Cropped Will Cardini artwork

October 31st, 2011

Happy Halloween 2011!

Filed under: Inspiration — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:36 am

Glade and I dressed up for the Monster Show opening as a goth and a nerd, respectively. Here’s a pic we took before we went out:

Hensel Halloween 2011
I’m never shaving my beard again. Thanks to Jason Poland for loaning me his Powerglove!

We didn’t come up with our costumes on our own, though. Glade had the idea that we should base our costumes this year off the drawings in a zine called Hot Topik. We picked these two:

Hot Topik

The zine is filled with similar characters. Sam Gaskin wrote all of the t-shirt slogans and then Matt Furie did the drawings. I definitely recommend getting a copy if you see one. If any of y’all are still going out tonite, have fun!

October 28th, 2011

Monster Show 6

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:40 am

Don’t forget y’all, this Saturday is the opening of the sixth annual Monster Show at Domy Books in Austin. Here’s the flyer (drawn by the amazing Lisa Hanawalt):

Monster Show 6 flyer

Come out (in costume!) to check out monster drawz by me, my wife Glade, cartoonist power couple Aaron Whitaker and Melinda Tracy Boyce, RUB THE BLOOD contributors Benjamin Marra and Keenan Marshall Keller, and a host of other amazing artists. There’s also a Monster Show going on the same time at Domy Houston with its own great contributor list, including Robbie and Bobby creator Jason Poland and his lady, Julai Whipple, who does cool embroidery work.

October 26th, 2011

RUB THE BLOOD Kickstarter

A lot of cartoonists, whether they end up drawing daily autobio strips or Fusion comics, read superhero comics when they’re kids. The last couple generations of alternative cartoonists grew up reading Jack Kirby or maybe Watchmen. My peers and I grew up with the Image revolution.

X-Force #9 Cover by Rob Liefeld
X-Force #9.

To honor this influence, Pat Aulisio and Ian Harker have put together a 90’s Image comics tribute anthology called RUB THE BLOOD. I’ve got a two-page story in there called “Lightbeam vs Bludwurld the Living Battle Planet” (I bought the above issue of X-Force as research for my story) alongside comics and art by Pat, Ian, Josh Bayer, Kramer’s Ergot contributor Victor Cayro, Catch Up contributor PB Kain, Keenan Marshall Keller, Peter Lazarski, Benjamin Marra, Jim Rugg, Thomas Toye, and Mickey Z (P.S. Did y’all know that Benjamin Marra and Keenan Marshall Keller were in a show alongside Nathan Fox and Zach Soto at Domy Books in Houston? Check out the flickr for the show, called HARDBODIES). You can see samples of artwork (including mine) in this dope, NSFW promo video that Pat and Ian made for the RUB THE BLOOD Kickstarter:


The second part of this video recreates shot-for-shot this Liefeld Levi’s ad from the 90’s.

The Kickstarter campaign is to get RUB THE BLOOD printed up for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest. It’s already fully funded but if you want to order a signed or unsigned copy, or get some original art or comics from me, Pat, or PB Kain, the page is here.

Here’s additional artwork by Pat Aulisio:

Pat Aulisio RUB THE BLOOD artwork

And Victor Cayro:

Victor Cayro RUB THE BLOOD artwork

October 21st, 2011

Hyperbox Ink Draw

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 7:06 am

Does anyone reading this remember my Hyperbox minis? Hyperbox was a long comic serialized in minis that I started but unfortunately never finished. I drew three issues for a total of 60 pages between December 2007 and June 2008.

Someone ordered those comics from me recently so I decided to do this Hyperbox ink drawing:

Hyperbox ink draw

I don’t plan on ever finishing Hyperbox because my style has changed too much since then but some of the ideas that I put into it will probably resurface in future works.

October 18th, 2011

James Jarvis: Pure, Unfettered Cartooning; including Steadman, Alechinsky, and my Monster Show Ink Drawz

The James Jarvis drawings that Dan Nadel posted this past week on the Picturebox blog are a revelation.

James Jarvis homage of Goya
An homage to Goya’s “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monster” from Day 1 of the James Jarvis posts.

James Jarvis colored drawing
A colored page from Day 4 of the James Jarvis posts. These posts on the Picturebox blog are promotion for a full-color book that Jarvis has out, De Profundis.

Pure, unfettered cartooning. The impulsive, inky scratching of them reminds me of Ralph Steadman …

Ralph Steadman “The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters”
This is Steadman’s homage to that same Goya etching. I posted it so large because I stitched it together from two scans I did of Gonzo: The Art, a Steadman art book.

… mixed with a little bit of Maurice Sendak and of course, Pierre Alechinsky.

Alechinsky, “Alvéoles”
Alechinsky, “Alvéoles.”

