The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe- REDUX Edition blog

I had the honor of taking part in the The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe- REDUX Edition blog, which was quite a thrill for me as I am a HUUUGE fan of the book series, which was a giant influence on my childhood obsession with character design. By the time I found out about the project and got ahold of the moderator it was pretty slim pickens, most of the 'cool' characters on the list had been rifled thru, leaving a lot of D-listers and what I like to call the 'single-pagers', which were always the most awesomely lame weirdoes the Marvel U circa the 80's had to offer. I fortunately was able to grab the last girl, being Her, the female counterpart to Adam Warlock, or who I lovingly now refer to as 'Giant Gold Bitch' and chose the awesomely weird Aelfyre 'Whitey' Whitemane, whom I remember even from my childhood as being such a strangely designed character. Plus it's such a departure from my usual pinup art, it was definitely a fun exercise. 

Be sure to check out mine and several other awesome reinterpretations of characters at the 

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe- REDUX Edition blog!

Her! See the actual entry here!

Whitey! See the actual entry here!

And now I ramble:

I love stats, I love character lineups, I love comparing power levels and surmising whether or not so-and-so could take on so-and-so in some whirlwind street fight. It fills my nerdy little heart with glee. The combination of the OHotMU, the Who's Who in the DC Universe series and various sourcebooks for tabletop roleplaying games I collected over the years resulted in me just spending hours upon hours alone at my parent's dining room table as a kid creating multiple characters and universes of my own design. All thru junior high I had stacks of RPG sourcebooks and stacks of character sheets, but sadly no one to play with. ::insert sad violin:: It wasn't until high school that I found enough sorta-like-minded individuals to get a Vampire: The Masquerade game together. Unfortunately the only way I could get them to play was if I was the DM/Gamemaster/Storyteller and totally threw out the actual dice-rolling process of the game (I know, blasphemy. I think they figured the lack of dice made it less nerdy?). Since everyone I played with had gotten themselves so wrapped up in creating their character, if there was even a possibility of that character getting killed and rendered unusable I could kiss being able to play at all goodbye. So I counted my blessings and just found creative ways to work story arcs where characters got really fucked up, but didn't necessarily die. I think that was a major mistake on my part however with running an RPG, as it gave the player characters (PCs) way more control than they should be allowed. But alas I was young and naive and had a spine made of spaghetti. These game sessions happened about once a week for about 3-5 hours apiece, and each 'Chronicle' (major storyline) lasted about 3 months. We even made different mix tapes for the characters and overall story atmosphere to get my brain going. (Which I still do to this day, but now it's playlists on iTunes.) It was creatively exhausting, writing all these open-ended stories for the PCs to navigate thru and then the times we actually played it would be even more physically exhausting acting out all these characters on the spot. I was seriously performing some sugar and soda-fueled one-woman show shit at that poker table in my parents basement. (I'm sure if I nowadays was a fly on the wall witnessing my antics I would cringe so much at the embarrassing wannabe theater-kid-ness of it I'd collapse in on myself like a dying star.) I apparently did 'such a good job' of DMing that once any of my players decided to step up to the plate and host a session they backed out at the last minute, which was quite a disappointment to me as sweet Christ it's an exhausting job. I have no idea how I did it. So many of the NPCs (non-player characters, essentially supporting cast and extras that were portrayed by me) I created for RPG sessions I still plan to use for my magnum opus comic Pearly Whites, though they have drastically evolved with the times. During my heyday of RPGing back in 10th-12th grade I probably had a backlog of easily over 100 NPCs, not including repeat characters who had multiple alternate universe versions depending on the story. I was so wrapped up in gaming I almost failed Desktop Publishing my Senior year of high school, which would have caused me not to graduate. Oh, the irony. Lookit me now! ;P
Even before all that I had started to make my own awful, derivative-as-hell superhero team and had about 10 pages worth of a fully colored, fully lettered comic back in the 7th-8th grade when I first started really getting into comics (which for a kid that young even I must admit is pretty impressive) which I carried around with me in one of those chincy plastic portfolio books with the clear plastic pages and worked on every chance I got. I had even made my own Handbook-style character entries in the back as a guide that I typed out with a TYPEWRITER and even drew in little fake 'action shots' (that were so totally swiped from everything I could get my hands on, but hey I was only in 7th grade and just learning...) that I had to format my typing around by hand. I probably had about 6-8 completed entries in that book, all illustrated with the original art gluesticked in, with fully realized origin stories. It was awful yet totally charming at the same time and I wish I still had them somewhere so I could show you but I'm pretty sure none of it survived my 'I'm gonna destroy everything remotely embarrassing because I have an ego made of sugar glass'-phase I had in high school. Sometimes really I wish I could go back in time and shake the ever-loving shit out of myself.
Nowadays my more intensive character creation processes has been temporarily retired to my stacks of private sketchbooks, filled with scrawlings that would remind you of some sort of OCD-riddled crazy person. The movie Seven comes to mind. Hopefully with the self-imposed projects I'm planning to inflict on myself in the near future I can actually flex those creative muscles again.

