NYCC2009 - Day Three, a bit late

I never did finish talking about New York, did I?

I should be used to this. It's so hard to write up the last day of a show because it tends to be your getaway day. And then you get back and you're busy and you just don't have time. Plus, things were really crazy back home with work that came in.

Anyway, the last day of the show was pretty good. The crowds were still thick, and I sold pretty well that day, too. I think as a lot of these shows max out and become almost exclusively 3-day attendees, Sunday becomes a huge sales day. After all, if you have until Sunday, why buy until Sunday? Well, because Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? was almost sold out, of course. By 1:00 or so, I was sold out, and only had single issues left. I'll have to keep that in mind when I go to San Diego this year.

I did a couple more caricatures, including Jennifer Kale from Marvel's Man-Thing. Yeah, I had no idea who she was either, but the customer had reference, which was good. There were a couple more that escape me, too. Kale and the Spider-Woman that I did are now colored and here on this page. Make with the clickin' and embiggenin'.

Let's review: I did a panel, sold out of a product, did some sketches, and lined up some work. Yeah, I think it was a success.

Bob and I helped Toon Tumblers take down their booth in trade for borrowing some space in their van to get our gear back to the hotel. I had a taste for pizza, so we wound up at Antonio's next to where the Late Night With David Letterman show tapes. It was pricey and it seemed to take forever, but the pizza was good, and it was a great end to a great show.

On the way back, I wanted to stop at the Kubert School to buy some brushes. Good art brushes are hard to find, and the Kubert art store stocks a lot of them. I kind of need to see a brush before I buy it as there's a whole process to choosing one. They only had one of my current brush, the Windsor Newton Series 7, but they had a selection of the Rafael, a brush I hadn't used since art school.

I bought three.

I even got to go into the school, which had been extensively remodeled since I'd been there. The school, the old Dover High School, had been lopped in half and a chunk of the JKS parking lot had been sold off. Kubert had a lot of unused space in it, including a full auditorium and a gym. Now those are gone. Computers are all around, the windows have been replaced (a source of contention for all of us in the old days) and they even have air conditioning now.

Man, these soft, coddled artists today. In my day I drew in the cold and the heat and lived off a box of Captain Crunch because I couldn't afford it and... well, I hated it, but I did it anyway.

Mike Chen was kind enough to give Bob and me a tour, and we even dropped into a couple classes. Bob had asked if I got the shakes coming back into the building. Truth be told, I did get the wiggins when we waited in the waiting room. I don't think I'd been in there since my first day at the school, or maybe when I came out for my interview when I was applying. That room brought back some worries. Everything else was fine, though.

Bob also said he had to get used to seeing classrooms without desks and instead with drawing tables. That never occured to me. I'd just gotten used to it.

The school looks good. The students seem the same, bantering with Mike when he brought us in. Well, there is one big difference: girls. The school got girls since Iwas gone. There were I think three women in my first-year class of 150. Now, with the success of manga and the like, there's a bigger female component, which is very cool. The school even has dorms for them now, which previously they weren't able to provide.

Big thanks to Mike Chen for taking the time out of his day to bring us around the school. It was a great time.

Now I'm back and working again. I've got a couple of weeks before my trip to Orlando for MegaCon, so I'm trying to clear some things out before then. Thankfully, Love and Capes #10 is done, so it's just doing client work, of which there is a lot, thankfully. I've got some cool things coming up, which I'll tell y'all about as soon as I get a chance. So stay tuned, cool things are happening.

The Coolest Thing Since Cool

New Love and Capes news. Click here to see what!

New York Comic-Con Bound!

I'm heading up to New York for the fourth annual New York Comic-Con tomorrow. I'll be there all three days, set up at booth #2446, in Small Press. So you can plan your shopping accordingly, I'll be doing/bringing:

• All nine issues of Love and Capes, as well as the trade paperback collection, Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret?There will be deals a'plenty on multiple issue purchases, too.
• Both the "Mark and Abby" Love and Capes t-shirt, as well as the new "Amazonia" shirt. I've got sizes small to extra large, and even some double and triple XL sizes. Quantities are limited, though, so stop by early.
• The set of Love and Capes trading pins, with Mark and Abby, Darkblade and Amazonia designs.
• I'll have the Love and Capes Valentine Cards that I had printed for this show. And there may even be an exciting announcement at the table.
• Freshly printed copies of both Powerful Women sketchbooks. How fresh? I'm picking them up today, in fact.
• I'll be doing commissions left and right, of course. As a baseline, all commissions are finished inked drawings. $20 per character, and we can do color if you send me a scan of the image or if I take it back home and scan it myself.

Not going to be there? You can order everything at the Love and Capes store, and order commissions here.

Cover Round-Up

Now it can be told, the cover I did was for the Ft. Worth Weekly. It's one of those indy alt-papers that I've done so much work for over the years. Here's the cover, complete with text and headlines and masthead and all of that stuff.

