After working on the Nightwing pages for Howard Chaykin in March I decided to put together a new portfolio of images to show Chaykin at the Baltimore Comic-Con in October. Rather than do something predictable such as Batman, the Shadow, or ripping off of masters such as Wallace Wood I decided that the focus of this portfolio would be the photography of Arthur “Weegee” Fellig; a crime/urban photographer active in the 1930s and 1940s.
My reasons for making Weegee’s photographs the basis of the portfolio are that first, in Brannon Costello’s Neon Dreams, Chaykin describes his childhood in the New York City of the 1950’s as being like the New York of Weegee’s photography so I figured that the portfolio would appeal to him on a personal level. Secondly, Chaykin’s two personal works, Time2 and Midnight of the Soul, are both set in the New York of the 1940s and 1950s with Shorty the Bowery Cherub making a cameo appearance in Midnight. Thirdly, since many of the photographs are black and white, working on the portfolio would give me the opportunity to work exclusively with ink, which I have not done since college. Lastly, the portfolio would be a way to show Chaykin that I was not just another superhero-obsessed fanboy and that I could draw real people and objects from the real world.
Working on this portfolio was not easy. On the first picture, Summer of 1937, I started with the pencils then inked the lines thinking I could add the ink wash the way I added color with Prismacolor/Copic markers. Experimentation, however, showed that had I done that the wash would have caused the inked lines to bleed so I ended up having to buy a set of grey Copic markers to finish the picture. Moving forward with Shorty the Bowery Cherub I did the pencils first, added layers of ink wash to achieve the variety of greys in the original photographs, and then finished with inking the lines.
My original goal was to have six illustrations finished by October. Three illustrations would be focused on people and three other pictures would focus on buildings and landscapes. Due to conflicts with and changes to my schedules at my two day jobs, especially in August and September, I was only able to complete four illustrations. In the end, however, Chaykin seemed to be impressed by the illustrations sayong that they were “charming” while my comic pages were “too labored” which I agree with in hindsight.
UPDATE 10/31/20: In March of 2020 I decided to do two more additions to the Weegee to finish it as I originally planned in 2019: three pictures with people and three of the city itself. I planned on showing the two pictures to Chaykin as a surprise when I saw him again at AwesomeCon 2020 but due to it being postponed and later cancelled due to the Covid Pandemic I decided to share them publicly.
UPDATE 02/11/23: Finally managed to scan the pictures on a scanner large enough for them.
