Another week, another blog. I'm beginning to enjoy this.
This week has been both refreshing and hectic, and I feeling an odd mix of relaxed excitement as I write this. At the beginning of the week I regretfully decided that it was time to end a long standing collaboration with my friend, Travis Johnson. Since Speakeasy closed it's doors and our deal with them fell through, we had been attempting to put together a new project to pitch to new publishers. Unfortunately, such an effort doesn't pay the bills and with a daughter on the way I've decided it's best to put this one on the shelf for the time being. On Wednesday I cleaned out the sketchbooks, scrapping the multitude of random doodles and scribbles related to the project, and filing away all the good stuff so we can revisit the project at some point down the road. Clearing out the piles of old work also helped to clear my head, and I feel both refreshed and revitalized as a result.
The rest of my week has been spent gearing for Friday, June 30th, which will be spent watching "Superman Returns" with Jim Lee. Damn, that sounds spicy, doesn't it? The local comic book store (http://www.musecomics.com/) has arranged one hell of a promotion for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Jim Lee will be doing a signing at the store on the day Superman opens, and for a small donation you get to go to the movie with Jim.
I, of course, also see this as an opportunity to get some of my work under Jim's nose. I know there's little to no chance that this will yield more than a few polite comments and pointers, but what the hell. I won't be able to make Comic-Con this year, and I figure my chances of getting a job out of Jim Lee are about the same as they are there. The problem, of course, is that I don't really think I have the right kind of work in my portfolio to really knock his socks off, and knock his socks off I'll have to if I want anything to come of this. So I've thrown my back into it. I've been working day and night all week trying to come up with that certain something that will make Jim go "Wow". And even if he doesn't, I'll have bulked up my portfolio this week with some of the best work I've ever done. Perhaps it won't be enough to win Jim over, but it's certainly going to help down the line.
My first few forays have been inking some of Jim's pencils that have been provided by the store as part of the promotion. Wow. This has given me a whole new level of respect for Jim's drawing ability. Easily the hardest inking I've ever taken on. My first two attempts can be found here and here. I haven't nailed it yet, but I've learned more in the past few days about inking than I had in the past ten years. And I've got a few more on the way. I've also done up this one, from a Top Cow packet they gave out at Comic-Con awhile back. I'm working on some pencil samples as well, I'm post them before the weekend if I get the chance.
Well, that's all the news for now. Back to the drawing board for me.
Thanks,
Daniel
2 comments:
Dan,
Love all of them. The Witchblade piece is especially gorgeous.
Hey there Jamie, thanks. The Witchblade page was a lot of fun, and much easier to than the Jim Lee. I have a few more Top Cow pages kicking around that I'm going to try to get to. I've also found some more Jim Lees on the net that I want to take a crack at. I have an even bigger appreiciation work his ability now that I've tried to ink him. He really puts his back into each page in ways that I'd never noticed until I got in there with the brushes and crowquills.
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