This is concept art for a project I have on the back burner.

In that vein, I’d like to introduce you to David Malki’s Wondermark. This comic is fiendishly funny. David mixes a delightful steampunk clip-art aesthetic with clever humor based on bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations and nonsense. This is how I was raised (apart from the steampunk aesthetic), so each one is like a letter from home. Consider #540 In which Love is unrequited.

No one hits every ball out of the park, but Mr. Malki has been hitting more home runs than not for over six years now. Plus, who can resist a piranha-moose hybrid?

Please note that most web comics are not written for children, and Wondermark is aimed at an adult audience. Mostly this means that the humor is over a child’s head but there are some situations and or topics that might not be age appropriate.

Enjoy!

Score this design: “Drag Queen,” to help it get printed on Threadless!

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Art for the People

This is a remix of a drawing/painting I did in my moleskine notebook.

My contest rules apply. See details here.

King of Beasts

This design was originally submitted to Threadless, but was rejected due to fears that it involved licensed characters. I believe this is covered under parody. Apparently so did DBH!

My contest rules apply. See details here.

Charliechu!

I’m going to have the same contest for each shirt that makes it to judging:

Qualify
1. Sign up at DesignByHumans.com.
2. Vote for my design.
3. Comment on my design.
4. Send me an e-mail with your DBH username, your t-shirt size, and mailing address.

Ways to Win (if the shirt is printed)
1. First completed entry for each shirt wins a t-shirt.
2. Best/most creative comment for each shirt wins a t-shirt.
3. Random drawing from entries from each shirt wins a t-shirt.

Details for the contest and how to sign up are available here –> The Replacement Komics

Current shirts in the running at DBH (click for link to the voting):

Sanijan

Ruby Throated Bullet

Thanks for your help and good luck!

What does this mean to you? Should my t-shirt get printed, A FREE T-SHIRT goes to the winners of my contest-within-a-contest!

“So, Karl, what can I do to win this FREE T-SHIRT?!?!?!”

I’m glad you asked. Here are the steps to enter my contest with the goal of winning a free t-shirt with my design on it:

1. Go to DesignByHumans.com and follow this tutorial using this link –> KARL’S DESIGN <-- for steps 8, 9, and 10.

2. Send an e-mail to me (karlhabegger at yahoo dot com) with (A.)your name, (B.)the mailing address you would like your t-shirt sent to if you should win, (C.)your newly minted DesignByHumans.com username for eligibility verification and (D.) T-Shirt size.

Entries will be accepted starting NOW and continuing until DesignByHumans.com decides to print the shirt, or declines to print the shirt within 120 days.

IF THE T-SHIRT WINS THE DESIGNBYHUMANS CONTEST, PRIZES WILL BE AWARDED FOR THE FOLLOWING:

1. First Person to Complete the Entry
2. Most Amazing, Stupefying, or Creative Comment (Judged by me.)
3. Random drawing on the day of printing from all entries

Rules:

1. Only one entry per person. Please do not vote fraudulently as this will hurt my chances
2. Comment as often as you like. If you are trying to win prize number 2 and you feel you have been out-done by another contestant, jump right back in there
3. T-shirt sizes are only what is available from DesignByHumans
4. Sadly, if the design doesn’t win at DesignByHumans, I cannot award any prizes
5. Members of my household are not eligible to win prizes

Lastly, here is my completely astounding design that you certainly would want to wear all around town and possibly even in town or among other humans. It is a ruby-throated hummingbird being fired from a Colt Python. Okay. I admit that may seem strange, but if you have ever lived in Peru, Indiana this would make some sort of sense in context of people being fired from cannons.

Good Luck and may the fastest, wordsmithiest, and most random persons win.

Keith’s dog never appreciated the work Keith went through to get his hair just right.

You have to keep your eye on that dung beetle. I think he’s hiding cards.

For the annoying literalist in your life who has everything!

Take your time. It will come to you.

“No really, even my wife thinks it is a figure of speech.”

We’re all bums at heart. Some of us just need to bum a little wi-fi.

You know there is nothing quite as fun as a kitten. Unless the kitten has a hook instead of a paw.

My cynicism knows no bounds.

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso depicting the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Here I have made it a happy birthday party complete with pony rides! War is awful, but birthday parties are fun.

We picked up Lucy at the Athen’s shelter yesterday. She is marked like a miniature pinscher, but smaller like a chihuahua. She is a hoot.

“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya is one of the most provocative images ever painted. Hopefully, my version will help you to forget his amazing artwork and think about ice cream.

