Raleigh Comic Book Show, Sunday 04/23/2017
Just found out early last week that I’m going to be a guest at the upcoming Raleigh Comic Book Show, next Sunday! As always, I am looking forward to seeing show runner Lyn Anderson and all the great dealers and convention regulars who attend these shows. Other planned guests at this show are Buddy Prince, who is a solid artist, good guy, and another Raleigh show regular… and Dan Johnson, whom I have not yet met but am looking forward to seeing for the first time!
I will again have original art and sketch cards for sale, including a bunch of new sketch cards from last Inktober that I drew after my last convention appearance. I’ll also have lots of glossy prints of a bunch of illustrations that I’ve drawn over the last few years. Time permitting, I might even be able to do some commission sketch cards or head/bust sketches during the show too. I’m getting ready for the show this week, so I could even surprise myself with new things I don’t yet know I’ll be bringing!
I hope to see lots of Facebook and blog followers at the show… and I promise to try and warp your brain with my nonsense while you’re there. 🙂 If you’re anywhere near Raleigh, NC next week you really ought to stop by the show… you will not be disappointed! For those who can’t attend, I will be blogging about the experience sometime next Sunday night as I normally do after these shows.
Inktober 2016 Part 1
Inktober is a thing, in October, started by Jake Parker back in 2009. It has grown over the years but the core concept is to complete and share one ink drawing per day for the entire month. I’ll skip the detailed history and origins and leave it to you to visit the Inktober Web site for yourself as he covers it pretty well there on his site.
So, I decided to participate this year… and I have been dutifully completing at least one new drawing per day since the beginning of the month. With the exception of that week where I was without Internet access, I have been sharing my creations every day, as I complete them, on Facebook so please check me out there to see what I’m drawing new each day!
My original plan was to make a weekly post here on the blog, and collect the previous week’s worth of dailies so that I didn’t interrupt my comic strip during the week. My Internet outage killed that plan as it spanned more than a week’s duration and killed what would have been my first two weekly update segments… but finally, I’m going to start catching up today.
I decided to go small, and every drawing for Week One is a 2.5 x 3.5 inch personal sketch card sized illustration.
Inktober 2016 Week One:
General Lee
Woman Face
Black Cat
Spongebob Squarepants
Flash
Green Arrow
Spider-Man
It’s easy to pick my personal favorite from the first week… Spongebob Squarepants! After that I probably like my Spider-Man card second best. Oh, and if you think that black cat looks super creepy, it might be because I gave it intentionally incorrect human-looking eyes just to be weird. 🙂
Please let me know what you think and remember, if you’d like an original commission by me or would like to hire me as an Illustrator, please use the Contact page and let me know as much as you can about your request.
Batman Bust Convention Sketch
Convention sketches are like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re gonna get! 🙂 With my humble apologies to Forrest Gump, begins the tale of a convention sketch from last weekend at the Raleigh Comic Book Show.
Once I was settled in and had said my hellos to fellow guests and the show organizer, I decided to begin a convention sketch on a blank 7×10 comic backing board. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to draw when I began, but since I had drawn a Spider-Man last December I was at least not going to do that. So, pencil to paper and at some point I decided I wanted to draw Batman.
Had I decided to draw Batman sooner, it would have started out looking less like Orion from the New Gods! I realized I had a little bit of work to do to bring it back to being a Batman drawing and not Orion. Nothing against Orion, incidentally, and I probably should draw him too… but I was going for a more immediately recognizable character for this unsolicited sketch and I figured more people would recognize Batman.
I think I managed to save it… but you can be the judge! Oh, and in case you wonder… I found myself without proper flesh-coloring markers so I improvised with a few different colors and going for the patchwork illusion of skin tone through color overload! It just didn’t look right leaving his face white once I had colored everything else. So, my least favorite part of this one is the faux flesh tone result here, even though the illusion works from a distance… it just doesn’t hold up quite as well to up-close scrutiny.
Remember, if you’d like an original commission by me or would like to hire me as an Illustrator, please use the Contact page and let me know as much as you can about your request.
Local Comic Book Storefront Work-in-Progress
I have an idea for a thing… that I will not get into right now… but something I wanted to do was use some inspired-by-real-life local locations with this. Given what I know and what you do not know, the place to start was with an old comic book store. Capitol Comics of Raleigh, NC, opened back in 1986 on Hillsborough St in downtown Raleigh, NC. Many years later they opened another location out past Crabtree Valley Mall, but a few years back they closed the original location and consolidated to just the newer one. Sadly even the building where the original location opened no longer exists! I worked at the original store location many years ago, and the owner Ken Pleasant has always been a class guy. I’ve also met and worked with lots of good people that I met through the years working and shopping at Capitol Comics.
I believe I’m mostly done here with the front of the store, complete with trademark easily-recognizable Spider-Man sign. There was originally an awning across the front of the store but I can’t find any pictures of that at the moment, so that is in the TBD later pile for now. I’d also like to draw the right-hand side of the store and I have plans to also pull back a little and create a semi-perspective look because that will allow me to also show the building next door that has a classic bulldozer sign on its roof. For those interested, below is a closer look at the Spider-Man sign, which I also have attempted to recreate as close to the original as my available source photographs would allow:
I don’t want to say too much about my eventual plans for all this… but it could involve some further decorating of the insides of the store (as seen through the windows) and some looks at the interior as well. Stay tuned! I’m hoping to keep a sliver of the past alive through the creation of a whole ‘nother thing as I get the time to work on it. Please let me know what you think (especially if you’re local to Raleigh, NC and are familiar with this store) and remember, if you’d like an original commission by me or would like to hire me as an Illustrator, please use the Contact page and let me know as much as you can about your request.
Spider-Man Bust Convention Sketch
While at the Raleigh Comic Book Show this weekend, I was able to complete a new bust style sketch of Spider-Man on a 7×10 comic backing board. Pencils first, then ink and coloring all with markers. I think it turned out fairly well.
Remember, if you are interested in requesting my services as an Illustrator, please use the Contact page and let me know as much as you can about your request.
Marvel Character Sketch Cards
Here’s an assortment of sketch cards based on Marvel Comics characters…
Venom
Green Goblin
Iron Man
Hulk
Landscape Scenery Sketch Cards
Changing things up a bit, I made some landscape scenery sketch cards without characters. One from DC Comics and one from Marvel Comics…
Bat-signal over the skyline
Spider-signal on a brick wall
i.e. Sequential... Journal... Visual... 
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