Simply the best chicken soup you ever had.....

Those that know me know well that I'm a prodigious home cook, not a chef by any rate just a guy who is passionate about cooking awesome food for his family and friends.  I do all of our cooking and love it!  It's honestly one of the best parts of my day, and being that we're now into autumn I wanted share something.  It's a different kind of art, as it does come in various guises right?  Smoked Chicken Soup with Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano.

It's easy to make, but admittedly a bit time consuming but well, well worth it.

I use a whole chicken, any size or type will do as long as it fits in your boiling pot of course.

I won't get too deep into this but I like to smoke the whole chicken beforehand.  You can do this on any charcoal grill with a lid-I've even used my little weber to do it!.  Keep the temp low and the heat indirect as you are really trying to cold smoke the chicken, to get all that smoky flavor but without cooking and consequently drying out the chicken.  I usually smoke as prodigiously as I can for 1/3 to half the alloted time it would take to smoke the whole bird to fully cooked.  (Don't worry there's an easy quick alternative I'll go into in the end if you feel that smoking a chicken is too daunting.)

From here get the chicken(whole into your now boiling pot of Lightly salted (don't oversalt the water-add your salt at the end-easy to add hard to take out sort of thing) water and boil it on medium heat until the chicken is falling off the bone tender-2-3 hours usually but sometimes it's faster.

Remove the chicken completely from the broth you just made, remove as much of the meat as you want to use, save/or discard the rest.  I have dogs so getting rid of the fat and whatever I don't want to use is a cinch.  Bones hit the trash of course.

Add 4-5 bay leaves to the broth as well as about 1 tsp pepper-any you desire-White, Black, Cayenne, doesn't matter.

Return the chicken to the broth and now add cut up onions(1-2 decent ones) crushed, or minced fresh garlic-to taste-, Cut up carrots, celery if you wish, and egg noodles-any type will work but I find that homeade ones really are much better.  If you have a pasta roller I say go for it!

If you like garden greens in soup you can add them during the last half of the boil with no problem-any variety will do.  I put fresh Kale in my soups all the time.  Spinach also works really well.

Boil until vegetables are done and noodles are nicely tender.

Dish out into bowls sprinkle quite liberally with the Fresh Parmesan, Asiago, and Romano blend-I mean any or all of these, or others will work.  This is just the way I do it because this is our favorite blend from the store.  ie-Manchego is great in this soup all by itself.  Don't be afraid to experiment.

Sprinkle a pinch of Kosher Salt into every bowl....

Eat Much!

Now for the easy alternative I mentioned:  If you are in a time pinch or just don't want to go through the smoking hassles, etc.  I have found that you can make the soup exactly as described-sans chicken smoking of course- and when you add the bay leaves add about 1- tbsp of liquid smoke extract to the broth-Honestly it comes out really good this way so don't be afraid to try it.

All in all and different way to have chicken soup but an incredibly enjoyable one that I really wanted to share.  If you come up with any variations on this you love, I'd love to hear about them.

Creative freedom can sometimes be more difficult

At present I'm working on two creator owned manga stories.  I'm glad that I have the time and freedom to finally get to them, because they are stories I've long wanted to tell.  In the midst of penciling said stories I've noticed something that I wanted to share.  The importance of 'locking' your story ahead of time.  Having the discipline to really treat writing as a separate craft ahead of executing the artwork and sticking to the storyline once pen'd.  This is something I definitely struggle with.  As I draw I'll see a new angle and start to deviate from my pre-written version.  Soon I end up on Nowhereland, or off on a disconnected tangent and have wasted a day or two penciling pages that have taken me far afield of where I should have been going.  Yes making changes to improve your story is fine in measured amounts, but make sure that before you start drawing that the basic structural foundation of your story is solid and will take the reader where you want them to go.  Trust me, if it isn't, you will end up wasting a lot of time changing and re-arranging things, and often to no avail.  Now, with the advent of Photoshop or GIMP, it's easy to re-composite pages and chop them up, move stuff around, etc after the fact, so really, draw it first the way you wrote it, and make changes later as needed.  I've found this to be a much more effective and productive strategy when working on my own stuff.  I mean we all want to shoot the moon and achieve greatness in our work, but drawing yourself into a disorganized corner will never get you anywhere except burnt out, frustrated, and lacking confidence in your efforts.  The way to avoid this is by inches.  Write a solid story, draw your layouts, finish your pencils, ink them suckas, tone or color, submit or publish.  No skipping steps or jumping ahead.  Shortcuts are always the long way around.  I think you'll find that by slowing down and being a bit more methodical that you actually speed up in the grand scheme of things sequential.  Best Wished and I hope this little bit of insight from my drawing table has been helpful.


IIID

Watch out for new previews of 'Miko' and 'Agency Black' coming soon!

The New 'Agency Black' coming soon

Yes I know we had that 8 page 'indy teaser' out like a year ago and then never went any farther with it, but actually I have been working away on it.   I did a complete rewrite and have reset the odometer to Zero.  Yup I just decided that I wanted to get deeper with the story and really explore the characters a bit more as well as add a whole bunch of twists and turns.  Well the new first issue is rolling right along and will be inked colored and lettered soon, I promise.  I think you'll agree it had to be done and I hope for the curious that it will have indeed been worth the wait.  Best Wishes to all.  I'll post some teasers, WIP's and such up here and a few other places as I roll them out.  Oh and we'll have related artwork up in the stores as well.

IIId

Whas up with that?

