Heroes Con and Wizard World Chicago

Just got back from two weeks of cons! I've never done more than one at a time, so I'm pretty pooped now.

Heroes Con in Charlotte was as great as ever, we got to sit next to some great artists, and I got to see the kids again from last year who I think are just incredible and I love watching their art skills grow. If Chase and Olivia are reading this ( and a certain special family, you know who you are!) I think you are amazing and I hope you keep drawing! Can't wait to see you next year!

As for Wizard World, Ray and I decided to go at the last minute, thanks to Kevin Mellon and Dennis Hopeless who let us hitch a ride with them North-ish to Chicago.

The Con itself was pre-tty awesome, I had no idea it was so big... sort of a mini-San Diego. Again I was sketching like a madwoman and couldn't get up from my table for a minute, but I'm not complaining, it was a blast. I met some great people. The first thing I drew was a Poison Ivy requested from a nice guy to give to his girlfriend as a present. She loves daisies so I tried to draw her wrapped up in a 'daisy tree'... he later sent me a picture of his girlfriend with it, which I thought was really nice of him!




Hope you both liked it!

I also got to be a part of the Women in Comics Panel. I didn't say much as I don't really know as much about the industry nowadays as the other ladies did, but I really did enjoy listening to their answers and meeting them later. I was really happy to meet Jann Jones, who is really genuinely happy and having fun working in comics. Sometimes I run into people who treat comics like it's as serious as a plague and never have fun. Comics should be fun people!




As fun as it all was though... my favorite part was eating the free breakfast at the Embassy Suites :D What can I say? I love food...and FREE food is even better!

And of course hanging out with Kevin and Dennis was as wonderful as always. Here's a pic of them being super annoyed by Ray in the back and trying to figure out how to push him out of the car :D

PIC!

And here's a quick sketch I did of their character Shelby from Gear Head.... she's such a cool character.


Well, getting geared up for San Diego now, sorry for the rant but it's late and I don't wanna go to bed yet.

'nae

Silver Surfer Sketch Card Video!

Hi! Here's another video I did on another Marvel Masterpieces Artist Proof. This one a commission of Silver Surfer and Shalla Bal. :)



Thanks guys!

Marvel Masterpieces '07 Proofs! And sketch video!

Hey! Just wanted to post some of my proofs from the '07 Upperdeck set. I recieved 10, so here's 8 that were commissioned so far, the other 2 coming soon!

Oh yeah, and here's the video for the Psylocke sketch ;)

















I'll also have new sketch videos up soon :) Let me know if you like them or not!

IDW's Rogue Angel

Well, thought it was past time to announce the book I'm working on!

It's called ROGUE ANGEL: TELLER of TALES , which is through IDW and based on the popular novels from Gold Eagle.

Here's some random pages from random issues ( they're in no order whatsoever.... sorry... )

Pencils - Me

Inks/Colors- Ray Ray Ray Dillon Dillon Dillon!

Writer- Barbara Kesel

 

I've been incredibly lucky that my first published comic gets to be about a female Indiana Jones with a sword.... awesome. I'm even luckier to be working with editor Tom Waltz, he is a really neato. He's always so positive and has a great view on how fun working on comics should be. Chris Ryall has also been awesome, as has writer Barbara Kesel. You have no idea how cool it is to work with another female creator.

Anyway, Issues #1 and #2 are already out. Do a girl a favor a check'em out ;)

Here's where you can purchase:

Rogue Angel: Teller of Tales #1

Rogue Angel: Teller of Tales #2

Keep and eye out the next few months for #'s 3-5 ;)

Let me know what you guys think. It's definitely been a learning process, but I think I'm kinda getting the hang of it. :)

Thanks for reading!

~Renae

UPDATE! Finally!

Well.... I did mention I stink at updates, right??

First a warning that this certain post is dedicated to all things that have happened over the last 8 months, so sorry if it all seems a bit whiny and crazy, but it's all very.... very true.

Well, rambles ahoy! ( you've been warned!)

Anyway, I apologize for the huge break, it's been a very...very very rough and turbulent 8 months. Starting in August last year, we had a hacker get into the local bank and take all of our money... every last cent. We don't have any other bank accounts, so it was all we had, and were TOTALLY wiped out. We had no food, internet ( very necessary for my type of work), nothing to pay bills with, for about 6 weeks. If it wasn't for our landlord being the saint that he is ( he paid our rent and electric bill for us) The bank finally came through and gave us ( most) of our money back after that time, but we still had roughly over a thousand dollars of late fees to wade through...fun!!.

But even then we bounced back pretty quick - UNTIL! It happened again! RIGHT after we got our money back! We hadn't even had a chance to get groceries and another hacker decides to do this to us again. So for another 5 weeks we were penniless. Things were very very bad. And just to clarify, when I say penniless, I mean we broke the piggy banks and spent every penny we had for food. Ray and I work in comics, so our checks are very sporadic, and during these particular months we had no sooner cashed a critical payment when a hacker would strike. It was just terrible bad luck.

But, with help and support of some good friends we managed to keep food on the table and keep up Tycen's pre-school payments, and eventually the bank paid us back for our 2nd hacker attack, just in time for Halloween. ( will post Tycen's pics for that soon!)

