Sunday, September 02, 2007

Con Sketches part 1

75 sketches over two days.

C'mon, that's a pretty serious effort! Friday I was at the booth for four hours. Saturday I had to give it a miss. There was a wall of Gene Simmons fans that blocked all traffic to our booth. On Sunday I decided to make up for my absenteeism and sat at the booth for seven hours.

The breakdown for the sketches were as follows:

Hiro: 23
Claire: 10
Peter: 5
Sylar: 5
Superman: 6
Batman: 4
Portrait: 4
Atom: 3
Eve: 2
Human Torch: 1
Spiderman: 1
Darkness: 1
ted: 1
Pan's Labyrinth: 1
Niki: 1
Haitian: 1
Nathan: 1
Darth Vader: 1
Lisa: 1
CloudStrife: 1
Green Arrow: 1
Poison Ivy: 1

As you can see, Hiro Nakamura is one hella popular guy!

Some sketches were good, some were not so good. Last year the joke was that I was so slow the con would be over before I did a single sketch.

This year, I did much better. Let's say that there was an hour each day of stuffing around, breaks and so on. That means I was averaging about 7 minutes a sketch. I thought I was quicker, but there you go.

Fans commented how fast I was and how much "bang for your buck" I gave them. Given I wasn't charging anything, I think they got a pretty good deal.

But seriously, there's so much stuff that you could be doing at the con, that to stand in my queue and wait while I take 7 minutes per sketch is incredibly flattering.

After talking to people, I realized that fans wanted a quick keepsake. They didn't expect the Cistene Chapel, they wanted something kinda good and quick.

To be honest, I didn't feel that I was delivering either.

I had brought an inkwash with me, but I couldn't find a brush anywhere to save myself. Despite the kind words from the fans who received them, these initial sketches weren't my favourites. I was kinda greasing the brain, and I knew I needed a solution to improve the quality and speed of my sketches.

Luckily I had a bright idea...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your emo Peter rocks. Lucky orange shirt girl...

I also like how every Hiro I've seen from you is different. Too often, con sketchers (understandably) draw the same or similar poses over and over again. I'm glad you were able to find some variety.