Clarification of sorts folks.  There is an individual from the Czech republic on a number of freelancing sites who is now using the artist tag IIID.  I'm not saying that it is anything other than an innocent coincidence and accusing this chap or chapet of nothing.  The simple fact is, I've signed my work as 'IIId' since the early 90's.  My work and posts are always signed with the graphic tag you see on work in this blog or with IIId(I always use the lower case 'd')  I am not from the Czech republic.  I live right here in the United States in the midst of our fair Great Lakes.  Lucky me!  I thank the emailer who brought this to my attention.  Best Wishes to all!

IIId

IIId man, do you do manga? Yeah, I do manga too........

After The Mission...

After The Mission...I was just in the mood for some classic 007 action today, and what's more 007 than girl, martini, beach and sunset?  Best Wishes!

IIId

Less can indeed be more......

Drawing sequential artwork in any form is challenging, stressful at times, but very rewarding.  I'm not going to go in a lecture to any extent about this but I really wanted to comment on something I see a great deal and certainly have done in the past.  It is a huge faux pas you want to avoid.  DO NOT draw your artwork panel by panel in all medium shots.  It is very natural to do this because of how we visualize our world, but you must think in a cinematic way when laying out panels or pages.  There are a number of reasons to use many angles both uber far and uber close.  Firstly is it adds a ton of appeal to your pages.  Secondly and more important is it saves you tons of work.  Learning to do your pages this way allows you flexibility and often less is indeed more.  Also your pages with have more emotional depth as well and visible impact.  This also allows you to control the pace of the story allowing you to speed the reader up and slow him or her down.  It's a very powerful tool in that respect.  Lastly know that publishers can spot this instantly and consider endless pages full of medium shots a real flaw.  Some even call it a 'rookie' mistake. They also know that you'll never finish your pages on time.   I think it can happen to even a veteran artist at times.  Sometimes it just reflects your mood about a scene or a story you are working on.  Sometimes it's even ok to do a slow moving page like this and works well for that, but it really is to be avoided throughout your work.  Try to really vary your panels up a lot and think in terms of a dynamic camera and you really will do faster, smarter and simply better sequential artwork.  An eye can say as much as a face.....Hope this is a helpful bit of insight.  Best Wishes and Blessings to all!

D

As an aside to this try writing short one or two page stories and drawing them.  It forces you to vary up your shots.  It's a good exercise and teaches you to work on one or two pages at a time thinking of each as a mini chapter or story with it's own problem, climax and conclusion.  When I go through a script I usually chop them up this way.  I also like to sometimes draw all my panels for a pages or series on separate sheets of paper, then either cutting them up and pasting them together(yes paper and glue was how they did that before digital)or just using Photoshop to composite them. 

SOPWITH FLYBOYS!

The new 'Sopwith Flyboys' design.  Hope you all love it!  I just love old fighter planes and what not and that episode of peanuts from back in the day with Snoopy flying one of these bad boys against the infamous Red Baron.  I just had to do it.  This one is already up in our Cafepress store.  Best Wishes to all and stay blessed! 

Does She Talk?

Alright technical skills aside I want to address something that at least to me is important in every piece of art I work on whether it is fine art, or design work.  Does it speak to me?  Sometimes the answer is actually no.  I've certainly done what I considered good painting and what not and then looked at it after the fact and just felt flat.  No response.  No stirred emotion, Nada.  These usually get stuck in a folder, or sent off to the island of misfit art, etc.  Never shared and often forgotten.  I just feel like if it doesn't speak to me before during and after producing it then it isn't art.  If it doesn't speak to you then it has almost no chance of speaking to anyone else.  Even if they think it's good they won't think it is inspired and that's the point.  You have to let yourself be inspired to produce work that you feel strongly about.  Anyone can learn to draw or paint a picture but it's those inspired cats that really flirt with disaster and achieve greatness in their work.  Academic drawing and painting skill is great but it isn't always of primary importance.  Getting the message in there in some clever way that shouts it out to your audience, that is never secondary.  Vibrance, Dynamism, Message, Technique,  they are all important and need to be addressed in every piece of important art you put out.  If you produce inspired work you really believe in you will be that much more confident in selling yourself and standing behind your body of public work as an artist.  Experiment, take chances, overcome challenges, in every piece and you will come out of each a stronger and better artist.  Comfort zones and niches while sometimes necessary from an economic POV, are easy places that don't push your skill or repertoire at all.  There is nothing wrong with consistency or making money, but don't be afraid to try new styles, subjects, improvise, or to blaze new trails within your artistic realm.  Don't be afraid to to mess up something you love, or be afraid to fail because you can't.  Keep trying, don't accept failure, and the concept of failure is banished.  Don't work at art, have fun with it.  When you begin to have fun and take chances in your work.  When you actually 'get fearless' with it you have reached new heights as an artist.  Others will notice the attitude shift in your work as well.  Your art is the chronicle of a journey and the way that story is told can hold others rapt or leave them passing by disinterested.  Tell your stories well, and remember shortcuts are often the long way around.  Best Wishes.

IIId

Don't worry Leia I 'tuned' up the Falcon already....

Had to do it!  I was just doodling one day last week and came up with the rough sketch of this.  I'm a self professed Star Wars Universe Junkie so I went ahead and finished it in Photoshop.  I had so much fun doing this one I'm sure you'll see more Star Wars fan art up here real soon.  Enjoy and Best Wishes to all!

IIId

Yeah we got Chops!

I love cars and drawing and painting 'Chops' is so much fun.  This one was drawn on pencil and paper and then colored and finished in Photoshop.  I think you really get a much better result doing it this way than doing the 'warp' thing in Photoshop.  I've tried it both ways but drawing the initial 'Tune' just works better for me.  I also like putting my chops in environments rather than leaving them on white or a simple grad.  Just wanted to share one of the latest ones I've done.  Best Wishes to all!