May The Holidays Be With You!

It's the time of year when I post my annual Brill/Stockham Household Christmas card! I've been doing these themed Holiday Greetings for a number of years now--in fact, this is the 7th one! I usually try to match the theme to an important event in the year...theatrically speaking. On the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, I did a Doctor Who themed card and I did the same the year the first Hobbit movie landed. I did Harry Potter and Big Bang Theory because those things were important to us at the respective times. This year was a no-brainer. I'd been wanting to do it for a while, but with the new movie about to burst onto screens across the world I HAD to do Star Wars!

I had the whole range of the Star Wars universe to choose from for our characters, but being the snobby purist that I am, I decided to keep it confined to the original film! After all, it's my favorite movie (and probably always will be for sentimental reasons) and it had a major impact on my life. The first movie will always be MY Star Wars. Anyway, best wishes to everyone for the 2015 holiday season!! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice and all the rest of the greetings for the winter holidays! ^0^

Brillustrator - Live Event Caricature Entertainer!

Well, I have done my first few events for Live-wires as a Caricature Entertainer! Live event drawing isn't new to me--I've done them many times over the years, of course, (I even did charcoal portraits at the mall during the Christmas Season a couple of years), but these were my first outings with an agency as an "entertainment attraction". LOL No pressure there! Things went really well though. All the experiences were enjoyable and gave me confidence that this is the right direction for me!

One was a company Christmas party for a high-end uptown catering firm, and one was a birthday party with a whole BUNCH of little girls, and I drew them all! The third was another corporate Christmas party, but at a public restaurant. I took some photos of the work, but not many. I ultimately was too busy! But here are few of the sketches I did during those events!

Inktober "DRAWLLOWEEN" Round-Up!

Another Inktober has come and gone! This year, in spite of a week when I was sick as a dog and missed one day entirely, I did pretty well keeping up. Along with a few of my fellow CLAW cartoonists, I followed a "Drawlloween" list that was posted online this year. Each day had a theme and we all drew something to match that theme. The only day I did not do that was October 21, because that was Back to the Future day! (Oct. 21, 2015 was the day that Marty and Doc brown went to 30 years into their future in the second BTTF movie.) That day I did a caricature of Marty and the Doc. But other than that I stuck to the list--although sometimes I tried to be clever with it.

Anyway, here are the highlights of Inktober 2015!



I also did this caricature for "pumpkin" day. Unfortunately I didn't think of the word "Trumpkin" until after I had written the headline on the actual art. Oh well. After I did think of it, I discovered that I wasn't the first to make that association, so it didn't matter anyway.

Terry Pratchett's "The Death of Rats" covered 2 days...the Rat day and the Skeleton day!

I was particularly happy with these two sets of caricatures I did. In addition to the BTTF ones, I drew Samantha and Endora from Bewitched on the day that the Drawlloween calendar selected for "Witches".

Hope you enjoy this selection of my Inktober highlights! I didn't include everything form the month (and probably included more than I should have!) Except for the day I missed while I was sick, most of the drawings were pretty decent...warts and all!

Harpy Holidays! Mwa ha haaaaaa!

Rose City Comicon 2015

So I attended Rose City Comicon in Portland over the weekend and, while I did better in the caricature realm here than I did at Emerald City, it was still pretty lackluster. BUT I did get a few brave souls who wanted to be Brillustrated! The first and hardest group was an entire family dressed as characters from the Disney/Pixar "Inside Out" movie! they really went all out and looked great! I was supposedly only doing black and white caricatures, but since color was so integral to their costumes I couldn't resist adding some. (Naturally I only charged them the B&W price.)

Then I got a father/son team dressed as Indiana Jones and Short Round...but with a twist!

And a chef...or maybe cook, who wanted the obligatory ZOMBIE caricature. He really liked it when it was done!

A couple of friends of mine, who spent a lot of time with us at the con wanted to get caricatures. Mark and Lou are great guys and make a cute couple!

--------------------------------------------------------

There were a few other little sketches and one sketch cover that was pretty fun. Sales were light other wise. A few prints here, a couple of sketchbooks there. I had more room at this con and that was a plus, and it was a lot of fun to be there and enjoy the atmosphere and the people. I really enjoy cons, but I need to find a better way to lure in folks to make sales!!

