JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

This is a sketch I did during this year’s APE show. Rafael Navarro has been keeping a CAPTAIN AMERICA sketchbook where he asks other people to draw his favourite super-hero, and this was my contribution. In retrospect, I should have drawn Captain America with Barack Obama’s face!

A few years ago I posted my Pin-up of Charles and Edgar, two outrageous characters created by my pal nate Stanton and featured in his contribution to the Afterworks 2 Anthology. This composition here was one of the other ideas I had for that original pin-up and I tidied it up this week as a Birthday present, which I will give him in person, later today.

Happy Birthday, Nate!

Here are the three new original pieces that I did for the latest Maverix Art Auction, which was held last night. In addition to these ink drawings I also submitted three signed and framed prints from my Dad’s Elephant Book.

Over this past week I had rented and watched the original three Star Wars movies, and as I had already been doodling the characters, I decided to tidy up a few and submit them to the show, when I couldn’t think of any better ideas. The LEIA was won by Mike Murnane, The YODA by Hop Matsuo, and the LUKE by Bosco Ng.

I am happy to say that I won some GREAT pieces myself and I will have a full report on the Auction in a few days, when the all numbers are tallied up and the photographs come in…
So Stay tuned!

Frequent visitors to this blog will have noticed that I have Star Wars on the brain at the moment… Here’s a little doodle (3×4 inches) of Princess LEIA done while watching TV last night..

You’ve all no doubt heard of HAN SOLO, but what about his sister; TRUMPET SOLO? (That nugget of internet gold courtesy of CHRIS.)

Some fans of RED SQUADRON made a great, life-sized X-Wing rocket that actually takes off! Not to be outdone, GOLD SQUADRON fans staged their own Y-Wing rocket launch! (Thanks to MICHEAL MAY for these links.)

Behold this neato Darth Vader T-Shirt and also this collection of Star Wars Pixel art. (Sent to me by MR. BKON!)

UPDATE: Here is the FINAL INKED VERSION.

More STAR WARS characters HERE and HERE.

I have some other things that I SHOULD be drawing today but instead I did this sketch of my favourite vampire, and a quick attempt at some colour.

Now that I got Vampirella out of my system (for a while anyway) I can turn my attention back to the other things on my “to-do” list.

The first is a short MS Monster comic story that I am doing for my pals at B-Minus Comics.

I also have to make a picture for the upcoming Alzheimer’s Association charity art auction, at Maverix Studios….

More details on those projects later…

This is a pencil sketch and quick colour pass, for a pin-up of of my good friend, the frighteningly beautiful MS. MONSTER, in her sinister yet slinky NEW bone-suit costume.

If you’ve attended any comic conventions in California over the past few years you may have had a personal encounter with the un-dead beauty herself, or perhaps you’ve caught Ms. Monster’s cable access HEL on ICE TV show or read her comic books. If not, then you will have a chance to meet her when she co-hosts the upcoming SHOCK IT TO ME classic horror movie festival at San Francisco’s historic Castro Theatre on the first weekend in October (also hosted by the equally charming, but markedly less beautiful, Dr Goulfinger). Until then, you can find out all you need to know about Ms. Monster at her website.

I started drawing this silly doodle, of HAN SOLO and his co-pilot CHEWBACCA the Wookie, while sitting at my booth at Comic-Con.

It made my pal Rhode laugh so much that I knew I would have to give this drawing to him when I finished it.

Then I put it aside for a while and then forgot about it altogether, until I found it recently, tidied it up a bit and finally gave it to Rhode for his birthday.

I am writing up my lengthy Comic Con report at the moment, but I am waiting on some photos that I want to add to the report before I post it.

Plus, I actually need to fill out my much-delayed tax return this week, and for a guy who is as feeble with numbers as I am, that takes up more brain power and time than it should…

In the meantime, here is a sketch I did for Irma Navarro, while I sat at the Abismo/Nerve Bomb Comic Con booth.

I am posting from my hotel here in sunny San Diego.

We got down here a day early, on Tuesday, to set up our booth with a minimum of fuss. Last Night was PREVIEW NIGHT here at Comic Con and it went very well for us.

In addition to all the left overs from previous years, I have the NEW mini-comic, entitled JOCK, the prints made on my tasty new EPSON printer and my Dad’s ELEPHANT book to sell.

I wont likely post again until COMIC CON 2007 is done and I can give a full report of all the craziness.

Talk to you all next week!

When I was a child, my Grandma let me stay up past my normal bedtime when she baby-sat me one night. I saw an episode of THE AVENGERS, and fell in love with EMMA PEEL. I was absolutely fascinated by this pretty lady, clad in catsuits and leather, who bashed the bone-marrow out of all the bad-guys. I had never seen anybody like her before and I couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was on-screen. Emma Peel was my first ever crush, many years before I was old enough to have any idea of what a crush even was.

Supposedly, I made a huge fuss on subsequent nights when my standard bedtime was enforced and I wasn’t allowed to see Mrs Peel kicking arse any more. Grandma tried to make amends by helping me write a letter, asking Emma to put her TV show on earlier, before my bedtime. I doubt very much that the letter was ever sent… but a few years later I was old enough to stay up late and watch the re-runs, anyway.

I recently bought some DVDs of this 1960s TV series, starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. It is a snap-shot of that time when everything coming out of Britain was automatically seen as being cool. The Avengers still plays well today, if partly undermined by other shows that have come along since, including many that THIS show inspired in the first place.

The martial arts fights that I had remembered as being so exciting, when I was a child, are hopelessly naff by today’s standards. We are now accustomed to seeing well choreographed action, and women in fight sequences aren’t a novelty any more, either; television has a different battle-babe for each night of the week. That wasn’t the case when Emma Peel hit the screen for the first time; she was a revolutionary character.

Though her “Karate Chop” style of fighting may look cheesy to some modern viewers, the character herself is every bit as charming as had I remembered. Even 40 years after Emma Peel first appeared on TV, there aren’t many characters to match her easy confidence, strength, book smarts, wry humour and sense of style.

The playfully platonic relationship between Emma Peel and John Steed holds up particularly well. It is still unusual, even today, for a man and a woman to have a long running screen partnership that doesn’t inevitably end in a romantic entanglement.

I should also mention that Emma Peel, as played by the incomparable Diana Rigg, is every bit as beautiful as I had remembered her, maybe even moreso.