Early 2015 Art Dump (2014's Leftovers)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's 2015- welcome to the future!!

With such a crazy busy convention schedule this past year- I found myself starting a lot of art but not necessarily finishing things. Or doing inks and colors on vellum for art shows but then never going back and finishing the digital versions of my pieces, which is where I usually fully realize the scope of my piece and can make it available as a print, magnets or other merch. With the quiet time right after the holidays I usually find myself arriving home from travels itching to have some quiet days to really get into some art before my day job and my clients have a chance to assign me projects.  So here's a bunch of art I started in 2014 but didn't really get a chance to properly ink and color until now in January 2015.

Enjoy!

Francesca & Yetch from Mad Monster Party

Connie & Raymond Marble from Pink Flamingos

Veronica Sawyer from Heathers

Kitty Pryde

Illyana Rasputin

Aftermath: NYCC 2013

On Saturday I dressed up as a rockabilly Lum from Urusei Yatsura!

 

 New York Comic Con 2013 is my final show of the year, which is both relieving and disappointing at the same time. My artist alley table was a rousing success and I sold out of several pieces of merch, which is phenomenal. I came in Thursday with a full suitcase and left Sunday with it at about a third the capacity! That's right- Thursday to Sunday! NYCC is SUCH a crazy busy convention it goes full speed for 4 days (the only other that does this is San Diego!). In fact I made back most of my table cost just on Thursday! It was crazy! I didn't really get to see much of the show floor due to being mobbed at my table all weekend- it literally took me over an hour from saying that I was going to go to the bathroom to actually being able to break free from my table, haha. NYCC was great way to close out the convention year for me though, I got to see so many friends and fans and sell a lot of my merch and gave away over a thousand of my cards to (hopefully) new fans and future customers! Looking forward to next year when Fenny (of Little Asian Sweatshop) and I plan to get a booth on the main floor!

On Thursday! Lookit that energy! Haha, that won't last!

Friday!

My table setup alongside Sara Woolley, who was kind enough to share her table with me!

2013 marks my *6th YEAR* of vending tables at Artist Alley as a professional illustrator. And it definitely seems with the success I've had at my tables this year I'm finally starting to find my footing in these crazy dog-and-pony shows. I've become confident in the level of professionality and universal appeal my merchandise has achieved over the years and look forward to creating even more merch featuring my art for you all to have as part of your lives.

Me and cosplayer Jennifer Rose, dressed as my Rockabilly Rogue!

Me as Lum on Saturday!

I don't normally do convention sketches, but a couple of lucky friends caught me off guard.

For booth neighbor Ashley Riot of her original character

For Marsha Cooke's Lady Gaga-themed sketchbook

Here's some video of my table on Friday:

The Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival!

Check it out, all! I did the flyer for the Visionary Tattoo Art Festival going on in July at Asbury Park, NJ and will also be a guest artist all weekend and will be vending my wares as well as Little Asian Sweatshop's. I hope to see you there!

I completed this flyer in about a week and a half, the deadline was pretty tight with the shop that runs the show getting approval for it to go on later than normal because of damage to the beach from Hurricane Sandy. So this is the 'unfortunate' result of me being bad at time management and artwork negotiations/consultations with friends who are fans whose enthusiasm for my work is contagious. Especially when they're feeling my ideas and give me lots of creative control. Before I've put pen to paper I've promised them (and myself) the moon and stars because you know, I'm THE Paige Pumphrey! I can do MAGIC! AND it involves impressing a subculture from which I at one point in my life felt excluded from? Oh MAN, ALL THE BUTTONS.

We wanted to make the branding of the Festival more light and beachy and family-friendly as opposed to previous years where it had a more 'come out and get some nails in your dick/metallll wooooooo!' vibe. After being shown examples of the beautiful facade of the Convention Hall, with it's Victorian sea monsters and copper plating, I was inspired to make the design an early 20th century/Victorian themed beach poster. Looking at the works of JC Leyendecker, an all-time favorite artist of mine, as well as the art and feel of the Battleship Bay area of Bioshock: Infinite (which my husband has just arrived at in the game) I knew I had quite an undertaking. My clients also really liked the layout of my Saints and Sinners flyer for my artshow a couple years back- of having two characters framed by very detailed typography. We chose a sword-swallowing mermaid and the Asbury Park mascot Tillie (who is similar to the Coney Island funny face) in old-timey swimwear to be the 'hosts' of the flyer.

Rough sketches of the mermaid and Tillie.

Tight pencils.

Inks. (Scanned in Photoshop.)

Flat colors.

Slowly starting to lay out the flyer. Originally I was going to use Victorian clipart to save time, my husband however looking over my shoulder suggested it would look soooo much better if I drew all the filigree and framework out. Begrudgingly I agreed with him.

Printing out what I had at 40% opacity, I drew out all the elements by hand- the banners, the gold railing, the sun-shaped caption for the date. I even added a sea monster as a call back to the building facade.

Scanning the sketches for the elements, I traced and built them out of vector shapes in Illustrator, then ported them over to Photoshop for placement on the actual flyer. You can notice some of the changes elements went through during the process.

Coloring in all the elements individually, adding shading, texture and slowly figuring out my palette. In the end the only clipart I ended up using was the background filigree and the seashells on the the gold railing. 

Harley and Ivy

Working on a set of chibi-styled Batman ladies for fun. I plan on doing 6- Batgirl, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Black Canary and Huntress. So far I have completed Harley and Ivy and have sketches for Catwoman and Black Canary! Check em out!

Surrender, Dorothy! and new Miss MJ

Finished the pencils for the Wizard of Oz piece on Cortes's Art Studio Livestream last week! You can see the archived footage from the evening here on the site! Fair warning: there's a lot of footage, split between several videos and I think if you want to start at the beginning you have to start at the bottom and work up.

Here's the first segment where I go thru my sketchbook! You can see the rest of the night here!

Was super-duper fun, can't wait to be on again!

I also drew up a BRAND NEW pic of Miss Mary Jane, finally! :D

Heads up! Livestream with CortesNYC on 2/12/13

Hey guys! I'm gonna be drawing LIVE on the internets with CortesNYC and TameekaTime next Tuesday night! Be sure to drop by and say hello!

CortesNYC’s livestream channel HERE.

Aftermath: HeroesCon 2012

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. ;)

Heroes Con prep!

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.