An oil portrait commission for a major comic art collector businessman and his beautiful wife.
My portrait commissions are usually rendered in pastel. I stopped doing paintings by hand almost entirely years ago when I began doing digital work. I have done no oils in some eight years.
I used Genesis Oils for this piece, which is an ideal medium for illustrators. I am perplexed why more artists don’t use it. It dries at 250 degrees after just a couple of minutes in the oven, or with a special dryer they sell. So, no long months of waiting between glazes.
A major challenge of this piece was working from a few snapshots instead of being able to take my own photos of the subject.
GONE TO AMERIKAY Book Launch to benefit COMIC BOOK LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
By Colleen on March 11th, 2012Posted In: Blog
Come one come all to the official book launch party for Gone to Amerikay, the new Vertigo original graphic novel by Derek McCulloch and Colleen Doran. Both creators will be on hand to sign copies of their book. Copies will be on sale at the party courtesy of Midtown Comics. This will be a benefit event for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Admission is free, though donations to the CBLDF are suggested, and a percentage of all book sales will go to the CBLDF There will be music and complimentary hors d’oeurves, and special guests from the comics industry and the city of New York will be on hand to inaugurate Gone to Amerikay.
This book has been years in the making and everybody involved in its creation is very proud of the result. Please join us to celebrate its launch in Amerikay.
Friday, March 30, 2012
6:00pm until 8:00pm
Harbor Lights Restaurant, South Street Seaport Pier 17 3rd Floor, New York City
Our FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE IS HERE.
FYI, I did the cover art for the St Patrick’s Day edition of Irish Echo magazine, so if you’re in the Northeast, check it out!
My new graphic novel, written by Derek McCulloch, premieres on March 28. But you can win a copy of the book by signing up at GOODREADS! Ten copies will be given away to US residents! Take a chance and get a minty fresh hardcover!
Derek McCulloch will appear at a pre-release signing at The Escapist in Berkeley, California on Wednesday March 21. This will be the first look at our new book! Derek will talk about the project and you can buy copies before anyone else has them!
Derek was also interviewed at Tastes Like Comics. Check it out!
I like to think if there’s not something for everybody in this book, there’s something for a lot of different people — it’s a story of immigration and families and love and death and tragic misunderstandings. It’s got a crime story, a ghost story, and a couple of love stories, and touches on music and folklore and theatre and history and just plain survival. It’s just got a lot of stuff, and my hope is that people will connect to it on that indefinable level of shared humanity. Which I hope doesn’t sound too grotesquely pretentious, because I say it very earnestly.
J Michael Straczynski’s THE BOOK OF LOST SOULS on sale now!
By Colleen on February 11th, 2012Posted In: Blog
One of my very favorite projects EVER was The Book of Lost Souls, a series I drew for J Michael Straczynski at Marvel Comics’ Icon Line. I have rarely enjoyed any assignment so much, and count it among my best work.
Jonathan, in despair over lost love and thwarted ambitions, commits suicide. He awakens in the 21st century, where he is transformed into a psychopomp, a spirit who escorts lost souls. Does he save them or send them to their doom?
He acts on the orders of the Dark Man, and his guide is a talking cat named Mystery.
Unfortunately, The Book of Lost Souls just did not get the circulation it really deserved. It would make an outstanding TV series, IMHO.
Marvel collected the entire run in a handsome, full color trade paperback. Issue 3 is a heartbreaking story that will get right into the soul of any artist. It’s worth it on its own.
For some years now, I’ve been unable to get The Book of Lost Souls trade paperbacks, except on the secondary market. I was told it was sold out and there were no copies available from the publisher, Marvel Comics.
Eh. No.
Nice Mr. Straczynski found and obtained the ENTIRE remaining stock of this trade paperback collection, and it is available here, minty fresh, uncirculated, for a super low price!
$7 off cover for MINT condition copies signed by me, with shipping included. How cool is that? Only $9.95 for SIGNED copies! $11.95 foreign.
SALE IS OVER! Thank you!
Or, go deluxe!
Get this trade paperback collection AND a page of ORIGINAL INTERIOR ART from the series for only $59.95, or $69.95 foreign. BARGAIN AND A HALF. I pick the page, you get the signed book and art. Your page MAY even be one interior from the UNPUBLISHED seventh issue.
All pages are hand drawn originals on acid free paper measuring 11″x14″.
SALE IS OVER! THANK YOU!
This sale is for a limited time.
Many people come to my website after seeing the show Stalked: Someone’s Watching.
Thank you so much to the Producers of Stalked for all their hard work, and thank you to all the people who have sent their words of support. For obvious reasons, I can’t answer all your notes, but I sincerely appreciate every single one of them.
If have questions about stalking, Isuggest you consult many of the online resources available. The show Stalked: Someone’s Watching also has advice you can read here.
I don’t want to give any more information than is already available about the antics and identity of the man who stalked me. I’ve been revealing enough as it is. My intention is not to direct people toward him or to seek revenge. I only want him to leave me alone, and ensure he never hurts anyone else.
