Reserve your print before NYCC!

I’ve done so many print designs that I can’t bring them all with me to conventions. If you’re coming to see me at New York Comic Con 2023 (ArtistsAlley table A-14) I’ll be selling 11×17 color prints for $20 or 3 for $50 – but I’ll have a limited selection. I want to bring a variety of Young Justice prints, Doctor Who prints, my new Harley Quinn print, plus favorites like Justice League and Svengoolie. But that quickly adds up to more than I can haul with me on my cross-country trek from Los Angeles to New York. So in my attempt to streamline my convention operations, I’ll going to be limited the number selection of prints I’ll be bringing with me, which means I might just leave your favorite design behind. UNLESS – you reserve your print in advance!

Please check out www.etsy.com/shop/ChrisJonesArt to see the full selection of prints I have available. You can order them directly from there, but if you’re coming to NYCC 2023 and want to buy it from in person at the lower convention rate, you can reserve any print from my archive I’ll bring a copy to NYCC and hold it for you!

Message me at chris@christopherjonesart.com. Let me know:

1) What print(s) you’d like to reserve for NYCC
2) Your name
3) and (if possible) What day you expect to stop by Artist Alley Table A-14 and pick it up.

I’ll have your reserved print(s) waiting for you at my table for you to purchase at my convention rates!

This is a first-time experiment I’m trying as a way to deal with the size of my selection of prints becoming a little unmanageable, but I don’t want to disappoint fans who come to my table looking for prints they’ve seen in past years or online. We’ll see how it goes!

Christopher Jones Art Prints GRODD WANT ART ETSY SALE!

I know that due to logistics and geography, a lot of you haven’t had the opportunity to see me at a convention or signing, but want to pick up one or more of my art prints. You probably know that most of my art prints are available for purchase in my Etsy store, but to show you I appreciate you all just as much as those able to visit me at events, I’m holding an online art sale! This is your chance to pick up that art you’ve been eyeing from me at a bit of a discount.

My GRODD WANT ART SALE will run until June 23!

(Why Grodd? No reason. I just love Grodd.)

Check out my Etsy Store at http://www.etsy.com/shop/ChrisJonesArt to see the full selection of art prints I have available. Use one of the discount codes at checkout.

GRODDMEGA – 40% off any purchase of $150 or more
GRODD45 – $45 off any purchase of $120 or more
GRODD30 – $30 off any purchase of $90 or more
GRODD15 – $15 off any purchase of $60 or more
GRODD5 – $5 off any purchase of $30 or more
FRUGALGRODD – 10% off any purchase of $10 or more

Also, prints now ship inside the United States at just $5 for any size order, and there’s a combined shipping discount on international orders.

Art prints all feature an original signature by the artist (yours truly) and can be personalized upon request.

I won’t offer discounts on online purchases super often, but it is my plan to hold an online sale at least once per year going forward.

Gerry Anderson’s UFO – part 3

Here’s part three in a series collecting the art from an unpublished comic based on Gerry Anderson’s UFO. You can read up on the back story of this project in part one.

Below you can pages 16-23 of the #0 issue, comparing the pencil art by myself, the inks by Joseph Rubenstein, and the colors by Matt Webb. Obviously the lettering is not in place.

Creating a Cover: Young Justice #25

It’s time for another installment of my Creating a Cover series. As was often the case, this cover was being designed before I had seen the script for the issue in question, so I had to rely on a suggestion from series writer Greg Weisman for an idea of what would be appropriate subject matter for a cover. Greg suggestion was basically “Everybody versus Brainiac.” I hadn’t seen a script for our Brainiac (aka “The Collector of Worlds”) in action yet so I wasn’t sure what kind of offensive capabilities he was going to display. I figured I’d just have him in a “ready for action” pose and make it obvious that combat was imminent. The “everybody” he was going to be fighting included all the Young Justice Team members, plus members of the Justice League – everybody who had been seen up to this point on Brainiac’s ship or the ship belonging to our other villain Kylstar.

I asked if there was any one character who was the focus of the final showdown with Brainiac and I was told that there wasn’t. Because of that and the fact that this was going to be the final issue of our series, I didn’t want to emphasize one of the heroes over the others for the sake of a more dynamic layout, so the the challenge became how to include more than a dozen heroes fighting a single opponent, without giving any one of them the lion’s share of the focus.

As is often the case when trying to include this many characters on a cover, the way to organize them into a layout is a process of almost mathematical deduction. I knew what I wanted to do, but I felt the need to offer multiple options and present my reasoning.

Sketch A

Sketch B

Sketch C

Sketch A places Brainiac at the center background with everyone else rushing him. The disadvantage of this approach was that while it makes for a compelling image, it puts most of the heroes in a position with their backs to the viewer – something I especially wanted to avoid on the cover for our swansong issue.

Sketch B takes more of the lateral view – viewing the gang-rush of heroes more in profile, with Brainiac down in the corner to allow the heroes to be more spread out and coming at him from both ground-level and from the air!

I felt the strongest option was the one presented in Sketch C – with Brainiac in the foreground, cheated “towards the camera” so we get a better look at him, but his attention clearly on all the heroes converging on him from the background. This option has the heroes coming at us front on, and gives us lots of open space to spread them across the cover, still leaving room for the logo at the top.

Pencils

Inks

Final Cover

And finally, here’s the final version with color by Zac Atkinson complete with all the final logos and other trade dress.

I really enjoyed getting to draw so many of the covers for my run on Young Justice. I enjoy drawing covers overall, and I really enjoyed getting to contribute more fully to the total look and feel of the Young Justice issues I did, as opposed to The Batman Strikes were most of the covers were by other artists.

You can find my previous Creating a Cover installments here.

A tale of Batman, me, and one young fan.

“Check Please!” says it all…

I just told this story in responding to a comment on another post and I thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience.

I remember one of my earliest conventions at which I had a table as an artist – it was before I’d “broken in” to do work for DC Comics or any other major publisher. I had displayed a Batman drawing I’d done on the wall behind me – it was my response to a lot of Batman art I’d seen that didn’t strike me as having a lot of mood or atmosphere. My piece was a black and white ink drawing that was 90% black with just a moon and just enough edge-lighting in white to make out the shape of Batman’s cowl and cape.

This young kid was walking buy my table and the sight of that Batman drawing stopped him in his tracks. He looked up at the drawing and his eyes got big. “Do you… draw Batman?” he asked me.

“I drew that Batman, if that’s what you’re asking, but I haven’t worked on the comic book yet, no.”

“Oh,” the kid matter-of-factly replied, and walked away without saying another word.

This is NOT the Batman drawing from the story…

I thought it was pretty funny at the time, and I *still* think it says something about fans and conventions – but don’t ask me exactly what that is!