Hello everyone! And welcome new readers from FallCon! We had a really great time this year, despite the cold. 3/4ths of this post is about the awesome stuff I got there, and the awesome people I got it from, who you should check out. But first…..
This coming Thursday I will be doing a Ustream with Abby of The Green Avenger (http://www.green-avenger.com). Abby is a longtime friend of mine, and a fellow Black Hat Comic Collective member. For those not in the know, this means that you can go to a specific website (to be posted a little later) and there will be a live streaming video channel of us, working on art- either via a camera pointed at a work surface or just displaying the computer screen itself. You’ll also be able to hear us yammering about something-or-other. Usually comics. You can also join in a chat with the other people watching, and with us.
Anyways, I spent most of the con hanging out with my fellow BHC members, who I should do a post about some day. But, I got to spend some time with a few other comic creators I really admire. I spent the most time with Spike, of Templar Arizona (http:templararizona.com) chatting, watching Cats Don’t Dance, and harassing customers, and Abby. Templar is on my links page for a reason. Lisa and I love her comic. I bought the latest two books of it at FallCon this year! Yay! And also a Sincerist patch. Go check her and her comic out.
I also got to chat a while with Lucy Knisley, (http://www.lucyknisley.com/) whose work I’ve admired for a while now. From her I got Pretty Little Book (which sadly, seems to be unavailable to buy online) and Drawn to You, which she wrote as an in-comics conversation with Erica Moen (http://www.darcomic.com/) which also seems to be unavailable online. ALSO! I got from her a shirt illustrating different kinds of cheese (she’s a foodie) and two adorable watercolor sketches- one of her iconic fat cat, wearing a beet hat, and one of a chinchilla. They are AWESOME and now I need some small frames for them. I love Lucy’s frank, clean, expressive, appealing style, and her sense of color. Also, she always seems to manage autobio work in a way that holds your interest without being melodramatic, depressing, or too navel-gazing. As a fiction-focused artist who doesn’t even write, I can barely comprehend how hard that is to do.
Also, I got a portfolio critique from the lovely and talented Amy Hadley (http://tentopet.livejournal.com/) , whose currently drawing Madam Xanadu for Vertigo. I’ve liked her work for a long time, but since she’s started doing Madam Xanau her style has really crystallized to me. She was very sweet, and was able to give me some good, concrete advice.
That’s all for now, folks! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to scan in those sketches. Everyone should get to see an adorable sketch of a chinchilla in a dust bath.
-Terry
