In other news, I have looked at my schedule for the month of September and I believe I will be doing more Conventionless, Convention Sketches. I will know for sure on Monday afternoon. This time I will take on the same amount of 20 (or less if no one is interested) but they will be completed over the month of September. I will offer them here first, and if I don't hit 20, I will put up an auction on eBay for the balance. More info tomorrow. But if anyone would like to chime in early and post if they will be interested, (don't send money) that would be cool. Thanks!

This is done in ink on 11" x 17" Canson Bristol Board.

Tomorrow starts the long Labor Day weekend here in the US of A. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend. Enjoy yourselves, I will be here when you get back. :)

R- rated versions and some people buy the PG versions. By always having just PG rated art, I may be missing out on sales. Don't know for sure but it was explained to me that there is a market for it. An easy fix and I don't have a problem with nudity. :)

The original art is ink on 10" x 15" Canson Cold Press Watercolor Paper. Colors and effects in Photoshop. I plan to paint the original artwork in watercolors. And she will be topless. :)

For this scene I wanted to establish they are in the air by showing the ground below. Our foreground are the tubes and pipes, our middle ground Hawke and the dock area and our extreme background is the terrain below. If this was a black and white book I would have done more to establish the depth here in the inks. Since the book will be in color, the only thing I did was vary the line thickness (line art is thicker in the foreground and get thinner as things are farther away) and will leave notes for the colorist to punch it up with color. Because I have worked on so many black and white books, I tend to try to do everything in ink, I have to remind myself to let the colorist handle some of it as well. Especially if it will make it look better. In a book like this, with a scene in the bright day,  the colorist can bring a lot to the page. I just have to get out of the way. :)

And I need to start on a new batch of pin-ups for CILM. Todays post is a sketchy idea. Does anyone know where I got title for today's post? Anyone? Bueller? This is done in pencil on 11" x 17" copy paper.

While I said the room would be finished tomorrow, that really means the big sweeping version of it. There will be details like parrots, crabs, other birds, lizards and so on that I will be adding as the muse strikes. Then there are the artificial plants that will attached to the walls to add some real dimension to the scene. So that's it for today. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

On a personal note, 16 years ago today, Deena and I got married. So this is an important day for us. I still do cards for her for different occasions. She has stacks of them. Deena gave me the okay to share the card she woke up to this morning. I won't subject all of you to the mushy stuff on the inside though. Deena always reads my posts so: Happy Anniversary Baby! And to everyone else, have a good weekend.

Pretty cool, huh? We had exchanged emails a couple of years ago and I offered to scan any pages I have of his fathers work for his site. Then I moved. And things didn't get done. Well, today I dug in there and found a page from NEW ROMANCE. The publisher was Standard. This is a beauty of a page. Twice up on some really thick board. When I scan it I will share. I have sent a digital image to Mr. Saaf to find out what story it is from. Hopefully he will know.

And so this is the 20th sketch from the Conventionless, Convention Sketch Auction. Actually there is a 21st piece. I did the above artwork for Terry and the next day I wasn't sure if it was the kind of "sexy" he wanted. So I did a second one and gave him a choice. Turned out I shouldn't have second guessed myself. He liked the first. Both will be in my CAF gallery if you are interested in seeing the second one.

Thanks again to everyone who commissioned a sketch. All were fun to do and seems everyone is happy with the results. I've been asked when I might put up another sketch auction and looking at my schedule, there might be room for one in mid to late September. I don't know if I will do it through eBay or just do it though this blog. Guess it depends on how comfortable everyone feels about dealing directly with me. :) We will see. Happy Wednesday!

On the first page we have a couple of curvy fairies. And a little underwear humor. On page 2, a couple slim girls. Which made me think of something that happened at MegaCon this year...

A woman was looking through my artwork. I greeted her in a very friendly manner. Smiled. Polite. When she finished looking through everything, she started to walk away, looked over her shoulder at me and said, "So you're a tit-man." It wasn't a question, more of a statement. I looked up at her and said that most of these pieces are past commissions and reflect the characters as they appear in the comics. I finished with "Personally, I'm a 'whole package' kinda guy, not just tits or legs or butts or skinny or curvy or any other ONE thing." She gave me a funny look then walked away. This kind of thing happens at cons from time to time. Most of the time I am just asked why I draw women with these fantastic figures and looks. That real women don't look that way. I point out I don't have the body of a Batman or a Superman either. They normally don't think of that. No biggie though, makes for some interesting conversations sometimes. Funnier though is how I have to cover the nipples on a drawing because there are kids present but a drawing of a disemboweled person or rotting zombie, or a severed head is good clean fun for the kids. Hmmmmm.

This was one of the hardest working groups I have ever seen. All were first timers and once the concept of the process was explained they really dove in and made it work. It's always a pleasure to work with people take the process and really work it.