Bill Watterson: The College Years

Face it, tiger-lovers — you just hit the jackpot: Check out this terrific gallery of early and rare art by Calvin & Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson. Included are pieces from the Kenyon College yearbook and student newspaper, covers from the political-cartooning journal Target, Watterson’s own editorial cartoons from the Cincinnatti Post, illustrations for an essay in The Comics Journal, self-portraits, a collection of Calvin & Hobbes sketches, and much more. The site design indicates that this is about a million Internet years old and thus many of you may have seen it before, but I sure haven’t, and it’s great way to see whole new side of Watterson — and a demonstration that his chops were ample even at a tender age.

(via Andrew Sullivan and Gavon Laessig)

Drawbridge Sketchbook art by Nathan Schreiber

That’s what organizers of King Con and members of the Drawbridge sketch blog want to know. So they’re sponsoring the King Con Drawbridge Sketchbook Competition, held as part of the Nov. 4-7 Brooklyn convention.

To qualify, entries must contain work from five different artists, and have one sketch made at at King Con 2010. The winner, who will be announced on Nov. 7, will receive the Drawbridge Sketchbook containing art by Dean Haspiel, Tim Hamilton, Simon Fraser, Reilly Brown, Nick Abadzis, Robin Ha, GB Tran, Joan Reilly and Nathan Schreiber.

“King Con and Drawbridge see the competition as a way to give back to the sketchbook collectors who commission work and support their favorite artists,” Schreiber writes on his blog. “As comic conventions grow and transform the fundamental relationship the cons are based on – that between creator and fan – runs the risk of being drowned out. The Drawbridge Sketchbook competition reaffirms this connection between creator and fan, and showcases the depth of talent and community at King Con. We’re hoping artists and fans use the competition to make and collect some amazing work!”

A character evolves in Ben Towle's sketchbook

Ben Towle has been working up his characters for his next graphic novel, In the Weeds (which sounds like it will be set behind the scenes at a restaurant), and he shows off his thought process at his blog. The book presents some challenges:

About half of the book takes place in a restaurant kitchen and this presents a prickly problem in that everyone will be dressed the same. It’d be really easy here to fall into an “Alien 3″ situation here where you’ve got a bunch of (mostly) white guys running around in the same outfit and you can’t tell who’s doing what or saying what unless you’re seeing a close-up of their faces.

It’s interesting to see how much the characters change as he refines them.

The Royal Tenenbaums, by Matt Wagner

One of the more unique aspects of comics conventions in the United States is the general amount of creativity bursting at the seems. One of the biggest signs of this is the generosity that most artists have for doing rough sketches to attendees.

Generally artists will do these for free, or for a small fee, but if you can get your hands on one it’s well worth the effort. I’ve been collecting sketches for several years at cons, and I thought myself the norm until I first glimpsed the themed sketchbook of Oni Press Editor-in-Chief James Lucas Jones.

In 2002, Jones began having artists and friends in the industry contribute to an ongoing sketchbook centered on the characters from the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, and it’s probably filled to the brim and Jones moved on to other themes. But it always sticks in my mind as one of the first themed con sketchbooks and one of the best. Here’s a sample:

Margot, Raleigh & Dudley by Ted Naifeh

Richie by Michael Lark

Margot & Richie by Hope Larson (with Bryan Lee O'Malley)

Richie by Cameron Stewart

For more, check out a page devoted to the book on Jones’ website.

Do you have a themed sketchbook or know someone that does? Comment below and if we like it, we’ll post it!

by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

Down to the wire here, so let’s do a round-robin of a few more cool items you can get at the San Diego Comic-Con this year …

• Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba are bringing a new limited signed giclée print, which you can see to the right.

• Buenaventura Press is having a going-out-of-business sale at booth #1734. Alvin Buenaventura will be there, selling the last copies he has of Kramers Ergot 7, Boy’s Club by Matt Furie, The Gigantic Robot by Tom Gauld, original art and more.

• Gene Luen Yang has a new T-shirt he’ll be selling at the show.

• Terry Moore is bringing The Complete Paradise TOO — “a 360 page softcover book filled with hundreds and hundreds of my comic strips and cartoons, from high school to SIP to all the Kixie strips and Plato and Lizzie the axe-murderer… all for just $30.”

• Scott Morse will have a TON of items for sale at the show; you can find them here and here.

• Both Josh Howard and Humberto Ramos will have sketchbooks at the show. Sean Galloway, meanwhile, has a Spider-Man print.

• Kevin Church will have collections of his webcomics Lydia and She Died in Terrebonne. Ben Costa will have a collection of his webcomic Pang.

• Animation studio Titmouse Inc. has an anthology.

• And finally, Dan Hipp has a new poster at the Hermes Press booth that teases an upcoming project called Stray Days.

by Chynna Clugston

March winds and April showers bring convention season, and with that, the opportunity to fill your convention sketchbook with some nice, new stuff. You’ve already seen Sean’s David Bowie sketchbook, and now Spell Checkers writer Jamie S. Rich talks about how he started his Audrey Hepburn one. You can find more of his sketch collection here.

