In 2008, a local comic dealer, Chris Peterson, shut the doors of his shop, The Comic Bookie, for good. Around 2009, he ended up starting a monthly comic & collectible show at the Packing House (aptly named, because it used to be a packing house and was, in recent years, converted into retail shops and restaurants) in the Claremont Village. At the time, he needed someone to help keep an eye on his booth when he had to attend to business pertaining to the show, so I agreed to help. I would sit there and sell a few sketchbooks, but mostly I just sat and doodled all day. The following sketch was one of those doodles, which I later colored and submitted for entry into Spectrum 17, an annual featuring the year’s best (according to that year’s jury) contemporary fantastic art. So this is the original blue-pencil doodle. You can see the finished illustration on page 204 of Spectrum 17 (published in 2010). As you can see, part of the image also currently serves as the header to this blog.
Frank Grau Illustration 