Con of Wonders!

Couple bits of business I should mention here. The annual WonderCon comic book convention will be held in San Francisco this weekend (from April 2 through April 4), and there are a few related things I'll be doing...

The SIREN Comic Collection will be on sale at booth AA 130 in the Artist's Alley. Assorted SIREN contributors will be flitting in and out of the booth like beautiful butterflies, and I'll probably put in a stint on Sunday.

Comics writer Brian Schirmer will have a table at SP 07 in the Small Press section, where you can pick up his self-published anthology "Worlds Apart," featuring a five-page story illustrated by yours truly. I'll be hanging out there at some point on Sunday, too.

Also noteworthy: Thursday evening, the Academy of Art University is hosting an Alumni Comic Book Panel with various grads-made-good, hosted by Marvel talent scout C.B. Cebulski. The panel runs from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at the Morgan Auditorium, 491 Post St., and is open to the public. Cebulski will also be reviewing student and alumni portfolios earlier in the day.

Speaking of which, here's the WonderCon Portfolio Review Schedule.

And finally, the lovely folks at the Cartoon Art Museum are throwing a weekend party on Friday night, from 8:00 to 11:00 PM. The party is a benefit for artist Ed Hannigan and co-sponsored by The Hero Initiative, which provides a safety net for your favorite comic creators in times of medical or financial crisis. Not sure if I'll be able to make it to the party, but it's a great cause and I wanted to give 'em a plug.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 8

I think our hero is finally starting to suspect something.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 7

Running a little late today, but here we go.



And in a very closely related vein, I just saw Michael Buble Being Stalked By A Velociraptor. Looks like this series launched a day after mine, so clearly there's something in the zeitgeist about people being followed around by carnivorous lizards.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 6

OMG, so much to do! But my commitment to the daily updating of the Death Dragon serial is as tenacious and implacable as the komodo dragon itself.



And thus we have our first eyewitness account, courtesy of an anonymous artist who's probably going to have a hard time explaining this to his parents.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 5

Digital colors this time, since Ben was taunting me about it. Once again I'm drawing what's right outside my window...



A little bit Coleridge, perhaps. "Because he knows a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread"...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 4

Nice and simple this time...

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 3

Man, these old markers are really on their last legs. Might be time to go digital with these, or switch to watercolors or something. In the meantime, here's day three!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 2

The pursuit continues. The movie, in case you're curious, was Hot Tub Time Machine.

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 1

Day One: The hunt begins!

Blood Bite of the Death Dragon: Day 0

This isn't the webcomic project I've been working on for the past few weeks, just a wacky idea that popped into my head this afternoon. With any luck, you can expect a new installment every day for the next, oh, three weeks. Real time webcomic is GO!

Critters Galore

Here are a couple of watercolor roughs I did as demos for an "Intro to Illustration" class I'm teaching. I did these step by step, with the students suggesting the colors for each element, and I think they came out quite nicely.




I probably had animals on the brain because I'd just been to the zoo a few days earlier. It's tough doing location sketching there, since the critters are always on the move. Maybe I should concentrate on sleepy koalas next time.




Of course, you can always draw people instead. Here's feeding time at the giraffe house, or at least as much as I could fit in alongside the turkeys and polar bears.

Drawing with George II

A couple more from Sunday's sketch-a-thon, in color this time.

Drawing with George I

New day, new post!

So Sunday afternoon, I was hanging around with the amazing George Cwirko-Godycki doing some freestyle drawing. We ended up doing a lot of monsters. Boar plus Moray = Boaray...



And then there was this guy.



Don't ask me what these are supposed to be. Haven't the foggiest.

Quick Studies

Whew, just scanned a bunch of recent sketches and whatnot. Looks like I'll be posting this stuff all week!

For starters, here are some pages from that Quick Studies workshop that Ben kept nagging me to attend. Hope you're happy now, Jelter!

From The Rent Files

Although it feels like I haven't been getting much art done lately, my wife keeps reminding me that I've been doing more than I think. Here's one example.

Back when we first moved into our current apartment, we were paying the rent by mail, so I threw in an illustrated cover letter each month rather than leave a naked check rattling around in the envelope. Pretty soon we switched to hand delivery, but I kept doing the cover letters, and now our landlords have an archive of about ten years' worth of cartoons covering whatever happens to be on my mind that month. Lately, that's been the unseasonably rotten weather, and at this point it's become kind of a meta-narrative...