Rainbow Dash!

This was the next to last drawing I did at ToyConNJ - a commission for my good friend and terrific artist, Jesse Hernandez (follow him on instagram @jessito555) for his daughter Karina. It was a nice surprise to see Jesse come down to the show. Jesse picked up an original of mine (KraKora) a print (Lil' Green Gouache Guy) and two sketch commissions! The Batman Kewtie was for him and for his daughter he asked for a drawing of Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony.  I used a style guide style image online (using my phone) for reference as the basis for the sketch.  For my Universal Monsters sketches I printed out a page of some pre-Kewtie style characters I drew for Halloween stickers that never materialized, to utilize as a style sheet to work from.

All in all ToyConNJ was fun, though it was fairly slow at points. I did relatively well, considering it was mainly a toy show (I think there were only 4 artists tables, including mine), though I have Jesse to thank for making Sunday a decently profitable day! :)

Most of the drawings I've posted here I drew just for myself, and then put on the table if anyone wanted to buy them. The only one that sold was the first one I did, the Frankenstein with arms outstretched, which went to a young lady not soon after I put it out.

When I did the last two Free Comic Book Days at New World Manga, in Livingston, NJ, I was sketch ing Kewtie characters for customers almost the entire time and as a result I only spent about 15 min per drawing. With the show this weekend having it's slow moments, I was able to spend a bit more time on these Kewtie sketches and they also progressed from no backgrounds to more detailed ones so I felt like I grew in a bit in my Kewtie sketching ability.

It was nice to have people stop by the table, even if they didn't buy anything and say some nice things, or even if they didn't stop, I could see some people noticing the Kewties and smiling or saying 'oh those are so adorable, cute, etc..' Something else I noticed, and this was unintentional, is that the placement of the Star Wars Kewties mini paintings on their easels at the front of my table is at the perfect height for four and five year old kids, a number of whom seemed invested in looking close up at the images, including one boy who looked intently for a few seconds each at every canvas, moving down the line until he'd seen them all. Another kid, a young girl, maybe three years old, was able to name all the characters when asked by her dad.

There was also a couple of kids, (sons I presume of the Brick Oven Pizza truck parked outdoors, as they were wearing shirts with the Pizza logo on them) walking around with a few bucks between them. The younger one, who looked to be no more than five looked through my book of prints and originals. He kept coming back to one called Kaijin (Kaijin) but his older brother (maybe seven or eight) kept flipping the page, but the boy was insistent that he wanted to spend the $5 he had on that print. So he did.  Another young boy with his dad, who was maybe six, bought a copy of my Monsters sketchbook and chose the copy I had with a pre-done sketch of Ghost Rider in it. I asked him if he liked to draw and he said yes. I asked him what he liked to draw - and he said monsters! Cool kid.

I met a few cool people and made a couple of good contacts (and picked up a copy of The Monster of Frankenstein #15, completing my run - the only thing I bought over the weekend) and with getting the table pro bono everything else was gravy.

I hope to be doing some other shows in the NY/NJ area next year.