06/22/08 - Lexington Comic Art Show - Call to Artists!

Comics, cartooning and illustration works are commonly thought of as being inferior to the fine art typically displayed in art galleries. With this misconception in mind it is with a great deal of excitement that I want to announce this joint project between LexArts and CCG that we have been working on for the past several months. Thanks to Nathan Zamarron, the Community Arts Manager at LexArts, for involving the CCG in the genesis of this event. Our goal is to have submissions representative of the entire commonwealth and therein to document the talent, diversity of voice, and artistic commitment of our graphic storytellers.

The window for submitting is somewhat short - so don't delay! The show is open to all ages with under 18 and 18 and over age categories. Comic pages, comic strips and single panel humor or editorial cartoons are all fair game for this show.

Look for more posts about this gallery show and associated events including possible lecture(s) and workshop(s). Follow this link to find the call to artists with all the information you will need to submit to the show.

The Mike Wieringo Scholarship

Mike Wieringo Scholarship "The 'Ringo" Announced
Wieringo's Friends and Family to Host Special Fundraising Booth at HeroesCon

When Mike Wieringo abruptly passed away last August, the comics industry lost more than a great artist and creator – it lost a friend. Now, Mike's family has teamed with the Savannah College of Art and Design to create The Mike Wieringo Scholarship or "The 'Ringo" to help keep his spirit of generosity alive.

Created by Mike's brother Matt and his sister-in-law Suzanne, the 'Ringo is designed to help provide similar help to artists at the Savannah College of Art and Design or SCAD. Domestic and international students with have a minimum 3.0 grade point average who demonstrate financial need and display a serious interest in pursuing comics as a career are eligible. The scholarship will take effect in the artist's second year of classes, and is renewable for up to two additional years, provided the student continues to meet the criteria.

The recipient will be chosen from three finalists determined by the college in a portfolio review by Matt and Suzanne Wieringo, along with a rotating group. The ultimate goal for the 'Ringo is to raise enough funds so that it can cover a full year's expenses at SCAD, approximately $30,000.

Toward this end, a table staffed by Mike's family and friends will be set up in his traditional spot in Artists Alley at Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. Heroes was a big part of Mike's life and career, and was the industry event he most looked forward to every year.

The table will raise funds through donations and the sale of remaining copies of Mike's sketchbooks, copies of comics featuring Mike's work, selected pieces of Mike's original artwork, sketches by Mike's friends in the industry who will be appearing at the booth, and items donated by other comic professionals. Pros appearing include Jeff Parker, Rich Faber, Craig Rousseau, Todd Dezago, Mark Waid, Richard Case and more to be announced.

"SCAD is one of the most impressive programs in the world to focus on the medium of comics," says Jeff Parker, creator of The Interman and Agents of Atlas, who worked with Mike at Artamus Studios. "I'm pretty sure Mike would have loved to have attended such a place in his student days. It would make an excellent legacy for him if we can grow the Ringo scholarship into a launch pad for the future greats of comics."

Despite his success on such books as The Flash, Fantastic Four and his own creator-owned Tellos, Mike Wieringo never forgot what it was like to be a struggling creator. For many up-and-comers, Mike served as a mentor and friendly voice, whether it was providing free covers, advice, or just the encouragement to keep going.

With your help, the Mike Wieringo Scholarship can continue to grow and help a new generation of creators get the training and connections they need to start their careers. Mike's talent, enthusiasm and generosity inspired many in the comics industry to be their best as both creators and as human beings. With your help, Mike will continue to be an inspiration for creators in decades to come.

05/08/08 - May Events at OSU Cartoon Research Library

We are very fortunate to be located so relatively close to a such a great comic and cartooning resource. Just a couple of hours drive north of Lexington is the Columbus OH campus of Ohio State University - this is where the OSU Cartoon Research Library is located. I have posted about this facility and their events in the past - last October they celebrated the centennial of the birth of their benefactor and famous OSU graduate Milton Caniff.

