A few months ago, I found myself back at the house I grew up in. I had a few weeks off, in between projects, and was visiting my father who was in poor health. It was a time of exhaustion and disinterest in drawing. Conceivably, you’ve had those periods with no rain, where almost any activity imaginable is preferable to moving a pencil across the fibers of some dead tree. The magic of creativity isn’t even an echo of an echo of a memory.

One day I was digging through a closet looking for a pair of cowboy boots that, to my regret, weren’t as cool as I remember them. Nevertheless, I found something much cooler, a box of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. Like almost every kid in the world in the early 90’s, I was an enthusiastic participant in the consumerist empire that was the TMNT. Looking back at those little toys, I was impressed at how fun and diverse the characters were. There were some really dumb ones (Anyone remember Farmer Michelangelo? Yikes) and there were some that had wonderful and creative designs (Groundchuck, MuckMan). Maybe one day I’ll dig into who the artists were that designed all these. Tony Soprano said “Remember when is the lowest form of conversation”, so I won’t walk longer down that path, but at any rate, the stone to the tomb of my inspiration had been rolled away, and my Blackwing 602 sparkled with newness as a tool for infinite expression and variation. Wild fun had snuck back into my life. 


I drew these on my new favorite medium, fountain pen on Midori paper. I wish to god they would make larger sheets than A4, this stuff is magnificent.  I used various Pilot pens. The sole objective here was to have fun, and make something I like.  I wanted to play with the proportions, and I worked mostly from instinct. After I liked the first few, I thought it would be cool to do a large series, but I only got 5 or six done before I had to move on to other work. I think I came up with some fresh elements to my own stylistic drawing language, and the response was pretty good on social media with these, particularly the Leonardo. Maybe you’ll enjoy them. 

 

 

A luxuriously thick Raphael

 

Never liked the surfer dude Mike. How about if his shell was possessed by an ancient warrior demon god?

 

These have a sketchy, less refined look to them that I’m quite pleased with. I haven’t cracked the code on how to get my comic book interiors to showcase this quality. Maybe it’s what has plagued me the last few years: a lack of courage. 

Where is the Watchmen-style gritty deconstruction of Rocksteady? I would love to do THAT.

 

My favorite turtle, Donatello. This is actually unfinished, I never quite got him developed but it was going to be a critique of technology/progress. I’ll get around to it!

 

Leonardo, equipped with the Buster sword and Masamune from FFVII. The internet continually mistook this as a Berserk riff, but hell I’ll take it.



Drawing stuff off model is so fun. There was never much of a story with TMNT in my opinion, but the characters themselves have always begged to be drawn in expressive and experimental ways. Yeah we’re all here to make money and satiate our feudal landlords, but it’s actually pretty fun to slip around and draw for fun sometimes. See you around.