Heroescon (June 7-9) commissions are NOW OPEN. $100 gets you a single character inked on vellum, toned with grey marker and spot colored. 8.5"x11". Payment in advance. Pickup at the show only. Email me iampaigey(at)yahoo(dot)com for further info.
I will have an Artist Alley table alongside Little Asian Sweatshop and we'll have lots of new and exciting merch for you to check out! Lots of original pieces! Hope to see you there!
So with Heroes over, my credit card is getting wrung out for all that it's worth. As a result, I did something I should have done BEFORE the show and offered single inked and greytoned marker character sketches (with no bg) for $75 a pop. That are on vellum, like the rather popular little Batgirl pic I did here.
That specific piece went for $200 on auction this Sat at Heroes. So yeah,not a bad deal. I only recently started selling my originals, as they are starting to take up too much room in my studio, so these are to be pretty rare, frameable pieces that whoever bought will have the one true, original copy of. To make toning easier with the markers, as they are done by hand- I also am coloring said commissions digitally in the more 'traditional' Paigey-style as I need to do a practice run to map out where my shadows are going to hit. So yay! The catch: For the time being, I only had 5 slots open for this offer, which was announced over my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts. Also, I was only doing fictional characters, not portraits. So no pics of people's wives, girlfriends, kids, etc. Sorry but too many egos get wrapped up in those kind of pieces and it infringes on my process. So revisions and progress shots ain't happening. You get what I'll give you, but if you're a fan of mine and pick a character that plays to my artistic strengths (boobs are aways a good start ~__^ ) I assure you you'll like what you get. Not saying I'll never do portraits of real people ever again, but that's not for this offer. I wanted to get these done quick and dirty. The experiment was a rousing success, with all five character slots being scooped up and payed for (the MOST important part!) in less than a week. I definitely want to do this again- it was A LOT of fun and I got a chance to put my own twist on some characters I wouldn't have otherwise thought to draw on my own. I'm steadily trying to build that trust/reputation with my artwork that if you give me something to draw, I will rock the shit out of it.
So anyways, onto all the awesome commissions everyone got!!
Big Barda "I'm not so bad. A little rough, maybe -- but once you get to know me -- I can be a real pussycat."
Lady Death "Queen of all that's dead or dying, baby..."
Columbia, from Rocky Horror Picture Show "It was great when it all began, I was a regular Frankie fan..."
Storm "The elements marshal their infinite might at my beckoning! Power seethes in the roiling clouds! Now, at my command -- STRIKE!"
A Baltimore Pinup Girl “I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.” -John Waters
And an extra bonus piece!!
Baltimore icons Mister Boh of National Bohemian Beer and the UTZ Potato Chip Girl "Oh Boy!"
I've got a couple more Baltimore-centric ideas for pinups- my friends and fans in Baltimore (my hometown) are VERY kind to me and I always like to do a little extra for them. Think I may pump those out before Baltimore Comic Con in September and see if I can get some postcard sets made. Which I will certainly also post to etsy. We'll see what my schedule looks like, as I have A LOT on my plate for the next couple months.
My 'Mrs. Batman' outfit- I'm the housewife of The Batcave!
Whoosh. Whatta weekend. HeroesCon 2012 has come and gone, and it was my first major show of the year as well as my favorite to go to. This was my 2nd year attending and it was awesome to see so many friends and fans both old and new alike at such a fun show.
So much going on! I had gotten a huuuge exhibitor table with my friends, including my BFF Fenny of Little Asian Sweatshop, pinup superstar Maria Danalakis, beloved husband Ballsy and NYCBFF Christy Sawyer and had all sorts of cool trinkets and doodads for sale.
Me, Fenny and Maria
There aren't enough nice things I can say about Heroescon. Everyone is so dang nice, it's run super professional and the guests and level of talent that attends is amazing. Since my first visit to Heroes last year, this show has been a fantastic example of a con done right. Was so happy Fenny and Maria had a good time, as this was their first Heroes and they attended purely from word of mouth (specifically, mine).
Our booth!
