Hello Halloween!

To greet my favorite holiday of the year, here are some sketches from yesterday's Halloween-themed Costume Carnival at the Academy of Art. I was teaching a Saturday class during most of the event, but I brought my students over for a little while, as an object lesson in something something reference something. Since Dax Santi thoughtfully tagged most of the models in his photo album of the event, I'll credit them here as well.

To start with, here are Little Red Riding Hood (Simone Eakin), a friendly wolf (Jonathan Bowling), and a nice ghost lady.




Everybody loved the business zombie (Frank Wollesen).



Angela Marie Hutchins, vamping it up.



This misunderstood loner (Pierre Isaac) just wants to play with his pet crow.



And finally, some graveyard hijinks with a monster priest and Liz Ramsey as a hot ghoul.

Planet Of The Demos

A quick inking techniques demo from today's comics class. A little bit of dry brush, a little bit of spatter, a little bit of ink wash, a girl, a gorilla...

APE Sketches, Part 2

As threatened, here are some more of the doodles I did while I was table-minding at the Alternative Press Expo this weekend. These ones are all animals and monsters, and I let Julie pick the selection. This first one is probably her favorite.




This bear is concerned that you've seen what he was writing in his secret diary.




I think this one was probably inspired by the excellent Norwegian mockumentary Troll Hunter.





And that's all, folks!

APE Sketches, Part 1

I spent the weekend minding a table at the Alternative Press Expo, accompanied by the fabulous Julie Davis and the amazing George Cwirko-Godycki, which gave me lots of free time for doodling. First, here are a few views of the APE show floor from our vantage point at the far end of the exhibit hall...




This next one was from early on, when there was a massive line for a Craig Thompson signing. The artist is represented here as an out-of-sight nimbus of brilliance, which unfortunately appears to be emanating from this one dude's pants. I considered moving the arrow digitally, but it's funnier this way.



And here's our neighbor Angus Oblong, in full clown makeup.




The gang at Lee's Comics, during one of the rare moments when they weren't swarmed by attendees. (See Glowing Nimbus of Craig Thompson, above.)



I also spent a lot of time doodling animals and monsters. Here are a selection of cryptids and bestiary creatures; there'll be more of these in the next post.