Zombie Hulk

Here is a crop of my Zombie Hulk I did at the Chicago Comic Con. I wish I had a better photo of it, but this'll work. The anatomy of the arm on the left is off, but I like it either way. The drawing had the anatomy nailed down, but when I started painting it it went south a bit - not that it bothers me at all. I enjoyed doing it and my client totally loved it. At the end of the day, that's all that matters!

Post-Comic Con Sketches and Debrief

The Chicago Comic Con was a blast. As I write this I am recovering from an exhausting weekend of meeting, greeting, sketching and painting. Whew....

I was attempting to take photos of all the random assortment of things I was doing throughout the weekend but only got a small spattering of things. I did tons of sketch cards for people - some of which I did some Copic marker work on and some that were just pencils. I did a few paintings, one of which was a Zombie Hulk for an awesome guy who actually was working for Marvel Zombies cover artist Arthur Suydam. Wow. Talk about intimidating - painting a zombie for the assistant to THE zombie artist. I got to meet Arthur and everything in the process. He's a fantastic guy.

Thanks to everyone who came out and made year 2 for me at the Con a fantastic and killer experience. I will be seeing you there again next year as well as a few more cons across the country! Look out NY - here I come!

Here are an assortment of sketch cards I had drawn in between commissions and sketches for people. I had them sitting on the table and people would see these and want me to make one for them....

A Batman sketch card I did for the Pediatric Oncology Treasure Chest Organization - they auction off artist cards and the proceeds benefit children with Cancer.

Ichigo from Bleach. I had no idea who this guy was but did a quick google search for the kid who requested him and did up a quick pencil and marker sketch card for him. He loved it. Yippie ^^

Potential Re-Working

As my mind was reeling from the day's events at WW/CCC I was thinking about my older image of Death here. It, much like my image of Dream, felt elusively unfinished. I decided to add some text like I did with Dream and came up with this re-working of the original. Let me know what you think - I am curious to see if you like it. The original is the exact same image just without the text....

Wizard World / Chicago Comic-Con: Day 1 Report

Today started out on a bad note.

I don't want you to think it was anyone's fault but my own. I was the idiot in this situation who forgot to check out the actual opening time for the convention. In past years, it always opened at 10am on Friday morning - advance ticket holders got in at 9:30am as a perk. I assumed that his was still the case. The Con has a policy of releasing your table to anyone who wants to have a booth should you not be fully set-up a full 30 minuted before doors open - so I arrive in plenty of time. In fact, I made sure i overkilled the time I needed. I arrived promptly at 7:45am. I was amazed at the lack of traffic and people attending the convention. Even as I paid for my parking and made my way down that loooooooooooooong corridor from the garage to the convention center and arrived in the main exhibition hall that there was really no one but a few volunteers and some staff members. No attendees. No people in costume. No one. Ok.... no one except a rather friendly group of Muslims attending their convention just upstairs from the comic book convention in the main hall. Someone even mentioned that there was a Dianetics convention in another wing of the building, but I cannot confirm or deny that....

I went to the artist alley registration line and asked the person there if I could get my packet and begin my setup. The doughy man looked blankly at me and informed me that I could not - not until 9am.

D'oh.

I looked at my watch and contemplated exactly what I would be doing for the next hour and fifteen minutes as I impatiently awaited the arrival of 9am. Eventually, my partner in crime Andy Evans (www.andyevansillustration.com) arrived and we passed the time talking to a pleasant guy from Iowa. 9am rolled around and we got the packet and meandered our way off to find our booth and claim our rightful place as almighty artists - or at least a few guys hoping someone would just buy our stuff.... At this point we set up all of our stuff and I have a moment to breathe (as if I didn't have all the time in the world to do this while waiting earlier...) and looked at the program to see what time this party was getting kicked off.... my watch was reading 9:15 am.....

The convention started at 12-noon.

@#*$#@!

After sobbing openly for a few humiliating moments, Mr. Evans and I took a (very) leisurely tour around the nearly silent convention center looking at artists' booths and commenting on the work we liked and also didn't care for - you know, typical artist crap. After killing enough time, we headed back to our booth and settled in for the grueling 12-8 convention day.

We met all kinds of cool people and some you would more likely consider douche-bags. Andy sold some prints and I did some drawings for people. One guy had me draw him a picture of Hellboy all zombie-fied and another guy had me draw him a picture of Jedi Quinlin Voss from the Star Wars comics. I must say, drawing Voss was fun and it turned out really cool. The fellow who I drew it for was super cool. He said he'd stop back on Sunday when he returned for that day.

All in all it was a fun day - really inspiring, but really draining. Tomorrow Andy and I are going to see what kind of mischief we can get ourselves int0 (and hopefully out of too...) and go on a photo scavenger hunt. We might even have an "out-geek the other" competition.

I can't wait!

This is the final version with text. It'll be available at Wizard World 2010 (otherwise known as the Chicago Comic Con) at my booth.

After the long battle, I like the way it turned out but I would probably do things completely different next time around. Coloring the line art rather than keeping it black (as I usually do) is new for me and took a long and hard learning curve to get it right. It's not all there, but it's satisfactory for me. My next image I will start out that much farther ahead of where I am now.

"Africana"

Africana marks the beginning of the second half of my series titled "The Devil's Cup." This painting as well as the following nine paintings will each contain coffee in their paint as to further tie in the symbolism of each piece and to make it that much more unique.

I made a pot of french-pressed coffee and upon finishing the pot I poured the dregs into a small bowl and allowed it to reduce a bit (allowing the water to evaporate naturally.) After it reduced, the concentration of the remaining coffee was darker and more syrup-like which was perfect for painting. I then tried directly painting into the painting with the coffee as well as mixing it into the other colors to enhance their color and texture.