The Ink Stained Wretch #182 4/23/25
Kryptonians, Watercolors and a Hawaiian Punch!
Wednesday AGAIN?!? That's right! Time for another of the crass, crappy, and contemptuous piles of crudity that are these newsletters! This week we draw a Sketch of Steel, splash around some watercolors (including in our Premium Subscriber video), and share a little tropical DMCA drama... on with the 'Wretch!
Sketch o'the Week: Christopher Reeve!
Click here if you are interested in this original sketch.
Last week Friday was "Superman Day", so this week's sketch is of the late, great, best screen Superman ever, Christopher Reeve! This sketch is a new version of one I did as a commission not too long ago… I tweaked it a bit.
Celebrating "Superman Day" on April 18th actually makes sense since on that date in 1938 Action Comics #1 went on sale, and the world was introduced to the first comic book superhero in Superman. This is an actual anniversary, unlike "Batman Day" (the third Saturday in September), which should be March 30th, the date Detective Comics #27 went on sales in 1939 which featured the first appearance of Batman, but isn't. Holy Fake Holiday, Batman!
I was 12 when "Superman: The Movie" came out in 1978. I was blown away seeing a comic book literally come to life on the movie screen. Reeve could not have been a more perfect embodiment of Clark Kent/Superman.
Getting Wet
This past week I did a personal commission which required me to haul out my watercolors for the first time in a while. I can't share the actual image here because it is a gift for someone famous who he hasn't gotten it yet, and I don't want anyone posting it to the interwebs until he sees it. (All you lucky Premium Subscribers can watch me do a little painting on it, however, in this week’s video! See WAAAAY down below.)
While virtually (pun intended) all my color illustration work is done digitally these days, when I got my start freelancing in the early 90's there was no such thing as Cintiqs or the type of graphics programs that are so ubiquitous now. I did my color work with airbrush, acrylics, and often watercolor. I still occasionally have cause to get out the real paints for certain projects, mostly when the original art is part of the deal with a client or for commissions meant as gifts. That is mostly watercolor these days.
I do enjoy getting the real paints out now and then. It’s messy and I really don’t do it enough for me to be very proficient at it, but once I am painting it’s fun. I really should force myself to do a little watercolor painting every week just to get back to being sharp with the medium. Digital is so forgiving that you can be as sloppy and unfocused as you want and can always fix and tighten things up later. There is basically no restrictions to working digitally. Watercolor requires you to pay attention and do some thinking before you apply a drop of paint to the board, or it can go off the rails and become an unrecoverable disaster. Working with the physical limitations of the medium become part of the look of the final art.
Back when I did those two prop illustrations for Quentin Tarantino for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, part of the deal was he wanted them done in traditional media so he could have the originals. Because of the shooting schedule I had to do them digitally first so they would have the images in time for the scene they were to be in, but I then did real watercolor versions for him to have:
It’s funny because the techniques I use for the digital illustrations are designed to look more like they were done in watercolors or some real media than done digitally, yet I have gotten rusty using the real thing.
Why not use real watercolors for my illustration work? Time and convenience mostly. Doing the final color digitally is faster, gets me similar results, and allows me to instantly deliver the final art as a digital file to the client. That’s why I put away my paint brushes all those years ago.
DMCA In Paradise
Just a couple of ‘Wretches ago I discussed internet copyright thievery and how some instances of it are not worth fighting and some are. That proved to be prophetic because just this past weekend an example of one worth fighting was brought to my attention.
Some pals online sent me a link to a website that was selling a Hawaiian style shirt that was using the “SNL” illustration I did earlier this year for vulture.com as the art for the print. (The above is NOT the one that was for sale, I just mocked this one up. But it’s not too far off of what was actually being sold). The company is RewindEra.com, and it is one of many “print on demand” companies where users can upload images and produce various products for sale there. The POD company produces the product, in this case a Hawaiian shirt, and ships it to the customer. The “designer” collects their share of the sale.
POD companies like this do not vet their sellers for copyright infringement, which is of course rampant on all of them. However the more reputable ones will take action when it’s brought to their attention that one of their sellers is being naughty. That said, they require you to jump through a few hoops to bring a copyright infringement claim against one of their sellers. This is in the form of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown form. This is a legal document used to request the removal of copyrighted material from a website or other online service. It's a formal notice sent to a service provider alleging that their platform is hosting infringing content. There is specific legal information/format that a DMCA notice needs to contain for it to be in compliance with the act.
Ordinarily I’d tell you to do a web search for DMCA and find out the specifics, but some enterprising internet “close but not quite” scammers have set up a DMCA website at DMCA.com that is NOT a government or US copyright site but a private company that wants to charge you a fee to submit a DMCA takedown notice. Don’t fall for it. All you need is the proper legal information in a letter to the infringing web host. I used a template I found for free here to send to RewindEra.com. If you post any of your creative work online, I’d encourage you to download this template and save it in case you ever need to use it.
I’m happy to say that the reason I have a mock-up image for their article and not a screen cap of the seller page is that RewindEra.com responded within 12 hours, on Easter Sunday no less, removing the item and promising me they would address this with the seller. It was removed so fast I didn’t get the chance to do a screen capture of the shirt. These are the actions of a company that knows their clients can abuse their services and are serious about taking ones that do to task. Those are the ones you spend a little time fighting because you get results.
That's it for another lame issue of the 'Wretch! If you are a Premium Subscriber, continue below for this week’s exclusive video!
Thank you for being a subscriber! As always, if you liked what you saw please share it with others. Remember I'm always looking for feedback, questions for the mailbag, and suggestions for future Sketch o'the Week subjects. Just reply to this email with any of the above, or leave a comment on Substack. And always remember... it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Ink Stained Wretch to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.