This month they will be hosting several excellent programs with world famous comic creators - I hope many of you will try to attend!

Saturday, May 10th 2pm - Jeff Smith and Scott McCloud in Conversation

Join Bone-creator Jeff Smith and comic book artist and theorist Scott McCloud for a lively conversation about Smith’s career and each artist’s view of the practice and future of comic book art. McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics, Making Comics, and Reinventing Comics and the creator of the comic Zot!

Thursday, May 15th 7pm - Terry Moore

Best known for his epic and unpredictable comic Strangers in Paradise and a key figure in the self-publishing of comics, Terry Moore is one of the most influential artist/writers working today.

Tuesday, May 20th 7pm - Paul Pope

One of the most eclectic talents in comics, Ohio State alumnus Paul Pope works in such diverse genres and styles as superheros, erotica, and manga.

Besides hosting wonderful talks and lectures the Cartoon Research Library presents gallery shows of relevant comic art and holds a large and diverse archive of comics and comic art available for viewing, including some digital albums available online.

Louisville Comic Show

May 31, 2008
Louisville, KY

Clarion Hotel and Conference Center
9700 Bluegrass Pkwy
Louisville, KY 40299
Admission only $1.00 with the Wizard ad. Early buy in at 9:30 am for only $3.00 with the Wizard ad.

Special Guests:

• Jay Leisten (Amazing Spiderman)


• John Dugan (Grandpa from Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Buyers will be at the show with cash to buy comics, toys, Star Wars, magazines and other collectables.

Click here for link to show organizor's page.

Autobiographical Comic Strip Workshop!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Funny Feelings:
Comics as Autobiography
with Kenn Minter

•Sunday, April 27, 10am - 4pm
$75 - LAL Members; $90 - Potential Members

Kenn Minter, University of Kentucky’s Art Director of the Creative Graphics & Web Design team and popular Lexington cartoonist, will share his cartooning and comics techniques to those eager to learn in a master class environment. For anyone interested in expanding their knowledge in the art of comics, this class is a must!

All classes are held at the Loudoun House (209 Castlewood Drive). For more information, to register for classes or to RSVP for ARTalk email Julia Curiel @ jcuriel@lexingtonartleague.org or call 859.254.7024!

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Famous Wildlife Artist Wilhelm Goebel comes to Lexington

Gallery B will be hosting an artist's reception for Wilhelm Goebel April 4th from 6:00pm-8:00pm. Fly Fishing Clinic sponsored by The Sporting Tradition. The show will also be up during the upcoming gallery hop on April 18th.

Wilhelm Goebel has been a popular and internationally renowned Wildlife artist and Illustrator for many years. He specializes in Bird art and is a skilled replicator of nature and anatomy and holds a degree in Biology. This excerpt from his website outlines his accomplishments:

"Goebel's artistic accomplishments are numerous; he was chosen as the 2004 National Wild Turkey Federation Stamp Artist of the Year, 2002 National Wild Turkey Federation Artist of the Year, the Grand National Waterfowl Association 2002 Artist of the Year, and in 1995 won wildlife art's most prestigious award, the Federal Duck Stamp contest. His entry entitled "Surf Scoters at Barnegat Lighthouse" graced the 1996-97 Federal Duck Stamp. He has also designed numerous state duck stamps for Alaska, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota and Virginia.".

Gallery B (http://www.galleryblexington.com ) is a leading Fine art Dealer Showroom located on 145 W. Main Street. They Specialize in landscapes, still lifes, portraits and other realistic paintings, prints, other media, and occasionally a few sculptural works. They represent some of Lexington's greatest oil painters and have a very large selection, especially after their merger with Dogwood Galleries and relocation into it's previous location. Please take some time to view great Nature Art right here in your hometown and a chance to meet a man who will most assuredly become legendary in the world of Avian Art. A true master in the sense of Audubon.

