WONDERCON COMMISSION REQUESTS CLOSED

Thank you to everyone who made a request. If your request made the cut, I will be contacting you by Saturday evening to confirm the commission. If you made a request and do not hear from me by Saturday evening, unfortunately, that means I won't be taking on your commission. Truth be told, I would like to take them all on, but I just don't have enough time. Hopefully, I'll get to yours next time around!

LAST CALL FOR WONDERCON COMMISSION REQUESTS

Thank you very much to everyone who has already submitted a request. I received several interesting requests, and was pleasantly surprised by the variety of ideas. I will be sending out confirmations soon. That said, it is last call for anybody on the fence. If you would like to submit a request for a commission to be picked up at WONDERCON, please do so by midnight tomorrow (Wed) PST. Please see the sidebar for the guidelines. Thanks again!

WONDERCON 2012 COMMISSION REQUESTS

Thank you very much to the folks who have contacted me about commissions. For the first time ever, I have decided to open an official 'pre-convention commission request list' for Wondercon 2012. Please see the link at the top of the sidebar to read the details before submitting a request.

I realize the commissions will be out of reach for a lot of con-goers, so I am also working out a sensible sketching policy for the show. I'll do my best to see that more folks can get a little something. 

Thanks again for everyone's continued interest and support of my work.

WONDER WOMAN 611 ORIGINAL ART AUCTION

An auction for the Wonder Woman issue 613 611 original cover art is up and running. Click the image to be taken to the auction.

Some folks have also contacted me about the website store I have been promising. I am happy to say I finally found the time to set it up. It will open next week with a few sketches and a print or two to get started. After that, I will try to keep it stocked with at least a few pieces of art.

I'm going to try to offer items at all different price points in the shop, so hopefully interested parties can find something without having to break the bank. Of course, there will be a few bank-breakers, too, for you big-spenders out there. I certainly wouldn't want to exclude you folks.

Finally, you may have noticed I have been doing some tweaks to the website. Hopefully, you will find it nicer to look at and easier to navigate. If anybody comes across something weird or broken, please let me know.
The most significant change is probably to the galleries, which should be easier to navigate and include more images. Most of the art is not new, but is stuff that was missing. I added all of the sequential pages from the old Sky Between Branches issue 0 to the Comic Book Interiors section, and restored the Book Covers section, which also features a few images I hadn't posted previously. The Comic Book Covers section features one previously-unseen Batman cover (bottom row, second from the left).

As always, thanks for stopping by.

UPDATE: Correction: This cover was published as issue 611, not 613.

WONDERCON 2012 - ANAHEIM

I'm happy to report that my Artist Alley table at WONDERCON 2012 in Anaheim has been confirmed. My table number is A93.

I'm putting together a portfolio of originals to bring along, and I will have prints of a few pieces, too. I might even do a sketch or two...

I am really looking forward to the show. It looks to be quite a guest list, so I expect there will be no shortage of great art to look at. I hope to see you there!

SLIGHTLY SOUR PRINCESS

Here is another one of these sketchbook drawings with a little digital color. She looks like she has a bit of an attitude. Maybe she is annoyed by those giant earrings.

I am being mindful to not over-render my stuff nowadays, and working on these little sketches helps me to develop that mindset. Over the years, I occasionally got carried away with rendering in Photoshop. Sometimes the piece called for it, but more often than not when I was going nuts with the bells and whistles, it was because the drawing was weak and I was attempting to obscure that fact with a bunch of digital crap on it. I wasn't always consciously aware of what I was doing at the time, but in any case, it works about as well as B.O. and cologne.

Speaking of horrible odors, I am finalizing my plans to attend WONDERCON in Anaheim March 16-18. It looks like I will actually be manning a table in Artist Alley, something I haven't done in a very long time. I am starting my preparations now, so I should have some decent goodies on offer, including some prints and original art. We'll see about those damn con sketches...

CHEEKY ELF AND A RETURN TO THE WILD

Here is a crop of a page from one of my sketchbooks. I have built up a few sketchbooks filled with mostly little headshots and style explorations, but haven't bothered scanning anything mainly because it is kind of a pain and also because most of the drawings are pretty weak.

Recently, however, I wanted to do some coloring and found that I didn't have much to work with, so I flipped through the books and tried to pick out the more scan-worthy stuff to fool around with in color, including the cheeky elf seen here. I'll try to post some more of these soon. I'll also see if I have drawn a girl with a shirt on...

I should also mention that I left Nickelodeon a couple of weeks ago. It was a great experience and the crew is a remarkable group of people, but it was time for me to move along. I can't say much about Legend of Korra, but I am certain that fans of the original Avatar series will be very pleased.

So I am back in the wild. It was nice to have the relative security of "in-house" for a couple of years, but I don't think I'll be going back. In fact, I think I will go deeper into the wilderness than ever before. Don't worry, I will keep my internet connection and will post the results of my expedition.

