Playing Two Instruments and Drawing Harry Potter

I'm not afraid of much -- dying in a plane crash, trying to walk on stilts while having my arms bound by my sides, etc -- but I AM scared of vacuum cleaners when other people are using them. It's my one crazy and irrational thing, and it's been so since I was a kid. So while Liz was vacuuming today, I consoled myself by practicing on my tiny accordion. While I was doing so, I realized that I could play a number of the parts of Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (provided that I played it in the key of C). But I really wanted it to sound more full, so after a good ten minutes of maneuvering I successfully figured out how to play both the accordion and the guitar, although neither one particularly well.



I can squeak out the full song, though, but it sounds pretty rough. Maybe with work I can have a talent show talent besides the old standbys of the "chalk talk" and turning my legs backwards.



I've spent my week putting together promotional imagery for the San Diego show for the book I'm working on. Still can't post them here, but fifteen seconds after the announcement they'll be all over this blog - I'm very proud of how they've turned out. But I've also been thinking about putting together some prints for the Comic Con, and have been thinking of what might be fun. One thing that sprang to mind was Harry Potter. I drew this picture of Remis Lupin...



...and it got me thinking that it might be fun to do some sort of thematic portrait page, and with the Order of the Phoenix movie coming out what could be better than to do a big picture of the various members of said Order? Here are the pencils, sans Lupin:



I may repencil Mrs. Weasley and Tonks, as (a) I stink when it comes to drawing females, and (b) I made them a little too big. Overall, I'm going for a sort of halfway between the books and the movies, which isn't hard as the movies did excellent casting and design work.



I'm also wanting to do a good Usagi Yojimbo sketch to pass on to Stan Sakai at some point while I'm down there. Usagi is probably the best floppy comic book being made today. Go to your comic store and pick one up - you'll enjoy it, there's no question. Here's a thumbnail, with Usagi fighting some 17th century pirates (had to tie it in to my stuff somehow).




Oh! In my last post I had a sketch of Dean Trippe taking a picture of me upon which he was going to draw his character Butterfly - here's that picture, from his now-famous MOCCA report.