The Art of Samax Amen: 2012

"Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you. You just gotta find the one worth suffering for..." -Bob Marley

I was looking through an old e-mail conversation with a young artist and found these comments I made about death and dating. At the time, my wife's grandfather was in ICU and we were all "hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst" so I guess I was just feeling deep or something. Even though these were my comments, I was encouraged a lot as I reread them...

Serene Too... by Samax Amen


Get a copy of BLACK COMIX free with your paid membership! (While supplies last of course!)

this one comes with a sketch, so it's cool... nomnomnom...

Undead Celebrities: Andre the Giant by Samax Amen

Here's a new piece I painted recently called Southern Girl...

Fan Days is HERE! Come out to the Irving Convention Center this weekend and get your fan on. Me and my boys will be at table #221. Some other people will be there, too...
-samax

"One Nation" Sketch Cover by Samax Amen

Check out this sketch cover I did for Jason Reeves's indy superhero comic One Nation!

I love the O'Bryans. I have known Jim and Carmen for about ten years, and in that time they have been very supportive of my work. When we announced the Champion of Children Kickstarter, they were quick to help...

COLUMBUS DAY WEEKEND SALE!

Click here for 50% off Teeshirts with my art! Use coupon code SWIFT at checkout!

When the doors opened on my Custom Art Sale, my fiend Camisha jumped right on it for this portrait. She's cool like that...

For the first time in a while, my dog ISN'T the top selling image of all the designs I have on Cafe Press. There's a three-way tie for the top spot in units sold, and those images are listed below. Honorable mention goes to Iron Mike, which moved a lot less units than the images below, and yet accounts for almost as much loot, because the items it sold on had higher mark-up on average. Thanks Champ! Anyways, these are my highest selling images (both in the Ziontific shop and in the CP Marketplace) over the last 90 days...

After reading about my Custom Art Sale on Facebook, Lonnie Lowe Jr. of Dark City Comics reached out to me to do a drawing of his character, Epic.

Li'L Ororo by Samax Amen

Taking it back to the essence...

Felt like doing fan art, but no mainstream stuff. Here's my drawing of Ross Campbell's monster/superhero character Shadoweyes.

Felt like doing fan art, but no mainstream stuff. Here's a drawing of Rich Faber & John Gallagher's Roboy Red. John and Rich do a podcast with my dude Jamar under the moniker Comicbook Diner, so after I drew this I figured I oughta draw some other characters from the ComicBook Diner crew...

Drew another ChampBackers caricature today. This one is of my internet friend, comicbook writer, and blogger J.R. LeMar.

I posted the pencils of this splash intro to The Brother on Facebook a while back and got an enthusiastic response, so I'll go ahead and share the inked and toned artwork below...

This is a drawing of Cal Slayton, one of the vaunted First 30 backers of the Champ Kicktstarter campaign (yeah, you missed it. The book will be out soon). As one of the First 30, Cal earned himself this free caricature...

Check out this one page ad I made for Champion of Children backer Mary Nichols aka DJ Fusion of Fusebox Radio...

Champion of Children Volume 1: I'm Known as the Champ will go to print soon, and will start landing in readers' hands in a few weeks or so. It wouldn't be possible without people like Jamel Jones...

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep, so I talked myself into scanning and tightening up the first fully inked drawing of my new masked vigilante the Gryphon...

I have known Lisa since high school. She's one of the only people to keep up with me through all the stages and weird turns my life has taken. She probably bought all the original issues, but she was nice enough to jump on the Champion of Children Kickstarter campaign too, which I appreciate big time! But then, maybe she just did it for the free caricature...

I recently decided I was going to draw a series of comic strips called Scream Phoenix following the activities of Phoenix Jones, the costumed activist ("real life superhero") in Seattle. For this piece, I watched a couple youTube videos and picked out a line I wanted to dramatize and launched right into it...

StaHHr by Samax Amen. ballpoint pen on notebook paper

Cathy Hutchison by Samax Amen

David Walker by Samax Amen

He will not remember this of course, but I met comicbook writer, film maker and all-around fresh cat David Walker at San Diego Comicon in 2006. I was waiting to get into a room with a bunch of other pop culture ~~nerds~~ enthusiasts to see the trailer for Sam Jackson's (at that time) upcoming anime series Afro Samurai and inadvertently shake hands with the mother- effing RZA. I was standing in line and a door pops open

A. Rozelle by Samax Amen

These days everyone I meet swears he is a writer, but none of those cats can fool me, because I know David Hopkins. Yeah, THAT David Hopkins. Now THAT dude is a WRITER!
But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself...

The Mad Twinz by Samax Amen. Ballpoint pen on paper

cover concept sketch for The Brother by Samax Amen. The Brother ©Jay Kelley

Malcolm Harris by Samax Amen. ballpoint pen on paper

Okay... that hurt...

Misty Knight by Samax (in progress... more after the blah blah)

Yeah, it is well known that I heart me some Misty Knight. I try not to complain when she is drawn weird or treated like a sidekick or silly wimpy girl, but y'all know she is still dope, and a great representation of the surviving spirit of black women. Plus, she's HAWT! so anyways, I painted her. Peep...

For those who have never read it, Champion of Children is about kid superheroes (because kid villains have to be stopped by kid heroes, right?). The greatest kid hero at any given time inherits the title "Champion of Children" along with the requisite privileges and responsibilities. The current Champion of Children is 5 year old martial arts powered hero Li'l Madd Skillz, but this particular short story Da Old School stars her big brother Junior Raw, and his friend Smash Boogie (whose name I only learned after drawing this story, by the way). To help promote our Kickstarter campaign, Champ co-creator and writer Corance Davis has empowered me to offer Da Old School in its entirety...

The Gryphon by Samax Amen

Instead of drawing pics of Iron Man, Spidey or whatever, I spend my rare free time drawing my own characters. Revolutionary, I know! So here's some blah blah about The Gryphon...

I'm always threatening to do comic strips about stuff that happens at work or whatever, but most of the time I never get around to it...

"It's bad..." pg 11

9 year old superhero, and former Champion of Children Junior Raw tried to take on an adult super-villain... It's not working out for him!

sketch (Dandy Lion) by Samax Amen

My yard is full of dandelions, and since we are selling the house, I have no intention of going to war with weeds. It's funny... as much as adults hate dandelions, kids love them. The name always made me think of a lion in a tuxedo... so since I'm a big kid at heart, I drew the sketch above. I liked it, so I decided to smash out the full body piece below....

I painted a series of watercolors in college starring the Old Testament action hero from the Biblical Book of Judges, Samson. The Announcement (above) portrays Samson's mother (on the left) who is told by an angel that she is going to give birth to the long-haired ass-kicker. Peep more below...

Mug Shots by Samax Amen. Acrylic on Canvas

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