Lea's Leo

This is it- Dooney and I leave for Toronto tomorrow and final preparations are being made. I'm dreading somewhat the panel on Sunday but maybe I'll just let Mike do all the talking.
Anyways, I wanted to make one last post before we leave. This is one of the advance commissions that I got. It's from Lea, and she asked me to do her a Leo meditating. My first thought was to just do a single figure of Leo, seated in a lotus position type thing- but thinking a little more it seemed that a nice scene might be better. This is the result.

Color TMNT Groupshot

Since last week, I've been real antsy about wanting to play with the paints some more- so, over this past weekend I inked up a Turtle groupshot with the idea that I would color it and take it with me to Toronto. Even though there's probably other things that I should be doing, yesterday afternoon I went downstairs to the official Mirage Studios lunchroom ( I needed a big space) and spent a few hours with my watercolors.

Tales 66 Cover

Right now, I'm going slightly crazy, what with getting ready for the Toronto show. The fourth issue of the Don mini is nearly pencilled and I've been extra busy with advance orders for commissions for that event (FanExpo). It's good though, I really like doing it this way- it's better for me as I can draw without any distractions, and I think that the person getting the sketch gets a better quality drawing.
In the midst of this, I've been forgetting that Dan needs the cover for Tales 66 for solicitation purposes. This morning, after getting to work, I reread his script and this image sorta came to me. I think what I like best about it, is that it's a little different than most Turtle covers and that it's the first Tales/Turtle cover that has no TMNT imagery on it.

Mike for Rosemary

When we were in San Diego, Roseangelo asked me to do her a commission sketch. The thing about this sketch was that she wanted it in color. Now, I have to admit that I'm having difficulty remembering the last time that I colored anything, but I agreed to it.
It was fun. I got out my ancient and somewhat dried out set of watercolors and went at it.
So thanks Rose, for pushing me to do something that I probably ordinarily wouldn't have. Your sketch is on it's way.

The scanner's down here- so I took a photo of the finished sketch.

Casey and Raph

Becky sent me an email last week with a request. FanExpo is next week and I will be seeing her there, but she asked me if I couldn't set aside some pages for her that she wanted and along with those, if I could do her a commission of Casey and Raph together. This is that drawing.

Paleo In Russian

I've been corresponding with a fan named Arseniy Dubakov for a few years now. I think that I'm correct in saying that he is really into the Turtles and even self-publishes his own Turtle comic. This comic, I don't know if you'd call it a alternate take of the Turts or just a re-imagining of the Turtle universe but it's a very gritty/sexy world his version of the Mirage characters operate in. His comic is called SaiNW and issue number 3 is due out September 9. Arseniy's work has been featured here on Boxburning before- he sent me a birthday card that I posted here last February. Very cool stuff.
Arseniy approached me and asked if I wouldn't mind if he could translate and post issues from my old Paleo series, and naturally this is the cover from the first one. It just looked so cool, and he did such a nice job that I had to give him credit here for all his hard work. The comic (Paleo #1) is on Rapidshare and available for download here.

The Brain Thief 4/Page 6

San Diego is now a dimming memory and I feel that I'm getting back into my regular schedule. Tristan's Tales issue (64) has been pencilled and put aside briefly as I begin to concentrate on pencilling the last of the Don mini books. Eric is inking on this series, and has told me on several occasions that he's really diggin' the way that they're coming out but I personally, have yet to see any final art.
I hope that I'm not giving anything away by posting sneak peaks of the art, but I thought that this page pretty much apes the cover image, which has been revealed here before.

In other news, I was originally going to go to the Toronto show, then after San Diego I changed my mind and decided that I was going to pass on it. Since then, Mirage has sort of made it clear that they want the artists to go... so with a little bit of arm-twisting I'm back on board.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Hey- I was away last week. My family and I broke out of our normal lives and got up to Maine with the goal of logging in some beach time and doing some of the normal tourist-type activities that vacationers do. With that in mind, one day we drove up to Old Orchard Beach. It was mid-morning when I took this picture, however you can see that the haze off the ocean was pretty intense. OOB was just mobbed with people, of every shape and size, and it was all right there put out on display. Delightfully tacky.

Steve Lavigne lives in the same town that we rented the house we stayed at. I rode my motorcycle up with the idea that he and I would get out for a ride on one of the vacation days. He picked me up on Wednesday morning and with the promise that we would return in a few hours, we went for an all day ride. We rode through the town where he grew up (Westbrook) and stopped to see his dad, then got pizza and then went to this crazy cool biker bar called Bentley's. That is where I took this photo of Steve trying to explain why it is we were gone all day. Nice.

This dinner kicked ass.