Sketchbook: My best Christmas present

There have been many, many TMNT sleeping bags made over the years, but THIS ONE is the one I’m talking about.

Sketchbook: Where he lives and what he brings

My 2 year old daughter is convinced Santa lives in our chimney… so suck it everyone else, I guess. WE GOT SANTA IN OUR CHIMNEY AND HE’S BRINGING ME BEER.

Sketch Cover Sale! Help my classroom out and get some artwork!

It’s that time again, readers… time for me to hawk my good to y’all. I love drawing on sketch covers and now you can love owning one of the sketch covers I loved all over with my pencils, pens, and markers! That sounds like a good sales pitch, right???

Anyway, I’m trying to scrape some money together for the Gem City Comic Con at the end of the month. My students and I are paneling at the show on Saturday and I’d like to have a little extra scratch for gas and other amenities. Last year I gave the kids a couple of bucks and let them go crazy at the long boxes, and that was super awesome.

…so here’s the deal, y’all – you can purchase any one of these predrawn sketch covers are $20 dollars apiece. That covers the actual cost of the comic (usually around $3-$5 dollars), my drawing fee (probably around $10 bucks, we’re not talking crazy rates here) and shipping to you.  I have a PayPal account and if you drop me a comment here with the book you’re interested in, we can work out the details.

SPECIAL SUPER ADDED BONUS TIME!!!

Around Christmas, I acquired a sizable stack of blank sketch covers for IDW’s GI Joe #1.

Same deal as above, $20 dollars and I’ll draw you something on there are send it your way… only you get to choose what I draw for you. Please keep in mind, it’ll be in the style in which I draw the journal comic, so plan your choices accordingly. I’ll draw your favorite COBRA guy… or hell, I’ll draw whatever you like on there. Want a GI Joe comic with my version of Serpentor? Great! Want a cover where I draw something about Romeo & Juliet? I can do that!

Holiday doodles for students

I get students asking me for drawings a lot. The way I manage these requests: On the last day of classes before mid-semester exams, I allow students the period to prepare an index card full of whatever materials they think they might need for the upcoming test. While they work on that, I pass around a clipboard and have them write down something they want me to draw for them. I like to joke that these quick doodles are their holiday gifts.

 

Doodle Day: The Bard Over the Garden Wall

Here’s a little doodle I did in preparation for second semester’s Shakespeare work in my classroom. I liked it enough to ink it and scan it… but not enough to color it. If you’d like to color this, you’re more than welcome.

On the other hand, here’s a doodle I did of the characters from the Cartoon Network mini-series Over the Garden Wall. I liked this one enough to get out the Prismacolor markers… but marker colored pieces always look weird when I scan ’em.

OTGW was fantastic, by the way.

Sketchbook: New Scooby Doo?

It’s dumb, and I can’t believe this joke hasn’t been made somewhere before… but since my kids are all about Scooby Doo, the character’s been on my mind lately.

Sketchbook: Tons o’ stuff

A random assemblage of sketchbook stuff including:

Barry Ween: Judd Winick’s boy genius creation has always been a favorite of mine. I understand the market forces which moved Winick toward writing superhero comics and working in the entertainment industry but geez Judd… MORE BARRY WEEN PLEASE:)

Doonesbury: I’ve been looking at a lot of the older Holt, Rinehart, and Winston collections of Garry Trudeau’s comic strip. Not much can beat Doonesbury in terms of newspaper comic strips during its’ run in the late ’70’s/early ’80’s.

Eggbert the Talking Christmas Egg: The New York Times can explain this oddity of my Hudson Valley childhood quite a bit better than I ever could.

Sketchbook: Romeo and Juliet

In drawing these comics about my teaching of Romeo and Juliet this year, I noticed I’ve been using the same designs of some of the characters. I didn’t set out to design these characters and I think it shows in those comics from earlier in the week. I decided to try and refine a bit more. Here you can see some quick sketches of (clockwise from top) Romeo, Lord Capulet, Tybalt and Juliet.

Romeo had kind of a Disney prince character thing going on, which is kind of interesting I guess.

Sketchbook: Student awesomeness

No comic today but here are a couple of things I’ve been sitting on for a few months.

 

A sketch page I stole from Sade, one of my students this year. I thought it was so good I couldn’t resist. It reminds me of the kind of thing I do in my sketchbook from time to time. Look at this, she’s so good!

sketchbook: world’s finest

Elliot asked me to draw him a Batman and a Superman and here it is.

Happy New Year! I still have two days of break left… I should probably start grading and preparing for the second semester, huh?