Alechinsky, “Volcan ensorcelé”
Alechinsky, “Volcan ensorcelé.” Both of these paintings are from the website of the Alechinsky retrospective at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Check out this Alechinsky post by Derik A Badman or my previous Alechinsky post for more examples of his comic-like work.

Steadman was one of my biggest early influences and I love Alechinsky so Jarvis’s work really speaks to me. I’ve been experimenting with modifying my wanna-be Moebius-and-Brinkman hybrid style to something more spontaneous and cartoony. I like working in MangaStudio but sometimes I just want to get away from glowing computer screens and put nib to paper.

Here are two examples of me doing just that, in these drawings that I did for Monster Show 6 at Domy Books in Austin:

Cardini Quirky Miniboss Squad
I was thinking about the TV Tropes entry on the Quirky Miniboss Squad when I drew this (warning: TV Tropes is a link-infested time suck).

Cardini Fuck You Monster
This drawing is dedicated to my buddy Grant Davis.

Disclaimer: these drawings may or may not be in the Monster Show 6. I’m going to have something in there but I don’t know what yet. Come to the opening from 7-9pm on October 29th (costume encouraged) to see tons of monster drawings by all sorts of amazing artists. If you’re in Houston, there’s also a Monster Show there.

October 14th, 2011

Turtle Mutant Ninja Bart

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , — William Cardini @ 7:47 am

Inspired by KC Green’s Fan-Fiction Fridays, here’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle/Bart Simpson mashup:

Turtle Mutant Ninja Bart

Should I make this into a t-shirt?

October 11th, 2011

Figure Drawing

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 9:56 pm

I went and did some figure drawing last night. Austin Figurative Gallery does an event every Monday from 7 to 9pm at the 29th Street Ballroom. It’s $5 to attend.

I hadn’t done any figure drawing since I was a freshman in college but after a couple quick warmups it all felt familiar again, except for the d00d drawing with his wacom in Corel Painter. Not that I’m against it (I do most of my drawing with a wacom) but that’s definitely a tool I’ve never thought about using for figure drawing. When I was in school I would use charcoal or pastels on newsprint or butcher paper, but I didn’t want to have to go out and buy a bunch of new supplies so I used some pencils and a Prismacolor brush tip marker in my sketchbook.

Here are my best pages of sketches from this session:

Mark Hensel figure drawing
Contour drawings with the Prismacolor brush tip marker. Three to five minutes per drawing.

Mark Hensel figure drawing
The one on the right is more of a traditional figure drawing with a softer lead pencil, either 2B or 6B. For the one on the left, I tried to do what Frank Santoro talks about in his blogpost Color Workbook 1: define the shape of the figure with gray and then add contours on top. Three to five minutes per drawing.

Mark Hensel figure drawing
Contour drawings with a 6B pencil. I balanced some levels in Photoshop so the lines are easy to see. Three to five minutes per drawing.

Mark Hensel figure drawing
Contour drawing with a Prismacolor brush tip marker. Five minutes for the drawing.

I’ll be going back next week – maybe I’ll see y’all there?

October 7th, 2011

Big Nose Bug D00dz Sketch

Filed under: Sketchbook Pages — Tags: — William Cardini @ 7:47 am

After using moleskines for a while, I finally broke down and got another one of my favorite sketchbooks, an 8.5×11″ réflexions bound sketch book. I broke it in by drawing a bunch of big nose bug d00dz:

Cardini big nose bug d00dz sketch

You might see some of these d00dz in a future comic of mine.

October 4th, 2011

24-Hour Comics Day 2011 Austin Recap

This past weekend was 24-Hour Comics Day. I spent several hours at an Austin event organized by Zach Taylor.


A sample page from Zach’s current webcomic, Bear Quest. I love how he does pixel art versions of each page.

I wasn’t there to work on a 24-hour comic – I just worked on a book-length comic, VORTEX, that I’m now about 3/8ths of the way through.


I’m not going to show y’all any more of VORTEX until the whole thing is finished.

The 24-Hour Comics Day event was fun (and productive – I finished [almost] four pages in the [little over] four hours I was there). I got to meet Jason Poland, who makes the webcomic Robbie and Bobby, IRL after many online convos.


This is a few panels from a Robbie and Bobby comic called “Wings”. Jason does all sorts of awesomely weird stuff like this in his strip, which he puts out several times a week.

I also met Austin Bedell


This is a comic from Austin’s side project Vidyagame Library, where he draws comic inspired by NES videogames.

… Chris Sweet …


This is a comic from Chris’s webcomic Effing Decaf. He also did a great mashup comic with Zach called “16-Bit Breakfast”.

… and many other awesome local comic folks. I’ll probably continue to work on my own projects during 24HCD2012 but it’s great to get to hang out with a bunch of local cartoonists.