JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

San Diego’s Comic Con is coming up, and thinking of Comic Con reminds me of booth-gals posing in the most difficult-to-wear costume of all time:

The gomer-showdown begins in less than 8 weeks, so I still have some time to prepare new stuff, most likely prints, sketches and maybe a mini-comic. Abismo/Nerve Bomb will be exhibiting in the same great spot as we had last year; BOOTH #1329.

Hope to see you all there!

Another quick Super-Heroine sketch done while sitting at my booth at a comics convention. This one is of my new favourite super gal; POWERGIRL.

I got a bit lazy with the hands and feet on this one, so I’ll tidy them up later.

I did this BATGIRL doodle (in grey brush-pen and pencil) along with a bunch of other super-heroine sketches, while sitting at my booth during last year’s Comic Con in San Diego. Rafael Navarro put dibs on this one almost immediately, but in the hectic swirl that is Comic Con, we didn’t get a chance to meet again before the con ended. However we finally got to close the transaction earlier this month at Wondercon in San Francisco. It is nice to know that she has gone to a good home…

Here are some of the sketches I did while sitting at the Abismo/NerveBomb booth at last months Comic Con. Drawing famous heroes is a first for me, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it. I’ll post some more when I get time.

Speaking of Comic-Con, I was only recently able to get my hands on the stuff I purchased down there, my stash was packed up in some boxes that I couldn’t get to for a week or two, but now I am spending the evenings reading through all the stuff I bought…

The daylight hours are spent drawing elephants, and I still have quite a few to go. I’ll post some of those too, as they get finished in the next week or two. My Dad, (the author of the book), is in the USA for a visit, and we will visit some Civil War sites in Virginia and Maryland later this month, along with my brother Joey who lives out that way.

After that quick break, I will be back to drawing and colouring elephant illustrations… and hopefully I will have finished all of them by the end of September.

UPDATE: I posted some more Super-Heroine scribbles:
BatGirl
Powergirl

This is a pinup for my friend, (and constant source of inspiration) Ted Mathot, the creator of the splendid Rose and Isabel graphic novel. I have to confess that getting this picture done kicked my arse… I did a million thumbnails trying to decide on a composition, and the one I liked most I simply was unable to draw… Drawing “cool” or “bad ass” doesn’t play to my strengths (”Dumb ass” is more my line).

I have seen some other lovely pinups of Ted’s characters done by the likes of Sam Hiti, Rod Guen, John Hoffman and Scott Morse, and of course Ted is an art-monster himself, so perhaps I was feeling the pressure a little… In any case, I am looking forward to seeing the finished book and glad that a pic of mine will be in there someplace.

Rose and Isabel is the story of two sisters who run off to join the Civil War in order to find their missing brothers. Book One was out last year, and Book Two featuring the conclusion of the story, will be on sale at Comic Con in San Diego this July.

In addition to Doing 160 pages of Rose and Isabel, Ted also wrangled the production of, and did a short story for, Afterworks 2, the 360 page colour anthology of comics done by Pixar artists being released by Image comics later this year.

Oh, and when he isn’t cranking out quantities of superb comics, Ted also excels at his very demanding day job as a story artist.

Afterworks 2 is fantastic by the way. I have seen the book mock-up and it will absolutely be one of the “must buy” comic books of this year. I did not have a chance to read any of the stories but I saw a great variety of cool art styles; it’s a visual feast. Contributors come from the Animation, Story and Art departments at Pixar. Some of them (Ted Mathot, Mark Andrews, Scott Morse) may be familiar to comics readers already, but there will also be a lot of new faces to the comics scene (Pete Sohn, Jennifer Chang, and Jeff Pidgeon for example). This book gives animation artists, who largely work invisibly behind the scenes, a chance to show you what each of them can do as individuals. I can’t recommend this book highly enough to you.

It seems a few years ago “anthology” was something of a dirty word in comics, and yet lately some of the best books out there are anthologies…

This is the pencil sketch for a PINUP I’m doing for my pal Nate Stanton, one of the lads from E-Ville press. AFTERWORKS 2, the second E-Ville Press anthology, will be published later this year by Image comics, and in colour this time.

Which means that I have to colour the pic this weekend… And what a full weekend it promises to be…

Rhode Montijo’s Cloud Boy book launch (including food cooked by Rhode’s Mum) will be held on Saturday at Galleria de la Raza.

Mary Patterson’s art show Days of Wine and Chickens opens Saturday evening in Petaluma for those of you who live in the North Bay.

The 9th Sketchcrawl is underway this Saturday, starting on Filmore Street, which is within striking range of…

The Cherry Blossom Festival, which is my favourite street fair in San Francisco. The grand parade (which is the highlight of the 2-weekend festival) Happens on Sunday. I hope I can get at least some of these things done by Monday!

UPDATE:
Here is the (more or less) finished piece, done in coloured pencil on Canson paper…