UNFINISHED

Once again, it has been too long since my last post. That means I've been working too much on stuff I can't share and not drawing anything new that I can share. Well, I have to move that Dragonborn post down the page somehow, so here are a couple of sketches I came up with a while back but never finished.

I drew the Berry Faery several months ago. I remember feeling kind of down one evening when I was struggling to draw, so I abandoned whatever it was I was working on and picked up a new sheet of paper and sketched out the figure on this sketch without much thinking. To my surprise, she looked pretty good, so I quickly snapped a photo of the page with my iMac (didn't feel like messing with the scanner) and sketched in the rest of the concept digitally. I was all fired up to finish it when I hit a wall- I couldn't decide if I should attempt to paint the final piece traditionally (my initial instinct) or to just do my usual digital thing. I put it on the back burner and eventually abandoned it.

The Medusa was another misfire. The idea for a Medusa portrait just popped in my head one day, and I could see it pretty clearly. I drew the figure in pencil without reference, thinking I would get something stylish and pushed like the image in my mind, but much to my dismay, my pencil was stuck on "realistic" and I wound up with this boring portrait of some lady. I scanned it and tried to make it work in Photoshop, but only made it worse by adding more rendering and lighting to increase the photo-realism factor. It was going even more in the wrong direction, so I had to abandon it completely. There is just no way to "stylize" something after the fact. You have to go big in the first place and whittle it down.

Perhaps given the time and motivation I will revisit these two ladies, but for now, they are living on the island of misfit drawings.

On a side note, some folks have been asking about original art sales. I am working on a new online shop and hope to have it up soon. I'm going to be selling whatever remaining comic art I have, including covers and a few interior pages, along with some sketches and the like. I'm still figuring out the print situation, but hopefully I will be able to offer some prints, too. I'll post another notice when I get closer to putting the shop online, so interested parties should stay tuned.

Thanks as always for stopping by. I'll try to come back soon.

DRAGONBORN

Once again, it has been too long. LEGEND OF KORRA is in full swing, so I am pressed for free time but I am loving every minute of it. I'll be talking about Korra plenty more in the future, but for now here is an image I don't think I posted yet. It is a book cover I did a while back for a new edition of DRAGONBORN by Toby Forward, which I understand is quite good, so I look forward to reading it once I get my hands on a copy.

For all of the nice folks who have contacted me over the last few weeks but did yet receive a reply, please accept my apologies. I am painfully behind on my e-mail, so it is going to take me a while to catch up. I'll do my best to get back to everybody eventually.

Thanks!

LEGEND OF KORRA

I'm thrilled to say that I will soon be joining the incredible crew of Nickelodeon's forthcoming THE LAST AIRBENDER: LEGEND OF KORRA animated series. Here is the limited edition poster I drew of Korra astride Naga for San Diego Comic Con.

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON

While I am not exhibiting at SDCC, I am attending Fri-Sun. Just in case anybody is interested in saying "hello" and maybe twisting my arm for a quick sketch, you will at least be able to find me in one place for sure- I will be attending the Legend of Korra panel in room 6BCF at 4PM on Saturday. Look for my gleaming scalp in the front row.

Enjoy the show!

WORKING ON THE SITE

Recent visitors may have noticed some goofy stuff going on with the website/blog, not the least of which is the fact that the blog and my main website have been combined into one main site at www.joshuamiddleton.com. I am still in the process of redesigning, so please bear with me while I clean up the place, add some new functionality, and break a bunch of stuff along the way.

The Gallery currently features my comic book covers, but will be expanding to include everything that was in the galleries on the old website, as well as some new stuff. I will post further updates as things progress.

Thanks!

GREEN ARROW

Here are the covers for Green Arrow issues 13 and 14. I have included the issue 13 pencils and inks for those of you interested in seeing the progression. Once again, I tried to keep these fairly simple with traditional pencils, inks, and colors with more flat areas and cuts than soft edges.

I think that's enough of the superheroes. I'll post some of my own stuff next.

WONDER WOMAN 614

I'm going to keep these posts coming with another Wonder Woman. This is the regular cover of issue 614. I tried to keep the colors simpler on this one- almost without exception, I prefer very simple colors with minimal rendering, yet I often forget that when coloring my own stuff. So, I made an effort on this one to focus on the drawing and palette, and to let the colors be more graphic without a lot of fancy light or effects. It was a nice break from all of the rendering and glow of the previous cover, Wonder Woman 613 (previous post).

I few folks have asked me if these DC covers mean I am coming back to regular comics work. No, not really- I have been working in animation since the end of 2009, and on my own projects, but I was able to complete a handful of covers for DC over the last few months. Along with the two Wonder Woman covers, I did two Green Arrows and a Batman. They almost led to a regular assignment, but sorry superhero fans, turns out it was just a brief visit to the old house.

I also drew a couple of fantasy novel covers along with the DC stuff, but I can't show those quite yet. I'll post them as soon as I can.

I'm currently sketching for myself, working on a couple of larger personal pieces, and generally trying to improve my traditional technique. If I get something good, I'll be sure to share it. That's a big "if" at the moment.