Promoting Baseball, Captains Style
I'm partnering with the Lake County Captains once again this year. I'll be doing three promotions for them.
1. In previous years, I've arranged to have my Free Comic Book Day issue of Love and Capes available at Classic Park on FCBD. 
This year, I'll be doing an original eight-page Lake County Captains comic.
I've already committed to be at Four Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga that day, so I won't be there for the giveaway. But it'll be a great time, regardless!
And I'll be posting some art and the cover soon.
Free Comic Book Day: May 1, 2010.
2. I've designed a Skipper "Bobble Belly"with Skipper as a rockin' guitar player to celebrate Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Skipper's playing a specially designed Fender Stratocaster.
Rock-n-Roll Nght: July 3, 2010.
3. And, to tie in with Cleveland and the A Christmas Story connection, we're going to be doing a Skipper Leg Lamp. Yup, you read that right. Hot electric baseball action that will look great on your desk. (It's not full size.)
Christmas in July, July 25 2010.
Click on either to see them embiggenated!
Shiny New Postcards!
Here's my promo item for the new Chicago C2E2 show, and probably my item for the rest of the con season: Local postcards. Here, classic Super Powers Cyborg and Braniac (two of my favorite figures from that line) look on at the first three cards. There'll be one given away every day, and then they'll be available for purchase on the Love and Capes site later.
Get To Know Me, Good Things Happen
So my friends at IDW are now a Diamond Premier publisher. Among other things, it means they're now in the front of the book, starting with the new catalog of Stuff Shipping in June, which comes out this week, I think.
In a completely unrelated story, among those first premier publishing solicitations is the second Love and Capes collection, Love and Capes: Going to the Chapel. Now, I'm not saying there's a connection, but those two events seem oddly connected, don't they? I mean, come on!
When you get your Previews catalog, be sure to order item APR10 0387, the snazzy new LNC trade. It's also available for pre-order on Amazon and you never know when they're going to have some crazy glitch sale, do you?
Wayback Wednesdays: Fish
Here's a poster-sized piece I did in my second year of art school. As I recall, the assignment was to draw something with multiple animals. I've always liked fish, so I did those. The piece was done in Dr. Martin Watercolor Dyes on a 20x30 piece of illustration board. I used to really like working wet like this. 
I remember being pretty happy with this piece, but looking at it now, I think it needs much more contrast. Maybe some of the inks faded in the intervening years.
With Friends Like These
My proofs for the Free Comic Book Day issue of Love and Capes came today. I'm checking it out now, but it looks good. You can see for yourself on May 1st!
Wayback Wednesdays: The First Slider Project
Back in 2001, I was pitching the Cleveland Indians on doing a Slider comic. Eventually, it would morph into the two page comic/puzzle page that I did for them for five years. But my original notion was do a three 24-page comics that could then be traded up into a graphic novel for sale at the Cleveland Indians Team Shops. This was back in the day when the Indians were a great team, and I think it would have been a great promotion. I couldn't convince them to do it, but I think it would have worked.
Well, aside from the slide the Indians took into lousyness the following year. Gone were the total sellout seasons and bleaker times prevailed. So maybe it all worked out for the best.
Along the way, though, I did an 8-page plus cover sample that I figured could be folded into the final product. I actually wrote all three issues, each with three stories apiece, and drew the first eight page story and cover, even designing a logo. Apparently, I had a lot of free time back then.
Still, it was a learning experience. This was the first big coloring thing I did with my newly purchased Wacom Intuos tablet. Apparently, I had a lot of extra income back then, too. Once I started using the tablet, though, I never looked back. It was one of my better purchase.
This was probably the last project for myself that I lettered by hand on the boards. I hadn't yet converted completely to computer lettering. I hadn't started doing my Photoshop composited heavy art yet, either, like I do on Love and Capes. So these boards look, largely, like the finished pieces. I like the process now, but I do miss having original finished art.
The invisibity effects in the story were created by drawing Slider on a separate piece of board and dropping him in later. I was also experimenting with doing colored lines in some places, and think it worked really well here.
If you look closely, too, you'll notice that the Wacky Professor character looks a bit like the Indians' Chief Wahoo. In fact, his name is Professor VaHoo. Oh, subtlety, thy name is Thom.
Click and embiggen on anything!
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.