Free Comic Book Day Wrap-Up

Here's some of the free sketches I drew for customers at Lightning Comics in Coeur d'Alene, ID on Saturday. I was there with my friends in the Comicsmiths' Guild for Free Comic Book Day.

The shop had a really good turnout, and we were busy sketching the whole time, almost non-stop. It was great to talk to so many people who had been there for FCBD the past couple of years, and were looking forward to seeing us again.

There was a small write-up in the local paper about the event - the Guild got a mention, and they even included a picture of me sketching for one of the kids who was there. You can read it here: The Coeur d'Alene Press

 Also, there's a new comic up on the In Geekness page at my website, so be sure to check that out too!

Sketches and Comic Signing

A bunch of free sketches I drew today at Lightning Comics. I was there as part of the Spokane Comicsmiths' Guild, to support fellow local artist Joshua Covey, as he signed House of Night #2, his big debut with Dark Horse Comics.

We had a good turn-out and Josh was busy the whole time, signing and sketching. Thanks to Matt and the gang at Lightning Comics for having us out and taking care of us while we were there!

Halloween Wrap-Up

I spent Saturday afternoon with my friends in the Comicsmiths' Guild, over at Lightning Comics in Coeur d'Alene, sketching for customers as part of their Halloween weekend event. We had a good time, and had a pretty decent turn-out of people.

I wasn't very good about taking pictures this time around, but did make sure to get a shot of this one, which I was pretty happy with. It was actually for the daughter of one of the other local artists who was there drawing - Joshua Covey, who drew the cover for the new (second) Guild Anthology comic.

We also had the first copies of the new Anthology for sale at the sketch event, fresh from the printers. They're available for sale locally for now - you can of course order them from the Guild and we can figure out shipping costs to your location. We should have them available on IndyPlanet soon as well, along with the first Anthology.

We stayed home for Halloween (had new TV to watch, after all), and actually had a fair amount of trick-or-treaters this time around. We've lived in these apartments for 6 years, and have never had a huge turn-out, which always seemed odd considering we're smack in the middle of a big residential area with a bunch of other apartment complexes. And I know there are plenty of kids living around here. But this year we may have had the same amount as the last 2 or 3 years combined. Maybe the weather was just nicer?


And the library lets their employees dress up for Halloween, so Jenny went as a pirate!

Blink & Chamber

These are for an X-Men jam piece that the Comicsmiths' Guild is currently working on. Everyone is penciling their favorite characters and then they'll be assembled into a big image, which will be inked and finished by Levi Skeen.

We recently did one like this with different Green Lantern characters, and were pretty happy with the results. It's currently being colored by one of the members, and when it's finished we're planning on making prints we can sell to benefit the Guild.

Everyone seems to find these jam pics fun, so we're hoping to do some more in the future. Below you can see the final inked version of the Green Lantern piece.

Catbeard of the Caribbean

So, my good buddy Matt Nelson has had this awesome weekly webcomic going for a while now, called Catbeard the Pirate, about the adventures of a pirate cursed to have a living cat as a beard. It's hilarious, and I highly recommend checking it out. And the current story even has dinosaurs!

I've been meaning to do some fan-art for it, so when this idea popped into my head I had to put it down on paper. Only pencils so far - I'll post an updated version whenever I get a chance to finish it.

Spokane ComiCon Wrap-Up

Just realized it's been a week since the Spokane ComiCon, and I never actually did a post-convention blog post....

The Con was a lot of fun (per usual) - it had it's highest turn-out yet, which is definitely an encouraging sign of the size of the geek community around here. We met a lot of great folks, and it was also awesome to see people we recognized from past events, who made a point to find us at the Con and get more sketches from us. And of course, it's great to be able to meet more artists and creative types, and catch up with friends from out of town.

The one serious snag in the event was the "fire drill" mid-way through the day... The fire alarm went off, and everyone had to leave the building while we waited for the fire department to show up and make sure everything was safe. We were only outside for probably 30 minutes, but I'm sure there were some who didn't wait around and just left.

And apparently this was a known issue with the alarm system itself, as it had gone off at least twice before that week and hadn't been fixed. Just bad timing, but thankfully most of the attendees took it in stride and didn't let it ruin the day.

