DCartoons: Dan Christensen’s Comics & Sketches

Have you ever wondered what Maleficent (the evil fairy queen from Sleeping Beauty with a thing for spinning wheels) looked like after she got stabbed by the Prince and fell off the bridge at the end?

Well, according to my three-year-old son, she’d look something like this:

Actually I’m reading into this a little bit. When I asked him what he had painted, he just shouted out “Maleficent, mwa ha ha!!” (he digs Maleficent and does this great imitation of her evil laugh)…so if this were hanging in an art gallery somewhere, the little paper underneath it would read:

“Maleficent, mwa ha ha”
Watercolor on Canson paper
July 2008

And in closing, here’s a few sketches of the Black Widow.

Here is a drawing of Spider-Man VS. The Sinister Six, taken from the new Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon. It hasn’t come to French television yet (unfortunately), but from what I’ve seen on YouTube, it’s easily the coolest Spider-Man cartoon to hit TV since the one I grew up watching, back in the late 70’s. (You know, the one with the “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can” theme song? Yeah, that one) The new cartoon is, well… Spectacular. In keeping with Spider-Man-related adjectives, the character design is Amazing, and was done, I believe, by the very talented Sean Galloway. Anyway, we’re all fans of the show, and my son in particular, so he drew his version of the team: from left to right, we have Sandman, Kraven the Hunter* (replacing Rhino, who “wasn’t in the original Sinister Six”, I’m told), Electro, Dr. Octopus, the Vulture and Scorpion (replacing the Shocker for reasons unknown).

And this here is Iron Man, drawn with my handy Pentel brush-pen and colored in Photoshop. I still haven’t seen the movie, by the way… is it any good?

*formerly of the Village People

On rainy days, when we can’t go outside to play in the park or go to the beach, my boys and I have this unofficial tradition of sitting down at the kitchen table and drawing. My oldest is more of a “superheroes with markers” kid, while the youngest is more of a “surrealism with watercolors” kind of kid. The fact that he’s three may explain this.

Me, I’m more of a “use whatever is on the table to draw in my sketchbook” type. So, to shorten the wait in-between Paranormal pages, I’ll be posting some of the better sketches from the Rainy Day Sketchbook Sessions, or (RDSS in order to cut back on the excessive use of syllables).

Here’s the first two: The Silver Age X-Men (my favorite incarnation of the team, and my favorite superhero team of all time, followed closely by the Doom Patrol, the original Avengers and Justice League; but that’s another story for another time).

I sketched these up fast and inked them with a Pentel brush marker, then grabbed some supermarket-issue colored pencils to throw down some color. These are a lot sketchier than what I usually like to post, but I hope you dig them anyway.

Had me a Twilight Zone moment last night. Back on June 26th I’d posted the following drawrings, but last night, while nuking some spam messages*, I noticed that the post had magically disappeared. Spoo-oo-ooky.

Yeah, so I’m posting it again. Ahem: “Here’s a coupla colored pages from the last volume of my Paranormal trilogy”:

Page 3

Page 25

Enjoy! I’ll be back soon with more pages!

*Thanks a mill to all the [insert insulting adjective and noun combination here] who attempt to put spam posts on my blog; no, really, I DO APPRECIATE IT. REALLY. Now run along and go get yourselves a real job. I hear McDonald’s is hiring, with competitive wages.

Remember in my last post when I said, “I’ll post more pages next week”? Well, what I REALLY meant to say was, “I’ll post more pages next month.”

Page 7

Page 8

I’m nearly halfway done and am really hoping to finish the book by early-to-mid-July. More news (and pages) to come!

A month or so ago I took on a couple freelance illustration jobs, one for Spy Monkey Toys, an action figure company specializing in Golden Age comic book characters, and the other for a talented band from San Diego, So Long Davey!.

I was asked to rework Spy Monkey’s company logo and draw some Golden Age characters for the toy packages:



And the band had me draw them all as super hero characters for the cover of their CD, Another Planet:


Both projects were a lot of fun, kind of a breath of fresh air after having my nose buried in comic book pages for so long.

The colors for Paranormal vol.3 are coming along nicely, and I’ll be posting some colored samples next week. Stay tuned!

And now, a word from Rat Face:

Yep, it’s true: the art is done and scanned, and tomorrow I start coloring the book!

Will post some colored pages as soon as possible.