WHO AM I?

Darned if I know, although that ISN'T me to the left, just in case you're a little confused here. If you have any ideas about who I really am (or anything else, for that matter), send 'em to me. In the meantime, this is what I tell myself to stay relatively sane.

I was born to Mom and Dad in Bethesda, Md., 1955. I learned fairly early on that my love of drawing pictures could have some advantages. In grade school, I found that I could draw a picture instead of writing some dreary book report. In junior high, I found that I could impress other guys by drawing naked girls and thus avoid getting beaten up. In college I found that a business major was useless to me and that I could draw pictures for a living! After attending the Joe Kubert School of Art in Dover, NJ (Class of '79), I started my art career!A few thousand comic book pages and hundreds of other illustrations later,I'm still at it! And since 1989,I've also been teaching students at the Kubert School to do my job!

My biggest influence as an artist. . . Mom! No joke! For a painting of Mom's click here.

And recently a new influence on my whole life...the lovely and talented painter, Rowena! For her website check out http://www.rowenaart.com

Other influences include:
Oh, the usual lot...Frank Frazetta, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, Al Williamson, Stan Drake, Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Joe Kubert, Alberto Vargas, Gil Elvgren, Sorayama, Heinrich Kley, Franklin Booth, Charles Dana Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Joseph Clement Coll, Virgil Finlay, the Pre-Raphaelites, Lawrence Alma Tadema, Alphonse Mucha, the Hudson River Painters. . . especially Frederick Church, Thomas Moran, Thomas Cole, Alfred Bierstadt, etc., etc. . . like I said, just the usual few!

My favorite mediums to work with. . .
Again, just a few: Brush and ink; pen and ink; sponge and ink; rag, towel, cloth and hair and ink; watercolor and gouache paints; acrylic paint; ink wash; acrylic wash; gouache wash!; wash cloth; pastels, crayons, bits of dirt, a grubby finger; all kinds of marker pens; a sharpened Popsicle stick; collage!. . . I love collage!; my cat's tail; sometimes even a pencil or three; and lately. . . digital, especially Adobe Photoshop.
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Words to live by:
"I used to have a wild card!"
"A cartoonist is a terrible thing to waste."
"Don't forget to eat your greens and crack your window!"
"Ars longa vita brevis."
"Whatsa XQB?!"

What is an XQB?
Students at the Kubert School become known as Kubies (or QBs). After leaving the school, the QBs metamorphose into ex-kubies (as in, "this is an ex-parrot!"). . . also known as XQBs. Check out http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/xkubies for some incomprehensible XQB babble.

Favorite artistic subject matter:
Take a guess! A quote from Dad: "You got anything on this site other than girls?"