For those of you techies in the audience, drawn by hand, inked by hand, colored and composited in Photoshop. I handled most of the illustration elements separately, which allowed me to get in some nice detail in the Cowboy. The story is about how the big Stock Show (which is a Rodeo, for those of us in the North) that brings in tons of revenue to the city, but the city only gets a tiny fraction. So they wanted a cowboy roping a pile of money.

I changed it a little bit, making the money more of a sandworm (Dune, anyone?) so that there was a little more motion and resistance to the money. I think it worked pretty well.

Weekend Warrior

A few years back, shortly after going full freelance, I decided I shouldn't have to work weekends anymore. It was one thing when I was working for The Man, and nights and weekends were the only time I had to myself. I don't mind doing my own stuff on my own time, like Love and Capes, but I didn't want to have to work on weekends anymore.

It's a great theory, and it works more than it doesn't. This weekend was one of those "doesn't" times. That's okay, since both projects were for people I like who don't ask for too much. I'm willing to make a diving catch in the end zone a couple of times, but if it happens every time, then that's just poor planning.

So, I finished up that coloring project and moved over to this cover illustration. I still can't show the whole thing, but will be able to soon since it runs this week.

I had a really good Sunday. I went over to my Grandma's for "dinner" (well, it's lunch, but it looks like dinner) and hung out with the family, and visited with a couple of friends later in the afternoon, and even watched The Simpsons with my parents and brother. All great things. But, for some reason, I was beat when I finally got to the drawing board to ink and color this cover.

There have been plenty of times that I've been up until 1:30 in the morning working on Love and Capes and it's an effort to make myself go to bed. Maybe it's the last two months of that and LNC taking its toll, but I just had no power. I could hear my couch calling to me: "Look, Bourne Identity is on. And you've got lots of Supernatural on DVD yet." I'm not really a lay-on-the-couch guy, more of a do-something-while-the-TV's-on guy, but man, yesterday I really wanted to just veg out.

I managed to ink the drawing and lay it out in Photoshop so that I could wake up (shudder) early to finish it this morning. I did manage to get up a quarter after six to start coloring.

Have I mentioned the glories of coffee, by the way?

I got it done, and I think it looks really good. It's one of the rare jobs that actually turned out a little better than I envisioned in my head. So I guess it was worth it.

Slappin' Some Color Down

I've got a coloring project running right now, too. It's kind of amazing, to me, that I get coloring work. When I was in art school, color was my big weakness. Of course, sitting next to the absurdly talented Sean Tiffany didn't help. The guy's got crazy color sense.

But, a bunch of artists I know online took me to the woodshed to teach me how to color. I was battered and bloody for a few months, but now I'm far more confident in my coloring skills right now. And, apparently I'm okay at it too, since I'm landing work as a colorist here and there.

Here's a little glimmer of the page I just finished. I won't post a larger link yet until I get an okay from the client. But this slice should be okay to share.

A Cloud of Dust

From out of relative nowhere came a job to draw a cover for a client down South. Since I'm showing part of the drawing before it prints, I'm not going to mention the name, not yet at least.

The important thing here is that, man, I hate drawing horses. I haven't figured out the anatomy. And, they're so graceful that any blip on a line looks completely wrong. So, in this cover where I have to draw a cowboy on a horse, I have to say I'm pretty proud of how this one came out. The art and style actually look a little better than I had in my head, so I'm happy with it so far.

It's on proof to La Clienta, so once she signs off on it, I'll finish it up and then link to it when the cover goes live.

Dogs and Cats Sleeping Together

I've got a little bit of time before I need to start this, but I did have to do the cover for the "coming attractions" at the end of Love and Capes #10. So enjoy your first look at the new issue.

The Fruits of Success!

Oh, yeah. It's time for the Mocha of Victory.

But, thanks to a moment of confusion and the exemplary customer service of the Starbucks Baristas, I got both the venti mocha that I ordered, and the grande mocha that they thought I'd ordered. Bonus coffee, or more accurately, bonus Mocha of Victory.

Heck, I deserve it. I brought the book in a week early on my internal deadline. Take that, Mr. Everybody Else's Blown Deadlines!

Guess what's finished?

Done, done, DONE!

I love doing Love and Capes. But I think love the feeling of being done even more. Technically, of course, I'm not done. I have to do the cover for issue #11, and all the ads and trade dress for the book. That shouldn't be terribly hard, and I've got time before that part has to be done anyway. For now, having the story part done and out of my head is a wonderful thing.

The story's 26 pages, as I've said lots of times before. I can only show you one panel from those last two pages, and I had to take away the dialogue in it. But, trust me, there are two whole pages in a done state right now.

The eleventh issue should be interesting, too. It'll certainly be lighter and less superhero-y than this issue.

Speaking of #11, some of you may have read how Diamond has decided to raise their minimum orders which is causing problems for smaller publishers. And yes, I'm a smaller publisher and, yes, it could cause problems for me. But I'm working on some things to make sure it's not a problem. I have top men on it. "Who?" you ask. Top men.