This is it folks, time for the big show of the year. This year at San Diego Comic Con I will be sitting next to Frank Cho over at Steve Morger’s  Big Wow Art booth in the Artist Area of the con at booth 4903. It’s a big booth and sharing it with us will be a full compliment of talents, including Mike Mayhew, David Williams, Sanjulian,  Doug Sneyd, Travis Charest, Ernie Chan, Joe Jusko, Ted McKeever, Dan Brereton and, part time, Jane Wiedlin/Bill Morrison and Jason Eden.

I will have a number of limited prints, but the big draw will be the debut of my new artbook “Illuminations 2009″. I got it back from the printer a few days ago and it looks amazing. It’s 8 1/2 x 11 sized, with 52 interior pages in black and white and color showing not seen before art, including roughs and final pieces in all sorts of mediums. It will be signed and numbered, and limited to 1000 copies. The price will be $15 a copy. I will also have some copies of my hardcover artbook “Venus Overdrive” which came out last year. Here is the cover for “Illuminations 2009″, it’s slightly different from the originally posted art as everyone said I made her look pregnant.

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Also this year is something I’m really proud of, another collaboration between Frank Cho and myself. He created the line art, and I digitally painted it. It’s a print of Deja Thoris from the John Carter of Mars series, 14 x 24 inches, lithographed on a beautiful heavy stock. It’s limited to 300 copies at $25 each, numbered and signed by both of us. We’ll have packing materials at the show that have worked great for us the last couple of years. I’d recommend getting these early, we usually sell out by Friday or Saturday.

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So come on by and see Frank and myself and say “Hi” if you’d like to take a look in person.

In my new artbook for the year, I have a lot more process stuff in there this year so people cans see how I work. I am one of those guys who tends to try and put only my completed stuff out there as I like to put my best foot forward. But since people seem to like seeing the buildup, I thought I’d show a little more rougher stuff.

Here is the evolution of a cover I just completed for the Nova series from Marvel. I have the sketch, inks, and final stage, but no pencils as I forgot to scan them. You can see how the sketch changed on the cover after some feedback from the editors, that happens all the time, which is why I suppose they have you do sketches in the first place.

Here are some scans of a Conan commission I did at the Heroes Convention. I normally don’t have time to do much work at shows, but I was able to squeeze this one in. I have scanned the pencils, the partial inks, and the final inks for you to see. I do a lot of my work inthe inks stage as you can see, as I’ve been inking myself exclusively for many years now and have developed my own shorthand in the pencilling stage.

I just got back from the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC. What a great show, loved seeing everyone familiar and new there! Thanks again to Shelton and everyone else at the show for taking such good care of me.

I’ve added a bunch more convention appearances in August and September, so here is my new updated convention schedule for the rest of the summer:

July 22-26, 2009
Comic-Con International
http://www.comic-con.org/cci/

San Diego Convention Center
111 W. Harbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92101

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 : 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Thursday, July 23, 2009 : 9:30 am – 7:00 pm
Friday, July 24, 2009 : 9:30 am – 7:00 pm
Saturday, July 25, 2009 : 9:30 am – 7:00 pm
Sunday, July 26, 2009 : 9:30 am – 5:00 pm

August 15-16, 2009
Dallas Comic Con
http://www.scifiexpo.com/DCC/dallascomiccon.html

Richardson Civic Center
411 West Arapaho Road
Richardson, TX

Saturday, August 15, 2009 : 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Sunday, August 16, 2009 : 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm

August 22-23, 2009
Mini Megacon
http://www.megaconvention.com

Orange County Convention Center Hall E1
9899 International Drive
Orlando, FL 32819

Saturday, August 22, 2009 : 10:00 am – 7:00 pm
Sunday, August 23, 2009 : 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

September 4-7, 2009
Dragon*Con
http://www.dragoncon.org

Marriott Marquis Atlanta
265 Peachtree Center Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30303

Friday, September 4, 2009 : 10:00 am – 7:00 pm
Saturday, September 5, 2009 : 10:00 am – 7:00 pm
Sunday, September 6, 2009 : 10:00 am – 7:00 pm
Monday, September 7, 2009 : 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

October 10-11, 2009
Baltimore Comic-Con
http://www.comicon.com/baltimore/index.htm

Baltimore Convention Center
One West Pratt Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Saturday, October 10, 2009 : 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Sunday, October 11, 2009 : 10:00 am – 5:00 pm

The inks for the Supergirl commission, complete with batputer and the reason for the hearts. A fun piece to do.

Another commission piece, this time with Supergirl. The raw pencils and the start of the inks. There is a specific theme with this and a reason why she looks lovesick. The background will reveal all, the inks should be up very soon. This week should have a lot more art post.

I really goofed off today and saw two movies. That’s the benefit of working in comics and not having a real job, so “ha!”

Very different movies, but both great in their own ways. The first is Up!, which is from Pixar meaning you know it will at least be good if not amazing. Well, it was amazing. I saw it in Disney 3D, at 11:45 at night with a theater of teenagers, and we were all entertained. Once again, Pixar has layered a story with many different levels for all ages, and tied it all together with a big heart. The people who work there are the best storytellers of this generation in any medium I can think of. The 3D is growing on me, but it’s a gimmick that may become too overused. There were a lot of trailers for other movies coming soon before Up! and some don’t look like 3D will be adding much to them, if you know what I mean. Here’s hoping Hollywood doesn’t drive the whole 3D thing into the ground, but who am I kidding, they will.

The second movie I saw earlier with my friend Jimmy Palmiotti was called Drag me to Hell. Now, folks who know me know I don’t care for a certain type of horror movie. Slasher films and others in that ilk tend to have a lot of dumb people running around getting killed in interesting ways. I hate watching dumb people. I get incredibly annoyed with dummies in real life so I don’t like to see them in my entertainment, even if they do get offed by a maniac with a chainsaw. This is not one of those movies. It’s fun, gross, and campy, and just really well done. Beautifully written with Sam Raini handling that job and directing. He’s so good, I miss him not doing Spider-man movies. I like Spider-man just fine, but the last one was so bad I just think the series should stop and let Sam go do what so obviously is his true calling in films.

This summer has been pretty good for movies so far, I have high hopes for a few more coming out soon. But sitting at any movie beats working during a hot summer day. It’s good to be in comics!

The inks for the final piece. I added a lot more detail in areas like the capes and integrated the digital stuff so the piece ties together better.

The pencils and a little digital work for a Dark Knight commission, near the end of the book where he’s whupped Superman’s crying baby butt. The trashcan and lightpost I made digitally and printed to the board, as it saved a lot of work. The inks will be coming shortly. This is a pretty raw pencils scan, something I am normally loathe to show, but I keep getting told my rough stuff should be shown more, so there you go.

The inks for the finished Conan/Red Sonja commission. I used a little Photoshop technique on the background to create the stippling from a greyscale drawing I did for the piece. This stippling gets printed onto the boards directly, and then I add my final inks to finish the piece off.