Tyrannosaurus Rex

I love drawing dinosaurs. Always have since I was little. T Rex is my favorite to draw, since I was little.

I am also digging taking old sketchbook sketches and digitally inking and coloring them.

Fun warm up.

Draw or Die Draw Together

So, on Tuesday I attended the second monthly Draw Together event put on my D.J.Coffman and his wife Ally for Draw or Die Club in downtown Pittsburgh at the Federal Gallery

It was super fun, and I got to hang out with some old friends and met a bunch of new artists to sit, eat, talk and DRAW together. It’s a really fun thing to do, to draw around other people and socialize. As an artist, I usually sit and draw by myself. It’s so much more fun, with company

Draw or Die Club is a club that promotes drawing, every day. For fun, for profit, for mental well-being. It’s awesome. https://drawordie.co/

DJ had a list of prompts to go from and you could roll a dice and see what to draw. I ended up doing one of each and an extra doodle, too.

I’ll probably do this next month, too. And if you’re in Pittsburgh come on down and hang out!

Mel and Laurel showering

So this is both new and old. I pencelled it, and my old friend Tim Etchison inked it, many moons ago, but I’ve never had it on any of my sites until this years Valentine’s Day challenge.

These are two characters from the original version of Brian Babyok’s Weirdlings (MK1). These characters (at least the way I drew them) morphed into Emily and Mercy from GD7 from the pages of Phineus.

Enjoy!!

VDSD2023 PARTICIPANTS!!

MonicaNG – MoonSlayer Julie Devin – Monster Soup Amy Letts – Epic Fail Team Lady Valiant – Lady Valiant Midnight – Danger Zone One Centcomm – Datachasers Lou Graziani – Cy-Boar Darksh1ne – Monstroniverse Adventures The Letter M – The Restless Dead Blue Dragon – Dark Horse Lightfoot – Pulse Stilldown – Ariane Eldar’s Personal Place Stilldown – Theater Of The Bloody Tongue Sheryl Schopfer – Sharpclaw Sheryl Schopfer – Deer Me Arne Cooper – The Androssian Prophecy The Exiern Team – Exiern Extras The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Zen The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Chaos The Exiern Team – Exiern: Dark Reflections The Exiern Team – Exiern The Exiern Team – Exiern v1.0 Barry Linck – Phineus+ Magician for Hire MiraKirall – The Ace of The Spades sidaragasum – Locked in Imagination Spelledeg – Now Hiring Zaten – Club Pegasus Jim and Alli Perry – Out of My Element Momoru – Mildreth of the Night Momoru – Alvery Nerveaux’s Secret Case Files Microraptor – Cryptida rulerbrain – Selling Smiles Mark Egan – Bata Neart Mark Egan – Back Office Zach Vanzile – West Tree Academy of Heroes Ben Bourbon – Devilbear: The Grimoires of Bearalzebub SpaceGoblin – By The Book Gojiramon – CKarrus Nick Greaves – The Great Isle of Prentil Marshall Reeves – Yesterday Bound Sean Harrington – Spying With Lana John Harrington – Super Rivals Lirvilas – Grinder$ J.E. Draft – The Challenges of Zona Jaycee Knight – Bloomin’ Faeries yellowgerbil – Zoe the Vampire yellowgerbil – AquariYUM Stef Marcinkowski – Sarah Zero

Cosmic Hellcats guest art

Here’s an old one from 2012, Star Wars meets Cosmic Hellcats. Hellcats was a webcomic by local Pittsburgh creators Chris Mav and Max. Fun stuff.

Old Sketches

These were some old sketches. The first was in preparation for Phineus:2013, which was later renamed The Kali Saga. The second is designs for GD7 (from 2007 & 1940) for the Brian Babyok scripted, The Great Jaguar Paw. We’ve seen the modern GD7 many times in Phineus, and the 1940 incarnation in the bonus story” How We Won the War”, available to Patreon subscribers.

I gotta dig out more of my old sketchbooks and share the hidden treasures and turds living there.

This year marks 36 years of Phineus and Sara

1988. Well, late 1987 to 1988. I created these two characters in a computer graphics class I took in high school at Carnegie Mellon University on Saturdays. Yes. I CHOSE to go to school 6 days a week.

The original story was way too much Highlander meets Matt Wagner’s Mage, at this point. Phineus was some sort of extra-dimensional being sent to Earth for fight demons. Sara was the stereotypical damsel in distress. I clearly moved to a different path. I had a few different incarnations through out college, until I settled on the paranormal investigators we all know and love.

I’ve known these characters a good, long time. I’ll see if I can dig up any more old drawings of them.

Barry

Lovecraftian horrors

These are some of the game pieces I did, based off of Phineus monsters for One Page Rules. I plan to use them in a tabletop game supplement for the Phineus RPG.

