Homages, retools and rip-offs

I was reading lately of the unavoidable heritage of any artist. They admittedly or not have millenia of other work that informs theirs. It is inescapable, to paraphrase; no artist is an island. I have no problem with it and it is good to embrace it even. The following picture are clearly using other ideas or themes in a different context.

These first two are the "Kama Monstra". I am poised to do more work on these. I think there is a lot of potential in them. They are fun for me nonetheless. The creature feature is part of my cultural heritage. They are a newish telling of old stories about monsters, night creatures and anything that is on a higher rung of the food chain than us. The Kama Sutra less so part of my heritage but it is of course in the cultural lexicon thousands of years and thousands of mile later. That is an amazing thing if you think about it.

The "Spider Goreys" are also fun and a melange of other things. This first pick is the rough idea as it started out. Strangely the cleaner copies (the third one, done on more appropriate paper I might add) of the ones that follow do not, I think , capture the mood I wanted.

The idea here is to simmer down each issue of the the Amazing Spider Man series into a single panel. Done so in style based on Edward Gorey's and focusing on the Peter Parker(Young Mister Parker) character than on the super aspect of them. This idea of understatement is I think informed by a comic I read in the 90's which may or may not be Jim's Journal.

I did these two to send to some blog or another. I hope the riff is clear.

compare with this work on cardboard

Sometimes I just copy other people's work.