Most of my friends know that I collect comic book art. It got started in 2008 when I went to my first comic con - NYCC - and immediately got hooked. If you go to a comic con and walk around Artists Alley with a sketchbook, it's a lot of fun and immediately addicting.
I've been doing this for almost 12 years now which means I'm accumulating quite a collection. To an extent I didn't even know how big it was getting. Over Christmas I got the bright idea that I should scan all of my artwork. There's a practical purpose to this. The website Comic Art Fans has a feature where you can upload your art and add details about it, including estimated value. So if nothing else, if something happens to me Cathy can sell the artwork for what it's worth and not what I told her I paid for it.
(These are the jokes, folks. Tip your waitress.)
This process ended up being a lot more complicated than I thought because:
a. I had to pull a lot of pieces from frames and I didn't keep track of what picture goes with what frame as carefully as I should have. Which resulted in a mess I'm still dealing with.
b. I have more art than I thought. Including commission, pages from actual comics, and drawings in my sketchbook, I'm pushing around 150 right now.
Geeks with money, man. It's dangerous.
But it also occurs to me that nobody really gets to see most of this artwork except for me and Cathy. And while Cathy is tolerant and supportive of this hobby she doesn't exactly understand and love it the way I do. Fair enough.
And if I do say so, I've managed to build a pretty decent collection. And perhaps it's egotistical and perhaps no one will really care, but I though it might be interesting to show people who still read this blog what I have.
So once a week I'm going to post up an image and tell a story about it. Sometimes it might be very brief. Not all of the pieces have awesome stories. There are a few "I bought this on eBay" (Not many. Buying art on eBay is risky.) Or "I bought this through the artist's dealer."
But sometimes there's a cool story involved. It also has the added benefit of getting me writing again.
So if this is going to be the first one of these I do, it's best to start at the beginning.
So if you want to know the official date of my addiction, it would be April 18, 2008. I was wandering around Artist Alley trying to figure who to get a commission from and how it even worked. Todd Nauck had a few people in his line and I liked his work on Young Justice with Peter David. Plus, if I recall, he was asking $25 a sketch which seemed pretty reasonable. So I decided to ask for a Wonder Girl sketch.
This is pretty much a perfect $25 sketch for its time. I forget exactly how long it took for him to draw it, but I suspect it was around 15 minutes and that was with him chatting with people. Some quick penciling to establish what he wanted to do, and then using ink or a marker to fill in the details. I was very happy with it at the time and I still am.
If you ever go to a con and he's there, find the time to swing by his table. He's absolutely one of the nicest guys in comics. I've stopped by his table at other cons and he always makes a few minutes to chat. Although it's a bit harder to get a sketch from him these days and it costs more.
Hilariously he looks almost exactly like Peter B. Parker from the "Into the Spiderverse" movie, and the internet is filled with pictures of him posing with cosplayers as a middle age Spider-Man. Like this one:
He has a blast with it too.
Anyway. My first sketch in my first sketchbook. Only three more years to go.....
Last Five
1. Arms aloft (live) - Pearl Jam
2. The infanta - The Decemberists
3. White boy blues - Mo berg
4. Stay free - The Clash
5. Saint Simon - The Shins
I've been doing this for almost 12 years now which means I'm accumulating quite a collection. To an extent I didn't even know how big it was getting. Over Christmas I got the bright idea that I should scan all of my artwork. There's a practical purpose to this. The website Comic Art Fans has a feature where you can upload your art and add details about it, including estimated value. So if nothing else, if something happens to me Cathy can sell the artwork for what it's worth and not what I told her I paid for it.
(These are the jokes, folks. Tip your waitress.)
This process ended up being a lot more complicated than I thought because:
a. I had to pull a lot of pieces from frames and I didn't keep track of what picture goes with what frame as carefully as I should have. Which resulted in a mess I'm still dealing with.
b. I have more art than I thought. Including commission, pages from actual comics, and drawings in my sketchbook, I'm pushing around 150 right now.
Geeks with money, man. It's dangerous.
But it also occurs to me that nobody really gets to see most of this artwork except for me and Cathy. And while Cathy is tolerant and supportive of this hobby she doesn't exactly understand and love it the way I do. Fair enough.
And if I do say so, I've managed to build a pretty decent collection. And perhaps it's egotistical and perhaps no one will really care, but I though it might be interesting to show people who still read this blog what I have.
So once a week I'm going to post up an image and tell a story about it. Sometimes it might be very brief. Not all of the pieces have awesome stories. There are a few "I bought this on eBay" (Not many. Buying art on eBay is risky.) Or "I bought this through the artist's dealer."
But sometimes there's a cool story involved. It also has the added benefit of getting me writing again.
So if this is going to be the first one of these I do, it's best to start at the beginning.
So if you want to know the official date of my addiction, it would be April 18, 2008. I was wandering around Artist Alley trying to figure who to get a commission from and how it even worked. Todd Nauck had a few people in his line and I liked his work on Young Justice with Peter David. Plus, if I recall, he was asking $25 a sketch which seemed pretty reasonable. So I decided to ask for a Wonder Girl sketch.
This is pretty much a perfect $25 sketch for its time. I forget exactly how long it took for him to draw it, but I suspect it was around 15 minutes and that was with him chatting with people. Some quick penciling to establish what he wanted to do, and then using ink or a marker to fill in the details. I was very happy with it at the time and I still am.
If you ever go to a con and he's there, find the time to swing by his table. He's absolutely one of the nicest guys in comics. I've stopped by his table at other cons and he always makes a few minutes to chat. Although it's a bit harder to get a sketch from him these days and it costs more.
Hilariously he looks almost exactly like Peter B. Parker from the "Into the Spiderverse" movie, and the internet is filled with pictures of him posing with cosplayers as a middle age Spider-Man. Like this one:
He has a blast with it too.
Anyway. My first sketch in my first sketchbook. Only three more years to go.....
Last Five
1. Arms aloft (live) - Pearl Jam
2. The infanta - The Decemberists
3. White boy blues - Mo berg
4. Stay free - The Clash
5. Saint Simon - The Shins
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