JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Here are some sketches from a trip a few weeks ago, up to Point Reyes and parts further North in Marin County. I should have done much more drawing on this two day outing but the fact is that the weather was so beautiful in Point Reyes that Julia and I spent all our time taking in the scenery on the first day of the trip. When I have been to Point Reyes before, most times it is either overcast or, if the sun is out, the landscape seems parched. This time however, there had been several weeks of rain prior to a spectacularly sunny day, so the land around the point was absolutely saturated with greenery.

Another major distraction from sitting and drawing was a spectacular parade of grey whales past the Point Reyes lighthouse. As each whale surfaced and spouted, there were great cheers from the assembled throngs of onlookers at the point. It was like a Whale Pride Parade. We heard that there was a record number of whales sighted that day. This was a happy accident for us; we had only planned to go draw. Everyone ELSE had planned to see whales, as we found out that it was the absolute height of migration season.

So, it seemed appropriate to bask in our good fortune that first day and enjoy the show put on by Mother Nature. So, drawing had to wait until day two. Possibly inspired by the vivid colours around me I tried a little watercolour on this sketch trip, which I don’t normally do.

The paper in the sketchbook is beautiful so i will try to move out of my comfort zone (which is line sketches in pencil and ink) and do more colour studies until I fill the book.

Some quick photoshop tones over a pencil doodle. Needs more work but i will do that later.

Here are some rough designs from a few years ago. This project died pretty soon after the design process began, which happens to most projects I work on in development.

What was unusual (but may be the shape of things to come, unfortunately) was that the company went bankrupt before I had even finished the rough drawings.

For quite some time I’ve wanted to do a PIN-UP book full of heroines; characters that I like, from TV shows, comics or movies. Once, when I was about to get into that idea in earnest, I saw the just recently released BELLE du JOUR by Bill Presing (not to mention his follow-up BOOK PLATE BETTIES) and suddenly, I lost steam on the idea… not just because BILL is one of those despiring (depressingly inspiring) artists who make you want to break all of your pencils, one by one… but also because I realised that it would be hard to bring anything new to a book of cheesecake; there are hundreds of them already out there, and until I can think of something ELSE to bring to the idea it remains on my (now very crowded) back-burner.

Pondering that weighty issue doesn’t stop the doodles accruing in my doodle book, such as this page of of POWERGIRL scribbles.

Last weekend’s WONDERCON show was the first time I have ever exhibited in SMALL PRESS and also the first time exhibiting solo (my longtime booth-partner Rhode now lives in New York) So it was a smaller space overall (an 8 foot table instead of the 10 footer at the full-size booths) but more room to display my own work than ever before.

I put a lot of thought into planning how to display all this stuff. Even with the extra space dividend (now that I get the entire table to myself) it is hard to display all the bits and pieces I have produced over the years, now including the stuff I produced for this show; 7 new buttons, and 40 new prints (ten 11×14 designs, ten 8.5×11 designs and twenty designs at the NEW size of 5×7). The prints in particular present something of a conundrum to display in such a limited space, especially the variety of designs that I have now. Some exhibitors bring wire frames to hang the artwork, or other heavy, bulky display cases but I am determined to use only lightweight and modular displays so that I can take the show on the road as much as possible.

I am quite happy with the solution that I came up with this time around, which was to use a daisy-chain of clips to hang prints from the back-drape (between the two banners I had made for EMERALD CITY) and have a fetching booth-babe stand in front of them as an eyeball-trap… What a marketing genius I am, to be sure.

I need to think of a different solution for those shows where there is no drape (such as APE) so I will most likely make myself one of the PVC pipe display frames I see other people use. I didn’t get a new book done this time around but I have not given up on the idea that a mini-comic may get done in time for COMIC CON. Lately I have been puting more effort into PRINTS than comics… It is always tricky to trade off the months of work that drawing a book takes, and the low price that they sell for, against the ease of selling one single image over and over at a relatively higher price (a comic takes months for one person to make and sells for $3-$5 and a print may take as little as a day to make and sells for $20).

While I would like these things to at least pay for themselves I do not want to be driven away from what I want to do in an effort to pander to “market forces”. Likewise, I’d prefer to have more people come and actually look at the artwork (rather than just walk on by) So I will do as much as I can to make the display appealing, but I don’t beat myself up if people move on to something else. Failing on my own terms is what it is all about.

I have been going through old artwork looking for stuff to make PRINTS of for Wondercon next week. Not yet sure if this one will make the final cut (I already have TON of elephant prints) but thought it was worth posting here in my blog.

This pic was drawn to illustrate a story (about Elephants being used as bulldozers to clear shanty towns) from my dad’s Elephant Limerick Book.

In an attempt to purge my mind’s eye of images of the BEARDED SLAVE LEIA seen last weekend at Emerald City Comic Con, where he single handedly overwrote the adolescent memories of a thousands of nerds (including myself) here are some quick sketches of the LEIA I would prefer to remember, drawn through bleeding eyes.

I have exhibited at a few Comic Conventions in the past decade but most have been in San Francisco, where I live, and all have been in California. When exhibiting out of town (so far, only at COMIC CON) there has always been a VAN to load my stuff into (driven by Rhode). But this weekend, for the first time, I will be exhibiting out of state, at EMERALD CITY CON in Seattle, so I had to pack my books for a FLIGHT, which I have never done before. My thinking was that making the kit as portable as possible would be the way to go, as the easier it is to take the show on the road, the more likely I will be to do it again in future… and I like that idea.

I recently bought a rolling trunk for away-teams to long shows out of town (such as Comic Con) but I don’t really sell much in two-day shows so, while I was tempted to use my new trunk for this trip, I opted for a roll-aboard carry-on bag stuffed full of my wares. This thing is designed to carry about 8 pounds of socks and undies but at the moment it is jammed with about 55 pounds of books and is definitely the heaviest carry-on bag of all time.

Other than the rolling brick, I have a small duffel bag and a folio-case containing my new vinyl BANNERS. It is strange that I have never made these before. Rhode and I usually hand-make the booth-decorations for each show, but having a more portable and durable display will be key from now on.. To make my kit complete, I still need to buy some lightweight banner-STANDS for those shows that do not provide a backboard. In the past, I have used an EASEL for this purpose but they are bulky and have a huge footprint that is inconvenient in cramped booth spaces.

If you are in Seattle this weekend (March 13/14) come by the EMERALD CITY con where I will be sharing a booth with TED MATHOT and DEREK THOMPSON. It would be nice to find out that I needed to pack more stuff to sell. Selling out would be a GOOD problem to have.