Hugo’s Blog

And Happy Birthday wishes to phaedravelveta!!! (no connection to the above image) Hope it's a great year for you and yours!

The first sketch I did for ragepie1967's "femdom" commission revolved around the subject of face sitting, but everything I came up with seemed too derivative of that one Japanese artist who always draws big females sitting on the prone faces of hapless men (you know the guy I'm talking about, right? He does really beautifully rendered work), so I bagged the idea and went with something else (seen here), using the same male figure. Over the weekend, I sketched this girl...

and seeing as I still had that rejected femdom sketch laying around on my desk, I decided to go ahead and work her into it...

Had something good and something very sad happen to me today. First, the good: a couple of pieces that I submitted to The Dirty Show annual exhibit in Detroit got accepted. This drawing and this one made the cut. I'm excited because the opening night looks like a real hoot. I'll definitely do my best to make it out to the Motor City. Thanks to utopiarebel for letting me know about the show!

The sad news is that I had to have one of the feral cats who live in my backyard put to sleep. Poor old Sir Thomas is no longer with us. He's always been a ragged little guy, but recently his health was really declining rapidly. He'd eat a lot whenever he came around, but he was so fucking gaunt and ill looking. I managed to pet him a few days ago and he was nothing but ribs; his skin was like paper. So, I got hold of a trap, and, to my surprise, caught him in less than a day. He was in the trap when I got home from work today, so I took him to the vet, but he was so far gone. He weighed only 6 pounds, which is about half of what a cat his size should weigh, and his kidneys were completely shut down. The vet did a number of tests and determined that he had FIV. There was really nothing that could be done for him, so I decided to have him put down. Poor little guy.

RIP Sir Thomas

I'm posting 'em here. LJ is a pretty incestuous family, so if you're friends with me you're probably also friends with the great dexter_cockburn and you already saw this image when he posted it a few weeks ago

I did this as a "thank you" drawing in exchange for some artwork he sent me, but he's going ahead and using it as the cover of his next comix collection. The guy's got no sense, if you ask me, but who am I to stop him? The drawing features Dexter's character Pippa Creme playing the coquette and my imagining of the artist himself.

Next up is a commission that the mighty ragepie1967 requested. The theme was "femdom," which inspired (using the term loosely) this...

Who's got the ten and a half?

Went down to DC to see an old friend last weekend. We took a trip up to the eternal city of Baltimore, which inspired this drawing.

Seeing all my drawings amassed together on my website, I was struck by how monochromatic everything is. I've always been attracted to black-and-white work, so a lot of this is a personal choice, but I have to admit that I also just don't know enough about color to use it well and I don't have time to learn. I came to this whole drawing thing too late in life. Anyway, over the years, I've tried my hand at working in color. There are a few examples on my website, and here's some more from ye olde sketchbooke. Some of these go pretty far back.
At first I was messing around with colored pencils, but I never liked the waxiness and the fact that it was so hard to get darker tones with them.

Around the same time, I was experimenting with using animation cel paint applied to the reverse of drawings done on vellum paper, which is how this drawing and the one below were colored

I really didn't like drawing directly on the vellum though (too slick a surface for my tastes), so I bagged this method.

A bunch more examples. These get repetitive as I keep trying to work out skin tones and backgrounds

at the Basil Wolverton exhibit currently on view at the Gladstone Gallery (515 W. 24th St, NY, NY). It's a mind-blowing show, featuring a ton of Wolverton's drawings, including his Topps portraits and the Apocalypse series from his Bible illustrations. If you're anywhere near New York City, you owe it to yourself to check it out. But hurry--the show closes Friday!
You can peep a sampling of the show here

Ask any devotee of smutty art and writing about the first volume of Robin bougieman Bougie's SECRET COCKUPATION:THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF A PROSTITUTE, and they will certainly attest to its excellence. It was with great pride and pleasure, therefore, that I received Robin's invitation to contribute to the second volume, which details the exploits of Chicago's own demi-goddess of depravity, Lil Princess. Now, I haven't seen the entire finished product yet, but if it bears the bougieman seal, then you KNOW it's damn good, so order yourself a copy now! Here's all the info you need
I provided a few illustrations and a 4-page comic based on Lil Princess' writing. Here's some samples...

Thanks again for asking me to contribute, Robin. It was an honor!

Just messing around with this drawing. I think it needs more black.