Happy Valentines Day (Shameless Self-promotion)

Some art for Valentine's day, because I love my readers. I posted this on my Deviant Art page a couple of days ago. Here's how I described it there.

This was done for the Womanthology Valentine's PDF, sent out to Kickstarter backers. This is a vector, drawn in Adobe Illustrator CS4 over a pencil sketch. I'm actually pretty happy with how it came out, which is a nice change for me. It felt like it was teetering on the brink of disaster while I was drawing it.

A word about what this depicts, though: When I first started working on my Womanthology story, I was in the three to four page category. Renae De Liz asked me if I would be willing to scale down to a pin-up/one page story instead, and I agreed (fortunately, I had an idea for that). Thing is, though, I had already started work on a longer story based around a character named "Fantastic Woman," who in the story foils a bank robbery then goes back to her day job teaching (and reading to) kindergarten students. I only drew a few panels before Renae asked me to switch, and I never finished it. But this is the character. She's obviously a sideways version of Wonder Woman and Superman, and in the strip I imagined afterward, she's got a little of The Bionic Woman in her, too (Jamie Sommers was a schoolteacher, you know). Given that I was riffing on Wonder Woman, I knew that she was queer, and I started drawing this other character as her version of Lois Lane. Anyway, that's where this comes from.

Also, don't forget to order a copy of Womanthology, if you're interested. It's due out in March and there's only a limited print run. It's for a good cause and there's lots of awesomeness inside of it, including a comic by yours truly.

I also did this piece sort of for Valentine's Day, which you can buy from my Deviant Art print shop if you so desire. This, too, is a vector created in Adobe Illustrator. It comes in prints, postcards, greeting cards, magnets, coffee mugs and other geegaws. I've been working on a lot of art lately, because during the coming year, I'm probably going to have to earn my living from art alone, so buy lots of prints. Send them to friends. You know you want to.

As for movies, well, Valentine's Day means gangster movies in my house, so you can expect to see a review or two later in the week. I think the schedule is going to be Murder by Contract, Larceny Inc., and The Petrified Forest, but a friend of mine suggested gangland love stories like Gun Crazy and Bonnie and Clyde. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day.