03/12/08 - Lexington Comic Show 2008

In case you haven't heard; there will be a Comic Show in Lexington on Saturday April 5th 2008. This is the third year running for this event! This one day show runs from 10AM to 4PM and is being hosted by Comic City Comics out of Nashville TN. Here is a link to their site with more info about the show.

Show guests (always subject to change) include - Lexington comics writer, Robert Kirkman, Lexington cartoonists, Kenn Minter, and Mark Kidwell.

Look for us, the Lexington Comic Creators Group (or CCG) to have a table at the show! Please come by and say "Hi", meet some of our members and learn more about our group.

Here is a link to the hotel (UPDATED) where the show will be held:

Ramada Conference Center of Lexington

2143 N Broadway

Exit 113 I-64 & I-75

Lexington, KY, 40505 US

Phone:	859-299-1261
Fax:	859-293-0048

E-Mail:

ramadainnlexky@aol.com

03/12/08 - 2008 Gem City Comic Con in Dayton

Wow, two local comic conventions in one weekend!

Besides the Lexington Comic Show on Saturday April 5th 2008 there is second convention (luckily the next day!) that weekend in Dayton OH. The Gem City Comic Con is having it's third annual event Sunday at the Student Union at Wright State University, Dayton OH. Here is the link to their website.

Scheduled guests include popular Image comic artist, Billy Tan, and famous Marvel and DC comics writer, Marv Wolfman. A rare chance to attend a convention so close to home!

Street Fighter Tribute!

Udon Entertainment has announced an open call to illustrators and artists to submit artwork in a contest for the new Street Fighter Tribute artbook. Udon is a Canada-based art collective, affectionately dubbed the "Udon Crew," that has been around since 2000. Their artwork appears in magazines, table-top RPGs, collectable card games, and numerous official Capcom artbooks and comics. (That's just to name a few.) Their artbooks always include such diverse artistic styles that even if you're not familiar with the franchises they illustrate for, you can still find joy in the work found in their pages.

Most of the artists can be found on Deviant art through Udon's postings, and being able to get your work published under Udon is almost garaunteed recognition and great exposure. I recommend browsing them to get a feel for what they might be looking for in an artist. For full contest details, go here: http://www.udonentertainment.com/blog/?p=87

03/05/08 - Blue Line Pro Charity Event this Saturday

One of the few art supply companies catering to the comic book market is actually headquartered here in Kentucky! Blue Line Pro has been making comic art boards and selling specialized art supplies for more than 15 years now. They are also the publisher of one of the top How To magazines targeted to comic creators: Sketch Magazine.
Their home base is located in Florence, KY where they share their building with a comic store - Comics2Games. This Saturday, March 8th, Blue Line Pro and Comic2Games are hosting a Sketch Card Gallery Show and American Cancer Society Benefit Auction. The Show starts at 10am and runs till 5pm. There will be artist appearances running from 5 -8pm (see the Comic2Cards website for who might be there). The online auction will start at 5pm and run for one week on E-bay. Here is the link to the store's page about this event, with complete information and directions to the store: http://www.comics2cars.com/sketchcardshow.htm


Let's support all the creators participating in this worthy event by making a strong presence at this Saturday's show and auction. Post a comment here or send an email if you are interested in attending, have more questions or want to inquire about ride sharing from the Lexington area.

03/03/08 - Lexington KY setting for Syndicated Comic Strip

Did any of you know Lexington was the setting for a nationally syndicated comic strip? I know I was pleasantly surprised to find out about this strip and the "discovery" of another great artist from the past!

From 1948 to 1959 Francis "Frank" Godwin drew "Rusty Riley" a wonderfully rendered comic strip. The title character is a young orphan boy who finds work as horse groom... where else but in the horse capital of the world! Frank Godwin was influenced by two famous contemporaries: James Montgomery Flagg (artist of the the "I want you for the US Army" recruitment poster with "Uncle Sam") and Charles Dana Gibson (the Gibson Girl artist). All three are consummate pen and ink men. With Godwin adding the brush to his tool set to produce black and white art that managed to create a great deal of of tone with just the use of line.

