Pre-Con Sketchcover Commissions 2016

I generally only do commissions on-site at conventions but after a number of requests, I did some in advance last year. I was pleased at the results (I like working at home in my drawing chair!) so I’ll be doing it again this year. At the moment, I’m limiting this to sketchcovers. As long as a convention is still listed, I’ll be taking commission requests for it but I am limiting numbers for each con.

March

Toronto Comicon March 18 – 20

APRIL

Emerald City Comicon April 6 – 10

Calgary Entertainment & Comic Expo April 28 – May 1

(More to be added as they’re announced)

At this time I’m only planning on doing sketchcovers. I do have some sketchcovers in stock; if you want something else, I will see if I can get it from my LCS (and will let you know the added cost).

Single figures are $60, Two figures are $90, ink, markers and copics.

The blank sketchcovers I currently have on hand are:

Batman 66 #23

Batgirl #38

Superman #32 

A-Force Secret Wars #001

The Flash #39

Wolverine #310

Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars #001

Wonder Woman #19

Wonder Woman #36 

Justice League #16

 

All covers will be available for pick-up ONLY at the convention. Payment can be in cash at the convention or you can PayPal me before pickup.

If you’re interested, send me an email at tybunny@gmail.com and tell me which blank, and what you’re looking for. I’ll confirm with you before I start anything.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Delayed Bun Toons! Boo!

If anyone asks, I’m not here.

There is a Bun Toon coming, I’ve read it, and it’s officially funny.

But circumstances beyond my control are delaying my getting it to you.  My schedule, my family travelling for the long weekend, and let’s just say “caprice” have all conspired to delay the Bun Toon.

In the meantime, I present to you, a bunch of sketch covers I did for the Montreal Comicon a couple of weekends back.   I got scans and some of them don’t suck.

Don’t say I don’t give ya nothing, internet family.  Bun Toons return tomorrow!

Got asked to draw a Clayface cover. I’m not sure I ever drew Clayface in the series, and didn’t have a reference in front of me, so it was Clayface from memory. That’s the great thing about him, he can look like ANYTHING and it counts.

The New Harley Costume. As much as I love this character, I don’t love the new costume, but what’s more fun than a thirty pound whoopie cushion? (I had reference for this costume, provided by the fan. I’m not THAT good at working from memory).

This is the sequel to a con sketch I did last year (Death Fish I). That’s a first for me, as I didn’t think sketch covers ever got sequels.

 

A familiar idea that a fan asked me to reproduce for him. Yes, it’s flipped over…again that was a request. I haven’t drawn a Dark Claw cover yet that’s not based on an existing cover, since the official cover was taken from a B:TAS promotional poster.

There’s a bunch more of these sketch covers, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with dazzle all at once.  I might upload a bunch more later this week…

Ty the Guy OUT!

And now, your BONUS blank cover sketch:  I told you there were more of them.

I promise, that’s Montreal in the background.

 

Niagara Falls Comic Con 2012

Been too busy for anything but drawing, writing scripts and teaching these days. Sometimes there’s a burger and a coke. But I realised that I had a couple photos from the Saturday I spent at Niagara Falls Comic Con 2012 and thought I’d do a super-quick post.

The con went really really well–we’d heard about it from Christopher Yao and Leonard Kirk who had both been guests the first year. When Dan McKinnon contacted me and asked if I’d like to be a guest for 2012, I jumped at the chance. (I got to do a panel with Dan McKinnon, a former letterer and inker for comics who now runs High Concept Media with his wife Katie. We talked about how to get in the business and be a comics creator.)

Aww.  Hulkie Smash Sumpting.
Thanks to my work on Marvel Ultimate Spider-Man Adventures, I’m used to drawing Spidey’s web mask pattern.  That actually takes a couple of drawings before you can match the “official” pattern.  It’s like Superman’s “S”.  There’s always an “official” version.

8

The “official” version of my friend Christopher Yao.  Christopher was moving copies of his wonderful creator owned title Fauntkin, about an adorable little grandson kept alive by evil technology.

