Comic Art Battle at Pistol Bazaar

Comic Art Battle at Pistol Bazaar

So last night was Ezra Clayton Daniels famous Comic Art Battle. He and Heather Kortan own and run a really cool, concept greeting cards company called Loaded Blanks. They get local artists to create pictures and cartoons for cards and then leave the bubbles blank so you can fill them in as you wish. You can get a look at the cards on their Etsy site. (They are good to stockpile and use as needed;) ) The Comic Art Battle was held at Pistol Bazaar, a vintage clothing shop owned by two lovely ladies whom I am proud to call friends, Lana McAllister and Michelle DeLeone. ( 1717 W Chicago Ave, open 12-7 everyday selling vintage, vinyl and independent art. fabulous dress collection and the owners are drop dead gorgeous!)

Aaron and Ezra

Anywho, apparently one of the Comic Contenders was a no show to this rather densely populated art and fashion affair. So Ezra asked me quickly if I would be the fill in. The couple of glasses of sangria in me told him, "Yes I would". I immediately gulped down some more liquid courage and wrangled my nerves into a skittish but workable union. The first round was to draw from life. Someone with some acting humor posed and one person from each team had 5 minutes to draw her.

Posing karate-style for Round 1, Nate drawing her

There were two teams: Team Fashion (Yes!) and Team Comics. I was on Team Fashion with a dapper fellow named Steve and an illustrater named Richard. The other team consisted of Nate, Grant and Aaron, all artists themselves. Round 2 consisted of the audience calling out a noun, a verb, and an adjective. It was like ad-lib pictionary on stage. Our clues were Creamy (adjective), Fig Newtons (noun), and Spraying(verb). Yes, it was challenging, yes it was super funny, and no I did not win this round. My take on it was U.F.O's attacking our cities with creamed fig newtons.

Team Fashion (me, Richard, Steve)

Mind you,we had five minutes, a sharpie and some newsprint to render this with. My opponent drew a guy biting into a fig newton and it bursting and splooging up into his eye with some other wacky stuff going on in the background. It was a really good drawing and hilarious. I wish there was a picture of it!

U.F.O.'s spraying cream fig newton

Round 3 was also the result of an audience generated clue. I believe it was Fashion for a Fornication Occasion.

Fashion for Fornication Occasion

You can imagine how that one went! Eruptions of laughter from the crowd mixed with nervous twitters and wise-cracks from friends. The two drawings rendered were completely different but equally hilarious.

Richard

The 4th Round was Winner Takes All! All six of us had to share battle on one page of newsprint. Our theme was, of course, Fashion against Comics. More specifically, the fashion time period Regency against newspaper comic classics. It was a clusterfuck of scribbles, sharpie squeaks, laughter and battle cries. I kept drawing wigs and ruffs on cartoon characters and Aaron kept drawing Calvin and Hobbes characters taking the wigs off!

Aaron and Grant

All trying to draw at once!

It was a super fun event! I have to give Ezra credit here, because if he hadn't asked me to do it, I would have never volunteered! And I really makes me want to draw more, and participate more, and involve the arts more. I have incredible stage-fright and that could have been a problem but for a) Sangria and b) a really cool and kind audience. Lana and Michelle are great hosts and hopefully they made some sales! I met new cool people (Bridget and Alicia) and had a great talk with an old friend (Heather - I'm totally jealous of that bike, Lady!). Thanks to Nate Beaty for these awesome pictures! He is a great artist and photographer!