I’ll be in Artist’s Alley at this weekend’s Texas Comicon in San Antonio – Saturday June 25 and Sunday June 26.

Come on by and say hi!

So, I’ve apparently been nominated for the 2011 Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award.  From the website:

“Comic-Con International, North America’s largest comic book and popular arts convention, today announced this year’s nominees for the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award (commonly referred to as The Manning Award).

The Manning Award has been given out annually at the San Diego Comic-Con since 1982. It is presented to a comics artist who, early in his or her career, shows a superior knowledge and ability in the art of creating comics. It is named for Russ Manning, the artist best known for his work on the Tarzan and Star Wars newspaper strips and the Magnus, Robot Fighter comic book. Russ was a popular guest at the San Diego convention in the 1970s. The first recipient of the award was former Manning assistant Dave Stevens. Other past recipients include Jan Duursema, Steve Rude, Scott McCloud, Art Adams, Eric Shanower, Dan Brereton, Jeff Smith, Gene Ha, Alexander Maleev, Goran Sudzuka, Eric Wight, David Petersen, Cathy Malkasian, Eleanor Davis, and Marion Churchland.”

And the full list of Nominees:

I’ll be at the Dallas Comic Con this weekend on Saturday and Sunday in the Small Press section.  I’ll be tweeting my booth number once it’s been assigned tomorrow morning, so take a look at the twitter feed on the left!

For details about the convention, check out their website here.

So, over the last couple years I needed to figure out some easy ways of marking off even divisions of a page – halves, thirds, quarters, fifths.  There are some pretty basic and widely known ways of doing this for halves and quarters, but it’s pretty difficult to find easy reference for more obscure divisions (thirds, fifths).

Thankfully, there IS a really easy way to figure out these divisions, see below for details.  For simplicity’s sake I’ve focused on the horizontal divisions, but the basic principles apply for either horizontal or vertical divisions.

Dividing a rectangle in half:

Dividing a rectangle into quarters:

Dividing a rectangle into thirds:

Dividing a rectangle into fifths:

Now, I realize that there are alot of lines in those diagrams, so to understand the mechanics of drawing the divisions… DRAW the divisions!  Start with the red lines, then draw the blue lines, then the purple lines and you’ll start to see how/where they meet and you can mark off the divisions!

David Pepose recently interviewed me for his Artist’s Alley feature at Newsarama.com, where we spoke about breaking into the industry, my creative process and advice for aspiring artists.

Link to article:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/artists-alley-11-david-marquez-110207.html

My first Marvel work, Secret Warriors #24, comes out tomorrow: Wednesday, February 9!  I’ll be signing at Austin Books and Comics from 5-7p, so stop on by, grab a copy and say hi!

Secret Warriors #24, my debut work at Marvel, comes out next Wednesday, Feb 9.  Here’s a Preview of the Nick Fury Awesomeness:

So, 2010 was a pretty huge year for me.  My first Graphic Novel, SYNDROME, was published, as well as my first single issues with Pilot Season: ASSET and Days Missing: Kestus.

2011 stands to be just as exciting, with the final 3 issues of Days Missing, as well as my first work for Marvel Comics, providing art for Secret Warriors #24, written by Jonathan Hickman.  Here’s Paul Renaud’s cover for the issue:

So, some of you may (or may not) know that Brian Bolland, comics cover artist extraordinaire, has been working fully digitally for years.  I just came across a step-by-step article he wrote, walking through his creation of a Batman cover.  For myself, I found it fascinating to see both how similar, and also how drastically different, his process is from mine, even using (nearly) the same tools.

Check out Brian Bolland’s step-by-step HERE.

So, Austin Comic Con Starts tomorrow.  I’ll be in Artists’ Alley all weekend, so anyone who’s attending should definitely stop by to say hi!  I’ll post the booth number tomorrow (which is when I find out!)

Info about the convention can be found HERE.