It's Jamar!

Or rather, a sketch I did of him.

I rarely draw just for the fun of it these days. I find most of my time is taken with drawing for work, or I wind up spending my work time doing things for my various websites. Yesterday, I was proofing some comic book stuff, in my capacity as editor for John Gallagher's Buzzboy, and I went to the web to check to make sure one of the visuals was correct. When I found what I was looking for, one of the other things that came up in the image search was a picture of me with one of my trihosts from Comic Book Diner, Jamar Nicholas. I liked the angle of the shot (the photo was taken by your friend and mine, Mike Manley, so no surprise that it was well composed), so I decided to do a little sketch of it. I thought it turned out ok, so I took a photo of it with my phone camera, and imported it into Photoshop to clean it up a little (that, by the way, is a little tech tip. If you're on the go with your art, and don't have access to a scanner, but need to upload it somewhere, you can take a picture of it, and clean it up in Photoshop later. I actually do this quite a bit now).

Well, I got kind of carried away, added color, and an hour and a half after I began, I wound up with a completed color sketch. What's funny, is that generally, I do a finished drawing, maybe ink it, and THEN add color digitally. and even then, I use my tablet to color, fairly precisely. This time, I used a mouse, on my dining room table. I don't normally work this way, so this was a little rougher than my usual finished work, but it was also liberating. It kind of felt like working with watercolors, and I think the finished drawing sort of looks like a watercolor piece. Anyway, here's the sketch:



I'm going to attempt to do a few more like this, beginning with a much-needed new self-portrait, and one of Gallagher as well, as I'm thinking we might be able to use them for the podcast website. I'm sure I can do one like this of me, but I have a feeling John will be a challenge. Ironic, since he and I have been friends and colleagues for over eight years, and I sit right next to him at every show I do. We'll see if that translates into an accurate portrait. I'll keep you posted!

I'll be back soon, so stay tuned!

Best,
Rich