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So last night I wanted to just sketch something fun that wasn't part of a job. I went to my twitter account and asked the legions want they wanted and the first 3 responses were, Captain Ahab, The Beastie Boys and Eddie Riggs of Brutal Legend. Evan Shaner also suggested The Thing, but I have never been able to do him any justice. So here is Mike D leading Eddie Riggs and Captain Ahab on a quest for adventure and mystery. All Aboard!
On the web - checking out the Wolverine 100 covers on Newsarama, CBR & Marvel.com The Wolverine 100 book will be out in December, more info can be found here. It features me and about 99 other amazing artists.
On the TV - ROME, the HBO series. I will wrap it up tonight and be sad, like I was when I finished Deadwood and the Wire. For my money, these 3 shows may be the best television I have ever seen. I love the characters on Rome, not as much as the Wire, but the scope and epic nature of the show make up for that. Do yourself a favor one weekend. Get rid of the kids if you have them, put aside work, and just watch both seasons back to back. Also, fellas, it's like an aphrodisiac for the ladies, trust me.
On the reading table - Umbrella Academy vol.2 that I got from khepri.com. I really liked the first volume and this one just continues that, the characters remind me of why I really liked The X-men originally, dysfunctional and super-powered. I also recently got Cora Vol.1 & 2, Ted Mathot's follow up to the two Rose and Isabel books. Really great stuff chronicling a family of women with powerful abilities from the civil war south to the western frontier. My only complaint would be that the Cora books seem short with lots of build up and I'm eagerly awaiting volume 3 for the payoff.
On my drawing table - Lots of stuff I can't show, I just picked some more really rushed freelance work to go along with some sketchcards and comic work. I'll try to post new art when I can, I put up a small sketch of a panel in progress last night at the Sketchjam blog.So what are you guys reading, watching and working on?
I've always disliked my original design for my Super75comics site so I re-did it yesterday and kept it very simple. It's a place for me to host a gallery for editors and art directors as well as a hub for my published work and a link to my blog and to my "exclusives" dealer @ Khepri comics. My next personal, self-published book will be a full-color sketchbook that will also serve as a preview book for my next project, Icarus, that I will be debuting at The Emerald City Con. Until then, I'm still working on an OGN for Outlaw Entertainment. Here are a couple pictures I just found on my friend Ben's Myspace. I think it was the first time I've logged into that horrible site in about a year.
Here is me signing at the Hero Initiative Booth alongside Andy Kuhn, Terry Moore and Tony Parker. We also did a fun little panel on the hardships of indie comics and self-publishing. Also, way in the back there is Tim Seeley.
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I got back from Long Beach Sunday night around 10:30 and I'm still feeling the effects of the weekend. I've had weird stomach pains on and off since Sunday morning. Maybe there's a little chest-burster in there, who knows. If you study the above photo you will see me, in the bottom left hand corner in the green shirt. All those other people on the other side of the booth are the people that didn't buy any of my stuff.
As part of our agreement with the wonderful Atomic Comics fellas and the con organizers, the Arizona-based artists agreed to do free sketches for kids under 12. A safe estimate would be that between myself, Scott Godlewski, Ben Glendenning, Terry Tibke, Jim Hanna and Matt Bennet we probably did 250 sketches over the two and a half days. I think I did about 45 or so on Saturday alone. It wasn't bad as they were mostly simple head shots, but the problem was that I think everyone thought we were employees and there only to provide free sketches and they did not bother to look at or purchase any product. Financially it was not a very good con personally. I know the guys over in artist alley did much better and I was glad to hear about several of my friends selling out of their convention stock including Matt and Scott's Mysterious Adventure Magazine #2 (which I did the back cover for).
While I did not get alot of sketch commissions or move alot of product, I did have fun sketching for the kids overall and I had a wonderful time hanging out with all my creator friends. I still fully plan to go back next year and with my hopes of squeeking out a visit to Heroes Con next year, I'm looking forward to doing four conventions in total in 2010. I should have a graphic novel out by next summer as well as my other, superhero project as well. If I met you in Long Beach please feel free to visit the blog often and post comments as well. I'll get some art up for you guys soon, I didn't have a scanner there so I will probably never see most of those sketches ever again, but I hope the people enjoy them, but here is a Kilowog sketch I did the first night, and one of only two drawings I have copies of.
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