Commissions: ROUND THREE.

I can’t believe I’ve never drawn Death before. I drew Delirium for the SDCC souvenir book a few years ago, but never Death. Or any of the other Endless, actually. It might be fun to do a whole lineup someday…

HORDES of commissions this time around, folks. I can’t thank you enough for all the requests. (But here’s one at least: THANK YOU!) I posted a couple of my favorites below, but you can see a few more in the commissions gallery (including, oddly enough, a drawing of noted action transvestite Eddie Izzard).

Black Canary came out best, I think. Surprised the hell out of me!

If you’d like to commission your own famous DC comic character sketch (or, y’know, something NOT owned by the Time/Warner corporation), send your requests to serenity@heartshapedskull.com. The base price is $50, and $30 for each additional character on the same page.

And since I’m shilling my wares…

Did you know nearly every page of Serenity Rose Vol. 2 is currently available in the Heart Shaped Shop? SR Vol. 2 pages are $50, the dwindling supply of SR Vol. 1 pages are $30 each, and all the Kimmie66 pages are $20 (they’re kinda small). There’s some other stuff in there, too, every stitch of it perfect for gift-giving. I’m sure some sort of holiday is coming up… In fact, it’s the Gofflin’s birthday on Friday. Why not buy my wife the gift of her husband’s artwork, to hang on the wall of the home we share? It’s gotta be better than the crap I bought!

BTW, we’re probably going to go watch Iron Man and have tapas. Consider that a sort of advance “twitter” in blog form.

Thanks again for all the great commission requests! I’ve already got some cool stuff lined up for next time, but don’t be afraid to send some more:

serenity@heartshapedskull.com

Commissions: ROUND TWO.

“It is to laff, huh Mistah J?”

This month’s batch of art commissions was especially fun, so I figured I’d share a bit. Multiple requests for characters in the “lady super-people” genre this time, which sort of surprised me but really shouldn’t have. It’s kind of what I do, I you think about it.

Harley Quinn is my favorite, I think (hence the extra-massive image, donchaknow). There were a lot of beyond-brilliant things about the old Batman animated series, but that character was without question the beyond-brilliantest. A really slick design, an instantly appealing personality, and a note-perfect “40’s gangster ditz” voice… man, just all around good stuff. I especially liked the way her presence managed to significantly lighten up the Joker character without making him feel any less, y’know, psychotically dangerous. Still not quite sure how they did that…

I think Harley Quinn might be the only Batman TV character to ever jump from television apocrypha to full-fledged printed-on-paper in-continuity comic book “canon.” Which is kind of neat. I mean, Louie the Lilac himself couldn’t even pull that one off.

Anyway, the cheerleader drawing up there is from that “Heroes” TV show, which I still haven’t seen because Netflix won’t send me whole box sets at once. (I can’t be tying up my whole queue for a month to see this stuff, you STINGIES! Southland Tales waits for no man!) The other drawing is obviously good ol’ Wonder Woman (well, hopefully obviously). Now, it always kind of bugs me when people draw Wonder Woman like she’s wearing some sort of shiny metal one-piece, so I made sure to break the outfit up a bit. I also didn’t put high heels on her, because I’m not an idiot.

If you would like to commission your very own commission, click rightabouts HERE. The price is $50 for one character and $30 for each additional character on the same page. No backgrounds for now, sadly… There’s Serenity en-paging to do!

And now I sleep and dream of flaming pom poms…

Calvin & Hobbes.

And there they are!

Now, for whatever reason, when I started this “commissions” thing it never occurred to me someone might ask for a Calvin & Hobbes sketch. Which is really odd because, y’know, Bill Watterson is maybe my #1 biggest art hero ever (it sort of cycles between Bill Watterson, Tim Burton, and Hayao Miyazaki). I guess maybe it always just felt vaguely heretical to even consider drawing these characters… Like the very notion of it was simply not fit for respectable people like me. You don’t re-write Hamlet, you don’t re-paint the Sistine Chapel, and you don’t re-draw Calvin & Hobbes.

But I did it anyway, and it was a lot of fun.

It was cool, too, when I was flipping through my big stack of C&H books for reference, I was struck yet again by the incredible looseness of the drawings. It’s all so wonderfully scribbley and gestural, little bits and wiggles of detritus flying all over the place. So much energy… It reminds me -weirdly- of some of the old EC artists who’ve had such a big influence on me. Especially Jack Davis. That guy was an especially filthy little scribbler. And I love him for it, the creepy old cuss.

God, people’s obsession with “clean” drawings is a total mystery to me.

A couple more commissions that turned out pretty good, if I don’t say so myself but I guess I just did:

The first one is Starla-Faye Jovansensan from Jimmy Misanthrope’s “Agents of the Endtimes” webcomic, and the smaller floating girl in the second one is Faith from Thomas Szewc’s “Alone In A Crowd.” Thank you so much, Jimmy and Thomas!

If you want to be as cool as those guys, click HERE to commission your own… commission. And help keep Serenity Rose Vol. 2 going in the process. Seriously, it takes way less time and is far more enjoyable than taking on freelance jobs. Art directors always want “clean” artwork, y’know.

TWO MORE WEEKS.