Walpurgis Night Revelers

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A nod to both Hallween 2 and Charlie Brown, these guys have masks and robes. Are they human? We shall see.

Josephat Rotwang

Here is Rotwang in all his glory. This is also me, at 20, in a bald cap in the basement of the house I was living in at the time. My buddy and photography major, John Burris took the pics. I added in the effects by superimposing an areosol spray, lit with a match. The magic of the darkroom!

I did a series of these and made up spell descriptions and how to cast them and made up a bound book! It was fun. If I can find the book, I may scan it and post it. Big if.

State of Phineus…

So. Phineus has time jumped 20 years, so I decided to move it to a new site. I’ll still post art, blogs and bonus pages here. These new bonus pages, can take place in the present, past or future.

The new free comic is Magician for Hire, that takes place in 2036. Phin and Sara are still around and in it, but it’s definitely Cole Beam’s story, now.

Where Phineus is my Anakin, Cole is my Luke.

I hope you come to love her like her parents, she is a lot of fun to write and draw.

So head over to the new site, often. Check back, here and enjoy my new stuff.

Thanks,

Barry

Folklore Guest Art

Here is some commissioned guest art for the excellent webcomic, Folklore. It’s a creepy, supernatural, post apocalyptic super hero story. Go check it out at http://www.folklorecomic.com/

Comicadian feature: Silversong

Silversong is a high fantasy adventure comic. Tebetha is a young girl whose farsight ironically caused her to blindly stumble upon a dangerous plot aiming to tear down the Walled Kingdom.

http://silversongcomic.com

Look! A Dragon!

I was watching Drag Race with the girl, and drew a dragon on my phone.
Gonna have to put more dragons in the comic. I mean, they’re there, but polymorphed to look human.
We’ll see…

Magician for Hire has it’s own site!

The new arc will continue here for a while, and eventually move to it’s own site at phinmagic.net/magician .

We’ll continue to have content over, here, too. I’ll post new present era Phineus stories, blogs and art here, as well as all the upcoming new BONUS content, I create. So, stick around, read some comics, become a Patron & hang around!

Thanks,

Barry

What does blog mean, anyway?

From Wikipedia: A blog (a truncation of the expression “weblog“)^[1] is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (“posts”).

So, yeah. I need to Talk more. I get rolled up in creating and I forget to write stuff. I’m a pictures guy, more than a writer. Always have been.

Even when I write, it’s in a photograph form.

So, today we spent the day in Cleveland at Cleveland Clinic for my daughter. She’s been struggling with a chronic illness called Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome. It’s an auto immune disease that cause uncontrollable vomiting for days at a time, several times a month. We’ve taken her to CC, as they have specialists for this very very rare condition. She’s making progress, but it’s a very long road.

So, during the times I don’t post stuff, it’s usually due to a long hospital stay. I’m working to keep on task despite this stuff.

Going forward, I am finishing up Paranormal Pickers and Teen Wizard, while I prepare for the new era of Phineus. It will be revealed very soon. I’m pretty excited and it’s been planned for YEARS.

So, stay tuned!

An oldie but a goodie

Commitment to comments and stuff

As you have probably noticed, there haven’t been and page of “How We Won the War” , recently. We my illness and all, I got behind. I have decided to finish up Family Secrets, first, then back at the bonus stories.

Speaking if bonus stuff, you guys know, that as Patreon patrons, you get access to HUNDREDS of bonus pages and stiries, right? Well, now you do.

And guy, let me know what you think of the new art style. I’ve switched styles, using gray tones and having a blast. Hope you are, too.

When we finish up “Family Secrets “, we start the epic Phineus/Feist crossover, “Should I Stay Or Should I Migo”, by Myself, Vaughn Reynolds & Calvin Garcia. It’s totally refreshed art, new covers and a 3rd chapter that I haven’t drawn, yet! Exciting!!!

So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to. Let me know what you’ve been up to!

Cheers,

Barry

Getting back in the swing…

After 2 weeks of being sick, then trying to get caught up on all the work I missed afterwards, I am finally working on a new page. So sorry for the delay.

I haven’t been THAT sick in a long time. Really took it’s toll on me.

Should have new pages starting up again this week.

Thanks for your patience.

Barry

House of the sick

Been home sick with my daughter for the last 3 days. Em has the flu, I have bronchitis, double ear infections, gastroenteritis and a URI. Went back to the doctor, today, and found out I have the flu on top of it all.

I am super sick and can’t concentrate, so not Art for a bit. I may or.may not have a page next week. If I do, I’ll probably only have one up. Sorry for the delays.

Building a better Landraider

Step by step scratch build of my new Squat Landraider. This will be for Kris Kringle and his acolyte retinue.

