Here’s a quick little morning sketch to get the day started. A little Ted Grant, aka The Wildcat. One of my favorite DC characters.

Brent

I was going through some work folders on my computer and stumbled upon this promo sheet for a character design I did for a possible project.

I did them to show the client I could nail the look of the character they were hoping to use as their corporate mascot. I believe the Esurance girl had really taken off at the time and this would have probably been a duplicator of her.

I remember the project came from an online job posting site. I don’t frequent those sites much anymore but I do have project alerts emailed to me that fit the categories I work in. I occasionally take a look at those if work is slow and see if anything sticks out that seems professional. That is usually rare. Mostly the projects are either not worth doing or the budgets are ridiculously low. A lot of times it’s someone who wants you to draw their new tattoo or someone who’s written a kid’s book for the first time. They don’t have money but would be willing to split the profits. Cause every book make it’s money back right?

So for the most part I avoid those places. There are clearly better routes to finding new work. But every now and then I read one that seems like they could be legit, like this one. I took 20 minutes of my day and did up some pencil designs and sent them in. They liked them and asked for an estimate and low and behold it was too much for what they were looking to spend. Not a shocker, but not real loss either. The pencils were done while sketching in the sketch book which is something I do a lot anyway. I guess the moral of this story is to be skeptical. Don’t invest more time than you can afford to on projects. You probably are not going to find a ten thousand dollar job amongst the tattoos and wannabe Twilight knockoffs but sometimes it never hurt to check.

Brent

Here’s some photos of some of the commissions I did while at the show. I know I did more than this but I either didn’t take a picture of them or they are on our other camera. If so I’ll post them later. Otherwise enjoy!

First sketch of the show.

My first ever Dr. Who drawing. Have to say I rather enjoyed doing it.

A guy named Matt stopped by my booth and was having people draw sketches of his this super hero he created. I can’t remember what the character’s name was though. Fun design to it,  old school. 

Buzz from Toy Story.

Had some people stop by who made a movie called The Transient, about a vampire Lincoln. They gave me a copy of the film in exchange for a sketch. For more on the movie go to killvampirelincoln.com

Scarlett from G.I. Joe.

The Shadow

This Race Bannon was for Chris Samnee. I sat close to Chris and his wife Laura all weekend. They are both extremely nice and I wanted to give them something after Chris sketched an amazing Creature from the Black Lagoon in my sketchbook. Hope he liked it.

I ended up doing quite a few Sinestro pieces this weekend. I only have shots of this one for now. Here’s the inks.

And here is the final color version.

That’s it for now. Once I upload the other camera there may be more. I’ll post those later.

Brent

Started the second day of the show with a fun Green Arrow sketch in a sketchbook.

Next up was a kiddie version of everyone’s favorite rocky hero The Thing.

A Black Panther piece in a sketchbook.

This is Jamie Madrox, aka The Multiple Man jam piece. I did the 90’s X-Factor version of him on the left.

Another cool sketch book making the rounds was a 70’s Marvel horror character themed book. The person had a flip book of great references for people to use. One of the images he had though for the Spider-Man villain Man-Wolf was pretty funny. So I had to do something based of that. My only regret was not having more time to do something a little better.

One of the final images I did at the show was a fun Indiana Jones piece.

Getting ready to start packing up for the day I saw this young kid dressed up as a jawa from Star Wars. She was really owning it by sticking that gun in everyone’s face.

This last photo is from the end of the day and I just want to say it was an honor sitting next to Freddie Williams. Him and his family were very cool is is was just a blast to see all the people who came up to chat with him. I bought his book about drawing comics digitally and started reading at the airport and it’s truly a great read. Can’t recommend it enough.

Brent

Here’s some character designs I recently did for a short story I am doing with writers Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir. It’s for an as of yet unannounced relationship anthology. Should be a lot of fun to do and I love Nunzio and Christina’s work. Hope to post more about this one soon but for now, all I got are some sketches.

Brent

This past weekend’s Fallcon show was awesome as usually. The weather did play a factor in attendance but overall is was still a great time. I would like to thank everyone who stopped by and bought something, or simply to chat. I really appreciate it. Here’s a photo wrap up from the show.

Started the show with a Surfer commission.

The Hulk came by to say hi. Looks a little out of breath.

Freddy came up from the boiler room but quickly went away after everyone complained about the heat not being on.

Then Godzilla came over. That badge around his neck is actually three stories tall.

Surfer finished.

Bad photo of a Hulk sketch card.

Dick Tracy walking by the table.

Very quick zombie pirate sketch.

Batman piece, that now that I look at it more, looks like he’s doing the robot dance.

Beginning of another Batman piece.

Alex Terrell stopped by for his first convention ever. He doesn’t understand why all the grown men are dressed like Captain America.

Coolest part of Sunday, I got legendary Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway to sign this illustration of the Green Goblin I did. I was actually planning on selling this piece this weekend but ended up keeping it.

Batman fully inked.

Batman fully colored.

I did some other commission before the show as well. You can check them out down below.

Great show, can’t wait till next year.

Thanks again to all who stopped by.