There were a few personal 'experiments' this go at Heroescon for me- I *did* try to sit down and sketch at the show on Friday. I really did! Buuut unfortunately my sales suffered as I wasn't standing up and addressing customers and giving myself presence on the floor. I think that people were afraid to disturb me and feel like they're being rude. Plus I can't see what's going on in front of me as my head is down. Apparently y'all would rather engage in conversation with me than watch me draw. Which I'm actually totally fine with. Drawing at cons sucks. I'd much rather give someone a solid piece of art that has my full attention that was created in the comfort of my own home. Plus I have a rather unique situation of hawking my wares at a show, in which I'd actually say sales and engaging in conversations is my secondary strong suit behind creating the actual art. Several other artists I know have enough of a draw from their art to have people search them out, versus me, who is usually reeling people in with my crazy outfits and gift of gab and only after that do they realize that all the cool stuff in front of me on the table is of my creation. So Sat and Sun I focused purely on sales.
My convention obsession: Table Feng Shui
Another experiment was getting an exhibitor booth versus Artist Alley tables. The space was fantastic and very roomy, however with the high partitions and giant tshirt booth in front of us our visibility was somewhat lacking as opposed to AA which was very open and allowed you to see across the entire showroom floor, which allows for things like vertical banners to really work in your favor. Also since we were on the exhibitor side of the con, we were grouped among the more retail-heavy booths such as the aforementioned tshirt booth, back issue bins and wholesalers, which doesn't attract the type of art collector-heavy audience having a table in AA has, as they tend to have a very strict budget and a tendency to bee-line. Which is also something to say about Heroes- usually AA is segregated to some back corner of the show much like a leper colony. But not Heroes, here AA is a major draw.
Lil' bit of Con Ingenuity: standing up all day? Lay down a yoga mat!
Your feet will thank you!
With this being my one convention where I actually have to pay for a hotel room (as it's not in NYC where I live or Balt/DC where my parents live) this is one of my most social conventions. I usually try to save as much money as possible during shows, to the point of not leaving my table and eating only before/after the show (save for the odd granola bar) in the comfort of my own/parent's home (since then it's free, plus I'm exhausted). But there are just TOO MANY awesome people to hang out with at Heroes. Which unfortunately means I'm spending at least one day at the table hungover (hellooooo Sunday!). But it was really fab to hang out with my closest friends (like my table-mates and husband) alongside folks I only talk to online or whose DeviantArt I stalk regularly. Or people who I had NO IDEA I would meet who now are one of my favorite new people to follow online (like the *amazing* dressmaker Vivcore!).
Us ladies with my husband Ballsy at the Saturday Art Auction!
I also put one of my new experimental pieces, where I ink/greytone/highlight a pinup on vellum that I lay on top of a piece of shaded paper, in the HeroesCon Art Auction. It's their big Saturday night hullabaloo where they auction off artwork donated by various artists at the show to go towards throwing heroes next year. Unfortunately my piece was early in the evening so I missed the bidding, but from what I hear it was one of the first big highlights/bidding wars of the night, raking in $200! Either way it was a lot of fun seeing friends and hanging out and getting shushed when Stan Lee started talking. (Oops. ~_^;)
My Batgirl piece- 'Bat Dat Ass Up'
Overall it was a pretty amazing time at Heroes this year and I'm so glad to see everyone and spend time with folks I don't get to see face-to-face very often. It's really awesome that even when I don't see my friends in comics very often (sometimes for only a few hours over the course of a year) we're able to pick up and hang out like we saw each other yesterday. Eagerly looking forward to attending next year- and this time FOR REAL, we're gonna fly instead of drive. ;)
Just some computer colored versions of the characters I was drawing out in my last entry.
Batgirl "Bat Dat Ass Up"
Retro Lum
Leela
There will probably be a few more of these, they're pretty fun to do and are a good way to 'keep myself out of trouble' and deal with pre-convention stress.
Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC is coming up the weekend of June 22-24th and I am SO EXCITED!
I will be vending the show at a giant booth just for me, Little Asian Sweatshop, Maria Danalakis and Christy Sawyer. And since I will have a few friends at the table to mind customers and general comings and goings, I will actually attempt at convention sketches this show. I'm kinda playing that aspect of the show by ear, I really want to commit to sitting down at my table and drawing for people but I'm sure I will be slow as all hell and will have a very short list of commissions over the weekend, either out of general disinterest or me just being busy with taking on very few sketches at a time. I'm also making them a little more involved than the average sketch you can buy at a show, as my OCD refuses to let me give anyone any art of mine that looks rushed or hacked. It makes me cringe. Especially once it shows up later on the internet. 9_9;;
So I'm *planning* on initially sketching the piece out on scrap paper, thus removing the performance anxiety of using 1 piece of Bristol for the entire thing and also allowing for the inevitable 2-4 false starts I'll have trying to nail a pose. Then I'll ink it on super heavy vellum and on the flip side tone it it with warm and cool grey markers and white-out, much like an animation cel. This being a bit more involved a process I'm still trying to figure out a price point.
