Team Cul De Sac- p02

As some of you may remember, I’ve submitted art to the charity event set up by Chris Sparks entitled Team Cul De Sac, which involves a wide range of cartoonists doing their version of Richard Thompson’s comic strip Cul De Sac. The original art will be auctioned off, and a book will be published of the images, to raise money for Parkinson’s research; all this is in association with the Michael J Fox Foundation. You can learn more about donating art, and/or money at the website.

Some amazing work has already been done, the most surprising (and one most likely to set the bar at auction) is an oil painting donated by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson– his first new, publicly released art, in 15 years!

It's a testament to Richard as a person to get this sort of involvement.

Granted I can’t compete with that, but if I’m lucky enough to get one of the two images I submitted into the book, that’ll be a feather in my cap! Below are the pics I’ve supplied (I posted poor scans earlier, but these are nice and clean), and where others are working in their own styles, I wanted to jump around on Richard’s turf. He has a wonderfully, loose and sketchy quality to his work; and it was fun to mimic his use of  line in these images. If you read the strip (if you don’t you should!) they’re based on various story lines found in the strip.

I loved the idea that a guy sits on a couch so long he becomes one with it.

This is a "greatest hits" sort of image— read the strip and you'll get the gags!

Plane ticket, hotel room, terrorist leader in latex = √

OK the title alone will probably get me on every FBI watchlist available (as if my internet searches haven’t done that already), but I’m getting ready, for in a month I’ll be at the HeroesCon in Charlotte. Every year two things happen there– they have an auction of original art to help off-set the cost of the show, and Shelton Drum (organizer and owner of Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find) never remembers my name. I figure if I start pulling in a little money at the auction, maybe… just maybe, he’ll start to recognize me and call me “Shane? Sam? Shamus? Sean? (God no!)” — well it would be a start.

Below is the pencil work for the image I’m putting in the auction this year, to kickstart that recognition from Shelton. The piece is larger than I normally work, at 11 x 17; and those of you who know me will vouch that I usually draw my pages, sketches, commissions, and other auction images at 8.5 x 11. If you’re in the Charlotte area the first weekend of June, come by the show and bid on it.

I’ll post the inks and gray washes for this image as completed… that is if I don’t end up doing them the night before I leave for the show! ;¬P

Remember, Shelton knowing me is half the battle!

Pencils for the HeroesCon auction!