Aftermath: Thanks For Your Support Release Party!

All dolled up!

The merch table/ art show and photo booth before it got all crazy!

The Friday night before Baltimore Comic Con I had decided to have an artbook release party at The Ottobar for my newest book, Thanks For Your Support! as a way to see all my friends from Maryland who could come out to the art show but maybe couldn't make it (or want to go) to the con. I'm blessed to have friends and family who want to support me and my artwork, but they maybe are not so much into the comic convention scene and if they do venture out to the show I feel bad they paid an entry fee and waited in line just to see me at my table, when I could be absolutely slammed at a moment's notice and have to ignore them to sell artwork and merch. Cuz yeah, as fun and silly as cons are, it's still work for me. I'm also insanely lucky to have the awesomest best friend in the world, being Fenny of Little Asian Sweatshop who was more than happy to man my merch table so I could spend time with everyone and her husband J who was awesome to take pictures at a faux-photo booth and around the actual event.

Fenny running the merch table!

BFFs!

Overall the event was wildly successful, I'm definitely gonna try and figure how I can capture that lightning in a bottle for next year, as well as other shows in the future.

Photobooth and event shots by J!

The art! Some of it is still for sale and will be put up on my etsy page!

BONUS VIDEO!

Me being a goober during the 'dance party':

Aftermath: Baltimore Comic Con 2012

Photo by Edward Boren

Last weekend at Baltimore Comic Con 2012 marked my *5th* year vending in Artist Alley as a professional artist! Wa-hoo! 5 years already? Crazy! 

It was also the debut weekend of my 2nd art book, Thanks For Your Support!, as well as my I (heart) Baltimore mini-print set! (Both of which are available at my etsy store!) My BFF Fenny of Little Asian Sweatshop and I both had our own Artist Alley tables this year which really showcased all of the awesome stuff we had for sale beautifully and with the extended floorplan we had plenty of room to be comfortable behind our tables.

Overall Baltimore yet again proved to be one of my best shows for the year, and this year in particular it was my best show (financially) ever! Being able to stay at my parent's house a mere 10 minutes away in my hometown of Glen Burnie allows me to save boku bucks in travel expenses, so Baltimore usually ends up being one of my most profitable shows of the year. Also with having such a history in Baltimore as the 'local kid making it in the big city', I also get lots of friends popping by the table as well as fans who have now become repeat customers who make sure to swing by the table every year. I was so busy in fact that I could barely leave to go to the bathroom without getting called back to sign an artbook or say hello to a visitor. It was dizzyingly busy, but then that's how I like it! Cons are such a fun, frantic tornado of friends and fans coming and going for 8 hours straight, once it was all finally over I took my hard-earned con money and had a big ol' 'Treat Yo-self' moment of a dozen jumbo steamed crabs. And OMG they were sooooo good.

I am eagerly looking forward to Baltimore Con 2013! 

I should hopefully have even more exciting new products and merch by this time next year, Fenny and I have some exciting ideas on the horizon!

Getting ready for Baltimore Comic Con!

I drew another UTZ girl pinup!
Time permitting, I would like to get one or two more pieces
done in time for my show at The Ottobar!

