I got an idea for a Wahoo Morris poster, print, or wrap-around-cover the other day and did a quick sketch. It was inspired by a classic photo of the Beatles that was in the newspaper which I thought I could adapt for my purposes. It will be a while before I have the time to finish this, but I thought I would post the sketch now.

I’ve mentioned before that I was working on a story to be included in the upcoming Image anthology COMIC BOOK TATTOO: Stories inspired by The Songs of Tori Amos.

I was illustrating a script by Jim Bricker, inspired by the song GOD.

Well, I finished up the art and colours yesterday and sent them off to the editor for inclusion in the book. It was my first attempt at colouring a full story, so I’ll be nervously awaiting the book coming back from the printer to see how my effort turns out.

We were asked to not show any art until the press junket had started. I think showing a panel or two should be okay at this point.

The story itself is a conversation piece, which I’ve done a lot of in WAHOO MORRIS, so to challenge myself I decided to try and draw in a new style. I was going for a vaguely Tintin-ish cartoony realism style. I’m a little too close to the job still, so I’m not sure how successful I was. Plus, as I said before, the whole job of colouring a story was new to me. So the story really was one big experiment!

Colouring is a skill I would like to develop, though. I’ll definitely jump at the chance to do another colour story when the opportunity comes along.

Since making the decision to get back into doing comics two years ago, it had always been my intention to start pursuing mainstream work once WAHOO MORRIS was back on track. While many opportunities have come up in that time that have kept WAHOO MORRIS from getting to where I want it to be, I started working on some mainstream samples back in September (those samples are still in the unfinished stages because of the increased workload I’ve been under lately, but that’s another story!).

But, back in late October, in anticipation of having those new samples to show, I emailed a link to my existing portfolio to every editor I could find an address for, and got a number of positive responses. So when Mark Paniccia at Marvel Comics emailed me in late February, asking me to do some sample sketches for their new MARY JANE series, I was pleasantly surprised but I didn’t put two and two together.

See, on January 31st, the cut-off date for email entries for Marvel Comic’s talent search ChesterQuest, I sent CQ a link to my on-line portfolio as well. I’d actually forgotten about it, but about 15 minutes after receiving the email from Mark Paniccia, I received an email from C.B. Cebulski himself letting me know that I had made it into the semi-finals of ChesterQuest. Needless to say, I was thrilled!

So, I ran out and got some reference for Mary Jane, did some sketches and sent them in.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Two days before I was leaving on vacation, the suspense got the better of me and I emailed to ask if they were close to a decision. Unfortunately, the reason I can now talk about this whole experience is that the decision was not in my favour. They chose to go with one of the other artists under consideration. You win some, you lose some.

I will admit that I was second guessing myself from the moment I sent the sketches in that I shouldn’t have drawn the characters so “on model” of the original artist’s style, and instead drawn them more in my style. Who knows… I’ll be very interested to see what the art looks like when the book comes out.

Obviously I’m disappointed that I didn’t land the job. I think it would have been a fun gig, but, there will be other opportunities. I’m still pretty excited that I made it as far as I did. I believe there were something like 1200 entries world wide, so it’s pretty encouraging that I made it into the top 30 and was being seriously considered for an assignment.

Anyway, I’ve been bursting at the seams since February 25th wanting to tell the world the news!

Lastly, a big “Thank you!” goes out to C.B. Cebulski, Mark Paniccia, and Marvel Comics for the opportunity!

This is a piece I drew as a potential cover for Wahoo Morris, back before I decided to stop publishing singles and go with a direct to trade paperback publishing model.

I was a little frustrated with a Work For Hire project I was working on, and got some bad news about another job I was waiting on, so i decided to to sit down and ink this to clear my head. It took about 2 hours in one sitting.

I might end up using it as spot art in the next Wahoo Morris book.

That set of fill-in comics I did for Microsoft way back in January? Well, they finally ran last week so I guess it’s okay to post them now, with a link back to the main site.

It’s interesting scrolling through the archives. The art style changes every week, and sometimes multiple times during the week. I’ve been reading a lot of the comments and most of the complaints are about the characters look changing.

When I did the three day’s worth of strips, there was almost no reference material for any of the characters and I imagine that was the same for most of the art teams as I believe they tried to get several weeks worth of buffer by using a number of artists and studios simultaneously. I was given the first 7 days of pencils, beautifully drawn by Rich Burchett, and that was it. After I had drawn my three days I was then given a character sketch each for the other two characters. I tried to stick as close as I could to the look he initiated. How successful I was is up for debate.

All things considered I think the strips turned out nice.