The Comic-Con sketchbook continues. Everyone needs a little downtime, especially when you’re surrounded by a 120,000 of your fellow comicbook/sci-fi/fantasy fans. This guy was stealing a moment of repose on a bench at the bottom of one of the stairways. The bench was actually wide enough to accomodate three or four people, but I feel like the one-seater I’ve drawn in the picture better captures the idea of a solitary moment.
8-Rock
Here’s another selection from my Comic-Con sketchbook. I had a great time doing this drawing. I did the base sketch during the annual production designers’ panel. This drawing depicts three men I saw sitting together on one of the few benches in the halls at the San Diego Convention Center. Although I’ve taken a little artistic license when it comes to the color palette, the hairstyles are pretty much true to life, and one guy really was wearing a mask…which is really pretty tame by Comic-Con standards.
8-Rock
From the Comic-Con Sketchbook: This drawing depicts three friends I spotted waiting in line for the Guild Wars panel. If you are unfamiliar with Guild Wars (as I was) it is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game or MMORPG that–unlike its competitors–does not charge its subscription fees. Consequently, it has developed a deeply loyal fan base, including the three men in this picture.
8-Rock
In today’s post I’m returning to my 2011 Comic-Con sketchbook. This drawing depicts one of the many hopefuls I noticed each day as I walked past the waiting area for the annual portfolio review. I always marvel (no pun intended) at the commitment and optimism of these folks, who spend a significant chunk of their Comic-Con weekend waiting in line to have their sketches reviewed by a comic book company editor,all in the hope that they will be picked up as an illustrator.
Some Comic-Con attendees express their love for comic books, fantasy, animation, and sci-fi through their fanatical participation in role-playing games, others through dressing up like their characters, and still others through their encyclopedic knowledge of every aspect of the fantasy world in which their favorite characters live. The men and women who sat waiting patiently for a portfolio review represent still another type of fan, the kind whose love for the medium or genre has driven them to develop skill and expertise in the creation of their preferred art form. Such is the case, I’m sure, with other fan gatherings, like the various Atlanta’s A3C, and Austin’s South By Southwest. While many of the aspirants to hip-hop, rock, and country music stardom desire to take center stage, though, Comic-Con’s legions of aspiring comic book artists, costumer designers, animators, and production designers prefer to work behind the scenes to create the imaginary figures and landscapes that shape others’ fantasies and dreams.
8-Rock
Today I am taking a brief interlude from the Comic-Con sketch book to post a new drawing that juxtaposes an image of a contemporary Oakland figure with some headlines from Oakland’s past. In this picture, a young man of today is emerging from an early issue of the Oakland Tribune.
8-Rock
This is the first of 10 drawings from my Comic-Con 2011 sketch book. If I had to give this drawing a title, it would be, “The Truth is Out There.”
8-Rock
This is just a bit of a meditation on history and ancestry, with a Victorian style wallpaper pattern as a background, to help create the historical mood of the piece.
8-Rock
For this drawing, I did a sketch of a man I saw a couple days ago wearing an old-time letter sweater. I gave him a 1920s-style center part and set a wonderful vintage photo of African American college athletes as the background, all in order to create a tribute to the history of Black Americans in collegiate sports.
8-Rock
Ka’Ba
By Imamu Amiri Baraka
A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.
Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone’s
tho we suffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air.
We are beautiful people
With African imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with African eyes, and noses, and arms
tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.
We have been captured,
and we labor to make our getaway, into
the ancient image; into a new
Correspondence with ourselves
and our Black family. We need magic
now we need the spells, to raise up
return, destroy,and create. What will be
the sacred words?
Art by 8-Rock