So I've got A LOT of stuff coming up in the next couple weeks! I'm having a pre-party for Baltimore Comic Con Friday September 7th at the Ottobar starting at 9pm! You can see the Facebook invite here! It's also the release party for my newest artbook Thanks For Your Support. There's gonna be a Photobooth, a raffle to win prizes like a Miss Mary Jane figure, original art to buy and merch tables set up for both me and Little Asian Sweatshop! It's going to be QUITE the little shindig! But don't fret if yu can't make it, as I will also have a table at Baltimore Comic Con all weekend in Artist Alley at tables AA 213-214!

Artist Alley tables 213-214!
I'll be sharing with Little Asian Sweatshop!

I'm trying to get all of my merch, original pieces and myself in order before the big weekend, so I've been pretty busy the past few weeks and intend to keep working all the way up the the wire.

But anywho, check out all the cool stuff in store:

Original inks from my I (heart) Baltimore postcard
set will be available for purchase!

Ouija Girl inks will be available for purchase!

"Who me?"

Luchadora magnet sets!!

The Three Fates of Baltimore magnet sets!

Working on LOTS of magnet sets! 

Amor Eterno magnet sets!

And what's this?
Nothing I'll have at the show, but just a little sneak
peek at a future project I'm cooking up with LAS.

Tura! Tura! Tura! (Also: Inking)

So I had the honor of being personally invited to take part in Tura! Tura! Tura! 2, an upcoming tribute show to the great, late Tura Satana, of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame out in Palm Springs, California. I will be showing alongside several artists I have looked up to for several years and get to have my work in front of fans from the mysterious west coast. I'm hoping this is the beginning of a prolific phase in my career and other galleries take notice and invite me to take part in more shows.

::cough:: Gallery 1988... ::cough::

The secret I found to getting Tura's likeness as Varla right?
Flared nostrils.
Really!

***Editor's note: For the next few paragraphs I go on and on and on entirely too long about inking and my art process. If you're into it, awesome. If not, the above info with accompanying links and pictures below are all you really need to know.***

Flyer for the show by one of my artistic heroes,
the great Mitch O'Connell.

 I'm super excited about this show, as this is my first time testing out my new technique of toning my original inks on vellum with grey scale markers and graphic white on the gallery scene. Anyone who's given me time to flap my jaw about it would know I've *really* wanted to get into the low brow gallery scene for years now, but for the longest time being a primarily digital artist all I felt I could really offer was prints. Which while nice, unless you want to cough up the dough to get nice ones made, it's hard to break in to the kind of price points that original pieces go for. I never thought anyone would want my original inks for my pieces, as I though they were 'ugly' and on various pieces of scrap paper and had a zillion corrections on them.

Digital version!

Up until about 4 months ago my process of creating art was to lightbox my rough pencils onto bristol board and then tighten them up from there, then ink directly on top of raw pencils. While this worked for me for several years, I had noticed that when I transferred my images via lightbox, I lost a lot of the detail and energy from the original roughs. Eyes wouldn't line up, subtle hints of smiles would be lost, kinetic lines that came together perfectly looked stale and forced the second time around. Plus a lightbox can be a bit of a pain in the ass if you don't have a set area for it already, with a nice dark room to use it in and plenty of extra bulbs for when the lights start to dim (which will make tracing an aggravating process). Add to this headache by using a super thick, rough piece of bristol to draw on to, with a very hard pencil (I tend to use a 2H) which will put grooves in the surface of the paper if you dig with a death grip like I do and you're setting yourself up for a potential nightmare scenario. Once I would get to the inking stage, which is going directly onto my finished pencils (that are now all marred from my pencil-diggings), I need to be extra-careful as I only get one real chance. Unless I *really* screw up and have to black out an entire portion, re-draw it on another piece of paper and paste it in in Photoshop. And that leaves the re-sale value of the original pretty much nonexistent. But if I screw it up minimally with the inks I'll have to go over with white-out. Which leaves additional snags as inking on top of pencils means I eventually have to erase the pencils, which if I ink over white-out causes them to smear. Along with the fading that ink tends to suffer from with heavy erasing as I swear by using Microns and other disposable fine-line pens. I've tried brushes and nibs and much like how I feel about painting, it's just not for me. And yes, I've tried Rapidiographs as well, but they are far too expensive and a nightmare to clean. I digress. Anyhow, all of these 'ugly inks' as I refer to them, resulted in piles upon piles of discarded inks around my desk. At my old day job, when we had to move our offices after I had been there for 2 years I realized I had accumulated at least a 1.5" thick stack of inks that I had completely forgotten about, much to the horror of my coworkers who were all familiar with my work. So yeah, I eventually started to realize that I'm kinda sitting on some potential money here and have been trying to find ways to polish up my original inks to the point where my OCD'd ass would feel comfortable selling them.

