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...