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I think this is Wolverine’s daughter now, or a clone, or his clone’s daughter and the women who love them.  But the sketch went away with someone happy with it, and I was not pelted with rocks and garbage.  I think she’s named X-49 and a half or something.

8

I was asked to do a drawing of Arcangel and I’d mentioned that I’d done an old X-Men video cover featuring Warren having a good scream while on his knees.  Jason said, “Yeah, draw that.”.  So I tried to recreate the image from memory.  Let me hunt down the original to compare how I did…

8Can’t find the sketch right now…but here’s the printed version of the video box cover.

8

I asked Dr. Evil what he would like and he said, “ONE MILLION DOLLARS!” Instead I drew him Guy Gardner being terrorized by a bunny.

A haircut I feel partially responsible for.  I tend to blame Kevin Maguire when I see it on people at conventions, though.

8

The last couple conventions I’ve been at, I’ve been eyeing the Batmobile…and the owner of this one invited Keiren and me to sit inside…  Yes–life is good!

We had a wonderful time at the convention–before the end of the day, the organiser announced that it will be two days next year, and he’s booking twice the floorspace for it. Happy to see more comics fans getting a place to gather…

After the convention was over, Dan and Katie McKinnon took Keiren and I out to dinner, and we invited Christopher Yao and his wonderful girlfriend Cate to join us…  We had a great dinner and better conversation–some fun war stories were told that night.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Convention Sketches I don’t hate.

I always hate my convention sketches.

1)  I don’t draw particularly well to begin with, and

2) I’m always seated near Leonard Kirk, the KING of the con-sketch.

Both of those factors lead me to cringe at almost every convention sketch I see scanned and put up online.  But this last weekend, I actually did a handful that didn’t suck.

The above shot of Indiana Jones was done for a fan named Derek Jagt, who went around the convention asking all the artists for a drawing of Indy.  Obviously, I couldn’t draw one out of my head, but when presented with a reference photo, I did this in about fifteen minutes, with two grey markers and a Faber-Castell artist pen.  I’m not sure I completely caught Harrison Ford’s likeness as perfectly as I would have, given another hour or so, but what I like about it is the very casual line work all through the sketch.  When I do a portrait, I tend to tighten up, but this has some of that easy movement one might see in a Mort Drucker piece.  I’m not in his league, but every now and then, I can see what I’m doing to get there.

On the more whimsical side of things, here’s a sketch cover  I did for Jason Truong, a friend of the blog.  Whenever I do Wolverine, The Thing, Nick Fury or Howard the Duck, I always insist on the cigar, since they’re not allowed to smoke in the comics any more.

Even if it’s Chibi Baby Wolverine.  He’s a mutant, he’s got the healing power for when he starts coughing up the phlegm.

There were one or two others that didn’t suck from the weekend.  I did one with V for Vendetta that wasn’t awful.  But I don’t have a scan of that one.

Back to drawing in my home studio…where I get to use an eraser and white out if I don’t like how it’s going.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your BONUS Con Sketches:

I’m serious about not sitting next to Leonard Kirk at a convention if you have any pride.  Look at the sort of thing Len considers a “con sketch”.

It makes you want to break his fingers, except he’s a very nice guy.  GRRR.

The Convention Sketches Came From My Basement!

A couple of weeks ago, I put together a sketchbook for an open house/gallery show at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop.    (click on Sketchbook by Ty above!)  We printed up a bunch of ’em, and had a dozen or so left over after the event, so we offered up em through our little website here.

Each sketchbook has a first page left intentionally blank, so that I had a space to scribble a doodle and signature and a message for the person getting it at the open house.    I can’t remember what I sketched in those books, as my brain forgets the image as soon as it’s drawn.

