This is a little guy I had made some time back. Please don’t ask why he has a telephone. He’s pretty annoyed at the absurdity himself.

A small listing of the books I picked up from this year’s Con:
• Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons 1 and 2 by Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood. I love Ashley’s meaty oils and gestural/dynamic panels in scratchy ink. Great texture. Plus it’s about zombies and robots and amazons all fighting eachother! C’mon!

• Chris Sanders’ Sketchbook 2 - full of his fantastic little critters and busty babes. Really, this guy is just an incredible draftsman!

• Claire Wendling’s phenomenal work in drawers 2.0. Claire blows me away. She can draw her figures and animals like Frank Frazetta and also do concept work for animation and comics. I don’t think her super simplified characters are as strong or interesting as her other work, but it’s nice to have the entire gamut of her style in one book. I love, love, love her animals and figures. The gestures!

• Afterworks 1 and 2 - I was late on this bandwagon, but I got ‘em now! Lovely work from the folks over at Pixar.

• Istanbul by Dupuy and Berberian. I couldn’t pass this one up. A real lovely book of sketches of this incredible city. It’s full of beautiful quick and whimsical studies of the architecture and people. Again, this is where my family is from, and the illustrator is Armenian. Yay!

Yesterday I attended the geek-fest that is Wondercon in San Francisco. I’m definitely on the “artist-geek” end of things, but the “fan geeks” definitely make the event highly entertaining. I picked up some really great books which I’ll talk about later. But first here are some pics from the day. These photos were taken with my phone, so apologies for the low quality.

Some people really spend time making elaborate costumes. I don’t even know who these characters are supposed to be.

Ah, yes. Cobra Command!

Again, I have no clue what character she’s supposed to be. But it’s cool!

Silent Hill was a pretty awful movie, but I loved the production design, and these evil characters. They were pretty memorable, and I was pleasantly surprised to see these two go through all the trouble of recreating them here.

Lou Ferrigno! The Original Hulk!!! I’m usually not so easily star-struck, but this guy made such a big impression on me when I was 5 years old and watching the Incredible Hulk on tv with my dad. He scared the living crap out of me back then, and I think also helped nurture my fascination with horror and all things scary.

This little girl was wandering around the bank while her mom was waiting in line in front of me. The cuteness was almost unbearable, she kept walking around and examining everything with her hands quite intently, and her nose was runny the whole time. When she took her hat off, the crazy case of hat-hair caught me off guard, with bits of her scalp peeking through her fine hair. The mom, by the way, was really awesome with her. I overheard her calling her Twyla. Had to try to get her down when I got home.

This beautiful park is just two blocks away from where I live, and a wondrous oasis amidst the hustle and bustle of the Inner Richmond. It’s a wonder there’s a peaceful lake just a stone’s throw away, where you can go and just let your thoughts be for a while. Gulls were abound today, and a few children on the playground. I like the big tree with the sign that greets you when you walk through.

Violetta’s little traveling wagon. Her bear Blue, carts her around with the harness.

A little bit of scribbly ballpoint covered with Photoshop later. Violetta is looking a bit on the “bad girl” side on the bottom. Probably needs to be toned down. She’s a trickster, but she’s not evil. More like a Puck character. And I kind of like the little Hindi woman that appeared.

This is a continuation of the weird and random drawings of bears from before. I think I found him. Will be working on color, too.

The little gremlin on the left was drawn with my non-dominant left hand. Just to see what would happen.