Old School--SITH Happens!

Here is a sketch cover piece that I did to display and hopefully sell at Rose City Comicon this weekend.

I wanted to do something different than the zillion other Vader pieces I've seen on similar sketch covers and struck upon the idea of taking the original concept painting of Vader from Ralph McQuarrie's pre-production illustration of Vader and sort of space suited Luke facing off with lightsabers ablaze. I've always loved that painting and to this day it still gives me the nostalgic feeling of mystery and adventure that originally seeing Star Wars in the movie theater gave me. That painting really tales me back...

So here's to you Ralph McQuarrie! George never could have made Star Wars without your vision, and the Vader we all know and love wouldn't exist without this guy!

(Below, I'm posting the McQuarrie painting so you too can enjoy it's genius!)

Spiderman-on-man Action!

So, on July 11 I set up my little convention display down at Destiny City Comics on St. Helens Ave in beautiful downtown Tacoma for a mini Pride Day related event. To be honest--it was slow for me. Lots of people came through, and I think the shop had a really good day, but I didn't do very well personally. Only one Magic card sketch commission--which, of course, I forgot to photograph, and I sold a couple of prints. :P

However, I DID manage to do another sketch cover while on sight. I put about 3 hours work into it--with pauses to chat with potential customers. In any case--it came out pretty good! Using a special "The Amazing Spider-man: Renew Your Vows" #001 variant blank cover issue, I created the Universe 69 gay Spidey! I originally wanted to have him lip-locked with the Miles Morales Spiderman, but had forgotten that the character was only supposed to be a young teenager and so it would be wildly inappropriate. I thought about using Venom, but I ultimately decided to use one of the Spidey clones. I liked the Scarlet Spider costume the best of the many clone versions, so SS made the cut. Btw, I used my growing new collection of Copic markers for the colors.

The design is actually based on a J. Scott Campbell cover in which Spidey was kissing Black Cat, while poor MJ looked on from the background. In my Universe 69 variation, Spidey is kissing Scarlet Spider (actually a clone of Peter Parker himself) while, once again, poor MJ looks on--BUT, in this world, Black Cat is there to help Mary Jane Watson through this difficult revelation! Anyway, it turned out pretty good and is now on display (and for sale) in the comic book shop where it was born.

Happy Pride!

Batman Saves the Weekend!

Last weekend I manned the C.L.A.W. table at an interesting event: The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Convention. I have to say right off the bat that the show was not very busy for us non-game related vendors. I got two commissions my entire time there and even my friend Mark Monlux had difficulty raking in customers!! But it was still pretty cool, although I'm not much of a gamer--but I DID get to see the Flintstones prop car from the movie, courtesy of the LeMay Car Museum, which is also here in town.

So here's a pic of me trying to look busy and important, alongside the caricature of Mark Monlux, fellow CLAW member and purveyor of "cartoon reviews of movies" in his "The Comic Critic" books. I did the drawing as an enticement to passing customers to get their caricatures done.

I did finally get two commissions from a very nice couple who wanted me to do fun sketches of their boys. The older boy was actually a Magic fan and wanted me to draw him as an MTG style goblin. The parents asked me to portray the younger son as a flying monkey because he liked my drawing on the CLAW banner. I added the soccer ball because he was wearing a soccer jersey. They seemed to be really happy with them, which always feels great. After that, though--it was dead! I sold a couple of prints and that was it for two days! *Sigh*

Since the second day was a complete bust, I decided to put my time to some use by working on the "Batman '66" sketch-cover comic I had acquired. I worked on it most of the time I was there and went WAY too overboard on it, but it came out pretty snazzy. I wanted to do something sentimental to honor my youthful appreciation of the old series. When I was a kid--Adam West was Batman to me. (Also, I got an enthusiastic buyer for the piece, so it sort of salvaged things for me!) So, thanks once again, Batman!

So while it was the most unsuccessful weekend I've had at an event in some ways, I got some good things out of it. I probably won't do the event next year...but one can never say what the future might hold.