start paring down.

Inside your JAWNS wallet, you can stash your JAWNS, with extra space for even more JAWNS!

I discovered the JAWNS wallet on Twitter and contacted the cool guys over at JAWNSbrand and asked if they’d send me a sample for review. They did so with no hesitation, and were very eager for my input. The company seems pretty new and because they were open to critical review, I had some thoughts that I’d like to share, and hope they help. DOES IT WORK? The wallet itself is made out of white Tyvek tear-resistant material, that same stuff that you sometimes get things mailed to you in, and it does what it’s supposed to do. This wallet is very sturdy, but I consider this to be a journal with a place to put things, rather than a proper, permanent wallet, so I may step back from describing it as such. HOW MUCH DID IT COST? The JAWNS wallet retails on their site for $12.00 USD for either of their two designs, Incline, which I received, or Topo,

DRAW! SPRING 2015

Draw! #30