Thought Bubble 2012!!!

Went to Thought bubble this year. Absolutely excellent convention! And to say I got some swag is an understatement  Figured I'd show ye all what I got this time.

http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/

So I'll start with the thing i think is my favorite.

Phil Noto! One of my out right heroes. Got to drink with him on Saturday night. Might have geeked out a little too much with him. But to be honest, in college, his art was a constant inspiration. I must have spent ages studying his drawings. I got to talk to him about his time in Disney too, which was great. The sketch itself is A3! http://www.notoart.com/

Don't usually get issues signed specifically to me (Don't really know why). But this one is special. On the Saturday I got talking to Mark Waid. What a bloke!!! Mark is responsible for my love of several characters, and I generally read almost everything he writes. (Hard to explain how great it was to chat about legacy characters and why that was my biggest love of DC characters to the man who is the reason for me reading those types of stories.)

So, when I met Mark on Sunday and he happily signed the reads I had brought. He personalized the one comic that kinda represents that whole idea. Flash 92 is the first appearance of Impulse, the grandson of Barry Allen (the Flash). And I loved this run Mark had on the title. (I got Mark to sign the first issue of the big story he wrote on Flash, back in 2010 in New York)
http://markwaid.com/

This one is a slight cheat. I got to meet Paolo Rivera in forbidden planet Dublin the week before Thought bubble, but I'm gonna count it in this post cause I got to drink with him in Leeds. What a great artist and a sound bloke. I love the way he draws Spidey's eyes. http://paolorivera.blogspot.ie/

As a little surprise Sinead scored me a Daredevil sketch when I was off queuing to meet Sean Phillips. I love the current Daredevil run and thoroughly recommend you read it.

I got this sketch of Sean Phillips along with a signed copy of Fatale. Love his use of light in his books and was really shacked when I saw original pages belong to him. On Fatale he is working at “comic book” size. http://surebeatsworking.blogspot.ie/

Next I got to meet the brilliant Kate Beaton. The que to meet her was bar far the longest line of the whole con. Kinda wish I got proper time to talk to her, and had meant to approach her  and Scott C at the pub on the Saturday night. I “think” she got a bit of crack out of me telling her I had basically spent the week sending her comics to Neev, my desk buddy in work. I was sending her the Lois and Clark strip I love, cause I think this is probably the best way to describe my friendship to Neev. http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=305 – especially the third strip. So Kate drew me a Lois in the book. (think I love it even more because when I showed Neev, she remarked how the drawing looked like her)

Sitting to Kate's left was Scott C. Boy, do I love his art. Got talking to him about cartoons, he watched Foster's (he said). The great showdowns book is a perfect idea, and he giggled when I said I was jealous of such a great idea. He drew me this sweet Marty Mcfly. http://www.pyramidcar.com/

I bought 3 books off him and he drew a sketch in each. This one he did for the book i bought off him for Sinead.

Guess which one is my favourite

After Scott had drawn the Marty sketch I found Mister Hope. And like destiny, he had this great Back to the Future print, so i had to get it straight away. I had seen the Bill Murray art set he had done online somewhere, so I grabbed a set of postcards off him too. http://misterhope.com/

Jason Latour sketchbook and Des Taylor artbook

Here's the brilliant Mary-Jane sketch I got off Des Taylor. Picked up his art book off him too. As a thank you, Des gave me a print too.  http://despopart.blogspot.ie/

This is the print I got off Jason Latour. Along withe sketchbook, his art is great. He's about to start writing Winter Soldier for Marvel and it couldn't be timed better. Kinda chickened out of talking to him on the Sun day night when he approached me about my hulk t-shirt.
http://jasonlatour.blogspot.ie/

Love the Ceasar Romaro Joker

This is the Dean Beattie print I picked up. Really think Marvel should get him to do some variant covers, cause his superhero art is great. The Venom pose in this is class.
http://www.deanbeattie.com/

Met a girl called Zarina Liew. When I saw her art I almost double taked. It's brilliant. I'm a big fan of David Downton and her art is very reminiscent of his. She works in fashion illustration and with my current approach to life drawing, the art just immediately inspires me.
http://cobaltcafe.co.uk/

Here are the two prints I got for Sinead. Spent the weekend keeping an eye out for something she'd like. She's a big wizard of oz and Alice in wonderland fan. Was delighted when I found it. (Still can't believe Sinead likes going to cons with me, better not jinx it)
http://jenniewood.co.uk/

Found this great artist http://naniiebim.livejournal.com/ . Really wanted to come back and get the print of the girl surrounded by fish, but I ran out of time.