Spider Jerusalem by Jeff Lemire

If you’ve ever had the good fortune of getting a convention sketch from Sweet Tooth and Essex County writer/artist Jeff Lemire, you’ve learned two things: 1) He can draw pretty much any character, from Doctor Octopus to David Bowie; 2) He goes all out on those suckers. If you haven’t gotten a Lemire sketch of your own, let this gallery of commissions Lemire drew at the Emerald City Con (courtesy of Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock) school you on what you’re missing. Pictured are Spider Jerusalem from Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan (above), Robin, Doctor Doom, Nightcrawler, the Golden Age Sandman, the Sweet Tooth cast, and even a character from Lemire’s upcoming Top Shelf graphic novel Underwater Welder. Feast your eyes, folks.

David Bowie by Niklas Asker

I’ve been collecting David Bowie sketches from comics artists at shows and cons since MoCCA 2007. What can I say? He’s my favorite superhero. In that time I’ve amassed drawings of the chameleonic musician from 97 different artists, and adding to the collection is always a high priority for me at every show. I had exceptionally good luck at this year’s MoCCA — you better hang on to yourself as we flip through this year’s haul!

Niklas Asker (above): Oh man, look at that, just look at it. How can a sketch be shiny? Niklas Asker pulled it off with maybe the most elegant and sexy Bowie of the batch–no surprise, if you’ve seen his graphic novel Second Thoughts.

Hope Larson: Hope actually turned me down for a sketch at MoCCA a few years back, though I did succeed in getting one from her husband Bryan Lee O’Malley. I’ve chatted with her a few times since then over Twitter, so this year I warned her in advance I was coming back for Round Two, and she graciously acquiesced. She knew exactly which era Bowie she wanted to draw — in fact, she wanted him from The Man Who Fell to Earth specifically. Bowie as lone wanderer.

Ken Dahl/Gabby Schulz: Under the nom de comics Ken Dahl, Gabby Schulz is the author of the autobiographical Monsters, chronicling his life with herpes. So this Aladdin Sane-era Bowie with a giant sore on his forehead in lieu of that circle is pretty much exactly what I hoped for.

Miss Lasko-Gross: Miss Lasko-Gross apologized to me midway through this sketch, explaining that just because I was wearing glasses and a Bowie t-shirt at the time didn’t mean this little man in glasses and a Bowie t-shirt she was drawing was me. Phew! I always enjoy it when people work Bowie into their sketches in unexpected ways.

Sara Edward-Corbett: I’ve known Sara since college, when she was part of a crew who consistently wowed me and my friends with their comics in one of the school papers. She’s been on my Bowie sketchbook hit list for a long time, and I finally cornered her. Woo!

Kolbeinn Karlsson: Kolbeinn is the author of The Troll King; I think his Bowie looks suitably fantastical. I wonder what he’s saying with that spiral?

Simon Gärdenfors: Simon immediately latched upon a picture of Bowie as a little kid in one of the books of photo reference I had with me. I promise you that if you’ve seen the photo, you’d see the resemblance here.

Jess Fink: Jess is no stranger to drawing Bowie, having done several little portraits on her website just for funzies, and since she’s dressed up like him for Halloween I think it’s fair to characterize her as a fellow superfan. Over Twitter she told me beforehand how excited she was to get a chance to contribute to my Bowie book, and she didn’t disappoint. I wish more people would draw different versions of Bowie interacting, in fact!

L. Nichols: L. had a tough act to follow, taking the sketchbook directly from her tablemate Jess Fink, but I think she pretty much killed it here. She sorta cut’n'pasted a Bowie photo that was very popular in this batch, blowing up his crossed hands and attaching them to the portrait like wings. Lovely colors too.

Isaac Moylan: Isaac drew the Bowie biography comic I wrote, The Side Effects of the Cocaine, so getting him into my sketchbook was a no brainer. Tired of drawing the Thin White Duke-era Bowie, he came gunning straight for the older, dare I say grizzled Bowie of the “I’m Afraid of Americans” video. Note Trent Reznor lurking in the background. Folks, when in doubt, going with stuff from this video will always make me happy.

Farel Dalrymple: I caught Farel while he was sketching at MoCCA’s fundraising table. Daunted by the prospect of contributing to the book, he simply chose to nail the Aladdin Sane cover as accurately as he could. Success!

Molly Colleen O’Connell: Ah, now this was cool: I handed my sketchbook to the entire Closed Caption Comics collective and let ‘em go nuts with it, thus netting myself sketches from Lane Milburn, Chris Day, Conor Stechschulte, Andrew Neyer, Zach Hazard Vaupen, and Molly Colleen O’Connell, who the group told me was the biggest Bowie fan in the bunch. I really like this piece because it comes as close as any of these sketches has to capturing the rainbow madness of some of Bowie’s Ziggy/Aladdin-era stage get-ups. Lady Stardust and Lady Gaga are not worlds apart. (PS: Noel Freibert and Erin Womack, I’ll get you next time!)

