Baltimore comic con was an amazing experience! thanks to the Autumn Society for inviting me. exhausting as it was i wish conventions were my job
i was lucky enough to be sandwiched twixt Justin Gray and Craig Parillo (AMAZING artists), and the amount of hilarious commentary was in stereo for 2 great days
one of the most humbling things were the folks who asked me to do paintings right then and there (here i am working on a zombie!). special thanks to those people who asked me for a painting for really making me speechless, and thanks to everyone who bought a print or just stopped by to say hi and talk to us or look at our art; it really meant the world. also thanks to long distance folks like Alicia & Ryann, and especially Jay & Timmons for coming out and surprising me, showing me that the best part of the weekend wasn't getting to meet folks like Mike Mignola, but sharing these incredible experiences with some of the best friends anyone could ever hope for
Joe "chogrin" Game not only orchestrated the whole event making it easy on of all us, but he did incalculable amounts of work, like these sweet Autumn Society merch bundles. when i was younger, it was the height of writing your favorite bands (these are punk DIY indie bands mind you) and they would send you so much cool stuff in return. i think Joe captured that same excitement with these bundles of art zines, magnets, stickers, buttons, cards, and even a CD comp of musicians from the Autumn Society (on sale for $3-5 here!)
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in addition to this being the first time i've ever experienced the "other side" of the convention table, i still had plenty of starry-eyed hero-awe all weekend. Darwyn Cooke was gracious enough as i awkwardly gushed all over him with praise (as well as giving him a painting of the green lantern, officially the nerdiest thing i've ever done that wasn't for a girl), BPRD's Guy Davis ended up being one of the most amazing talents and people EVER, Walt Simonson as it turns out is a really funny guy (told me he was John Byrne in disguise when i bumped into him at Adam Hughes' table), having Harvey award winner Joe Keatinge ask me to go get my artwork based on the merits of my homemade t-shirt, and for me, one of the biggest things, was meeting the folks at Adhouse books--one of the most incredible, high quality output small publishing places on earth. i had so many books from them before i even realized they were coming from the same publisher a few years back, and i've been paying attention ever since. pretty much everything they do is gorgeous, and meeting Chris and finding out what an awesome guy runs the place sealed the deal. i really look up to them because they follow the simple rule of believing in everything they release, even if it's not as many release as they'd like, the quality is undeniable.
at any rate, if that wasn't enough, i find out that they wrote something about ME on THEIR blog, linked here!
i've seriously been on cloud 9 ever since.
thanks again to everyone on every side of every table who made this weekend a memorable first of many!
-pw!
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