FLICKER STREET Update, Recent Art, and Special Thanx

                                                                                            Jareth
Checking in with a new blog after 5 months away from it. My personal fortunes have had an upturn - improvements in my health, renewing ties with lifelong friends, achieving closure with my last lady love, and beginning a new regular job. Regarding my comix opus, Flicker Street: the first few months after my last post here were extremely productive. Daily writing, new scenarios and characters, reviving older aspects of my story and bringing them up to date and using them to expand previous ideas into new story points - all have transpired and been extremely exciting and fruitful. 

                                                                                        Abolisher
I was especially productive in continuing a series of character portraits inspired by my latest story arc, "Ellinger". After an ill-fated trip to Florida in January, I nursed a broken heart by succumbing to a frenzy of illustrating the most prominent characters I was devising material for. In mid April, I began a new job, and my output of visual art slowed tremendously, but I am still at, it gradually finishing new pieces, rounding out my original projected "Phase 1" of "Ellinger" renderings. 

                                                                                       Gersten C 
Another area in which Flicker Street has continued to grow, and very gradually gain more exposure, is with my official Flicker Street Facebook page (found here: https://www.facebook.com/flickerstreet
). My following has slowly grown, and I've been steadily adding content - posting each new completed piece of art and posting my older FS treatments that I originally posted on this very blog, albeit updated and heavily edited, eliminating typos, correcting awkward syntax, and fleshing out passages with additional plot and character information. 

                                                                       Clive, Bryn, Black Cabal
To a lesser extent, I've been using two other sites to bring attention to Flicker Street: my Deviant Art page (at https://www.deviantart.com/henryzeocovert), and to a much lesser extent, my Instagram account ("coverthenry" at https://www.instagram.com/coverthenry/). I've been posting each new piece on both platforms. 

                                                                                     Jun-kim
I'd like to thank everyone who's followed me in all the various venues I've been using to generate interest for this long-gestating project. My biggest supporters and inspirations have been on Facebook, through the FS page and my own, personal FB page. The official Facebook page has nearly 300 followers now, and some folks have been especially encouraging and attentive to my posts there. Foremost is my dear friend, Sean Lee Levin, who has abetted and collaborated with me on various projects and pursuits since 2006. There are a few other close friends/ collaborators/ influences that I run new art and ideas by on Messenger before posting them more widely. These include: Jon D Allen, a friend, confidant, and kindred spirit I have known since 1992; Mark Baranowski, a close friend and occasional collaborator since 1998 who is quite a multi-media artist in his own right; S.A. Mosley, blood brother since 1998 who I've had many adventures with, and who is forging his own Magnum Opus; Delphine Levesque Demers, a brilliant and accomplished visual artist from Quebec that I met online in 2016 but who lives in my city, and inspired me to return to an older, more ambitious art style and who I anxiously send the roughest new sketches for feedback; and the wonderful Eastern Bloc artist, Iren Frost, a fellow traveler I met online in 2016 who I've given the unofficial title 'President of the Flicker Street Fan Club'. 

                                                                                          Convy Lee
Before departing (probably for more long months), I'd like to thank by name several other friends and artists I correspond with who inspire, encourage, and support me with their kind words and valued feedback on Flicker Street: Tim McLain, Doug Williams, Vincent Black, Bill White, Shawn Michael Vogt, Richard Reynolds, Micah Harris, Matt Mundorf, Adriana Palka, Michelle Westmoreland, Sara Kathleen Krueger, Dru Maguire, Jesse Cooper, Tim Tolbert, Katrinka Ann, Izzie Frost, Marlena Marie Kruger, Leslie Willard, Renee Graham, Robin Eva Fay Embry, Yasmine Cielo, Erin Antak, Jason Wallach, Chandra Nicole, Kylie Eve Marklin, Miette Merlot, Caroline Eikenberry, Nicole Leopoldine Staudigl, Ally Bray, Lone Fleming, Zeda Mueller, Rosemary Tantra Bensko, Jezzy Wolfe, Ken Storey, Russell Vangilder, Marci Tolley-Berkheimer, Ashley Doss, Robert L Robinson, Crystal Sutton, and a good number I'm probably sadly forgetting.... 