But when I did little front-page doodles for the fine folks who ordered copies  through the website, there was a scanner handy.  So I’m posting a bunch of them today.  While you guys are looking at them, I’m busy finishing up a script for Heroes of the North, and designing a giant killer robot for a project I’m doing with a fairly famous pal of mine at a fairly major comic company.  (What a tease I am!)  I’ll keep you posted.

This last sketch below comes with a small story.   On Tuesday I got into a conversation with someone about what is the “right” tool to ink with, and responded with the advice Joe Kubert once said:  “grab anything and use it.  If you need a specific brush or pen,  you’re not making the line, the tool is.”

Within reason, obviously. Kurbert didn't mean for anyone to ink with one of these.

Well, just for the straight up hell of it, I tried inking a sketch with the giant fat marker pictured above.  A really beat up, half dry one, too.  In fact, I searched for the skankiest marker in my studio.  This is what I got.

I wasn’t particularly trying to ape Kubert’s style when I did this, and pulled the Tarzan portrait out of my head, but there’s an eerie hint of Kubert-isms in the final sketch.  I think that’s the secret of Joe’s style.  Ink with the most awful piece of shit tool in your studio, and the constant awareness that you’ll never get a line you’ll like, that you stop looking at each stroke and focus on the whole drawing.

I’m going through the garbage and rescuing all my horrible dead brushes and gnarly markers.  That was fun!    Next sketch I do gets inked with a spray can.  I’ll show Kubert there’s tools you can’t use!

I think we have one or two sketchbooks left.   You’d have to check with my wife by going HERE.

Ty the Guy OUT!

PS:  BIG events at the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop tonight.  I shall speak of them tomorrow.

———————————————————————————–

Here now, a BONUS sketchbook page, left out of the printed collection for space.   I learned to draw the WildCATS: Animated style from back in the 90s…

Acts of a Vengeful God Destroyed My Art.

So, like a week ago, I posted a quick commission sketch I recently did of a Green Lantern character Mark Waid and I created, like fifteen years ago.  I did it for a Green Lantern fan named Christopher Matusiak.  It was on green paper, and I used pencil, ink, marker, pencil crayon, blackboard chalk and other tools I’m sure I’ve forgotten.  Maybe some hair tonic and crushed walnuts, how do I know, I wasn’t all there towards the end.  It turned out not too bad, and it looked like this:

 

BREEON, an obscure Green Lantern from one of the annuals, and a back up story at that!

So, we sent off the package, and Christopher emailed me on Monday to tell me it had arrived, after getting soaking wet along en route, and now the drawing is a green smudge on the inside of the cardboard envelope it was sent in.  Dead, destroyed, it is an EX-drawing.  It is no more.

So I did Christopher another drawing this afternoon, the same character yelling at his Green Lantern ring.

 

STUPID GREEN RING! ANSWER ME!! WHO KILLED THE LAST SKETCH?

I’ll be wrapping this one up in tin foil and sealing it in wax before it goes in the box.  And since I have a blog, I post it here, just in case it dies en route and no one gets to see it.

I lost the original art for some fairly decent Batman Adventures covers this way as well.  They were shipped to a museum in Europe as part of a Batman Anniversary display a while back, and shipped back soaking wet,  ruined.

 

This was Ruined

All Destroyed

Dunked and Runny

I’ve lost a ton of original Stig’s Inferno pages to water damage, and some original Wally Wood pages to a cat pulling a full pot of liquids over onto them.  The cat has since passed away and the police were willing to call it “natural causes”.

Clearly Poseidon has never forgiven me for beating him at rock paper scissors.  We met at a party, he got all competitive about this and that, cause there were girls there, you know.  he challenged me to the rock paper scissors thing, and I knew  he would never go for “paper” because he doesn’t really understand what it is, and I stuck with “rock” until I totally whipped his ass, and now he curses my artwork with water damage every couple of years, just to remind me we’re all ultimately his bitch.

Ty the Guy, out!  WHOOOSH!

Here now, you comic book moment of zen:

The issue featuring the original appearance of the wildly popular Green Lantern named Breeon. This is where the craze started. You'll notice that the shwred editor-at-the-time did not even mention the Breeon tale on the cover. How well he understood the character's appeal.

