Coffee shop drawings July 26th

I went to the San Diego Comic-Con this past Saturday and Sunday - it was fun, and inspiring. Fun, because of all of the cosplay and general geekiness that surrounded me, and inspiring, because of the amount of amazing art that I got to check out while I was there. Everyone I spoke to there was super nice. Even with how big the Con has gotten over the years, when I started chatting up the artists there, I still got the same great sense of community that I got when I went at 13, 14 years-old and a Japanese publisher gave me a free copy of Gunsmith Cats, simply because my geeky love affair with manga was so apparent.

Anyway, a day after that Comic-con high, my comic-loving streak continued when I went to a book signing at Secret Headquarters by this artist that I randomly came across just the day before at the Con: Paolo Rivera. I saw some of his original art work at a booth while I was walking/galloping through the exhibit hall with my brother... we initially passed an open portfolio with these pages that really struck me even though I saw them for a just a second. After we had passed a few more booths, I asked my brother, "Hey man, did we just pass some original artwork by the dude who did Bone?", which made us both stop and turn around. When we got back to the booth with the striking art work, we quickly realized that it was not Jeff Smith's work, but something very different yet still just as awesome. Rivera, who is the second bad-ass artist that I've newly discovered and found out is my age (which kind of makes me want to jump off a building, but this isn't a competition, and I digress), is a stellar draughtsman, and has this economical way with his line work that I absolutely love. I think there's a school among super hero comic illustrators (and other types of illustrators, frankly) to go for as much detail/clutter as possible, which I think can be excessive, unnecessary and lead to mediocrity in the hands of someone who's not very capable and uses the detail as a smoke screen to cover up their flaws... then there are the other artists. The ones that have no throwaway lines, and for whom every line has a purpose and meaning. My brother commented that Rivera's work was almost reminiscent of some indie comics in it's deceptively simple line work - I agreed, and added that there was something very classic about his style, without being overly retro or derivative.

So it was to my delight that I got back home from the Con and found an email from Secret Headquarters announcing that they were going to have no one other than Rivera at their store the very next day. Synchronicity can be pretty awesome! I went to the signing, chatted with Rivera for a bit (he's super nice), again, wanted to walk in front of a speeding car when I found out he was my age, got a few books signed by him, and then I left and went across the street to Casbah and drew people for a few hours. All of the drawings you see above are from that night.