A Winters' Tale

The Fuglie's 2013 Christmas Card
2016 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith

  So every Winter I do a Fuglie Christmas card, or poster.   I don't make any money on this and it's not for anyone special, I just do it for me and I'll post it at my various social sites.   I could say I do it to promote my Fuglies' Brand, but that's not really what it's about.   It's actually just a fun thing I like to do, no other reason at all other than to have fun.    What I do has to be fun for me, or I'll lose interest and I wont be able to give the emotion to the project that it needs to be successful.   Money is not a true motivator for me either, although it helps pay the bills and feed myself and my family.   It's my creativity that is motivated by an idea, or a feeling, at least that's how it starts.   Of course I don't work for free, except on my own personal projects and I do expect to be paid well for my talent.  When I was much younger I actually felt getting paid to do my art was a bad thing, naive, yes, of course.   Understand though I didn't want to sell my creativity, I felt I should share it freely.   Which is probably why I do things like The Fuglies and the Fuglieversal Monsters characters.   These are my FUN projects that I can share for free with no expectation of monetary commitment.   Plus, I just downright love monsters!

The Fuglie's 2014 Christmas Card
2016 Copyright, Joseph A. Wraith

   I remember seeing my first Odd Rods, Weird-ohs, Monster Bubble Gum Stickers and Cards, most were based around hot rods, B.K. Taylor, was and is still one of my favorite monster artists.   I think though that the monster sports cards captured my imagination the most and I don't even like sports. 
  I can't even locate pictures of those on the internet which is a shame.   I also loved Plop Magazine, which was a DC comic devoted to such monsters with artist's such as Basil Wolverton, Berni Wrightson, Wallace Wood, doing covers and story art and one of my favs Sergio Aragonés who did most of the frame stories.   Most of the artists were from Mad Magazine at the time.  I'd have to say that Mad Magazine and the bubble gum cards taught me how to draw.  They influence my work today.   Jack Davis, and Frank Frazetta who recently passed, were both great influences in my art as well.   Disney also had a hand in it, but they were always too cutesy for me.  I used to spend hours getting yelled at by mother for looking at that "Trash" as she used to call it.   It was worth the sacrifice to spend five minutes with those little monster freaks.  

 
 Close-up of 2014 card

I do love my Monsters!
JW



 

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