I only got photos of a couple of the sketches I did during the Con. The top one is the person's original character, that he was getting different peoples' versions of. And the other was for a little girl, probably only 5 or 6, who apparently really liked Frankenstein. It was great seeing the thrilled look on her face when she saw it and realized it was for her.

Free Comic Book Day Wrap-Up

Free Comic Book Day is always great, as it's kind of "Geek Christmas", but this year's was particularly fun, though a pretty long day...

I was over at Lightning Comics in Coeur d'Alene, ID with my buddies in the Comicsmiths' Guild, where we were drawing free sketches for customers for a little over four hours. There were people lined up and waiting outside before the doors opened, and we kept busy the whole time, with a steady flow of people.

After we were done there, we headed over to the local theater for another 2+ hours of sketching - this time of only Thor (and related characters) as part of a promotion for the new movie. We were only drawing for people who were going to see Thor, and we were still swamped, and stayed longer than planned.

But we had to eventually pack up and leave, as we had a free screening of Thor waiting for us, courtesy of the theater management. I thought the movie was awesome, even with my expectations as high as they were, and being such a fan of the source material.

It was a lot of fun, with a surprising amount of (actually funny) comedic bits and plenty of big super-hero action and fight scenes. Afterwards I was left thinking that the new Superman movie is going to have it's work cut out for it to compete...

But if you do see it, I wouldn't waste your money on the 3D version. I thought it really was unnecessary, and the conversion wasn't the greatest either. Unlike other 3D films I've seen, it seemed like they didn't adjust the brightness or contrast or something, as the glasses actually made things really dim. Which made many of the scenes (like the night-time sequences) a bit hard to see. I'm planning on seeing it again, and going for 2D next time.

And here's the pics I got of sketches I did during the day. These are all from the Lightning Comics session - I unfortunately didn't get any of the Thor pics, but it was kinda crazy at the theatre...

Tintin

Continuing to play catch up with this month's "weekly" sketches for the Comicsmiths' Guild, here's Tintin and the Captain, set sail for adventure.

Barbossa

Getting back to posting art here by starting to catch up on the Comicsmiths' Guild "weekly" sketches for the last month...

This was for the pick of "any pirate", so I went with my favorite character from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Though really, Geoffrey Rush is pretty much awesome in everything he's in, so that's no big surprise.

Robin and Marian

This is fan-art of sorts - of my buddy Matt Nelson's characters from his awesome upcoming semi-steampunk Robin Hood graphic novel.

You can find some early preview pages and sketches for the project over in Matt's deviantArt gallery: Matt's deviantArt

Static Re-design

This is for an event currently running over on Project Rooftop, in memory of the character's creator, Dwayne McDuffie, who recently passed away. Static was part of the Milestone imprint, published by DC in the '90s, which was a concerted effort to create a comics universe that showed real diversity, in a genre historically populated by mostly white characters and creators.

While his name is perhaps not as well known outside the comics and entertainment industry as some creators, McDuffie's reach was greater than most. He was the driving force behind the Justice League TV show, along with the Static Shock cartoon based on his own character, as well as a writer for Teen Titans and several of DC's animated movies. As such, McDuffie is probably responsible for reaching a larger mainstream audience in the last 10-15 years than comics themselves and creating a whole new generation of superhero fans that exists today.

Unfortunately I have the hardest time getting a decent scan of watercolors with my current (i.e. old) scanner. The colors for this still ended up looking washed out, even after tweaking in Photoshop, as you can see by the slightly blurry (but more accurate) camera pic below:

Aquaman Re-design

This was my entry for the most recent Project: Rooftop superhero costume re-design contest (which just ended on Sunday).

I was trying to at least imply some of his classic costume's traditional elements (gloves, trunks, "A" buckle), while giving him an updated modern look. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, but guess we'll see if the judges think I succeeded...

A New Year

Hopefully everyone out there had a happy and safe New Years celebration. I spent the first day of 2011 getting off on the right foot - by drawing! I was at local shop Lightning Comics with my friends in the Comicsmiths' Guild doing sketches for customers, during their big New Years/3 Year Anniversary celebration.

I'm not really one for resolutions, but I do have a lot of goals and plans for this year, mostly involving finally getting various projects off the ground. I should also have some news soon about the upcoming inaugural Comicsmiths' Guild Anthology book.

