This year, Studio 2nd Street had a booth at Comic-Con.
It was a quiet booth, living a quiet life, bothering no one, until the artists came.
The madness started shortly after that, as soon as the Mad Hatter (who is secretly my friend Danny) showed up, 10 minutes after the con opened.
The artists drew on Thursday. This artist discovered that painting friends-as-zombies is hard. And painting while hundreds of people walk by is extremely difficult. Not to mention hard on one's ego, when you usually can paint like this:
But the painting of friends-as-pimp&ho-zombies was tragically overdue, so it had to be done.
The artists drew and painted so much, that the booth couldn't hold them all, so they had to go upstairs for their panel. Upstairs, there were people waiting to see the artists paint and draw.
There are no pictures of the painting and drawing, as the artists were too busy painting and drawing to take photos of themselves. Also, that's a good way to cover your camera in oil paint, which cameras do not like. The panel was nervewracking, but went well. At least, that's what some of the audience said later.
This artist then left to go have beer, as there was sadly no beer in the booth. So she went to Stone Brewery, where her friend was reading, and also drinking beer.
The pole did not drink beer, in spite of many people's efforts to pour beer on it.
On Friday, this artist wore a different corset to paint in. Like you do. Especially when you're modeling corsets for Alter Ego.
This is a good way to be given a security escort to get back down to the exhibit hall on Friday, and pretend you're Important. Don't I look Important?
And then there was more unfinished painting.
And more friends I rarely see.
At the end of the day, and after the painting, there was more beer.
The booth did not miss us while we were out drinking beer. Not one bit. There were other booths, some with flashing lights, even.
And even though Ron strayed and painted the other booth with lights, we liked our booth the best in the end.
Other people came to the booth and gave us free paint.
So, of course, they had to be tested.
Jon Enge came by, pretending to be Johnny Breen, and proving that any Poxy Boggard is interchangeable, as I'd long suspected.
Some of the studio's models came by, wearing clothes, which made them almost unrecognizable.
Jen usually looks like this. That NASA jumpsuit is a good disguise.
On Saturday we left the booth and went to dinner with this guy, who drew Justin. Lucky, lucky bastard with his interesting mustache.
On Sunday, the booth watched me paint this in cat-herder extraordinare Ryan Graff's Sandman sketchbook. Started with this sketch, from last October:
Which became this:
Which became this:
Ryan promises he will send the hi-res scan over.
There was more drawing across the way at Allen Spiegel Fine Arts. This famous guy, working on this piece (final drawing here).
He did this of Vanessa.
My sketchbook now has this as its first page:
I have my orders.
Then the booth started complaining about having had all of the artists in it. Uppity, ungrateful thing.
So it had to die.
The booth swore it would come back next year, as a zombie.
Be ready.