Well, a couple weeks went by, when we had yet another strike, this time not from the bank, but from a credit card company that decided to pay our online bill for us....over and over and over again until we were entirely wiped out.... again!!!! I was pretty down at this point because the holiday's were coming, and I had a new book to work on ( talk about that later) and I had to spend all my time calling creditors, and electric companies, and trying to find money, when I should have been taking my son to look at Christmas decorations. Plus, having this kind of thing happen to you over and over again in such a short period was extremly stressful. I really owe Ray during this time, he really kept his cool and kept everything together and as happy as he could during this time. Thank you Ray :) :) :)

So, a few weeks later, after haggling with the credit card company awhile, they eventually paid us back. It was the beginning of December and things were looking up again, I was finally able to take my son looking for a tree and work on my comic more now that we didn't have to spend every waking moment trying to keep the electricity on.....

That's when the ice storm rolled in!! ( blare entry trumpets)

Yup, good ol' ice happy storms swept Kansas and coated pretty much everything in 1/4 inch of ice. Being from coastal California and Oregon I've NEVER given any thought to ice storms in my life :p I never thought they could do anything damaging.... but apparently they cause tree limbs to crash down on your roof, and the best part, makes your power go out for weeks right before Christmas!! Yippee! That's right, our house is in a section of town most ignore, so they waited for weeks to get to our block, so we had to evacuate our house. Luckily we had friends willing take us in ( thank you so much John and Kelly :) ) At least this time we had a little money for food, but Christmas is a very very important time for me, and the fact that I couldn't take my sonn to get a tree hit me pretty hard. But, we were all together, and that's what was important.

Luckily they turned the power on a couple days before Christmas and we were able to pull off a nice little Christmas.... until we all got a virulent stomach flu ON Christmas morning that lasted for a week.

Seriously, you think something is out to get us??

It's been three months now since all of this, and we're almost recovered now. Because of all bank problems, it incurred thousands of dollars of late fees ( that we had to pay and have yet to be reimbursed...) but we're getting over that finally.

The worst part of all this, is that I finally get to work on an awesome book for an awesome company, and the timing for getting them done started during this whole mess. It made the whole book behind, and .... well, I'll yak about that later. :(

I guess that's pretty much it. Sorry for all the whining, guess I had to get it out. I'll be trying my best to keep up with this Blog, it is pretty nice to be able to talk about anything :)

Thanks for reading guys! :)

Heroes Convention: Charlotte: NC

Alright, I know I'm terribly late on this. I am really bad at trying to keep up with Blogs. I'm sorry! :D

Ray and I recently went to the Heroes Con in Charlotte late month. It was my first time having my own table ( both times before I shared with Ray), and it was definitely a bigger convention, so I was INCREDIBLY nervous. There were so many big named artists around, I really didn't think people would want to talk to me.

But boy was I surprised!!

I really can't say enough good things about this con, but I'll try.

The hotel we were in, the Westin, was pretty much amazing, as well as being only a walk away from the con. Charlotte is a beautiful city.

We were a bit late getting there the first day, and were shocked at how many people were in line to get in! But we quickly got our badges and went in to our table. We immediately started to meet awesome people. Ray and I both talked to people nonstop the whole weekend, as well as being swamped with too much work. This being my first con where I was super busy, I didn't handle my commissions well and ended up making a lot of people wait ( I'm sorry guys!) but I've learned my lesson and hopefully next time I'll do better.

My favorite part of the con were the kids, they were just awesome. A lot of them came up to chat with me, and even showed me their art! It was just cool seeing budding artists.

My sister, Kimberly made the trek over from Raleigh to see me too! It was really great seeing her again. Happy 21st Birthday, too Kimbo!!!

Other than that, we spent our time hanging out with some amazing new artist pals. We already knew the awesome Ryan Stegman, and he introduced us to Chris De Bari, who is not only an amazing artist, but just about the coolest dude ever. He also loves Silent Hill as much as Ray and I. How can you get better than that??

(left to right: Chris, Kevin, me, and Derek)

There was also the amazing Kevin Mellon. He was sitting next to us at the con, and was oddly also from Kansas. We had a great time hanging with him. Ray and him loved each other.

Here they are bonding.

Oh, and here's some Con sketches

Okay, I'll stop yabbering now. Just wanted to say how awesome and friendly Heroes Con is, and I recommend it to anyone!

Have a wonderful day everyone! :D

'nae

Planet Con and New Art

Hi again!

Got back the other week from the Chicagoland Card convention. It was a blast!! It was also my first ever table, and besides having to duct tape together table equipment at the last minute, and not knowing how to price any of my work, it went pretty awesome. I got to meet Katie Cook and Dave Dorman, as well as see Cynthia Cummins again. I had a great time talking to all of them, especially Katie and Cynthia. Not only are they incredibly talented, but just darn nice as well :D I also had a great time talking to a number of collectors as well as store owners, and it was VERY interesting learning about sketch cards from a non-artist point of view. I hope to talk to them more in the future.

Also, Tycen had a good time at the show. He literally took over the floor behind the tables and turned it into his own little train -land :D Chris

(Left to Right: Katie Cook, Cynthia Cummins, Me, Ray Dillon, Brent Engstrom, and Tycen in front )


Well, in other news, this weekend I'll be attending the Planet Con in Kansas City. Another table! It's fun, but boy can it be stressful! Learning how to draw in front of people is one thing I don't think I'll ever get used to :D

As for new artwork, here's a Zatanna commission, and a cover commission for a friends book called Janus. You can see more of my work at my Deviant Art or Comic Space account.

Still working on the DC: Legacy set. I took on an extra hundred cards ( WOO for extended deadlines!!!) Also working on the un-named comic project that will soon have a title, a mound of commissions, and a few other things here and there.

Okay, that's all for now, thanks for reading this far! Have a great day!!

'nae