Support Your Favorite Artists!
A look through my most valued original art pieces!
From friends and colleges to seasoned professionals I have, over the last few years, started to commission and collect original artwork from the people that inspire me to be an artist. I’d love to show you all a small look at the most personal and cherished originals in my collection.
Con Buddies, Collaborators, and Friends
I’d like to start this presentation with the grassroots people that I see on frequent basis. People I vend next to as conventions, people I spend hours in a car driving to those conventions, and people that draw silly, powerful, and amazing stuff that I’ve needed to have.
Sunray Starshine and Dave are artists I see multiple times a year and we all have a love of cartoons and awesome toys. I picked up these two pieces after long conversations with both about my favorite characters from Transformers and TMNT.
Dylan and Drew have come to know me very well over the years on vending halls, car rides, dinners, and good natured bullshitting. So, unsurprisingly, Dylan knowing Mareep is my favorite basic Pokémon and making me a super badass electric sheep has helped this be one of my cherished artworks from him. Drew, on the other hand, has a knack for classy wordplay and got me laughing all weekend at a show with a “Specific Rim” joke that I then was forced to commission him to draw my favorite Jaeger from Pacfic Rim.
I’ve known Solomon for over a decade as a fixture of the Sioux Falls creative illustrators group. I picked this original up at a rare sighting of Solomon at the Art Collective (a local art show) and he brought his bin of originals so I had to take advantage! Bivens is a fantastic horror illustrator and comic professional and this gel pull original was staring at me for a whole weekend so I had to have it in my home.
Professionals I Don’t Know but Love to Support
Most of these artists I have been a follower of even before the advent of social media but it sure has helped to know when they are selling art! Many of these originals are hugely influential and I love having them in my studio to admire.
Dendo and Romy have been amazing mecha artists I’ve followed for a long time and I have always been on the lookout for art sales from them. Romy had a huge sale and I picked up a few great pieces, the only problem was taking awhile to get here from Malaysia. Dendo I decided on day to DM him about this specific piece and Arcbeetle is my favorite Medabot and I was kind of amazed he agreed to sell it.
Simon Roy makes some of the best sci fi comics I have ever read. They are gloriously weird looks at space and humanity among the stars and I feel lucky to have been able to get an original from his last Kickstarter “A Star Called the Sun”. Emerson Tung is one of the lead visual developers from id Studios and does most the concepting from the Doom and Doom Eternal franchise. But before all that I knew Emerson from his artbook SUPER ROBOT BOMBER from 2016. I bought it so fast and knew I needed to follow this guy. Since that book he has developed a whole world called Tank Head whose roots started in SRB, and when he put the originals from Tank Head up I reached out and picked up some of my favorites from that book.
These originals are my top tier, joy in a bottle, holy grail pieces I own. Jake Parker’s art quiet literally taught me how to ink and use brushpens so being lucky enough to own a color original was worth every penny. Jake is a comic professional and is the creator of Inktober, which I’ve talked about on this newsletter before, and has been a major influence on me. Scott Wegener is the artist for Atomic Robo, which is the best action comic most people haven’t read. It’s been the first comic I’ve ever collected and kept up with and I get much of my comic sensibility from this series. On the last collected volume Kickstarter he did they offered the covers as an add on and it has been a dream of mine to have any original page from that series (which is currently all digitally made except the covers so no easy to get many lately) so having this one with Robo’s Rogues Gallery is pretty damn special to me.
Support For Everyone
If you have a favorite artist and you like supporting what they do I heavily advocate for asking about originals and commissions. The easiest way to have an artist make a thing you love is for you to pay them to make it ( also it happens much quicker too). I always appreciate people that want original work from me and have learned to pay that appreciation forward by supporting the artists and professionals around me that I look up to and want to see more of what they can do.
If anyone has anything they are looking for from me it’s as easy and contacting me through my website on on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in this month and I hope you enjoyed a look into my originals collection!
Thank you for reading and if you enjoy the content please consider following me on Instagram or Subscribing to my Substack for great once a month look at my process and happenings. See you next month!
What I’m Reading
Uri Tupka and the Gods - by Mike Mignola and Dark Horse.
I am always on the lookout for a new Mignola story especially when it has him returning to interior pages. Uri Tupka and the Gods is written in Mignola’s Lands Unknown world that includes Bowling for Corpses which was phenomenal. This story follow Uri through strange lands meeting comical and horrifying characters as he searches for the lost Gods of the world and where they have left to.
That’s all for this month, if you enjoyed the small snippet into my life please consider subscribing or sharing with a friend. I hope to see you all again next month!
Fun post! Nice score with the Jake Parker!