                                                                                         Cal Thorne
And, once again, it wouldn't have happened without the spark being lit in 8 year old me by a precocious 9 year old lad named Thomas Shackleford Davis, a kid bursting at the seams with creativity akin to his idol Jack "King" Kirby. Thomas inspired me to start drawing my own comics and forged the original blueprint for how I should go about. RIP my brother. You got me through a rough childhood.

                                                                          Stephen Bartholemew
                   (the first character I created with Thomas Davis' blessing) 
I hope you enjoy the newer pieces presented here, which some may have seen before elsewhere, that I've completed since my last blog. Take care all,

Henry Zeo Covert 
July 21, 2018

Flicker Street, all art, characters, designs, and story material are Copyright 2018 George Henry Smathers Jr.

FLICKER STREET and Beyond?

                                                                            Ellinger

These past months since I last blogged have been interesting, on both the personal and creative fronts. I don't have much to share on the former at the moment, save that once again, I'm going through some unexpected and tumultuous changes. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.... 

On the creative front, however, I've spent the last several months hard at work on my ongoing opus, FLICKER STREET. I've wrapped up the last long storyline I was working on, on and off, for the last three years (during the same period i was working on the 17 chapter Flicker Street backstory found on this blog), "Austerity". The follow up arc to "Austerity" is "Ellinger", which will take place, in the world of Flicker Street, during the years 2010-2014 ("Austerity" spanned 2004-2009). 

                                                                            Anouk

"Ellinger" has been much easier to write, thus far, than the long, erratic, and often torturous process that was "Austerity". I've been able to pick up the lives of various denizens of the Flicker Street Universe from the prior story arc, and have been heavily inspired to create new and distinctive characters to flesh out the ongoing mythos. There was ample room for new blood in the story, as "Austerity" had ended with many longtime, and even many newer, characters, permanently dispatched. It was a clearing of deadwood in many ways - a way to decisively move the narrative forward into new areas, but also to restore certain qualities that had made this tale so enjoyable for me to write over the many years since it was first conceived. 

Not only did I come up with an interesting assortment of new characters, I was also able to develop some longtime peripheral characters, some of whom had been simply too young to participate meaningfully to the ongoing storyline, but who had now come of age and could carry on another generation of the saga. And "Ellinger" is also an opportunity to bring back a few characters long absent from the canvas - some once major, some never more than minor, creations. A handful of these characters were never intended to be brought back; some of them seemingly deceased for good.    

                                                                             Kyle

Unlike many other fictional universes, my characters, once dead, tend to stay well and truly dead. Still, this is a universe with magick and outre phenomena at play, so, on occasion, a character can be plausibly restored - if done in a (hopefully) dramatically compelling fashion. And one of the characters returning in a huge way in the Ellinger arc wasn't permanently deceased - I'd left his fate obscure simply from lack of interest in resolving the character's fate. But an opportunity presented itself, and this long-languishing creation suddenly had not only a long overdue raison d'etre, but revealed himself to be a perfect prime mover of events across the entire arc.

In penning so much new material, I was eventually convinced that I should pick back up the drawing pencil after far too long and capture the likenesses of many characters that will be prominent in the new story arc. Some I'd designed previously and decided to update visually. Some characters I'd always had in my mind but could never adequately visualize. And some were brand-new characters that I had a fresh vision of, and was eager to capture it. 

                                                                            Esme

So, I began a Facebook fan page, Henry Covert's Flicker Street (here: https://facebook.com/flickerstreet/) and began adding brand new character portraits there and on my Deviant Art page (https://henryzeocovert.deviantart.com/). My latest Flicker Street art is generally much less stylized and cartoonish than that of the last several years. There's still a fair share of loose impressionism, but more of a concentration on realism and capturing distinctive features and moods of the individual characters. I've compiled a huge file of photo references, as well as drawn (literally) on some interesting real-life acquaintances, to incarnate the key figures in the "Ellinger" arc. Seen here are some of my recent pieces, and all of them can be found at the two links cited above. 

That's it for now, but I'd like to thank a few folks who've aided and abetted me, personally and creatively, with their loyalty and support: Sean Lee Levin, Mark Baranowski, Scott Mosley, Tim McLain, Jan Takehara, Steven Levin, Rhett Thompson, Delphine Levesque Demers, Cynthia Renee, Iren Frost, Tom and Dahlia Peterson, and my ex-girlfriend Stevie Lenn (I miss you). 

                                                                           Tana

Henry Covert
January 19, 2018