Tailgunner Jo stuff!

Hey there, websurfers.

I’ve been sick as a cat lately, so I’ve been doing little but moan and complain.  (I’d say “sick as a dog” but I only have cats, and they vomit fairly regularly, so we’ll go with that.)  I’m running late on everything, so I’m only popping in to show ya this sketch.

Those characters are the stars of a comic book series I did a million years ago called “Tailgunner Jo”,  a sci-fi/fantasy series for DC in the late eighties.  I was the inker for a few issues, and had posted one of the pages online for sale here at ART LAND, and when a fan asked for a bunch of them, we discovered that we had already SOLD one of the pages that he wanted.  He was nice enough to switch over to another page after we explained it to him, and this sketch was my way of apologizing for telling him (in an email) that I had a page which had actually been sold years ago.  (There was  confusion about the story page No. # vs. the issue page No.#  (both were marked on each page SHEESH!, and my brain hurt)

But it’s been all happily sorted out a few days back, right before the body gave in on me.

It’s been a while since I drew these characters, but I did the sketch without looking up the original designs, just to see if I could match them from memory.  I did okay, actually, only having to tweak the raccoon once I checked with the original issues (I’d given him a black mask…but he had a white one in the published stories!).

This series isn’t as long forgotten as I thought it was…for instance HERE is the Tailgunner Jo online shrine!  Nice to see the efforts are never COMPLETELY obscured by time.    Peter Gillis, and Tom Artis (the writer and penciler) did a great job on this series, and it’s their efforts I’m happy to see remembered.  I only inked the first couple of issues, and then I ran off to pencil Justice League, so I was a fair weather friend at best.  Going back and looking over the issues was a treat, and I hope folks find this stuff in their local fifty cent bins at conventions etc.  Worth the read, just for the way cool nonsense happening on every page.  Fairy tale teddy bear wars and cybernetic superhero industrial espionage corporate pirate stuff, with dark hints of drug abuse, wrapped in a message of single parenting in a harsh world.  Lone Wolf and Cub meets the Matrix.

I’m fairly sure the listed pages on the website are all correct and on sale, but I’m as disorganized as an octopus directing traffic most days.   My wife assures me we’re okay.  Heads have already rolled.  I’ve fired two of my cats. **

Ty the Guy OUT!

(**actually, I have a master list of what pages are available and which are for sale, based on what’s been listed on the site. The problem here was email communication–Ty thought he’d never sold any of the pages and was much surprised to find that he had. kts)

This is why artists get married.  So we remember to eat.  It reminds me of this joke.  What do you call a painter without a girlfriend?

A homeless guy.

It’s funny because it’s easily verifiable.

T. t. G.

Here now–your COMIC BOOK moment of ZEN:

Wizard World Toronto, a little convention art, and the GREATEST CON SKETCH OF ALL TIME!

Uncle Ty's Convention Sketches. Ready in just FIVE MINUTES

I just got back from Wizard World Toronto, and boy, are my arms not tired.

Not because I live in Toronto (and the flight back wouldn’t affect my shoulders, get it?)  but because I spent the weekend, not sketching particularly much.  No more than thirty  sketches over a three day weekend, and at a big convention, I usually do fifty on the Saturday alone!   At first I

One of my less embarrassing con sketches of Kara Zor-el.

thought it was me…did I have a piece of meatloaf hanging off my face?  Did I wear my misanthropy on my sleeve too obviously, or was it the whiff of urine on my street clothes?

No, it was happening to almost everyone at Toronto Wizard Con, (other than Dale Keown and Richard Pace, who seemed to have a crowd around for a while on Saturday, and Adi Granov, who had a minor crowd on Friday).  The attendance was thin, and mostly wrestling fans there to see the Iron Sheik and his pals.  It’s always a bad sign when you start doing sketches for the other con guests or dealers because neither they, nor you, have anything else to do for the next ten minutes.