For now, here's a few of the free sketches I did today (click to embiggen the image):

Greymon for Dinosaur Day

My good buddy Matt Nelson recently came up with a pretty awesome idea - a brand new holiday called Dinosaur Day, where artists everywhere can flood the internet with new dino-related artwork, for no other reason than dinosaurs are themselves awesome.

So here's my contribution - Greymon, from the Digimon series. I've actually been a fan of Digimon for years, but strangely I don't remember doing any fan-art for it before this.

Guild Sketches - Red Sonja

So, the good folks in the Comicsmiths' Guild have started doing weekly sketches, where one person picks a subject that everybody draws (similar to, and inspired by, the Comic TwArt blog). We've been doing it for a couple of weeks, and participants have been posting them over on the Guild blog and deviantArt page.

This is actually last week's subject - the She-Devil With a Sword, Red Sonja!

Project Rooftop - Captain America

The current contest over at Project Rooftop (which ended yesterday) was to design a new costume for Captain America. It could be for anyone who's held the title, so I went for a new outfit for Bucky Barnes, the original Cap's sidekick and most recent shield bearer.

My attempt was something a bit "retro-superheroic", with some influence from his old WW2 outfit. The cape is meant to be a nod to the costume original Cap Steve Rogers wore for a while when he went by Nomad. Something about Bucky following in Steve's footsteps while also forging his own identity...

These Project Rooftop redesign contests are always fun - and one of these days I won't wait till the last minute to come up with my entry.

Post-Convention Update

This last Saturday was the Spokane ComiCon, which was (of course) awesome. I shared two tables in Artist Alley with my friends Matt and Jesse, representing the Comicsmiths' Guild, and we had fun and met a lot of cool folks. We all did pretty well sales-wise too, selling prints and art and drawing a ton of sketches for people.

After the convention we headed over to fellow Comicsmith Levi Skeen's place for the after-party, where we could wind down and fill ourselves with some delicious BBQ. A big thanks to Levi and Heidi for the party and to Nate O'Brien for putting on an amazing show! Remember to mark your calendars for the next convention - May 21 2011 will be the 5th annual show.

I did a lot of sketches at the convention, but unfortunately only got pics of these 3. The Gambit & Iron Man went to a couple who ended up getting 5 (!) sketches from me and bought 9 of my sketch cards. The bottom one is of a critter from The Maxx comic. I don't know what it is, but thankfully he brought some reference along for me to draw from.

Free Comic Book Day Wrap-Up!

Well, Free Comic Book Day has come & gone once again. It's always a fun experience, and this year was no exception.

I spent Saturday at Lightning Comics in Coeur d'Alene, ID, sketching away like crazy with other members of the Comicsmiths Guild and Joshua Covey, another awesome local artist who we just met that day. It was a packed house pretty much the whole time, and the day was mostly a blur of people and drawing. We were scheduled to be there from 10-3, and ended up staying till 4 since there were still people coming in.

A few other guys from the Guild were over at Merlyns in Spokane on Saturday, and apparently it was just as crazy over there as well. It's great to know FCBD did it's job and got people in the doors of comic shops to check them out. Hopefully some of them will come back and become regular readers.

Myself and a couple other Guild members came back to Merlyns on Sunday, as the owner was extending the FCBD festivities to the whole weekend. It wasn't near as busy, but that might have a lot to do with the day also being the annual Bloomsday Run, a huge local event that draws most of the city's attention. But we still ended up doing a few sketches while we there.

Below are some of the sketches I did both days (click the pics to enlarge) - unfortunately there were quite a few I didn't get photos of.

Sketch Cards for Cancer!

The 3rd annual benefit sketchcard auction, sponsored by Blue Line Pro and the American Cancer Association, is fast approaching.

This is my 2nd year participating, and I tried to pick some subjects for my cards that will hopefully get some interest and collect some money for a very worthy cause.

The on-line auction is scheduled to start on May 15th. More information about the auction can be found here: Comics For Cures

Project: Rooftop - Black Canary

I did this a couple of days ago and hadn't got around to posting it... It's for the most recent call for submissions for Project: Rooftop. This website is dedicated to superhero costume re-designs, and I've entered a few of their past contests, even placing in one of them (for Batman).

This one is for Black Canary, a long standing DC character who is one of the premiere martial artists in the DC universe, but has never really had a costume that matches her superhero name (in my opinion).

I'm actually pretty happy with the design I whipped up, but I guess we'll see what the judges say....