caution: sketch dump ahead

Remember how I promised New Orleans paintings? Hahahaha, nope.

Whether it was because my parents were there and I decided to do the touristy thing or because, like Degas, I found the New Orleans sun way too intense, the world may never know.

Mostly it's because these things just happen sometimes. Nevertheless, I have been drawing, and while I am in a room without my scanner, I do have my very poor resolution phone camera. I hope your eyeballs are prepared for the fury I'm about to unleash.

 

 

City Lights Coffee in Charlston, SC

 

Still Haven't given up on that Spirit reboot idea, btw

 

 

Having a bad day and also thinking about Sargent. Mostly the thing about Sargent. 

 

Still thinking about Sargent, this time to the tune of having a seriously hard time drawing faces. 

 

 

Bastion is still one of the greatest games of all time and you should play it if you haven't yet. 

 

Have I mentioned before that I occasionally like to go back and do redraws of earlier drawings? In this case, I thought this was going to be the sketch that finished up the book, so I redid the first image from it. Said image follows below: 

 

House on Highway 19 near Dahlonega, GA

Back to the fantasy imagery idea for a little while

Always room for more fanart

The Old Coffee Pot, New Orleans, LA

MOAR WINGZZZZZZZZZZZ

Detail from the above. This one made me pretty pleased with myself. 

KORRA! 

More motion drawings, but without the fantasy element this time. They didn't work as well, I thought. 

I find vampires and unicorns really amusing because their origins are so totally about sex, but if you mention that to most people they will not believe you. 

Those last four are from today, and I think I've figured some things out which will be pretty useful in the future, but I am too tired to go into it right now. Nap times for alll, and to all a good nap. 

Suddenly: options!

Right. Ok. So. You know how I said that I thought I would be completely rejected from everywhere I applied? That is only sort of true. And then it became only sort of true TWICE.

I am currently an alternate candidate at University of Washington (the state, not the district), and they are collecting skype usernames and locations so that interviews can happen if their top picks choose to go to other places. I got that email on Tuesday.

And then I got an email from MICA yesterday, and while I had been denied entrance into their graduate program (those letters showed up maybe a week, week and a half ago), they are inviting me to take part in their post-baccalaureate program. Which, if nothing else, tells me that I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay closer than I thought I was when I received the rejection letter.

 Default assumption always being that they hate me and that I insulted their eyes with my terrible work.

This changes the field from denied, denied, unknown, unknown to denied, post-bac, alternate, unknown, which I am super in favor of. Even if that last unknown is now driving me up the wall. What does it meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn?

Good dog

I was going to wait until tomorrow to put this one up because it is my mom's birthday present and I will be seeing her tomorrow and didn't want her to see it before then, but I was just looking through my photobucket (yes i still use photobucket) at the two photos I took of it and, well....look:

 

I know I've complained about the quality of the camera on my phone before, but I just have to do it again. The painting is actually mostly white, leaning towards blue. I ....just......aaaaaaaaaaaaargggggggh. 

Also, I'm in new orleans now and while the hotel I am staying at is very very nice, I just paid ten dollars for the day for internet and it has cut out at least twice while I was writing this post. Nooooooot a good sign. 

Three times. 

Price list. The list of the prices

I've gotten a number of inquiries recently as to whether or not I sell my paintings. That's a pretty good feeling, I gotta say. The answer is yes!

This will of course be updated periodically as things change; I will also duplicate this list on my website so that it can be found there as well.

Paintings

Prices determined by an $x per square inch formula such that the larger the painting you buy, the less expensive per square inch it will be. Labor, time, and materials do not factor in, except in determining where the switch to the next bracket should occur. Price brackets are determined by the shortest side.

• up to 2' per side
• $3 per square inch
• 2' to 3'
• $2.50 per square inch
• 3' to 4'
• $2 per square inch
• 4' and up
• $1.50 per square inch 

The sizes I most commonly work at are 16x20 (all of my plein air road trip paintings are this size) which then come out to $960, and 30x40 which come out to $2400.

Some of you might be looking at those numbers and thinking that they're really really big. And they are, especially when you compare them to the prices of other modern luxury purchases. On the other hand, when you're comparing my prices to those of other artists, this is fairly reasonably in line with what they charge and are even a little bit low. Only a little bit, though.