Too bad… The Wizard folks were nice to us.  LOVELY volunteers, good people…they set up my bootcamp lesson/con panel and promoted it (surprisingly well attended, thank you), and were handing out the water and smiles.   It was Wizard’s first big convention in Toronto, and I was rooting for them.  Let’s hope there’s a few tweaks

Fans love Batgirl. And a lot of fans like her bum. I do what I'm requested...

and fixes before next year rolls around, and the thing rivals San Diego in the future.

The low point came on Saturday when some douche-twerp couldn’t resist the demon on the shoulder telling him to pull a fire alarm.  It emptied out the convention center in the middle of Saturday afternoon—taking nearly an hour to sort out whether we were burning up in a fire, or doing the world’s biggest HOKEY POKEY.   Not everyone came back when it was over.   Hats off the perished souls of Wizard Con Toronto, 2010—you will be remembered.

Highlights include:   being seated next to Gail Simone and Her Mysterious Husband, with Dave Ross to my left, and Kent (Planet of the Apes) Burles to my right.  With things a tad slow, I got to hang with the legendary Gail Simone and Her Mysterious Husband, and  got to see Dave Ross’s new pencils for an amazing Star Wars comic he’s working on, and  laugh with the always

A very non-Adventures style Joker. Dig that crazy haircut.

charmingly French Canadian, Yanick Paquette, and drool over piles of just gorgeous AGENTS of ATLAS original art by my buddy Leonard Kirk.   Len is one of those illustrators I’m openly jealous of, partly because he does THE best convention sketches on the planet

The rule with me at a con is, you get the sketch for free, but it’s done in five minutes.  That way, everyone who wants one gets one, and I give back a little for the fans.  You guys deserve it.  But we artists rarely get to see our con sketches after we let you have ‘em.   About one out of ten, I pull one off that I wish I could hold onto…it captured just the right gleam in Joker’s eye, or the right gesture as Robin jumps off a building.  I sometimes ask if the fan could scan it for me and send me a copy when they get home, but after twenty years of doing this, I have less

Must...eat....brains...unless....there's....donuts....

than a dozen scans of con sketches to show you, and hardly the best of the best.

Zombie Homer is the only one from this year,  as I used to think my BONGO contract forbids sketching the Simpsons, but Ken Wheaton (fellow toiler in Springfield) informs me, I can doodle inside published Simpsons books, just not regular sketch books and on blank pieces of paper…  Ken had a PILE of copies of TREEHOUSE OF HORROR: DEAD MAN’S CHEST for people to buy, so I did more Simpsons doodles this weekend than anything else.

As promised, here’s my favorite con sketch of all time, and the recipient was lovely enough to send me one.

A once-in-a-lifetime-art team.

It was in Paris, and I was seated in between Bernie Wrightson, Neal Adams, and Scott Hampton.  A group of BATMAN artists were touring through Belgium, France and Switzerland and enjoying all the lovely sauces we got with every meal, when some Euro-fan asked if Mr. Wrightson minded inking

Another Paris sketch from '92, featuring Tintin and the original appearance of ELSEWORLDS T-SHIRT BATMAN, seen last month!

the Batman portrait/sketch I had just done for him.  Watching my meager sketch be inked by Bernie was mind blowing enough, but then watching Scott Hampton add those moody water colours, I came this close from stealing the image back for myself…I have the scan though, and I share it here with you guys…the word’s only Templeton/Wrightson/Hampton collaboration.

Neal Adams did not participate in the sketch, but I have something better from Neal…something I’ll show you guys in a future post.  I have to keep the suspense going SOMEHOW.

Ty the Guy

Oh, and PS:  This week, I’m promoting this new Simpsons collection, NOW ON SALE.  I’ve got a fun pin-up inside, and the rest of the book is okay too, I suppose, if you like hysterical comic books.

In hardcover. Kirby says: "Don't Ask! Just Buy It!"

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