Zach Hazard Vaupen: In an act of creative repurposing, Zach Hazard found a blank page in the book and traced the Charles Burns sketch underneath it. I’ve heard from many people, including Charles himself, how much he hates the Bowie sketch he did for me (even though it’s one of my favorites), so I wonder how he’ll feel about having it sampled…

Chris Day: Chris captured Bowie from his days as a mime. I know mimes are like a big joke or whatever, but Bowie’s always been really open and insightful about how his training with mime guru Lindsay Kemp helped almost every aspect of his performances. What a great choice of an image to sketch.

Lane Milburn: Lane told me a story of how one of his art-school professors, Odd Nerdrum, painted a painting called “Dawn” that Bowie owns. That’s it hanging in the background. Where the tracksuit figures in I have no idea, but somehow it works. (PS: If I have a daughter, I’m toying with naming her Ashanti, fwiw.)

Andrew Neyer: Bowie the Imp! I am always down with Bowie sketches that make him look like some sort of mischievous fairy-tale creature.

Conor Stechschulte: I know exactly what photo Conor used as inspiration here. It wasn’t half so dramatically lit, I assure you. This is one of my favorites.

To see all of Sean’s David Bowie sketches, visit his Flickr gallery.

TV on the Radio's t-shirt for the Yellow Bird Project

“Okay,” you ask, “what does a t-shirt featuring a drawing of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, by TV on the Radio lead singer Tunde Adebimpe, being sold to raise money for Haiti relief efforts as part of the Yellow Bird Project, have to do with comics?” Glad you asked! Adebimpe is a part-time cartoonist (and a pretty good one at that), and his drawing of Bowie came directly from my David Bowie sketchbook, in which famous comics folks like Bryan Lee O’Malley, Kate Beaton, Randall Munroe, David Mack, Paul Pope, Cliff Chiang, Adrian Tomine, Seth, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Los Bros Hernandez, and many many many more have been nice enough to offer me their take on the Thin White Duke. Be a hero, just for one day, and buy the shirt!

from Jim Woodring's sketchbook

Jim and Frank creator Jim Woodring, comics’ master of dark psychedelia, has posted a selection of drawings from his moleskine notebook to his blog, and they are pretty much mindshattering. I seriously don’t even know where to begin, other than to say that the images above may be the least strange in the batch.

If that’s not enough, you can always take a look at our exclusive preview of Woodring’s upcoming graphic novel Weathercraft, which hits this spring from Fantagraphics.

Beautiful Dreamer by Richard Howell

A chance encounter at Tunde Adebimpe’s table at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival led to my discovery of Ben Herman’s impressive collection of Beautiful Dreamer sketches. In his sketchbook’s pages, the lovely telepathic New God from Jack Kirby’s Forever People is given her due by Dan DeCarlo, Dick Ayers, Ramona Fradon, Gilbert Hernandez, Mark Bode, Tania Del Rio, Michael Wm. Kaluta, Danielle Corsetto, John Bogdanove, Todd Nauck and many more. Go feast your eyes, and check out Herman’s entire assortment of ComicArtFans.com galleries — his Star Wars and Avengers sketchbooks are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Batwoman sketch by Cameron Stewart

Incoming Batman and Robin artist Cameron Stewart has posted a selection of sketches drawn for fans during his recent European tour with Karl Kerschl and Ramón Pérez, and the results are … uh, what’s the visual equivalent of “mouthwatering”? I don’t think it’s “eyewatering,” but this little gallery — heavy on the Bat-characters but boasting a few mutants and supporting Spidey castmembers too — may well bring a tear to your eye over the fact that you don’t live in Europe and thus couldn’t get one yourself.

O'Malley's Tintin

One of the highlights for me at this year’s SPX was having Top Shelf’s Leigh Walton show me his impressive Tintin-themed sketchbook featuring art by folks like Bryan Lee O’Malley, Jeff Lemire, Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Brown and many others. Thankfully, Walton has put up a Flickr set of the sketchbook, so that all from near and far can revel in it. Great snakes, what fun!

From Berrio's 'Conversations'

Even if you can’t read Spanish (and I totally can’t) this sketchblog by Juan Berrio, based on snatches of overheard conversations is still worth checking out. (via)

The Ugly Truth

While some folks collect sketches of comic characters (like the Watchmen) from artists at conventions, Surrogates writer Robert Venditti collects sketches of himself — or of his baby picture, to be precise. And he’s started sharing them every Monday at his blog, starting with one by Jeffrey Brown.

(Speaking of Brown, don’t miss his Wolverine vs. Hulk strip over at the Top Shelf blog).

Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, creator of Wacky Packs and the Garbage Pail Kids, and father of the modern graphic novel (though hes still demanding a blood test), presents this warts-and-all reproduction of his private sketchbooks — and the results are as candid, sharp, and funny as the relentlessly innovative man behind them. BE A NOSE! is a rare glimpse into the secret scribblings of an American original.