I was experimenting with a few already-inked vellum pieces I had laying around the office.
I also dug up some original inks to what would be considered 'classic' Paigey pieces, all but the mermaid inks I'll be hitting with greytone markers and selling off at Heroes, and if they don't sell there I'll have them either on my etsy or at my solo pre-Baltimore Con show in Sept.
I got a headstart on a couple of commissions for people at Heroes already:
DC Comics' Looker sketch
Inks on vellum.
Batgirl sketch
Batgirl inks
A Bettie Page/Lum mashup, just for fun/practice
What I'm pretty excited about is that this method can lend some new life to my 'originals', which I tend to discard to various piles around my work area once they're all scanned in and forget about them. Some of the guys I worked with at my old office job Freeze can attest- when I cleaned out my work area when we changed offices I had a pile of original inks and sketches about an inch high that I hadn't given a second thought to. I've got a pre-Baltimore Comic Con solo show happening at the Ottobar in September and now I think I'll be greytoning and throwing some older work in frames for purchase. Which is good, cuz otherwise it's just taking up valuable space in my Brooklyn apt.
Just finished up this wicked beast of a private commission for a fellow who loved my derby version of Dazzler so much he wanted to see more. (See her and the rest of my X-Men redesigns here!) This was definitely an instance of having a commission piece that if you give me an open timeframe and let me just do what I want you will get something awesome. It took me a little over a month and a half of off-and-on working with very little guidance from the guy who ordered it- he just wanted an action shot with Dazzler and I kinda took that ball and ran with it, adding in the Hellfire Club goons and various background elements. I'm trying to get away from portraits a bit as customers tend to get overly involved in the process which hinders the creativity of the piece and get more into character pieces where I can just cut loose without worrying about likenesses and waiting to hear back during the process. Once I got the idea for this piece in my head I was all "I'm really gonna hate myself in a month..." but I HAD to do it. There were just way too many things I love coming together. Plus me doing a piece with an actual background? Craziness! That was actually what took me the longest. Check out my progress shots below!
Sketching!
I tend to sketch out the elements separate and then lay them on top of each other digitally in Photoshop to make sure they line up and adjust any wonky anatomy issues. I'll then print it out on a low opacity setting to use as guidelines when I re-draw it and tighten up the linework.
Tight Pencils!
Drawing over top of my lightened roughs, I start cleaning up all those stray lines and start refining the figures.
Inking!
I recently revisited the old technique I learned at Kuberts of inking over vellum and forgot how much I prefer it to lightboxing my tight pencils onto a piece of bristol, as when I lightbox the original I tend to lose the organic feel of the piece and subtle linework tends to get lost in the reproduction.
More inking!!
I love drawing men's leg hair. It's a weird drawing fetish.
Colors!
I tend to work in with about 20 layers when I color, treating each major element like a big Dagwood-style sandwich- I start with my linework, then add the flat color underneath, then start working up from the flat color with each 'level' of shadows and highlights. I tend to color in flat chunks, almost like an animation cel.
You can also see that I changed the colors on Dazzler's pads halfway through to make her stand out more from the Hellfire Club.
Adding the background and special effects!
When I'm 90% done is my least favorite part of working on something. It just gets so grinding and you spend most of the time looking for all the little details you missed. XP
This was super fun to do, and I got to expand a little on my own make-believe rendition of the X-Men universe. What's funny is in my version of the X-Men, Dazzler is probably one of the tougher, more in-shape characters on the team, which in regular continuity is quite the opposite.
This past week I finished two big commissions and I'm sketching out a third and I did a whole bunch of marketing/promo for Little Asian Sweatshop! So yeah! Keeping busy!!
