Proud Mary

Today's drawing is courtesy of Stewart Copland. He is 4 1/2 years old and this is his first drawing of Spider-Man. Stewart and I are very proud of this drawing.

This post was co-written with Stewart.

Near The End

Getting to the end of the print run on my convention sketchbook, Marks On Paper 1. Each book is only $5, it includes postage to where ever you live PLUS an original sketch of your choice. Here's the latest sketch done for one of my recent sales.

If you are interested in getting one of the last few sketchbooks remaining, drop me a note in the comment section below, or email me at j dot copland at telus dot net.

Good + Bad Times

These pages are from the Marvel Age Team Up #4 script by Todd Dezago. Big shout out to Todd for sending me the script! I had a lot of fun doing this and I hope that it made me a stronger artist. There are definitely things I would change. No page is without some need of tweeking, that's for sure. But, as promised, here are the 5 sample pages I took with me to the Emerald City Comic Con... warts and all. Feedback is always welcome. Good or bad, as long as it is constructive, it's all good.

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

page 5

Emotional Weather Report

I'm back from the Emerald City Comic Con and I must say I thought the show was excellent! Good crowd, good mix of artists and publishers and the event was beautifully managed. Smooth as glass... not like the clusterfrick that is SDCC. Anyways... my ECCC report:

I saw CB Cebulski first thing Saturday morning and showed him my Thor/Spidey sample pages. For the most part, he thought they were strong and offered to supply me with more scripts to draw from. I'll definitely take him up on the offer and give another Marvel sample a go.

I also got an excellent crit from Erik Larsen, of Savage Dragon fame. He's notorious for giving brutally honest crits, so I was a little worried about being destroyed in public. Either I caught him on a good day or he actually thought I did a pretty good job because I left his table feeling good about my work. He gave me a few good things to lookout for, which was exactly what I needed to hear.

My last portfolio review of the show didn't go as well. Editor supreme, Bob Schreck, was doing reviews so I thought I jump in line and see what he had to say. Getting a chance to show work to someone with that amount of experience is an amazing opportunity that I couldn't pass up. But, man, I should have just continued looking for deals on Kirby Fourth World hardcovers, instead. He was very friendly and engaging but boy did he hit me hard. I won't go into the gory details but he definitely tested my resolve to draw comics as a professional.

The rest of the show was spent talking to wonderfully talented people like Dan Cooney, Jay Faerber, Jimmie Robinson, Ed Brisson, Steve Niles, Brian Churilla, Chris Moreno, Chrisian Beranek and Kris Simon.... Oh, and shopping for comics.

All in all, an excellent show that I look forward to attending next year.

I'll post the entire Marvel sample on Wednesday... worts and all.

All The Madmen

Crunch time! Working like a madman to get the Thor/Spider-Man sample pages done for Saturday. Here's another panel from one of those pages.

The Emerald City Comic Con looks like it's going to be a fun time. Lots of people to talk to. More than I originally thought, which is cool. I may even buy some comics...

Both Ends Burning

I'm. So. Sleepy. Burning the candle at both ends to get my work finished for Emerald City. It's going to be tight.

This is the first panel of the first page of my Marvel sample stuff. Looking at it now, it reminds me of the cover to "Amazing Fantasy" #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. Kind of fitting, no?

Beat The Time

Here are a couple of rough panels from the Thor sample pages I'm putting together for the upcoming Emerald City Comic Con. They still need a bit of work but the pages are shaping up nicely.

Besides the Thor pages, I still have to work on some Braids of the Gorgon stuff, also for showing around at ECCC. Seems, time is my enemy at this point.

Eraserhead

Work on the Thor sample pages has commenced! Friend and writer extraordinaire, Todd Dezago, stepped up big for me and sent over a script he wrote for Marvel that has Thor in it! It's a Marvel Age Team Up script, so I get to draw Spider-Man, too! Here's a rough of one of the panels from it. Pay no attention to the floating head in the upper left... that was a failed first attempt which happened to be just nice enough to not warrant erasure. I'll Photoshop it out when I make my rough layout to pencil from.

And here are a couple of Thor villains that I love to draw but aren't in the Dezago script. Oh well, maybe next time, Hela and Loki.