First of all thanks to everyone who stopped by my table for a sketch, and for those of you that I couldn’t get to I apologize. Regardless, I hope you all had a good time!

The con was a great experience in many ways and I learned a lot – this being my first time on the OTHER side of the table. It was great connecting with fans and chatting them up. Of course it helped that I had my lovely wife as my assistant with me. She really made things a lot easier. When doing sketches it’s hard to connect with people walking by. She did an awesome job of getting people’s attention and reeling them in.

To you, my love, my deepest gratitude.

Thanks also to my neighbors Andy and Alice Price, and Chris Rieke.

From a fanboy point of view the show was great and I got to geek out on tons of inkers, Paul Mounts, and Jimmy Palmiotti. It was also great hanging with Comfort Love and Adam Withers, of The Uniques fame, and their crew of Jeremy and Kelly Dale, Marcus Almond (The Razor Kid), and Bryan Glass (The Mice Templar). You guys were great, and I can’t wait to meet up again soon.

Meeting so many great people really fuels my desire to do more cons. This year will be a little hard to do more, but I hope to change that next year. I’m hoping to to Mid-Ohio November.

It was hard feeling like I was a part of a community until I did this show. It’s just not something that one realizes when they’re holed up and trying to get work done. The fun, the fellowship, these are things I don’t get at home and I could go on and on, but I won’t

There are almost too many great things to say about the show to try and wrap up in such a small space.

I’ll be there next year for sure.

Be on the lookout for con sketch pics!

Thanks again all,

Jon Alderink

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In a nutshell it kicked ass. I’ll write much more later, but right now I’ve got to get my ass in gear!

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Just a warm-up that I did prior to some inking for a Uniques Tales story. My W&N brushes are officially on my shit list, and I switched half way through the page to some Rapheals I bought as backups last Fall.

Werd.

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The mailman has been super nice this week in delivering a few copies of the books that I worked on last Fall and last Spring.

Nanovor Hacked!, and Prank Week are both now on shelves, and I have to say that they look GREAT! I put some of my favorites from Prank Week up. I did the drawing, inking and coloring in that one. There should be some from Hacked! buried in my gallery somewhere In my opinion the ones in Prank Week turned out much better. And to think, I did them only a few months after the Hacked! ones.

Both books I illustrated in a week, each. It was a crazy deadline that almost killed me, so in regards to the amount of time I had on them I’m still, overall, happy how they turned out. Far from perfect, but when you have that much work to do you just have to move on. If anything, it was a great exercise for not sweating the details….because there was no option to

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the pics I put up. If you have any young readers, pick the book up for them. It’s only $8!!!

Spread the word my friends!

Here are the links:  http://www.amazon.com/Nanovor-Hacked-Mur-Lafferty/dp/0762437561
and
http://www.amazon.com/Nanovor-Prank-Week-Seth-Johnson/dp/0762437588/ref=pd_sim_b_4

That’s all for now folks!

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Hey I was doing pretty well there with the daily sketches thing wasn’t I?

Yeah…..

It’s all good though! I’ve been working on some paid color work again through HiFi Design, which is just the bees knees. I still have to prove myself, and it’s much like starting any kind of new job. In an effort to focus my efforts on my work I put the sketches aside to ensure I didn’t blow this chance at the possibility of getting more work. It must have been effective, and although I’ve been battling a mean cold, I was still able to get everything in on time and they gave me a few more pages as well.

This is maybe the closest thing to stability that a freelancer, such as myself, can get and it’s an opportunity that I plan on taking full advantage of. So, I need to do everything in my power to not blow this. If that means blowing my daily skecthes things, I think that’s OK. Sketching in my free time doesn’t help pay the bills, which is something I haven’t been contributing to as much as I’d like.

At any rate, I’m very excited to be working with Brian Miller and everyone else at Hi Fi and I look forward to being pushed creatively and professionally. It’s going to be a fun ride kids, so hold on tight!

One final thing; I’ve been battling a cold from Hell and am taking the day to re-coup and have my sketchbook right next to me. Infer what you will.

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Well here it is ladies and gents

To me, this is an obvious fusion of Dave Devries’ (of the Monster Engine fame, google it) style into mine. I love his stuff and it’s so damn fun to paint like this. All digital this time. CS4. Not 100% finished, but that’s not the goal yet.

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I’m still totally counting yesterday’s painting as my daily whatever-you-wanna-call-it, but did this as well. The sketch was already kind of started. I just took it a little bit further. Yesterday’s sketch me become today’s digital painting.

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Decided to give things another go with the acrylics, so here it is. The ear is complete crap and I’m still not entirely enthused with the whole thing in general, but once more, I learned a lot.

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I’m starting on a new simple painting today to see if I can’t break out of the box a little bit. I started out with a sketch today, which I busted out during a bout of frustration with myself.I was trying to stay a little looser, and I still have a ways to go, but I figured I’d leave well enough alone. It was just a sketch after all.

Next, I scanned it into PS and started playing with the colors. Just random crap, trying to stumble on something different. After some moments of screwing around I thought I had something interesting going on. So what do I do? Started smudging the hell out of everything to see what would happen. The result is below. I could try to take it a few levels further to try and finish it, but I stopped myself. I wanted to do a real media painting, not a digital one. I’m pleased with the outcome simply because it’s so far from mos things that I do.I like the idea of the color sketch, but I’m sure the painting will look pretty different.

Wish me luck.

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So, in lieu of a sketch today, I got the itch to paint.

I wish I hadn’t :/ Blech. All the more reason to try again, no?

-Acrylics and colored pencil on watercolor paper.

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