Portrait commission for tattoo artist Cyn Rudzis,
in trade for my Wonder Woman tattoo
Roller derby portrait commission for
Kansas City Banked Beauties member Ms Kara Whiplash
I'm pretty proud of these two new commission pieces. I think it really shows what I can do when I don't have the customer meddling so much in my creative process and actually trusting me to deliver them a top-notch illustration. My commissions are still for the most part closed, with a few exceptions if the money's good or it's a project that sounds particularly fun and non-stressful. I'm trying to figure out a new price point for them since I'm now freelance and can actually focus more with a quicker turnaround in between lettering books. I've also got a lot of other drawing projects I'd like to do as well though once my plate is clear, including various fanart, fabric designs for dresses and I'm actually kicking around the idea of a semi-autobiographical webcomic way way further down the road. I know, freaky. Like, try and take all the random little anecdotes and stories from my life and make them into 1-2 page vignettes that are basically all the stories and tangents I go off on while drunk/stoned but in illustrated form. Part of the appeal for me doing this is that there's no continuity to worry about writing wise, and it's the sort of format I can do as a webcomic. And I can voice my opinions and philosophy on life, and share some of my silly stories about things and eventually do enough of them to collect into a book. Plus the CATHARSIS. My God... This is def something I want to put on the backburner for AWHILE. But once it gets going it could be really cool. We'll see.
In other news I've been submitting tips and singing praises of my best friend Fenny's company Little Asian Sweatshop to various nerdy/geeky fashion websites and gotten some nice returns!! So far we've gotten press from So Geek Chic, Boing Boing, and Fashionably Geek!
We're also going to have this ad in the program for the upcoming games for Chesapeake Roller Derby.
As a present I finished TWO freelance projects! YAYZ! 1 more to finish and 2 more to start before my self imposed commission blackout takes effect and I can focus on some selfish art FOR ME!! Muahahaha! ::wrings hands menacingly:: Which mostly just means I'll have more time to work on cooler, more experimental stuff and really take my art to the next level. So it's really all for you lovely people, in the end.
The Rhinestone Follies are a classical burlesque troupe based in NYC featuring (L to R) Hazel Honeysuckle, Beelzebabe Agogo and Kita St. Cyr! They perform regularly at the R Bar on Bowery- I highly suggest checking out one of their shows!
Happy New Year, all!! I'm back from my week and a half in Maryland and Missouri to visit family for the holidays. Felt like I was gone 2 months. Time moves differently outside NYC. Fun to see everyone but I'm so glad to be in my own house among my stuff and my precious furbaby Loki.
Sooooo happy. She purred so loud when we got home we could hear her across the room.
So yeah, my New Year's resolution for 2011 is to take the same amount of energy I expended in 2010 on extroversion and focus on some introversion. While 2010 was a big art/business/public persona year, I think 2011 is going to be a very personal/ introspective year for me. More looking inward to myself, taking 'me' time, focusing on the creation and experimentation of art than just getting it out there. I definitely need to get back on track with some drawing for me. Been stretching myself too thin this 2nd half of the year with all the conventions and my dayjob and just crazy extra curricular projects. I need to get on some drawing for me time hardcore. I look at this blog and it's all pictures from cons and parties the past 6 months, no art! Same with my FB fan page, that poor, neglected thing! Who knows, maybe I'll even get to writing something this year. (Whoa now...)
To flex my creative muscles, I've been taking on a few new projects that are pretty much just for me to dick around with.
One, being The 365 Project, which is when you take and post 1 photo per day for an entire year.
The other being a collaboration with my friend Ida's company Bitchcraft Apparel, of hand decorated lipstick/stash cases featuring my artwork. Each black or brocade case will be unique with sequin trim around both the image on top and the mirror inside, they are big enough to hold 2 lipstick tubes- or something a little more illict maybe? ~__^ They will be available for $20 each at various locations, including my etsy store and convention tables, Girls Drawin Girls' etsy store and convention tables and 9th Life in Baltimore Maryland.
Other than that though I'm working on the last of my commissions before I take the year off and work on some more personal pieces, and I'm also working on a submission to Udon's Mega man tribute book that I'm not allowed to show. (Boo!) No telling if I'll actually make it into the book or not, but if I have a chance to I'm definitely taking it. My submission is going to be a Big Daddy Roth style Tron Bonne in her robot from Marvel Vs Capcom 2.