John Addison, He'd just won an award for his comic. Well deserved. http://sgrblog.blogspot.ie/

Yanick Paquette print. The Poison Ivy is gorgeous. http://yanickpaquette.deviantart.com/

Emma Vieceli http://www.emmavieceli.com/ Love this print. However, kinda wish I bought another one too off her. (so much to buy, so little money)

Here is the Becky Cloonan book I picked up and the Cameron Stewart sketchbook. Both amazing artists.
http://estrigious.com/becky/
http://cameron-stewart.tumblr.com/

The Dean Ormston and Adi Granov sketch books I got. Adi has some excellent Iron Man pre-prod in it. (He designed the Iron Man suit in the film)
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/dean-ormston
http://www.adigranov.net/

Quick sketch I got off Frazer Irving. His he-man comic had just been released. Never thought I'd buy a he-man book, but it's gorgeous!

I was also lucky enough to meet Esad Ribic, Jock and Olly Moss, but I unfortunately didn't get anything but signed comics of Esad and Jock and “heart-break” off Olly (he got to a piece of art before me...)
Meeting Steve Wacker was pretty great too. Meeting the editor of Spider-man and him having such a love for the character was brilliant. He couldn't stop laughing at the Dan Slott Jamie story the lads told him ( I finally voiced my biggest wish to someone at marvel too, when I told Steve, that someday I'll get to make a Spider-man show.)

FINALLY. I end this giant post with the print Sinead got off Jordie Bellaire. Jordie is one of the best colourists in the comics industry at the moment, but more importantly she is one of the reasons I actually went to Thought Bubble.

 Jordie is actually a really great friend of mine and I went to Thought Bubble with herself, Dec Shalvey, Stephen Mooney and Jac O'Reilly-Mooney. Me and Sinead had an absolute blast with the gang. Nothing better in life than drinking with friends and talking about comics/animation!.
http://jordiecolorsthings.tumblr.com/

I totally recommend that if you're an artist or into comics, Thought Bubble is a brilliant weekend.

.... except for the salt and vinegar crisps! (injoke! sorry)

D.I.C.E 2012!

So D.I.C.E happened 2 weeks ago, and it. was. EXCELLENT!!! I had a blast at it. So here is some of the art I got at it.

Now it's no secret I'm a Tommy Lee Edwards fan, but I might have taken full advantage of him being in Ireland this time. I got 4 pieces off him, the first is a cover of wolverine 310, the second is a sketch Sinead secretly got me, she said he was delighted to draw his own character for her. Love this cause Sinead loves the 20's era stuff so I think it might have converted her to a "sketch hunter". The third piece I bought off Tommy Lee, it was a toss up between the Galactus piece and a cowboy piece... Galactus won out when it turned out Sinead liked it too. I'll have to post the 4th piece later.

 The next artist I got a sketch off was the brilliant Dave Johnson. Talk about an excellent bloke. Sometimes you worry about meeting artists you love, you know the whole don't meet your heroes etc. But Dave johnson was an absolute gent. And what a talent!!! love his stuff. He did this sketch in about 10 mins, and I love it.

Last but not least, I got a sketch of Jeff Parker. Jeff is a writer with Marvel (and other things), and this is pretty "sweet for a writer". Jeff was a brilliant meet, he writes the thunderbolts comic my friend Dec was artist on, and we were cracking jokes at each other and had a great chat about comics.

Other than that it was an excellent weekend. I think it was a brilliant weekend for Irish talent too. Both my friends, Stephen Moondog Mooney and Willl Sliney had personal panels in which they talked about their creator owed projects. Steve actually got to announce that his book, Half Past Danger, will be printed by IDW.... which is amazing.

Nothing better than talking comics while drinking beer...

oh... and I joined twitter because of it too.... @teehanwolf

More Fencing Life drawing

So in life drawing on Tuesday we had Doug, the fencing instructor again. This was another excellent session. And we had the added bonus of having Niall (the tutor) pose too!

For the session I also went to A2 paper. Forgot how much better it is working at that scale. Only problem was scanning it! However, upon scanning it I found some of the drawings really worked with this added cut-off. So I'm posting some of those too.

Used purely graphite sticks for drawing. Think it worked best in the previous session, so I wanted to use it again.

Kinda prefer this version - obviously in photoshop I erased the leg line

really happy with these 2 poses

happy with how the sword and the arm almost form one line

 

Here are the 2 min drawings.

think  this works equally well cut off like this

didnt try blocking with this one, happy with the line work in it.

 

the right arm is a little messier than i wanted, but i posted this cause I like the left arm

After the 2 min sessions we went to Multiple movement poses. Still struggling with how I want to have these on a single page. Usually they turn into a jumbled mess o' lines. This time I decided to let the blocking of the torso do most of the work and keep the line work to a minimum. These 2 turned out closer to what I want to do for this exercise. (the first atempt was horrid!)

this moves from right to left

Middle pose 1st. left pose 2nd, right pose 3rd

The last few drawings are from when Niall joined Doug in his fencing gear, so we would have 2 models. This was the first time I've ever had this in life drawing"classes", and I loved it.

think this works really well cropped

like this cropped version too