Raphael On Rooftop

I'm nearly done pencilling Tales 66- I should be able to wrap that up this week, hopefully. In the meantime, I've only got a few commissions left to go on my list and this is one of them.
This is for Michael.

Canadian Waterfall

This photo is from my recent trip to Quebec. I wish I could remember just exactly where the heck this was. To the best of my recollection, it was just south of a town called Mattasini. Or was it Mattagami? Anyways, after getting lunch there, we hopped on the bikes for a short distance and stopped. The sound of flowing water filled the air and just beyond the parking lot was this incredible vista. I have to admit, it took my breath away.
So yesterday, I took Pete's little panorama maker thingie and loaded the photos that I took. I was a little confused about how to get the program to work but after some messing around the result is, I think, pretty incredible.

Don on Rooftop

This is a commission sketch done for Melinda. She asked for a Don, and it seemed that she wanted him in something other than your normal fighting pose- she pretty much left it up to me. This is my first real "scene" painting, and I was a little nervous about having to cover a large piece of blank background. Hopefully it came out ok.

Casey Jones/Boba Fett

Since my return, I've been trying to give some attention to the short list of commission sketches that I have to do. This is one of those and it was a fun one- Casey Jones in Boba Fett's armor.

I'm Back...

...from my little bike trip/vacation. I had a great time- no one fell down and I've got a few stories to tell but for now I thought that I would post a few choice photos and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Random Duoshade Drawings

The combination of having at my disposal both Duoshade paper and my new Pocket Pen, is proving irresistable to me. These are a few of the drawings that I've managed to bang out over the last few days.

As a side note- this will be my last post for awhile.

Super Secret New SaiNW Cover Revealed

Back in the Spring I think it was, Arseniy Dubakov emailed me and asked if I would create a cover for his fan fiction TMNT-sourced comic SaiNW. Arseniy has been a great and helpful friend to me and I'm thinking in particular of his Russian translations of my PALEO series. This he has done for no financial gain- just as a service to myself and the Russian fans that he thought would enjoy reading the comics.
Anyways, back to the cover. Arseniy told me what he wanted and with a little art direction from him, this is the piece that I delivered. It features a despondent Leo, kneeling before Splinter's grave. This, as I understand it, is reflective of a scene taken from the 4Kids cartoon. Like I've said before, this comic is a very edgy take on the Turtles and I'm a huge fan. Find out more about it here.

Raph

This is the second of the 2 commissions that I got done yesterday. Becky asked me to do her a Raphael in color.

Don and Klunk

This is a short week for me. Today's a holiday, and although I'm here, I'm gonna blast out early. Friday, I leave on my Great Canadian Adventure- a 9 day motorcycle ride into the remote regions of Northern Quebec. I must be psyched for the ride, as the bike is sitting in the garage, practically already packed.
Anyways, especially since the Toronto show, I've gotten a few commission requests. To all of these people, I've told them that I couldn't really find the time to work on any drawings until I get back. However I did, find some time that is. So I got a couple done and this is the first. It's for Marie, and she asked if I would do her a Klunk and Don in color. To Marie, I hope you like it and I'll send it out soon.

New Brush

When I was in Toronto, I got a new brush. It's called a Pocket Brush, and it's made by Pentel- I thought that it might be ideal to use with the watercolors as it uses a permanent ink. I played around with it a little bit at the show, and found it to be a little tricky. It's point is long and tapered to a fine tip (good) but it is so soft and juicy that it takes a very delicate hand to get the best out of it (bad).
Combined with this new inking weapon, when I got back to the studio on Monday there was a big box of Duo-Shade paper waiting. Duo-Shade is the stuff that Kevin and Pete used to use on the original TMNT comic. It's really very cool to work on and it's neatness was kind of resurrected in my brain after the recent job that Eric and I did for Ubisoft (the cutscenes from the Turtle Smash-Up game). Anyways, I wanted to play around with both so just for fun, I cranked out this Turtle Groupshot.

The Bromance

Becky was nice enough to send me this picture and I just had to post it. It's from FanExpo- Sunday night specifically, and it's me and Dooney gettin' it on.

I wasn't drunk, really.

FanExpo

Mike Dooney and I flew back from Toronto yesterday. It was a pretty uneventful day, other than we both got to stand in line for customs with Bruce Campbell. Mike even got up the nerve to compliment him for his role on BURN NOTICE. In acknowledgement of that, Mike recieved a small smile and slight nod from the mega star. Nice.
Back to the show. The crowds were big- but not crazy big, and there were lots of costumed characters in attendance (which this show seems particularly good for). Many fans came by- some of whom we hadn't seen in a year, and some that we hadn't seen in only a few weeks. Dooney and I were squeezed a little bit- as we had in the booth space what amounted to one Artist's Alley table, but we made out ok. It really was a good show.
The panel on Sunday went fine. I'm not really comfortable in that type situation, but Mairead and Lea said that it (the panel), they thought was better than the one we did in New York, so good there. At the panel, 4Kids showed a preview of the TURTLES FOREVER animation. It was great seeing the movie again, even in this highly-edited form. And- speaking of previews, the TMNT documentary guys showed an early cut of some of FROM MIRAGE TO REALITY. It really was cool to see this early look at what the documentary is going to be like and there's some obscure nuggets of Mirage history there. Scary.


Speaking of scary, a scary hot April came by the booth. Her name is Carol Zara, and if you like what you see, more of her can be found at DigitallyBlonde.com. She really is a very nice person, and she seemed genuinely happy to meet us. Business at the booth seemed to increase somewhat while she was there...I can't understand why.


This is a commission for Coral. It's Mikey and Coral's character, who as I understand it, have some sort of thing going on. I kept it PG for the kids.


Me and Coral and her drawing.


Lastly, this is (from L to R)- Mairead, Lea, Coral and Becky. I think I speak for Dooney too, when I say that it was great getting to hang out with this group. Miss you guys already. Thanks to everyone who came by the booth and yes, I got my wake up call.