Godwin produced editorial art , commercial advertising art, illustrated stories and novels as well as drawing comics: most notably for the ground-breaking "Connie" about a strong, independent woman in the working world (1927-1944) during a time this was not the common portrayal. (The Art Lortie Connie site linked and mentioned on www.bpip.com as being comprehensive is no longer active apparently?)

Thanks to Jason Lambert (monitor for Sunday UK figure drawing sessions) for this post idea.

2/18/08 - Colors!

We all know the vast potential of computer tablets and such programs as Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop in the creation of digital paintings and drawings. Those of us that drool over the next big thing in digital art know all about the delights of the Wacom Cintiq and tablet PCs. But, what we probably wouldn’t expect is that a Nintendo DS could be turned into a portable digital sketchbook.

Colors is a homebrew program designed for use with a capable Nintendo DS or DS Lite. By capable, I mean you likely need an R4 Slot-1 Solution for your DS and a micro-SD flash card. You download the program to the root menu of your SD card, plug it into the R4, and put that in Slot 1 of your DS unit. Once you open the program, you find that it really is like a very simplified version of Painter. You use your stylus as the brush pen and paint using the DS touch screen. You toggle to the color selection screen, and there you’ll find you have settings for either a hard-edged brush or a soft edge. You can also change the opacity and brush size, as well as set those attributes to be pressure sensitive. There is a zoom option for creating more intricate illustrative details, and you can even play back the finished product from start to finish.

Once you’ve made your painting or sketch, getting it to your PC is a simple matter. Just remove your SD card and pop it into a card reader. The files are stored as .PNG’s with a fairly decent resolution. It really leaves little excuse for doing sketches on the fly if you have no paper or pencil, but have your DS on hand. It does take some getting use to, though. You’ll be toggling constantly to and from the color/brush selection and zooming. But because there are so few features right now, it’s easy to just jump right in. The only thing it lacks is an undo or eraser feature. So, in that sense I think the lack makes colors a great learning tool for those of us who need to hone their more painterly abilities. Any mistake you make either has to be worked back over, or become a part of some new evolution in the painting. It makes you think ahead and problem solve when programs like Photoshop have the handy Ctrl+Z and the problem goes away. I recommend everyone with a compatible DS give this program a try. It’s, at least, a fun way to while the time away.

Colors can be downloaded here: http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/


View the Colors community gallery here: http://colors.brombra.net/

Credit to "Moatdd" and "Tsenzen" for the illustrations found in the Colors gallery.

02/17/08 - Happy President's Day

Here's a little Photoshop painting to commemorate President's Day. I've been recuperating from a lengthy sick spell so I've had time to work on my digital painting skills. Word to all you interested in this - I hope to set up some get togethers and or workshops covering digital art in the coming year. Let me know if you want to participate or know more.

02/14/08 - Coloring Tutorial

Lisbon, Portugal creator Ginmau serves up an interesting mini-tutorial on coloring within Photoshop. By reading his primer I picked up a few tricks for working with images and I'm sharing as it's an interesting approach.

Check out the full tutorial over on Ginmau's Deviant Art page located here. (Click the image when you get there to see the full size image of the tutorial.)

Also, for a fun visual drawing tutorial check out Draw Like a Ralph from the drawing board of Brian Ralph. It's a great little toon that can be found here.

01/29/08 - Illustration Events - Summer 2008

Even though comics dominate our posts here we do want to support illustrators and animators as well. Here are some exciting opportunities for Illustrators to learn and network at some summer workshops/conferences/seminars: (click on the event title to visit the official site)

The Illustration Master Class, June 16-22, 2008, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Join fantasy illustrators for a week long intensive seminar open to various skill levels. Instructors include Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Donato Giancola, Rebecca Guay, Dan DosSantos, and Scott Fischer. "Attendees will benefit from a full schedule of classes in figure drawing from an illustration perspective, use of reference, drawing from the imagination, digital and traditional painting technique, live demos and industry q&a, as well as extensive individual one on one critique from 10am to midnight each day." Register by 2/15/08 to receive $100 discount off tuition.

