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Jonnie Allan
A self-taught artist, Born November 19th, 1968 Jonnie Allan grew up in Irvine, California spending most of his time playing with his closest friend Tom Dumont. Dynamic drawings of stages and fancy costumes of a yet future fantasy band would be littered across the floor of both bedrooms. Countless hours were spent pouring over their fanciful designs in hopes to one day usurp the title of Hottest Band In the Land from the fantastically clad members of the rock group KISS. Never mind neither Jonnie nor his friend Tom played an instrument at the time, the stages & costumes would be sweet. Eventually, they knew they had to get serious. Tom took up the guitar; Jonnie the drums. Fast forward several years, although drum playing was a passion, Jonnie became more & more consumed with the drawing & design side of expressing himself. While in his teens, Jonnie acquired the first Marvel Try-Out Book (This was a type of how-to manual with actual pages of art to work on & mail into Marvel Comics for review.). Suddenly, a new dream crowded out the old. Comic Books became the order of the day and a new passion overtook Jonnie and drove him to one day draw like the artists whose work graced the pages of the comics he fell in love with. With a drum stick in one hand & graphite in the other, Jonnie set out to pursue that dream (Tom Dumont continued his pursuit of playing his guitar in front tens of thousands of fans. He eventually became the lead guitarist for a band you may have heard of... NO DOUBT!) Pressing the fast forward button again, we find ourselves in the early 1990's. After a 4 year term of serving his country in the United States Navy where he helped design "cruise books," T-shirts & the "Underway Replenishment Flag" for the aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE & VAW-117, Jonnie attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in hopes to learn the skills necessary to follow his dream. Unfortunately, after his first semester, financial reasons cut short his time in Pasadena. Undaunted, Jonnie began consuming every art book he could get his hands on in hopes to glean what he could from their pages. Through mutual acquaintances, Jonnie partnered up with Parks Stevens to bring the comic book adaptation of THE MYSTIC WARRIOR to life. While attending the San Diego Comicon, Jonnie was introduced to Mike Carlin of DC Comics. After an unscheduled review of the work in progress, Mr. Carlin made 2 relatively small suggestions in regards to Jonnie's artwork. Those suggestions opened up Jonnie's work to an whole other level the countless books he raad through could not. Although the comic of THE MYSTIC WARRIOR was never released, the experience proved valuable in regards to his growing as an artist. Time moved forward, life got in the way of life, & "real" jobs had to be worked. While working in the field of insurance, Jonnie was contacted by QUEST COMICS & was asked to draw their title SOLDIER OF GOD published through BONEYARD PRESS. "An interesting experience, & we'll leave it at that," muses Jonnie. "But experience none the least." Sadly, to this day, the work done on MYSTIC WARRIOR & SOLDIER OF GOD has yet to see print. You can however see some of the pages in the OPP section. |
