Enjoy!

Pretty neat stuff, no?

Check here for even more work from Kurt.

15 Comments

• At October 3, 2007, TF_loki wrote:

  That is pretty good stuff. I wish my ballpoint doodlings were in that league

• At October 3, 2007, Apodaca wrote:

  You should mention the most amazing part of Kurt's talent. You know, the fact that he doesn't use his hands.

• At October 3, 2007, Brian Cronin wrote:

  You should mention the most amazing part of Kurt’s talent. You know, the fact that he doesn’t use his hands. ...

• At October 3, 2007, Apodaca wrote:

  Sorry if I blew it. The work does stand on it's own, absolutely, but I think it's worth pointing out, ...

• At October 3, 2007, FunkyGreenJerusalem wrote:

  I was looking at this on the boards the other day.

  It's really quite good.

• At October 4, 2007, Ian Astheimer wrote:

  You should mention the most amazing part of Kurt’s talent. You know, the fact that he doesn’t use his hands.

  ...?

  He ...

• At October 4, 2007, Cei-U! wrote:

  Actually, I draw holding the pen in my teeth. I was delighted that Brian didn't mention that fact and I ...

• At October 4, 2007, Mongoose wrote:

  Very classy silver age-y looking artwork. The three dimensional construction of the characters is just so tight and neat. I ...

• At October 4, 2007, Da Fug wrote:

  I dig his Batman and the Vulture/Spidey pic.

• At October 4, 2007, Apodaca wrote:

  My favorite is the old-school Batman at the bottom.

• At October 5, 2007, Paul wrote:

  Love that Batman. I wish I could see this wonderful colored Hourman drawing Kurt did again...I had it as ...

• At October 5, 2007, Cei-U! wrote:

  I'll try to post the Hourman pic on my art thread in the next couple of days.

• At October 5, 2007, Paul wrote:

  whee! thank you!

• At December 9, 2007, dr_cyclops wrote:

  I tried to get Kurt to draw with his feet. He said "NO". I owe so much of my drawing ...

• At April 30, 2008, Roquefort Raider wrote:

  Kurt is really excellent. His style is classic without looking dated; it has all that was good in silver age ...

Here's a neat little description of Bret:

Bret lives and drinks in the beautiful city of Vancouver, where he also pays the rent with freelance graphic design work. He's been drawing and painting his whole life, and hopes to someday get rich at it.

And he's not interested in doing portraits of babies.

With that being said, let's look at some cool artwork!

Click on any of the pictures to enlarge them!

Probably Bret's biggest strength as an artist is his work with automobiles and motorcycles...check this stuff out...

Impressive, huh?

Here's a superhero piece by Bret...notice how he actually gets the archery RIGHT!

Here are some more science-fiction inspired pieces from Bret...

And finally, here are a number of pieces where I think he does a wonderful job capturing the mood of his theme...

I especially like the lizard and the lady with the gun. So infused with character!

Here is a thread of his artwork, and here is his Flickr.

Enjoy!

10 Comments

• At February 2, 2007, DanLarkin wrote:

  I love Howy's work. There are some cool pieces here. Thanks for sharing them, Brian.

• At February 2, 2007, Adam Jones wrote:

  Anyone ever see that episode of My Name is Earl with the trial artist?

  She wasn't interested in doing portraits of ...

• At February 2, 2007, Greg Burgas wrote:

  Now, I like that art, but objectively, is it any good? Oh, wait a minute, wrong post ...

• At February 2, 2007, Roel wrote:

  The proportion of Green Arrow's waist to his shoulders is distracting. Maybe it's just me, but I'm more concerned ...

• At February 3, 2007, howyadoin wrote:

  I keep coming back to that little bio paragraph. Does it seem pretentious to refer to myself in the third ...

• At February 3, 2007, howyadoin wrote:

  As for the Green Arrow comments, I was aiming for the sort of physique that Simon Bisley gave Batman in ...

• At April 17, 2007, jason baroody wrote:

  awesome artwork!

• At February 25, 2008, ewan the didge wrote:

  i am outstanded by the quolity of this work if there are any outher sites with his work would u ...

• At March 7, 2008, (NO) wrote:

  Oh man these are great.

• At April 30, 2008, Roquefort Raider wrote:

  Bret isn't only a great artist, he's also a pretty cool teacher. His ongoing thread on the Artist and Writer ...

D'Armata made his debut working at Top Cow. If you did work at Top Cow as a colorist in the 21st Century (and your last name was not Smith, Isanove or Haberlin), you were likely working in the shadow of Steve Firchow, whose influence is evident in Top Cow's colorists since Firchow became the main man at Top Cow for coloring. This was the case for D'Armata as well.

It was while working at Crossgen a few years ago that D'Armata began developing his own unique style that he maintains today. If you look at Crossgen's colorists, you can see how much of a priority the company placed upon coloring, because their stable of colorists reads like a Who's Who of colorists, with both well-established colorists like Laura Martin and Justin Ponsor as well as young colorists who made their mark at Crossgen, who may have had profiles before CrossGen, but by the time they were done with CrossGen, their profile was much higher. Besides D'Armata, there was Morry Hollowell, Jason Keith and Caesar Rodriguez.

