I'm a regular follower of Leif Peng's superb "Today's inspiration" blog which introduced me to more fine illustrators then I can count.  When I came across the John Costanza illustrations and wanted to verify they were by the well known comicbook letterer, he was the first person I turned to for help.  Leif took a look at the illustrations and contacted some people he knew.  Within less than an hour I had confirmation, from no less than Jerry Ordway, that these pictures were by that John Cost...
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Browsing charity and secondhand shops can lead to some interesting finds in the way of books.  Today I picked up two eighties editions of Joy Berry's "Let's talk about" series illustrated by John Costanza.  Now I'm guessing this is the John Costanza, reknowned comics letterer and masterful cartoonist on The Simpsons, Looney Toons and many another cartoon comicbook franchise.

The style is much looser than his comicbook work, done in pen and slightly reminiscient of Hank Ketcham's Dennis work, a...
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I'm a long time fan, having read many of his books over the years and there was definitely a time when Vonneguts view of the world matched my own.  I've mellowed with age, a great suprise to the few people who still know me from my older days but fortunately Mr Vonnegut never did.  In fact I think his outrage grew greater as did his despair at being unable to affect anything.  November 11 was Vonnegut's birthday and this quote from him captures him perfectly.


reblogged from Drawn but having bo...
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One of my favourite things from Google is the Google Reader.  Instead of spending hours trawling through countless websites the updates on my favourite blogs and sites come to me.  It's a masterful idea for many reasons but one i just realised is it allows me to chart my interests.  There are 187 subscriptions on my Google Reader, mostly split between animators and illustrators and a bunch of old comic sites like Stanley Stories .  Up until a few months ago there were a large number of comics...
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My daughter Molly's birthday falls on All Saints Day, or as it's known these days, the day when you get sick from eating all the candy you got on Halloween.  Her birthday party wasn't a real highlight for her as she got sick 20 minutes in and spent most of it crying and feeling sick with a nosebleed to top things off.  She did perk up enough later to go trick or treating with her little brother though.

Here's Molly in her bat costume and Harry as a skeleton.


This was also the first year I've ca...
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