Rancho Obi-Wan: My First Step Into a Larger World

I visited Rancho Obi-Wan, the largest private collection of Star Wars merchandise (though I don't know who else would have more). It was fantastic. There was so much stuff… stuff I had as a kid, stuff I wanted, stuff I never saw and beyond. I got to play the Star Wars vector arcade game from the Eighties. I played chess against R2D2, who cheats. And best of all, I got to me Steve Sansweet, who is just the nicest guy. After my trip, I drew a thank you piece for Steve. His favorite character is Obi-Wan, and mine is Boba Fett. So I drew our two characters facing off against each other. And in my thank you note I admitted to Steve that, yes, I know that Boba Fett would lose. Heck, it'd be a victory if he walked away with both his arms. But it was still cool as can be to draw it.

And please, check out Rancho Obi-Wan's Facebook page. If you want to see more, check out Amy's report on the fully-functional memorabilia base. Go there if you're in Northern California. Totally worth it.

If Love Were a Red Dress

I love tackling other characters, but it's always a treat when someone actually wants one of mine. Here, the requester wanted Abby, specifically in the red dress she wore in issue #2. This was a lot of fun to do.

Insert Clever Backwards Title Here

Zatanna was really popular at Charlotte this year, including having a set of Zatannas be the artwork models at the charity auction. It's always good to see Zee, but I thought it was particularly cool to see this George Peréz 80s-version.

Here was my run at the character, harkening back to her live magic stage show. This was done at the table at Charlotte, and then taken back home to color.

My Drawing Board

Between cons and my website, I've been taking commissions. It's one of my favorite parts of doing conventions these days. I just completed a bunch of them, so I'll be posting them the next few days.

Here's the first, a Power Girl commission. The request here was to "show her defiant but not ticked-off". The commissioner was pretty happy with this one.

Of My Own Volition

It's no secret that I hate drawing horses. I just can't figure out their anatomy, especially how their legs work. But, when I got a request to draw Valkyrie, something in my head said "Draw Aragorn, her winged horse." I'd already drawn Val once, so I definitely wanted something different. So I went for it.

Admittedly, I cropped the image so you couldn't see much of the legs, but I think I still did some okay work on Aragorn. Val's not bad either. The temptation with her is to draw her in warrior, so itwas nice to show her in a softer moment.

And, as always, click to embiggen!

Hellcat-- in Technicolor!

Sometimes jobs just get away from you. I didn't mean to finish this one so early this morning, but I got up and couldn't help myself. So here's the finished, full-color Hellcat.

Okay, now to draw some Love and Capes. Really.

Who Doesn't Love Patsy Walker?

Today started out with such grand intentions. I was going to draw stuff. But then, pretty quickly, things went off the rails.

It took my forever to dialogue the new Love and Capes page. Then I dealt with some client logo designs and burned some data DVDs for another client. It was sunny, and I felt the siren call of my first Convertible Day. There were a ton of e-mails to return. I finalized Love and Capes #13 with my printer. I met with a client. I got an awesome present in the mail. Whew!

I'm only disappointed because yesterday, I put out a call on Twitter for commissions, and I got a bunch of them. It was great, and I was looking forward to tackling them. I figured I'd draw at least three of them today. But life gets in the way, and I managed to do the pencils for one.

But, since I don't post a lot of work-in-progress stuff, I thought I'd share this Hellcat commission that I'm working on. I don't do a lot of profiles, but I thought it caught her sense of movement pretty well. If you look, you can see where I originally had her left leg lower. Moving it higher accentuated the pose.

I'll transfer it to good board tomorrow, I think. I should have a new page of Love and Capes on the schedule tomorrow, too. We'll see if I can handle them both.

Anyway, the first image is my col-erase pencil rough (man, I love those things) tightened with mechanical pencil. The second one is the tight pencils, which will be transferred to bristol for inking. And then scanning and coloring.

The Dog of Steel!

In my ongoing attempt to make this The Coolest Blog in the Multiverse, and with a tip of the hat to Andy Ihnatko, I'm trying out the WordTwit plugin for my blog. Now, blog posts will be automagically sent to my Twitter feed. You'l be up to your eyebrows in up-to-the-minute Thom Zahlerishness If that's your thing.

Here's a commission I did for Jon Knutson's Random Acts of Geekery blog. He's a Krypto fan, so I decided to put Superman's real best friend in front of the Doghouse of Solitude. I'm pretty sure the Doghouse in no longer in continuity, but I'm sure DC will fix that soon.

Now They Can Make Margaritas

For my next trick, a commission for a couple of fans of mine. Their initial idea was to have themselves drawn in the Mark and Abby's receiving line. I did something along those lines, with Mark and Abby, post-wedding, opening up a present from them. You'll have to click and embiggen to see what they got.

You can see these two at the wedding on the cover, too.

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?

If all goes according to plan, I'm well on my way to Charlotte and HeroesCon by the time this post appears. I've got it set to appear automagically by using the telepathic uplink feature of the iPhone 3.0 software.

I'm just kidding. The iPhone doesn't have a telepathic connection. AT&T won't allow it.

Anyway, I did finished this commission last night. The commissioner wanted Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy. He suggested Gwen be in a similar post to that classic "Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot" pose. (And say what you will about Kirsten Dunst's performance, when she called him 'tiger', it worked, and that's a hard line to sell.) That gave me the idea to have them mirror each other, and about to knock on Peter's door just flowed from that.

This is a great time to remind everyone that I still have nine spots left for Powerful Women #3, and I'd like to have that filled up and ready for San Diego. Hopefully I'll have more than a few commissions coming out of Charlotte, but still, if there's anyone you want to see, go ahead and let me know.