Brent

This past weekend I was lucky to be among the great guests at The Windy City Con in Chicago. The show was fantastic and the trip as a whole was just what the Schoonover family needed to put a nice stamp on the end of the summer.
Last Thursday the alarm went off at 3:45 AM. We had a flight to catch at 6:00 AM and needed to get to the car shuttle on time. By the time I was really awake I was in downtown Chicago at a hotel checking luggage until our room was ready. This was 8:00 PM. The wife and I had tickets to that days Cubs VS Brewers game. The hotel clerk informed us there was actually a Cubs player outside. Turned out to be Kosuke Fukudome. Personally I was hoping for Reed Johnson but what are you going to do?

Since it was so early we decided to walk around a little. Chicago always does a good job of having some unique art display in downtown. Sometimes they can be a bit goofy but I actually found this sculpture of Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting to be pretty amazing.

Feeling like we had seen enough art and culture for the day we decided it was time to get our drink on. We headed over to the game and drank with new found friends at a bar across the street. Three years in a row this makes it for us to go to Chicago to see some baseball. I think it’s a tradition worth keeping. I’ve tried to convince the wife that a White Sox game would be equally as fun but as a die hard Twins fan I don’t think it’s going to happen.

After the game we head out for dinner. All the sun and beer made the Schoonovers very exhausted. On top of being up so early we were in bed by 9:30 PM. I was told one minute I was laughing at the TV show Community and the next snoring.

Friday we slept in a little and had a pretty open day. Once again we headed over to the “Friendly Confines”, this time for a tour of the stadium. I have a thing for stadiums, especially old ones, so this was pretty cool. I love Wrigley but anyone who can’t be honest and say it’ a dump is a liar. That is part of it’s charm though. With all the new stadiums looking like shopping malls, it’s nice to see something that looks like what it was intended for. Our guide was pretty awesome and gave us a lot of info. We took a lot of photos but I’m not going to show too many. This one is the view from the press box. No wonder Harry Caray got drunk everyday, if I had this view to look forward to I would as well.

This is from the Cubs dressing room. Where they devise a plan to lose in heartbreaking fashion every day.

Found this funny illustration that is for the players and their dress code.

We ended our tour on the field. To be able to stand on the same field as Todd Hundley is a feeling I can’t describe. Probably cause he was the worst Cub of all time.

That put a wrap on the baseball part of the trip. The rest was all about comics. We headed over to friend Mike Norton’s house to hang out and met his awesome pug Ninja.

Then it was off to the pre-show party at Challengers Comics. A great store that hosted all the creators for a few hours. It was a nice little gathering before the big day. I also got to add to their artist wall.

The next day started early getting to the convention and setting up. From the minute the doors opened the crowd flooded in and thankfully so did the commissions. I got a few done the first hour alone.

I stopped and took a little break to head over to the Sketch Jam auction sponsored by the Hero Initiative. For forty five minutes artist such as myself, Katie Cook, Chris Moreno, and Tim Seeley cranked out five minutes sketches based on suggestions from the audience. All proceeds from the sketches went back to Hero. Anytime you can draw a sad fat Aquaman for a good cause it’s well worth it.

Once I finished the Sketch Jam I raced back to my table where my wife had takien a list of commissions while I was gone. From here on out the day became a blur of drawing, meeting people, and the sweet smell of markers. Here are some photos of a few commissions I did. I didn’t take photos of all of them so if you are reading this and have one you don’t see, please send a scan. I’d love to have a file of it.

Dr. Strange break!

Back to drawing….

Once the show was over and I retrieved the feeling in my drawing arm it was time for the post party. The original bar for the post party started as a nice get together among creators to talk about their day. It quickly turned into asshole central with guests being asked to remove their hats for a dress code and music turned up so high nobody could hear anything. I’m sure I agreed to work on a few projects that I have no clue what they are cause the bass on Kanye’s Golddigger drowned everything out. The remaining creators decided to march a few blocks down to a nice little hole in the wall to finish out their evening. You know you are at a cool bar when this is on the ceiling.

Finally we all wrapped up the night and kissed The Windy City Con goodbye with one last drink.

Thanks to all who came out to the show. It was a great time and I can’t wait for next year. It was a blast.

Brent

If you’ve followed this blog at all you will no doubt know my love for drawing the Hulk. I tend to draw him whenever a situation comes up that either a) I don’t feel like drawing or at least not draw anything to challenging or b) I only have a short period of time and want to get the most bang for my buck. Recently things have changed. Dick Tracy is the new Hulk it would seem. I’ve been going through the old strips over the last couple months and have even invested time looking into the submitting samples for the artist position on the strip. Sadly it seems to be wishful thinking for now but until then I’ll be pumping out character drawings like these while a large file is being saved, scanning something in, on the phone with a credit card company, or simply avoiding responsibility.

Today I’m posting a sketch of the cover to my new sketch book for this years conventions. I’ve got the entire thing wrapped up and ready to send to the printers. Once they become available I’ll post the final art. Last sketchbook had an illustration of Spider-Woman and this years character is one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, The Chameleon. The Chameleon is Spidey’s first rogue he ever faced,next to the mugger that killed his Uncle Ben. Dmitri Smerdyakov was a Russian citizen with a talent for impersonation. Eventually making his way to the U.S. he tried impersonating Spidey until he was eventually caught by old web head. Dmitri was also half brothers with Kraven the Hunter and in the sketch you can see some of Kraven’s old costume in the background framed. Anyway, just thought I’d post a little preview.

Brent

Gotta love it when you go to a place to catch a bite to eat and they have those paper table mats that you can draw on. Just grab some crayons and go at it.

Brent