Cloud series, number 11.

Here is pig, hiding behind a condo. Pig sees horse floating by. Pig pinches his fingers together muttering “I crush your head, horse.”

Cloud series, part 10. With the “Cloud 9″ pun safely behind us, it is time for a lighter image.

What appears to be a fanciful fishing lure has somehow come to life and is pursuing a frog-lobster-love-child wearing an OSHA approved flotation device. Why, you ask? It is one of life’s great mysteries.

Worm victims everywhere…

You know, the monster, not the Doctor.

So, in the midst of doing all of these cloud drawings, I ran across Von Glitschka’s post over on Art Backwash about living a creatively curious life. He had a creativity pack with some exercises in it. One of the exercises was one he put together at IllustrationClass.com called What do you see? Above are the results of my stab at it. Quick and fun.

A platypus and a cardinal are working together in a last ditch effort to stop the grey goose from taking the ball to the rim while assorted teammates look on helplessly. Inked on paper. Scanned in black & white. Colored in the Gimp. I’m not entirely satisfied with the end product, but the process was fun and I like the goose. Artistic or no, you should go try this for yourself.

Cloud series, part 9. I’m so glad that I’ve gotten this far in the series. I guess you could say that I’m, uh, on … um, cloud nine. Okay, moving right along!

It is common knowledge that when Frogzilla finally awakens and comes waltzing across the Texas countryside, his first target is going to be a La Quinta.

Cloud series, number 8.

I confess that I find this image to be both beautiful and terrifying. Here we see a familiar scene from the Herringian myth-cycle. Lupatti, the demi-god of good listening being birthed from the nose of the starry-eyed Rambleshab. Rambleshab, of course, is the titanic bearded goose upon whom rests the foundation of the sky and sea. At the end of the world, Rambleshabs gastronomic collapse will cause the sea and the sky to exchange places leaving only flying fish unaffected. Until then, he floats on the gentle breezes and births semi-useful demi-gods now and then. Also according to Herringian mythology, Lupatti is a bit of a twit.

The world has gone crazy. Dogs and cats… singing together!

Clouds. Part seven.

As soon as I saw the vulture and fish I stopped. I probably could have worked a gorilla face or cookie monster into the background, but I liked the simplicity and power of the drawing as is. This could be the national symbol of The Republic of Herringia. I’m quite surprised it isn’t.

Clouds. Part six.

A happier image today. A man sings a song. We’re going to go with the idea that it is a happy song that he enjoys singing. In the far distance, a sphinx is thinking about the meal it will cook and laughing, presumably at the idea of parsnips. There aren’t any vegetables as funny as parsnips.

Okay. Today is part five of the Cloud series. If you don’t know what is going on, go back to my earlier posts and read up. I’m sick of carrying you people.

By now I’m realizing that this exercise is probably more of a window into my mind than is healthy for me or you. However, I’ve already started and cannot quit now. So there’s a person. Is it a man, a woman? Hard to tell, we’re getting mixed signals. The person deffinitely seems to be consuming a hot beverage which for our purposes will be coffee. Meanwhile a great worm is devouring this person. A minor worm perches on the person’s arm, neither devouring the person nor preventing their ingestion. I think the tragedy of this story is in the minor worm’s lack of action. Either eat the guy/gal or save them you morally tepid worm!

Wow. We are already to part four of the Cloud series. [Wherein I photograph clouds, print them out, and draw what I see in them, blah, blah...]

In this amazing look into Karl’s damaged psyche, we see a sea horse floating above the rooftops. Contextually, we have to assume the cow is therefore a sea cow, but what is this other sea creature? A large nosed sea bandicoot? A sea monkey whose owner put the bowl too close to the microwave causing radiation to give him Gamma Ray Powers? The mind boggles.

Part three of a series of cloud drawings.

In this fine drawing, I’ve represented a squid who tries to prevent a whale from catching a baseball. Meanwhile, Jim runs toward them with his balloon. This probably means something.

This is my second in a series of cloud drawings. I’ve printed out photos of clouds taken with my cell phone and then drew right on top of the clouds.

In this picture you will see that some poodle’s grooming can get out of hand. Especially poodles who have been trained to watch the hedgehog. Meanwhile a pig glances over from his mud hole and a marmoset trembles in abject fear of the poodle. Look. If you don’t like the way I’m calling it, write your own synopsis.

