1 down, 15 to go

I finished my book for Comic Con last night and sent it to the printer.

Here's the cover:



Here's a sample page:



I got an ISBN for it so if it's a flop at the con it can be a flop on Amazon too.

Rest up on the weekend and then back on to con stuff and the second graphic novel for Stone Arch books.

No rest for the wicked, they say. I must be very evil.

Comic Conning

I've been given a Small Press table at Comic Con. To be honest, I didn't want one. I wanted Artist Alley. In Artist Alley I could round up some stuff I've already got and sell that. I've been to several cons. I got that. That's easy.

No. The folks at Comic Con wanted me in Small Press. Insistent, they were.

So what do you do? You say, "Ok."

"Ok" means a WHOLE lot more work. "Ok" means something new.

And sometimes something new is something old.

I drug out proposals and stacks of old drawings, some of them going back 16 years. And while I threw most of it away, there was a set of characters I really wanted to spend more time with.

Picking the drawings from back in the day I most felt captured who they were, I put those through the filter of today.

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Dave, 2002

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Dave, 2009
In time you will know who this is, if you don't. (Meaning, I am going to tell you, not that he's going to be super famous... though that would be okay with me.)

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It is so much fun spending time with this group of characters again. Whenever I create a character, they become almost a real person. I know who they are, why they do what they do, how they do it. Have the characters defined, and the story writes itself.

It is good to be in their company again.

Health Illustrations

I did these for Current Health 1 magazine, one of Weekly Reader's titles. It was for an article on taste buds. In a last minute mix-up, I didn't know which rough I was supposed to complete. So, I finished them both out. The second one was in the magazine. The one on top is a CS Jennings Draw Blog semi-exclusive.

Run, Bottles! Run!

Illustration for last week's Austin Chronicle.

Drawings

If you were my niece named McKenzie, this was your Christmas present this year. It is her two dogs, Otto and Maddie, done in what I am calling my "Italian Vaudeville" style. According to the free translation website I used, this means "The Dogs of Comedy." Originally titled, "The baby thinks the dogs are funny," that was waaaay too long in Italian. || Click image for larger

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From my sketchbook. Little girl in a spacesuit with an umbrella. I like the idea that she lives way in the future, but cherishes this beat up old umbrella, which is essentially useless to a little girl all snug in her cozy spacesuit. I also like that her tiny hands are in giant clunky gloves.* (I love drawing with this red pencil.) || Click image for larger

* She's got some proportion problems that are driving me nuts. But that's why she's a "sketch."

pie fight.

an illo for the Austin Chronicle.



ran the week of Thanksgiving.



ran in black and white.