With that in mind, I'm not going to make you pay for it all straight up if you want one of my pieces. If you're interested, I'm totally comfortable working out a payment plan.

Comics/Books/Other printed materials (not custom)

Prices here are determined by printing costs, labor intensity, etc. and will be listed in an online shop as soon as I put one together. When I do, I'll update this space.

Illustrations/Other custom printed materials

I use the Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines as a framework. Each job is considered on a case by case basis.

Shipping

Ah, shipping, the big buggaboo. Realistically, I know that this is the part that I'm going to have to figure out on the fly, so I ask for your patience in advance. 

For books and other works on paper, most often I can find an envelope and ship UPS for fairly cheap. Pieces that are on unstretched canvas can be rolled up and shipped in a tube, again for fairly cheap. 

Things get more complicated when we get to larger pieces that need serious packaging to ship. 

Any and all details will be worked out during our discussions, but know that if I can afford to ship it to you without making you pay for either packaging or shipping, I will. 

Odds and Ends 

First and most importantly: if you have any questions, if I've been unclear, if you're interested in making a purchase, or if you just want to chat and you don't feel like leaving a comment, my email is sparkselrose@gmail.com

Secondly, I know that there's this idea that artists are these strange creatures completely lacking in business sense, uninterested in the constraints of forms and paperwork. Well, I'm not particularly interested in paperwork per se, but I do like to keep records. Contracts and receipts will happen; this protects you and me in case there's ever any communication weirdness.

And that's the thing, I'm assuming that if anything does go wrong, it's going to be because we're not communicating effectively. So, y'know, talk to me, and I'll do my best to do the same. But to you, not me; I talk to myself all the time and it doesn't really seem to solve anything.

reaper

Felt like doing a second painting when I got to the hotel today. Noooooot sure what's up with this one. Yep. 

I like skulls, though. They've got all sorts of interesting shapes. If I can get a hold of a model of a human skull that's not too expensive, I'll definitely snag it, no question. 

Woody Gap, Appalachian Trail, Georgia

A dog jumped into my car while I was cleaning up after finishing this one. I couldn't keep him because his owner was right there, but he was precious.

I'm starting a quick march down to New Orleans this week; I'll be there by Saturday. So, I wouldn't really expect many more paintings until I arrive.

Also, I do not know what is blooming down here in the south, but I am STILL sneezing my damn fool head off every time I go outside. Ridiculous.

Reservoir near Dahlonega, GA

Super chill paintin' times oooooooh yeeeeeeeeah. 

Northern Georgia, full of hills

You know how I mentioned by knee still being stiff from the crash and that I hoped it would be better by the time that I got to Dahlonega? Well, I got here, my knee works just fine for biking. Buuuuuuut my gear shift not so much.

I have no problem shifting into higher gears, but when I want to shift back down, it'll jump crazy huge amounts. As much as I want to fix the problem myself, here and now, I don't really feel comfortable trying it until I'm on flatter ground. Just in case.

I also had a small freak out when it started raining. Which was surprising. So I think I'm going to invest in some long sleeved biking gear in the near future, because I felt much more secure once I pulled on a sweater (the idea of tearing open my arm again really bothered me for some reason. My leg, not so much. I don't know, I don't know)

Today, despite the general rainniness, I'm gonna go paint this nice little lake that had some bridges over it and pick up a few supplies that I forgot the other day. If you want to eat sandwiches from little bags, you might actually want to purchase some little bags. Protip, that one.

Tomorrow is for slackpacking, the day after is for more painting, and then I'm on the road again.

The house that's not on the map, Columbia, SC

I had a hard time finding an angle where the sun wasn't casting my shadow on this one ): 

When I got to Columbia in the first day, I wanted to go north to explore because there were some interesting looking things that I passed on my way to the hotel. The only problem was that, y'know, bikes are not allowed on the freeway. So I took this one road out of the entrance to my hotel that I thought would take me north and under the criss cross of freeways. Instead, what I got was dead ends almost immediately and this broken down...I don't know what it used to be. A series of vacation homes, maybe? It was creepy and lonely and I could probably have happily done a series of paintings just of this place. 

After getting a whole boatload of bug spray, of course. 

Fenley Park, Columbia, South Carolina

I like Columbia. It has lots of interesting architecture and all sorts of things to see and good foods to eat. But it has NO PARKING THAT ISN'T FREAKING WEIRD. So tomorrow I'm gonna paint somewhere that I can walk to from my hotel. And then go for a walk. Except for a trip to get new brushes I intend to drive as little as possible tomorrow. 