I was riding in the van the other day looking out the window at huge billowy clouds. I saw all kinds of great figures and whatnot in them. Then it hit me: I should be taking pictures of these clouds, printing them out, and drawing the whatnot! If only I had remembered that my phone is also a camera. Instead it hit me the next day when the clouds weren’t quite as awesome. I still took some photos and WOW is my phone’s camera awful. It didn’t matter though.

Last night I printed them out and started drawing. Here is the first one. I’ll be posting the rest of the results over the next few days.

In this one, a weird bunny-man in star pajamas and bunny slippers is being leaped over by a lion-eagle-horse while Albert Einstein looks up from his cooking to watch.

Modeled after a People’s Republic of China poster.

Get it? Robot — Row Bot? Great pun, right? I hate it when my jokes fall flat.

Ve’re goingk on a treep in our faworite rocket sheep!

Private Wendy is ready for the trenches. Ronald McDonald doesn’t stand a chance, although he does have the largest Fast Food Posse. Only Jack in the Box may stand in the way of Wendy as most of her weapons involve blunt force trauma to the head.

Nothing bothers me so much as when I believe I have been incredibly clever and no one else notices. In that theme, please enjoy my joke with me:

Rube Goldberg machine = Rude Gold Bird machine.

See, I’m hilarious. No, really!

Tonight I ate the home-cured gravlax that I made following the recipe I found at I Eat You. It was delicious. Unbelievably good. If I don’t die of food poisoning, I will call it a success.

This being my first foray into the world of self-prepared-uncooked fish, (…okay, that isn’t quite true – I once dried some catfish in our food dehydrator, effectively ruining it, but I didn’t eat that…) I went ahead and photographed it for your viewing pleasure. Please note that my photography is almost as amateurish as my cheffery. And wordsmithery.

Now that you have a picture, if it kills me, you know what to go after. Avenge my death!

Okay. So cleaning up vomit isn’t very exciting, but if you shout “THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR… DAD!” right before you do it, then it adds a little luster.

This is my Antithesis Art entry for “Redesign a Peanuts Character”.

Anthropomorphic Kitchen Appliances… I wish I could claim that mouthful, but it was Richard’s idea. This is my completed version of my earlier sketch post for my Antithesis Art entry.

I believe the best prose, poetry, and art all accomplish the same thing: They create a sense of yearning. It may be yearning for a particular feeling or time or place, or it may be that the work makes you wish you were a better person in some way. I feel that way when I read Charles de Lint. Charles de Lint is an author who specializes in works that blur the realm of fairy tales and reality. I’ve only read a few of his short stories, but I’m enamored with his abilities.

This artwork doesn’t exactly illustrate Charles’ short story “The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep”, but it echoes the feeling I got while reading it some years ago. This painting was done for Country Bible Church’s remodel of an existing room. They are going for a coffee house feel and asked a few of the artist members of the church to create paintings for the room.

Good ol’ Santa is a good ol’ boy.

It has been too long without a post on The Replacement Komics. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have anything new to post, so I am going to post old Antithesis Art entries twice a week (Monday and Friday) for the next couple of months hoping that I’ll get a chance to create some new stuff in the meantime.

I haven’t posted in a blue or green or burnt umber moon. In August we were blessed with our third child, and she is getting all of my spare time. I’ll be back when she starts having a regular bed time.

A young pirate named Two Lipped John was in a horrible accident involving cutting toward himself.

Here is the colored version of Capt. Halfbeard. I used Noodler’s ink and watercolors in a moleskine notebook.

Isabelle made a portrait of me from the side with my hand on my cheek. She borrowed my fountain pen and used her own watercolors. She’s obviously a shameless flatterer.

Richard at http://table38.com/ has been rocking out the drawings the last few days. Here is my current drawing, sans the color it will some day be graced with.

Before the baby was born, I decided to do a bunch of art so that my site would not grow stale while I was in No Sleep Til Brooklyn mode. Unfortunately, I used up all of that work before the blessed event. So, here is more artwork done for www.AntithesisArt.com and rehashed here for your enjoyment. ALSO: Please note that The Replacement Komics is now using a CSS and DIV based layout instead of using tables. That makes it cool or something. ALSO: I’ve discontinued the “comments” functionality until I have time to code a more secure implementation of it. The only folks who were using it seemed to be promoting prescription drugs for male issues.

Have you ever had that feeling that perhaps your life is a big cosmic joke? No? …well, neither have I. I was just kidding. Anyway, this drawing was originally done for the www.antithesisart.com project Gone Fishin. I hope you enjoy it.