I built the bones of this out of chipboard, using a template I found online. My first Squat Landraider was made from a pattern I made myself, which I since lost.

I printed the template onto letter sized pieces of chipboard on one of the big printers at work. I cut it apart with utility knives and scissors and glued most of the pieces together using white glue, holding it together for drying with rubber bands.

i also used odd bits and bobs from random kits in my bits box. I crafter the twin las cannons from plastic tubing I got from my hobby shop, combined with parts from a GW Landraider.

I also sketched out and decoupaged a Dwarven face on the fron hull.

I have armed the tank with a very old multi meltas and a hunter killer missle.

I Need to find some time to toss some paint on this. It’ll be gold and reds, fitting for Kris Kringle! Remember my squat army is fashioned after Kris Kringle and Rugnar and all the North Pole dwarves from the comic.

More to come, soon.

Barry

Edit: Finished Landraider

Sometimes a buffer makes you lazy

Or distracts you, at least.

The wonderful story by Noel has me buffered up until late December. This has caused a lack of a sense of urgency. That, added to my daughter’s surprise concussion after a hospital stay for Gastric Paralysis have gotten me all out of whack.

I have the 25th anniversary story started. The page is wonderful. I just need to stop thinking about Warhammer 40k and get it done!

The laziness stops, here!

Oh, by the by. If you want to support me and read Phineus in a really cool way, go to COMIXOLOGY and buy a couple of my books. They have them set up for digital reading like the big guys with that guided view. It’s REALLY awesome!

Ok, off to draw!

Barry

Phineus is on Comixology!

We are live on COMIXOLOGY, now. Currently The Kali Saga and Phineus: Volume 8 are available. There will be more to come over the following months. Go, get some!

Sara’s lab

So, the whole gag with the ships door and magic flashing was made up by Noel. He explained it to me as her lab doesn’t actually exist in their apartment. It’s just a magical door to her lab, which is on a ship, deep at the bottom of the ocean.

It’s protected by powerful magics and exists as a safe place for her to experiment.

I thought it was a neat idea, so, it’s canon.

Similarly, Phineus has a Fortress of Solitude-style gallery with a bunch of keepsakes and artifacts that exists in an extra-dimensional space. He can enter it through a doorway in their offices. WHen he reaches into his magic pocket, he’s actually accessing that gallery, to pull things from. Rarely, though, he may grab the wrong thing.

His study is actually in their building, but it’s heavily warded and protected.

Gaming and I

Well, specifically, Role-playing shaped me.

It has grown me as an artist, an actor, a writer, a world builder and a storyteller.

I spent many years playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. We even played IN social Studies behind my teachers back. D&D flourished my imagination and ability to create characters.

I played D&D through Middle and High school. I played with a great group of friends in college, one of whom, John Burris, I collaborated with to flesh out his system, written on 6 note cards and created out own game that replaced D&D at Edinboro University.

When out of school, I played more D&D, more of our own game, named Backwaters of Mysticism, Call of Cthulhu, Feng Shui, Deadlands, Star Wars, Warhammer 40k (ok, not a RPG, but I use a lot of it in my comics). All these worlds they created for their games showed me what I needed to do to create the world in which all my comics exist.

And, yes, ALL my comics exist in the same world. Phineus, Kris Kringle, Creephunter, even Bastard Who. I’m kind of obsessed with doing that, for some reason.

Ironically John and my own RPG doesn’t have a world. We created it so that it would fit into any world you wanted it to.

Many of my Phineus stories came from those games. Rugnar and Maynard are both characters I played in Backwaters. The Kali Saga was based on a campaign run by John, in which I played Brother Maynard. And yes, he did get squished in that one, too.

Many comic creators are also avid gamers. Adam Black, creator of Locus is working on his own game. Brian Babyok, creator of Weirdlings also plays D&D, religiously.

I am toying with the idea of running some Skype based Backwaters games for my fans. As I gather interest and ideas I’ll let you know.

Games are good for comics.

Barry

The Heart of Phineus

While this comic (and site) may be called Phineus, Sara is it’s heart.

While Phineus changes, morphs and eventually falls to the dark seduction of the power of Magic (check out the TIMELINE), Sara remains the soul of the pair, the team and the world.

There’s a reason that so many fans, many of them creators, relate to her. She is the audience surrogate, in many ways, as she is not magical. She’s a normal (albeit bad ass) human.

Noeland Collins has done 2 stories focused around her, Sara One Shot (with Marshall Dillon) & The Werewolf Conundrum. In Jason Bender’s Have A Drink on Me, Sara is the hero, saving Phineus from The Contessa and himself.

Sara’s eventual death leads Phineus down his dark path.

Sara, originally, started out to be a damsel in distress. She is FAR from that, and my comic is so much the better for it.