Guild of Natural Science Illustrators' 2008 Summer Workshop, June 15-28, 2008, Hastings, Michigan

Here is the description of this event from the official website:

"This coming Summer in 2008, the GNSI Summer Workshop will once again be held at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute, a privately-run ecological education/research station set in a beautiful area of Barry County, Michigan with 661 acres encompassing an amazing variety of habitats, flora and fauna.

And, wow, what a lineup! We are excited to present our schedule to you in the links above. As with previous Summer Workshops, all of the sessions are meant to integrate and follow a unified theme. These sessions will focus on the creation of an illustration from pencil sketch to final illustration, using water-based media, and emphasizing the use of color and composition to accurately coordinate foreground and background. You may select any one segment for an excellent shorter program, or any combination for the more integrated approach. All 4 workshops will use the subject-rich surroundings at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute (PCCI) for inspiration and reference, from collecting animal subjects to observation, photography, sketching, and plant collection for background subjects! One advantage of the 2008 Summer Workshop location is the extended daylight hours; we are on the far western edge of the time zone, and our workshop will coincide with the summer solstice; daylight extends to nearly 10 pm!"

2008 Guild of Natural Science Illustrators National Conference, July 20-26, 2008, Ithaca, New York.

There will gallery showings, lectures and workshops at this event. For further details please visit the link above for more information as it is posted..

01/22/08 - Starting a web comic?

Creating your own web comic has never been easier!

If you've ever thought about getting one rolling, all you have to do is click here for 50 resources that may just make the task a whole lot easier.

This list was compiled by Laura Milligan over at VirtualHosting and is one of the more comprehensive resource lists I've seen on the topic.

01/07/08 - Coloring Instruction

Interested in learning a few new coloring techniques? Steve Hamaker (who worked with Jeff Smith on Bone and has done a lot of independent stuff as well) has been posting a series of videos to his blog which offer some great tips, tricks and instruction. The series titled "Coloring the Steve Hamaker Way" can be found via these links...

Part 1: Tutorial walkthrough and tricks for coloring comics using Photoshop.
Part 2: Using keyboard short-cuts: Alt/Option + brush tool.
Part 3: Digital inking and coloring using Photoshop CS3.
Part 4: Creating depth, mood, and dramatic lighting by using layers and transparency.

12/30/07 - Free Graphic Programs

"There are a lot of excellent graphics programs on the market these days, but just because they come with a premium price tag doesn’t mean they are the only option." Are you currently doing at digitally? Interesting in expanding your tool set? Check out these 35 free graphic programs as served up by Mashable.com.

12/28/07 - Interested in print on demand publishing?

If you are thinking about self-publishing your next comic epic, you might want to take a look at Ka-Blam Digital Printing. They are one of two main "print-on-demand" comic producers (the other being ComixPress) and they recently shifted their business model eliminating set-up fees altogether. Admittedly, you have to serve up your pages per their digital specifications, but it's a straightforward way to see your title in print and on sale relatively quickly. Great for the individual comic creator trying to get started.

Get all the details on their killing their fees here and learn more at www.ka-blam.com. Comics printed by Ka-Blam can then be sold/marketed by their sister site IndyPlanet. Check out that site by visiting www.indyplanet.com.

To take a look at ComixPress (comparison shop!) just stop by www.comixpress.com.

12/26/07 - Need a Pen?

Are you an artist in need of a pen?
We may just have a site for you!

If you are interested in pens (both art and standard), I'm pleased to share a blog that takes a fairly thorough look at the subject. Found on the web at pens.h099.com, the blog is (according to their own site description) intended as a useful and practical resource for people who draw a lot.

Motto from the site: "Who Needs Friends … when you have pens."

Well worth a visit.

Get more comic creator targeted stories and site pointers at the Creators Corner and please visit the Lexington Comic Creator's Group forum located here. We'd love to hear from you so please log in, say hello and leave a thought or two!