Mr. Manheimer is working hard to blend into his new environment. He has taken to the foxtrot quite nicely, but is still uncomfortable with the fancy dress and rich diet of the late 1870’s.

Also too disturbing.

A while back I did some Charlie Brown drawings for Antithesis Art. This one was a little too disturbing and didn’t make the cut.

When we’ve finished raising kids, perhaps we’ll buy an oat guzzler and hitch it up to this here wagon. We’ll take the show on the road. We’ll follow a horses fanny around for a few years before we forget our own names and become indigent social parasites… I think it is good to have a plan for retirement.

Dale and I both like to wear plastic buckets on our heads. It lends an otherwise missing dignity to our beings.

After overhearing salacious talk of bacon, Mr. Manheimer began construction of his balloon. After a few false starts he is now on his way to a bright future.

I’ve been working on the Kaufman Christian School t-shirt for next year.

Pencil on paper. Used various sources found on the internet.

I took one of the sketches I did for Antithesis Art and reworked it into a t-shirt idea. There is a site called “Threadless” that takes artwork submitted by the community and lets members vote on it. If it gets enough votes, they pay you for it and print it. This is my first time posting anything over there.

he first 24 hours are crucial. I need loads of 5 scores and “I’d Buy it” check-marks to stay in the competition. There is no obligation. Signing up is free. Scoring is free. Everything is free except buying shirts.

Original design from found photographs.

Sketch done for an Antithesis Art entry. The finished work was mostly done in GIMP.

I’ve been busy elsewhere. I’m working with my friend Richard to start a new website called Antithesis Art. We hope it will be a launching point to build a community of artists locally in East Texas. Check it out when you get a chance.

I found a couple of illustrations I did earlier this year. I’m going to post them up over the next few days in order to keep the content going while I’m working on the code. I hope you enjoy them.

The CSS is coming right along. I still have a long way to go, but I am having to relearn the basics and learn some advanced as I go. I am surprised I’ve gotten this far in Internet Programming without learning more than the few snippets of CSS I already knew.

The other thing I am dabbling in at the moment is MySQL. I’m using it to keep track of the images and their titles, etc. I’m not very savvy yet, but I’ve appropriated some code off of the PHP documentation web site to use in the meantime.

Well that did not take as long as I expected.

Announcement: I am changing hosts and rewriting the site in PHP. After I rewrite the site in PHP, I will rewrite the site in CSS. Then maybe I will offer a couple of different skins for the site. All of this is going to count as artwork in my head so I can justify not sketching while I do it.

Also, during this whole process artwork is going to disappear slowly until the new site is rewritten in PHP. I will put a link here when done. Thanks for your patience!

Ink on paper.

Colored pencil on paper.

Crayon on Paper.

Pencil on Paper.

Guess what I found whilst cleaning out the garage in prepration for our home going on the market…

Give up?! I know I do!

That’s right. I found a circa 2002 trial illustration of the future most lucrative children’s series since My Little Pony: The Dinosaur Riding Astronauts of the Wild West. Sorry the picture quality is uneven. It was too big for the scanner and so I had to patch it together.

Pen and ink on paper.

Well, we are teaching our son to ride his bike.

From 1996 – Woodcut.

From 1996 – Woodcut.

Printmaking is fun. I wish I had a press so that I could do more monotype and woodcuts. I posted some of my old monotypes and woodcuts from my last printmaking class in 1996.

From 1996 – Four color process monotype.

From 1996 – Black and white monotype.

From 1996 – Black and white monotype.

From 1996 – Black and white monotype.

Pen and Ink on Paper.

Chalk on tinted masonite.

Chalk on tinted masonite.

Chalk on tinted masonite.

Oil paint on masonite.

I took a scan of the blank and white version and colorized it via the Gimp.

Ink on paper.

The dramatic conclusion.

A continuation.

The American Dream is stealing mine. Find out how!!

Mixed Media done for a class my wife was teaching.

I need to get a fountain pen.

I’ve been looking at the blog of a guy from my church named Rich. It is called Table 38. Someone from our church showed it to my wife, and then she showed it to me. Rich is in the same place in life that I am. He’s got kids, a computer job, and life coming from him at all angles. And he is an artist. An artist without time to do art. But the difference between Rich and me is that in spite of not having time to do art… he still does art. He has a section called “Daily Pages” that is obviously not daily but still manages to be updated pretty regularly.

So Rich, if you ever read this, thanks for the inspiration. I’m going to start producing. I may not produce great art, but it will be better than producing no art.

Pen and ink on notecard. Edited in the GIMP.