Spectrum Live!!

 

 The recent Spectrum Live convention was completely awesome. I shared a booth with my old pal, Brooke Howell. We had tons of fun meeting up with lots of art buddies and meeting lots of new faces. I finished the Grave Watcher painting just in time to bring it along (in fact it was still wet) and I received a great response from the attendees.

 I've never seen a con like this one before -as far as the sheer number of amazing artists goes- and it went really well, especially for it being Spectrum's first con. Some highlights for me were meeting great people like Irene Gallo, Jon Schindehette, Zelda Devon and Kurt Huggins, and the painter of painters, Greg Manchess. Of course there were many more...I could go on and on.

Manning the booth didn't leave a lot of time to see all the wonderful demos, workshops,  and film screenings; I barely even managed to walk the entire floor to see all the amazing artwork. I did manage, however, to catch Greg's demo and the awesome display of the bat tumbler. 

I really hope that Cathy and Arnie Fenner decide to host the con again next year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Chaos

This is the chaos that my studio is in at the moment. I have been scrambling to get everything done in time for Spectrum Live next month in Kansas City. That painting on the board there has been calling out for attention but between ordering prints, building their supports, mounting them, negotiating assignments, and figuring out booth logistics for the show, it has been hard to knock it out. I'm feeling that a couple long nights might be coming up, indeed.

I was very excited to hear that "Laura's Sanctuary" was accepted into Spectrum 19. It was my first time submitting and although I was trying not to get nervous about it, I was pretty anxious. So I'm really happy I got in. Just one goal out of many I hope to achieve in the next few years.

I am also thrilled about an upcoming assignment I recently received to do my first wraparound book cover. I've only read part of the manuscript so far but the story seems wonderful and set within a very intriguing world. I'm not sure how much I can say about the assignment so far but I will post more about it as soon as I can.

Zelda color study

This is one of the more refined color studies I've done on a preliminary sketch. At this point I need to make a decision on whether I want to transfer this to a board and paint it in oils or just continue on it in Photoshop. Obviously the latter option would be much faster, I've already got much of the work done here and it would be much easier to do. But to have the finished oil painting of a Zelda piece would be AWESOME! Anyway....I'm still not decided on which scroll-work coloring I like better.

Zelda

A sketch for a personal painting I should be starting soon. It's one of a few new paintings I'll be making for the Spectrum show in May. I'm really excited to do some fan art for the fist time in a long time. I always wanted to do something with Zelda, my all time favorite video game.

I just got my booth assignment for Spectrum Live. I'm #907, just a stone's throw from James Gurney's and Greg Manchess' booths. It's gonna be so much fun!

The Sphaera Stone