Vellum is basically a heavy grade tracing paper some comic artists choose to ink on.
A lot of tattoo artists and draftsmen also use it, which are two other types of artists I
have been heavily influenced by.

 I remembered an inking method we were taught back in the heydays of my time at Kubert School, being a vellum overlay taped to your pencils that you can ink on without worry of damaging the pencils underneath. I had messed with it a little at Kubert School, but admittedly my inking has been under arrested development due to a rather possessive former friend who insisted on inking my work all through Kuberts and the years following, so it wasn't my strong suit for a long time. Anytime I did ink my own work, the emotional blackmail thrown at me would put even the most passive-aggressive Catholic mother to shame. Fortunately I kicked this so-called friend to the curb a few years ago and have been trying to play catch-up now that I'm free to pursue my art without worrying about those latched onto my coat-tails. So I gave vellum a shot earlier this year and have fallen madly in love with it, but now I had all of these curled up inks on pieces of vellum sitting around my studio. It was also around this time I was prepping for HeroesCon in NC back in June, and wanted to start drawing commissions at my table and needed a method that would allow me to keep a high standard of work without the need for a computer or digital assistance. If you've already read my HeroesCon recap, you'll know that drawing at my table didn't work out for me so well. I was able to do pretty well with post-convention commissions instead. And plan to do more commissions this way before/after shows in the future. Anyways, so I wanted to have my vellum inks available for purchase as original pieces in themselves outside of my digital color versions I save for the internet and prints. I had noticed there's a cool trend with a lot of convention sketches in recent years where artists will use a set of cool and warm grey markers to fake out colors, to really awesome effects. Adam Hughes is one that comes to mind who does this. And then also there's the sketches of the LA Chapter of Drink and Draw Social Club, which features artists drawing on tinted boards, allowing for white highlights from white-out and gel pens to really pop. These two influences, along with my obsession with the aesthetics of old school animation gave me the bright idea to tone my vellum inks on the opposite side with markers and white-out (though I started moving to paint), resulting in an original one of a kind piece of artwork that matches the digital version.

Original inks, toned with markers and white-out on vellum.
This will be the actual piece in the show.

So yeah, whew! Hopefully with this newly-discovered method of doing things I can *finally* start breaking into more gallery scenes and getting substantially more buck for my bang, as it were. Since all original inks cost me to produce is time, which I feel justifies a higher price tag than just sending stuff off to a print shop. Which helps me financially justify working freelance and keeps me out of yet another soul-sucking day job. So keep an eye out for my next commission deal, I plan on doing more pieces along these lines as well as more art shows in the near future!  

Post-Heroescon commissions.
Keep an eye out on my social media feeds for my next commission offering!

Things I Love Thursday: True Romance

With the recent and incredibly sad news on the death of film director Tony Scott, I figured I should pay tribute to the director of True Romance (my 3rd favorite movie of all time) in the best way I know how- with some good ol' Paigey fanart. Sucks that so many of the fanart-type pieces I've been doing lately are in reaction to someone involved dying. :\

I (heart) Baltimore Mini Prints

FYI! My I (heart) Baltimore mini print sets have been sent off to the printer and should be on-hand next week! I will have them for sale here on my blog as well as my etsy store. I will also be selling them at my artshow/book release party upstairs at the Ottobar in Baltimore the night of September 7th (FB event page here) and at Baltimore Comic-Con, Sept 8-9. 

You can also up until September 7th, get this set FREE with the pre-order of my newest art book, "Thanks For Your Support!". Click here for further details!