Kiss Detroit City Gallery Show

This Saturday is the opening reception for the KISS themed gallery show at the Start Gallery in Detroit. I will have two pieces in this show and will update on that on Saturday. If you know me, I'm not a fan of the band KISS. I was when I was 11, but that was more due to the makeup and costumes than anything music related. Then I discovered bands like Led Zeppelin and Queen and all that. KISS went bye-bye. So, here is a little teaser for the show. This is a drawing that I did when I was 11 on the inside of a school folder, which has survived three flooded basements and multiple moves. I still have that folder and it contains a bunch of my 'drawings' from that time. SO, on the left is my interpretation of the band and on the right, some scribbled warrior, with text from a school chum Jay Miglia and even a Charlie's Angels sticker. Life was good.

The show will run through October 13th, so come on down and check out what looks to be a fun show with some of Detroit's finest artists and illustrators, including Tony Miello, Kelly Ohara, Jeff Sornig, Anne Garavaglia among others.

Mid Ohio Con Wrap up

This past weekend I loaded up my stuff and headed down to Columbus for the Mid Ohio Con and had a very good time, I might add. The convention center was a very nice venue and was about half the size of the Motor City Con, but put together better, I think. It was mostly illustrators and like minded creators, with a few actors and just a small area of comic dealers, whereas Detroit's con has a huge area of dealers. Nothing wrong with that, I just thought it was refreshing to see a con with mostly artists.

It was fun to talk with quite a few sketch card collectors and to see their excitement about what they liked about the hobby. Also, it was nice to see the people who collected as a family, which I guess took me by surprise.

So, much thanks to everyone who came by my table, which was nestled right in the middle of fellow illustrators (and travel mates) Bill Pulkovski and Alex Buechel. Much fun was had by all.

This was my set up this time. I couldn't bring my display stands with framed originals because there just wasn't enough room in my jeep. The dude sitting there is fellow sci-fi/comics geek David Ozias who came along to help out and have a grand ole time.

Some illustrator type (Alex Buechel) who thinks he is a certain webslinger.

My friend Jay Miglia, the famed and notorious sax playin' Columbus inhabitant showing that yes, he was here.

Columbus from what little I saw of it seems like a great city and hopefully I'll be able to explore it some more soon!

CD Designs, Part 2

Here is the next batch of CD designs that I experimented with over the past few months. I have a buddy down in Columbus who is one hellava sax player and a teacher and if he had a website I'd link it. One day when he gets time in his busy schedule to record a CD I'll take a stab at doing the cover. So, I tried out a couple of images. Why the octopus? Why not. It's my favorite cephalopod mollusk if you need to know. Jeez.

And the other design is an early concept for The Good Leads (with sax-hater Chris Quigley I might add) with a title that they were considering.

Lots of stuff going on around here that I'm more than happy to pass along. I'm currently in the midst of my work on the Upper Deck/Marvel sketch cards, working on some unique greeting cards, as well as some commission work. Plus, I will be the new cartoonist for a Seattle health care newspaper, so I'm looking forward to that challenge. And today, I received an invite to be on a new sketch card set, but I've been down that road before, so we'll see. Busy, busy, busy.