Recently I was trying to clean out and organize a flat file cabinet in my third floor studio. My aim was to dispose of trash and to find the various sheets of Bristol board, watercolor paper and what have you in order to put them in some semblance of order. I made a dent in my attempts at organization, but, as is always the case, I spent a lot more time tumbling down other rabbit holes. I was going through a lot of old artwork from school and freelance and mainly wincing from creative choices made or not made. I was trying to get back to organizing when I came across this penciled piece on a yellowing sheet of 14-inch by 17-inch smooth Bristol board. I had not forgotten the drawing, but it’s been years since I’ve given it a thought. It was old. I worked at art supply stores for about ten years, and I always made a point of getting decent art materials. 100% rag. Acid free. It was from before that time just after getting out of the Philadelphia College of Art. It must have been from one of the discount pads I bought from Utrecht while I was at school. That’s why it was turning yellow.

I remember that it was around 1985, and I was hanging out with a couple I met at PCA. We were all into horror movies, horror literature or just about anything of the macabre. Punk rock was a big deal at the time although a lot of it was tedious and completely joyless. The Cramps was a different band. They eschewed politics and teenaged angst in favor of a hillbilly at the drive-in sound. We were big fans. The drawing was based on the Cramps song “The Goo Goo Muck” which was a cover of an obscure 1962 recording by Ronnie Cook & The Gaylads. With the Goo Goo Muck I was hoping to cook up a new monster for a new era as Universal Studios did in the 1930s and ’40s. My buddy sculpted and was pursuing special effects and prosthetic makeup as a career so I hoped he would render my monster into three dimensions. It would have been a great portfolio piece for him, and I could have turned the idea into a screenplay or comic book. We could have sold it to a producer as a package!

It never happened.

It only went as far as the pencil drawing on a 14 x 17 inch piece of cheap paper that has been yellowing in storage for nearly 40 years. I don’t know why I never completed it other than the fear of wrecking a nice drawing by the inexpert application of wet media. Nothing short of the perfectly brushed line would be tolerated. That sort of gun shyness is doom for an artist and it certainly hasn’t done me any favors. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Maybe I would just throw it out.

Sailor Fude De Mannen Fountain Pen with 55º Nib

Then I started inking the drawing with my Sailor fountain pen. If it didn’t work out, I would chuck it. What did I have to lose except a little bit of ink?

I am pretty happy with the results. I love that Sailor pen. The bristol has a smooth finish and the pen took to it very nicely

Sadly, white-out stands out like a turd in a punch bowl on this old paper. If we were still living in the analog days of “camera-ready art,” this drawing would be perfectly fine for reproduction. Those old high contrast, photostat cameras only registered black and white. On the other hand, the scanner picks up everything — even non-repro blue pencil — so I had to adjust accordingly in photo editing software.

So here it is — The Goo Goo Muck! Penciled in 1985, possibly ’86 and inked in around the week of Christmas 2024. Better late than never, I guess.

ADDENDUM

I did a little further finagling with this illustration in that I added some background elements. I did them digitally to see if it would work. I laid in a spatter background which is probably what I had in mind originally. The technique of building tones by flicking an ink laden toothbrush was very popular at the time I drew the original drawing. This time I did it digitally in Affinity Photo and I laid in a weathered parchment because I liked how it looked. I would have done it by hand, but I don’t think this old bristol would have survived the masking and painting process. I probably would have destroyed the original.

So how did I do?