I am grateful the show brings awareness to stalking and the terrible impact it has on victims. Everyone who knows and loves someone who is stalked has to deal with this torture. We’re all victims of this crime.
Thank you.
c
Thanks for dropping by. Some of our blog functions went haywire, and I’m just now getting around to updating the galleries. Hope you have fun looking through the pretty pictures! I’ll add more soon.
I’m working very hard on several new projects, most of which I can’t talk about just now. But my new book Gone to Amerikay, written by Derek McCulloch and published by our Superman bosses DC Comics/Vertigo, will be out in a little over a month.
Ciara O’Dwyer is a young woman raising a daughter alone in the Five Points slums of 1870; Johnny McCormack is a struggling actor drawn to the nascent folk music movement in Greenwich Village 1960; and Lewis Healy is a successful Irishman who’s come to present-day Manhattan on his wife’s anniversary-present promise to reveal the connection between him and them. The mystery originates with Ciara’s runaway husband, who disappeared after promising to join her in America, and carries into midcentury when Johnny, devastated by an unexpected romance and a lost shot at musical fame, gets a supernatural visitor.
Behold, our lovely dust jacket.
The advance press on this project is so wonderful it makes my heart swell. Getting this recommendation from Philip Chevron, guitarist and singer for The Pogues, is especially exciting for us, because Derek and I both love their music, which was a great inspiration for Gone to Amerikay.
“Ghost story or detective fiction? History or mythology? Drawing on the freewheeling spirit of Irish and Irish-American popular culture, Gone To Amerikay is all of these. A tale that takes place simultaneously in 1870, 1960 and 2010, it recognizes that though enormous changes have taken place over time in the relationship between the New World and the Old Country, some things, like love, justice and respect, are timeless and imperative. With thrilling illustrations, rich with the color and mood of these passions, you will find yourself unable to avoid lingering at length on them before picking up the story again.”
— Philip Chevron
The Pogues
We were also stunned to receive this lovely quote from esteemed novelist Kevin Baker.
“Gone To Amerikay’s a wonderful story, lushly illustrated, full of music and passion, twists and turns, beautifully evoking the Irish immigrant experience in three different times and sewing them all together brilliantly at the end. A real treat, for those who love New York history, or just a great story.”
— Kevin Baker
(Paradise Alley, Dreamland, LUNA PARK)
And, of course, this terrific quote from our good friend and benefactor J Michael Straczynski.
“Gone To Amerikay is not just a great book, it’s an important book. It uses the immigrant experience to talk about us, who we are, how and why we came here, with some echoes of where we might be going. The art is superb, containing some of the best and most evocative images of the period you’re ever going to see, and the story is wide in scope but intimate in its details as it flashes forward and backward in time. Forget the hype, this is going to be THE book of 2012.”
— J. Michael Straczynski
(SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE,
Babylon Five, Changeling)
J Michael Straczynksi is also working on prequels for Allan Moore/Dave Gibbon’s famous Watchmen graphic novel, which is very exciting. We wish everyone involved good luck with that.
Here is an in depth podcast interview with me and Derek McCulloch about Gone to Amerikay. It runs about an hour.
Mangaman is another book I’m very excited about. It is written by Barry Lyga and was just released to very good reviews. Best of all: a nod from the Young Adult Library Services Association as one of the great graphic novels for teens of 2012! We are truly appreciative of all the great reviews and kind words for the book. I was just in a store the other day, and there it was on a shelf. Whee! So happy!
We received generous, starred reviews in both Kirkus and The School Library Journal. A starred review in Kirkus is very prestigious. We were deliriously happy to get it!
Here are some direct links to Mangaman reviews.
Kirkus
School Library Journal
Graphic Novel Reporter
Bulletin Center for Children’s Books
Literary Treats
Stumptown Trade Review
Teen Reads
And many more…
We are deeply grateful for the terrific response to Mangaman. Librarians are giving us great feedback, telling us kids grab the book right up and don’t put it down! Just what we want to hear!
Barry is a talented and critically acclaimed young adult author, and his new book, I Hunt Killers, promises to be a huge hit when it is released in April.
Barry is so much fun to work with, and I can hardly believe Mangaman is his first graphic novel! He has old pro chops! And few old pros get these kinds of accolades on their first graphic novel!
In addition to these projects, I am doing prelim work on a new graphic novel, and gearing up to go back to A Distant Soil at Image Comics after a long hiatus. The book is doing better than it has in years, we have thousands of new readers, and I am working with the Image Comics graphics department to create digital comics editions of the series. Wish us luck!
Image has been so good to me all these years. I cannot adequately express how truly grateful I am to everyone there.
While working on all of these projects, I am finishing off a pile of commissions, including a major oil portrait for an important client. I really enjoy doing commissions: I have the luxury of not having to take on jobs I don’t really want, so I am able to do my best. It’s fun and I love seeing the reactions of my patrons when they get their finished art!
I often post commissions at A Distant Soil.com, so check out my webcomic site and have a look at my series!
Ask for my books at your local bookstore!
Thanks for all your support!
c