I'd bike, but my knee is still a bit stiff. Too bad. I'm hoping I'll be ship shape by the time I get to Dahlonega, because I really want to conquer the Three Gap Loop. But even if that doesn't work out, there's still day hiking in the Appalachian mountains, so, gosh, hardship. 

fall down, go boom

Was riding around earlier today, crashed my bike.

Because of train tracks. It wasn't even that I was trying to go over them or anything. They were sunk into the road, but the road and tracks both curved (but in different directions), so that as I went along the curve of the road, the tracks ate my back tire, which threw me to the ground.

It was very very weird, and more than a little scary, and I left some skin behind and some gravel came home with me, but I am all ok. Sore, and I will be purple, but ok.

I paneled a comic about it at dinner, so that's happening.

whooooooo aaaaaaaaare yooooooooooou +doodle

Blogger has some really good analytics stuff attached to it. Maybe too good. I admit it, sometimes, perhaps too many times, I just stare at my stats, wondering who the hell you people are.

Like, for instance, who were the three people that accessed my blog from their Nokia phones? Who in the Netherlands clicked through to here? And, most importantly, do they think I'm doing a good job?

Oh yeah and have this doodle.

This is accurate re: my post-everglades experience. Except for that I do not sunburn purple. I just didn't have a red pen on me at the time. The very nice ihop employee laughed at me, though, but it was ok because he knows this feel. 

The Spirit reboot

Shockingly, there is a lot of driving involved in road trips in America, and somewhere at the beginning I had decided that instead of just listening to my mp3 player, I wanted to listen to radio stations. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes you hear the same two songs over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then once more.

Turns out that NPR is a great palette cleanser for your ears. And sometimes, if you are very lucky, they are airing a program that is super aligned with your interests. In this case, I tuned in at the beginning of an interview with a man who got his start in comics by inking The Spirit. (I wish I could remember his name, but I can't.) The program immediately following that was also about Will Eisner, and then after that was an interview with R Crumb and his daughter, which is when I went back to trying my luck with local radio stations.

Some things you just can't bring yourself to care about, I guess.

Anyway, I was thinking about all of this and also about the imminent arrival of Womanthology and also also about some blogs I've been following recently that concentrate on how women are portrayed in comics (usually how it's done wrong, but also how it's done right) and then I thought: I would kill to work on a female!Spirit reboot (I am also a huge fan of many fans' portrayals of female!Sherlock, so I know things like this can be done well)

The first sketch. The idea really came together while I was doodling this in a coffee shop, hiding from some rain.

cover idea sketch

Ink test. This followed lots of pages of me really not getting the look of the character right. This was definitely the point at which things turned in the correct direction

I thought it was going to be really difficult to get the 'Will Eisner' to look right. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't that hard. (and yes, as you can tell from this, I am aware of who currently holds the rights to the Spirit property)

More fiddling with her personality, making sure the character works in different situations. 

The first time I'd gotten Ebony to work. In my version, her last name is still White, but Ebony is a code name she takes for herself. She's a professor at a local community college with a heart condition (which is why she never took to superheroics herself.) Taking on the Spirit persona is all her idea. 

The thing I love about Eisner's original stories (or one of the things) is that against a noir backdrop, they're so slapstick and ridiculous. It's important to me to maintain that. (Darwyn Cooke got it right. Frank Miller didn't.)

Obviously this is not something that is going to happen any time soon if at all. Probably not at all. But it's an idea I'm going to keep tinkering with in the back of my mind for a while, I think. Or maybe I'll just do a crazy short fan comic, exorcise it from my system, and move on.

Either way, I think I'll color that cover and use it as a portfolio piece. 

Two Drawings

These are both gifts for people, but I highly suspect that they do not often check my blog, so I am not worried about ruining the surprise.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from a sketch

Lake house in Michigan, from memory

Forsyth Park, Savannah, Georgia

Today was a two painting day. 

 

Lots of people paint/take photos/etc of this fountain, so of course I had to give it a go. 

Savannah is full of really cool looking houses, and this one was situated quite nicely. It was another 'sun starts setting in earnest as soon as I start painting' situations, but it turned out pretty good anyway, I think.