Since he first began at Crossgen, D'Armata had worked with penciller Steve Epting, but just as Epting began to try new things as an artist the longer he was at Crossgen, the same could be said for D'Armata. The culmination of this pairing was evident in their last project together at Crossgen, the pirate comic book, El Cazador.

From an interview with Greg Thompson at the time the first issue was released, here are El Cazador writer Chuck Dixon and Epting talking about D'Armata,

Thompson: How important would you say the colorist's job is in establishing the mood of El Cazador?

Dixon: Extremely. Frank D'Armata is really adding to the illustrative quality of Steve's art. The world of El Cazador is a real one; not a superhero or alien environment. Frank has to make certain that the lighting and textures remain true to our world. That's tougher than it sounds.

Epting: The colorist - in this case Frank D'Armata - is hugely important. We have had long discussions on the approach we wanted to use for this book. Frank is doing a sort of painterly style in an effort to evoke the feeling of classic pirate art in the vein of Howard Pyle and Frank Schoonover. It is an ongoing experiment for him and he keeps getting better and better.

Their compliments are on the money, which is evident in these sample pages from the first issue...

Look how lush those pages look!

This lush, "realistic" style is the same one D'Armata developed and brought with him when he stayed with Epting, as the two moved to Marvel, with Captain America.

Here are sample pages from Captain America #6.

The look they are going for in Captain America is that "action movie" feel, and D'Armata pulls it off beautifully.

Also, on Captain America, a secondary bonus of having D'Armata is the amazing consistency his colors bring to the book.

Don't get me wrong, working at Crossgen has brought a lot of Jackson Guice influence into Steve Epting's pencils, and Mike Perkins was Guice's inker at Crossgen and later ended up doing pencils with a very heavy Guice influence, so the change from Epting to Perkins should not be that significant, but whatever change at all is blunted by D'Armata's colors, which help the book maintain a consistent look.

For example, check out these sample pages from a Perkins illustrated issue of Captain America, #16...

I find that remarkable.

Perhaps what I find most remarkable about D'Armata, though, is his recent work on Daredevil. It is the same lush/realistic style, but much more "pulp-y"/"noir-y" style. It is done so well - right off the bat! Usually, you have to build up to this sort of thing, but D'Armata had the style down pat from the first issue.

Here are some sample pages from the most recent issue of Daredevil...

I'm really impressed.

At the same time, D'Armata is still able to use a clean, Firchow-esque style, when that is called for.

When he began working on Avengers: Disassembeld, D'Armata got a lot of crap for the colors, which I think is a bit unfair (and yes, I thought the idea of coloring everything red was stupid, too, but I understand that it wasn't HIS fault), as D'Armata was specifically told to color the scenes like that.

Yes, this coloring was pretty silly, but look at the pages where he WASN'T specifically told to color it red!

See?

Just a standard Firchow-esque coloring style.

This is the same style he brought over to New Avengers, as seen in this page from New Avengers #4.

By the way, as a testament to D'Armata's talents, look at how much worse the colors have looked on New Avengers since D'Armata left, and his replacement is one of the coloring greats, Dave Stewart!!

This Firchow-esque style (which makes sense, as Finch came from Top Cow, so he's Silvestri-esque, so it only makes sense that his colors be Firchow-esque...hehe) continues on his current Uncanny X-Men, which helps to make artist Billy Tan appear more like David Finch.

These pages don't stun the audience, like his Captain America or Daredevil work does, but it is still solid work.

All in all, I think that Frank D'Armata is one of the best colorists in the business, and I hope this little bit helped to demonstrate his talents.

12 Comments

• At July 9, 2006, Bill Reed wrote:

  Okay, you might be onto something with the pirate stuff, but I've never seen the guy as a great colorist... ...

• At July 9, 2006, Bill Reed wrote:

  And by that, I mean, Jose, of course. I can't type.

• At July 9, 2006, Peter Hensel wrote:

  While I agree that Jose Villarubia is an amazing colorist, there's no reason to dismiss D'Armata, mostly because of his ...

• At July 9, 2006, Brian Cronin wrote:

  I love Jose Villarubia's work. I just think that (perhaps due to his work on Promethea), that Villarubia isn't exactly ...

• At July 10, 2006, Tim Callahan wrote:

  I don't like the overly-toned computer coloring. I prefer the classic flat coloring and I think the arwork above ...

• At July 10, 2006, TeamSmithy wrote:

  While I think he's talented he's not really to my tastes andI think he's horribly unsuited to Lark's art. The ...

• At July 10, 2006, David Blackshore wrote:

  That's a good point about D'Armata bringing consistency to the art on Captain America. I still prefer Epting (though ...

• At July 10, 2006, Martin wrote:

  Ewww! Everything looks shiny and photoshopped. :(

• At July 10, 2006, Omar Karindu wrote:

  Gotta say I agree with David Blackshore to the extent that coloring and is now technologically advanced to the point ...

• At July 10, 2006, David Blackshore wrote:

  That's a good point, Omar, about flat coloring suiting some artists better than heavily-rendered coloring. The great thing about ...

• At July 10, 2006, Omar Karindu wrote:

  Tom Palmer, Klaus Janson, Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, Mick Gray, and Bob Layton -- all fantastic inkers.

  It's a pity, to ...

• At September 20, 2006, JEff wrote:

  Who colored those pages to make everything look greasy and washed-out and grimy? It completely ruins the drawings.

  The artist is ...