A little late with this one, but wanted to get it out of here before Boston Comic Con this weekend. Hope you all like it!
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Posts Tagged ‘sandman’
22 items.
A couple more commissions from the big show. My, I was prolific.
This one in pencil.
Sandman and Thessaly
on August 19th, 2012Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work, Culture, Comics, Colleen's Work, Commissions, Culture, Comics, DC Comics, Sandman
I don’t take commissions very often, because I am quite slow. I hope they are worth waiting for. Poor dude waited well over a year for this.
I didn’t use any models on this, which might have made the job go faster. The funny backstory here is that Thessaly is based on me a bit, and I guess that makes my job easier when I draw her!
Here’s a detail:
I still have parts of several major commissions to finish, and if I could get a free week, I think I could pull it off. I mean to get them all completed before I go to New York next month.
My pencil technique is exactly the opposite of what they teach now in art school. I do not use the side of the pencil, or graphite. I use the sharp tip of the pencil, and build up everything from hundreds of strokes. This is the way old masters drew back in the day with silverpoint. It’s a look I love, but almost no one does it because it is so laborious. The popular prejudice is for the 1950-ish commercial art drawing style. I like that, but it’s not what I want to do myself.
I am using this technique on the new Neil Gaiman graphic novel I am doing for Dark Horse. You can imagine how happy I am to be doing this project! The drawings will then be colored with thin washes of watercolor, digitally, or both.
The final work will look similar to this piece I did for the cover of Orbiter. The original drawing here:
And the final painting.
And on Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo, I layered handmade abstract paintings over my drawings, and then did final colors in Photoshop.
Thanks for visiting my website. Go read my webcomic. I hope you enjoy it.
Also, I did a lively podcast interview here where I talk about a number of my upcoming projects.
c
I set aside many more pieces of art to sell, but I just can’t take it any more. This is the last round. I won’t be posting anything else for at least six months.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for your VERY generous support. Not only am I absolutely amazed at the great response to these sales, I am so very happy to know I can rely on my pile o’ art to fund a good deal of the end of A Distant Soil next year. How far that will go, I do not know. But I had no idea people would be so interested in my sketches and prelims. Holy cow. Very flattering and encouraging!
OK, here’s the last of it.
A very nice and tight Sandman prelim intended for The Sandman Gallery. I am stunned to find this. I did not know when I got the assignment that I’d have an opportunity to paint a piece, and did this sketch with inks in mind.
One of the few pieces I have ever made available from the A Distant Soil prequel Seasons of Spring, which is out of print. This piece was a promotional pin-up showing the Scott family with tiny Jason and Liana, siblings, mom Jessica, and alien dad Aeren. Pen and ink.
An unused splash page from Power Pack issue #1, showing Julie Power battling a snark. Pencils.
An unpublished page from The Book of Lost Souls issue #7, showing the new villain who will probably never get published now, using tarot cards to scare the crap out of a football jock with a girlie underwear fetish. This was part of the Kranner Art Museum’s exhibit “Out of Sequence”.
And wow, here’s a treat. Back when I was in high school, I was in The Legion of Superheroes apazine, INTERLAC. Keith Giffen saw my art in the zine and asked if I would like to audition to be the series artist on Legion. Alas, I already had a letter of agreement with Publisher Zero to do A Distant Soil. And we all know how that went.
But behold, my audition page. I doubt I would have gotten the job, but I was cognizant of the need for speed as a pro artist, and wrote in the margins how much time it took me to draw each page. This page took 3 hours and 28 minutes.
At some point, I went through that page and erased all my lettering. I did not know artists weren’t supposed to add that stuff. And my writing sucked.
I have a couple of other auctions up as well, but the big stuff is all Lord of the Rings collectibles, payment from a vendor who owed me a lot of dough. I got paid in Samwise Gamgee heads. Among other things. Since I am going to New Zealand in a matter of weeks, what better way to finance cocktails at the base of Mount Doom then by selling a few of these babies? Check out the great low prices on a few of those toys!
I’ve been hanging on to this stuff for years hoping to get my investment back. Providence, don’t let me down!
After all this, a frantic week of shipping. Oh, boy!
And we are only 225 people away from my 2000 followers goal on Twitter. When I hit the magic number, ONE of you will win a $300 prize package of books featuring my work and original art from A Distant Soil. You’ll get Orbiter by Warren Ellis, The Book of Lost Souls by J Michael Straczynksi, Amazing Spider-Man 326, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #600 AND an advance copy of MANGAMAN, my NEW graphic novel by Barry Lyga, not in stores for a month!
Also, FIFTY followers will get an autographed comic from me! ANY follower in the first 2000 can win!
Sign up!
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Unpublished Sandman, Star Wars, Tarzan, Fallen Angels and rarely seen short story art for sale
on September 18th, 2011Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work
My art sale auctions continue! CLICK HERE TO BUY!
The last of my art will post on October 1. Then all of my direct art and books sales are suspended until further notice. Of course, you can still buy my books at stores and other online shops, but I’ll be out of the country and unable to handle mail order. If you want to buy any books or art for Christmas, now is the last chance to get them from me.
On sale now, a full page of Sandman and Death prelims for The Sandman 20th anniversary exhibit at Gallery Nucleus. 
The final version of this piece was shown HERE.
One of the last two Star Wars Clone Wars Widescreen Artist Proof Sketch cards. These are getting very high prices. I am really glad people like them!
A page of practice doodles for an unpublished official Tarzan project for European publisher Semic. Circa about 1994.
An unpublished Fallen Angels II cover sketch for the unpublished KIA series by Marvel. Circa 1987.
A rarely seen splash page from the short story “Eugenie”, which I wrote and drew in the 1980′s, and reprinted in a later issue of A Distant Soil. One of my favorite pieces, as a straight on romance, this is not the sort of thing publishers usually go for, but if the prices I’ve been getting on the original art are any indication, the public likes it fine.
One of the frustrating things about being an illustrator is seeing your favorite art get lower prices because it is not connected to a major project from a big client. A beautiful page can go for chump change because it wasn’t drawn for The X-Men. When art from an obscure project like this gets a good price, it is very gratifying.
This go-round of auctions has been amazingly successful. I’d sworn off ebay some years ago, because not only do I not thrill to the terms, but my art prices were dropping and I had some serious problems with bidders.
Now my prices are significantly higher, and the collectors have been incredibly kind and supportive. This gives me confidence for financing more A Distant Soil next year, since most of my time will be eaten up by the end of the series. I have great confidence that I can finance the end without resorting to extreme fundraising. If I do have to go Kickstarter, I don’t think I’m going to need a big financial boost.
There are many more unseen pieces in my files I know people will want. But everything goes back off the market in a couple of weeks, so get what you can while you can!
Thank you for all your support!
When this round finishes, I think I will also be finished with Gone to Amerikay, and can start winding up my commissions list, as well as getting into serious work on my new GN for Dark Horse. Spent the last month doing layouts and taking reference photos!
Now, go read my A Distant Soil webcomic. It’s online and advertiser supported, so you don’t have to fork over the dough to feast your eyes. Isn’t that nice?
c
