Abel Toledo - Astro Pikachu

2019.05.18 East Coast Comic Con, Secaucus, NJ

As you walk through he Con, there is always someone trying to get your attention to look at their books, art whatever they are creating. Abel's was making an offer that was hard to refuse. $5 sketch of Pikachu and only Pikachu, how ever you wanted. I watched him draw a Batman Pikachu for a very enthusiastic young lady who loved Pikachu. I was hooked and the above Astro Pikachu was born. I like when a piece is handed to me and I can not help but smile, from the joy it bring

Abel's a very outgoing person with a big personality, who has done work for Marvel comics, as well as hosting his own Youtube Channel InkIt, where he demonstrated art technique

inkit Youtube

Ad Astra

Jean Francois Clervoy - France

Marianne Merchez - Belgium

Pedro Duque - Spain

Christer Fuglesang - Sweden

Thomas Reiter - Germany

To the stars... I have long wished to have my head beyond the clouds (although my wife thinks I am there already). To be able to look at the earth from space and feel what it is like to float with the stars..

I fully support the efforts of the space program and I collect space flight related memorabilia and signatures of those brave and lucky enough to have achieved this reality.

I do not consider myself an artist, but I enjoy creating my own designs. The designs are used to enhance the signatures of members of the European Space Agency. The little astronaut figure I added was in tribute to the opening sequence of the TV series Lost In Space...

2017.04.29 East Coast Comic Con, Secaucus, NJ

Since I had previously used the Lost in Space theme for EAS astronauts, when I had the opportunity to meet the remaining cast, I created the above to obtain their autographs. Bill Mumy, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen and Angela Cartwright

Karl Slominski - Astronaut

2018-04-28 East Coast Comic Con, Secaucus, NJ

After I obtain the sketches I had planned for a specific convention, I walk the room to look for unexpected surprises. Karl Slominski gave me the wow feeling. His con banner featured a skeleton astronaut, which grabbed my attention. I explained my collection and asked if he would be able to reproduce the astronaut, which was very detailed. I appreciate the detail Karl was able to provide in a small sketch.

Karl Slominski is a graphic novelist and an alumni of the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Arts. His work has been featured in a wide rate of cartooning and illustrative outlets, including the graphic novels Golgotha (written by Andrew Harrison), Run Like Hell (written by Jeff Dixon) and Ashes: A Firefighter's Tale (written by Mario Candelabra) Tad Caldwell and the Monster Kid (written by Kurt Amacker). His recent works include his creator-owned comic book series Star Child, Fixer and the graphic novel Teeter Topple.

Slominski has also worked in the film industry, notably for the horror anthology The Mortuary Collection from Trap Door Pictures

@KidReverie

Colleen Doran - Reach for the Stars

2017.07.08 Garden State Comic Fest, Morristown, NJ

Colleen Doran is a writer and artist. Doran has illustrated hundreds of comics, graphic novels, books and magazines.

Doran adapted and did the art for the short story "Troll Bridge" by Neil Gaiman, which became a New York Times best seller.

Doran is a recipient of the Eisner Award, Harvey Award and International Horror Guild Awards. She was on of two people listen among the top 25 female comic creators in both the writer and artist categories. Comics Alliance listed Doran as one of the twelve women cartoonist deserving of lifetime achievement recognition.

Credits include illustrating works of Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Joe R Lansdale, Anne Rice, J. Michael Straczynski, Peter David and Tori Amos.

I sought out Doran, because of the Vertigo graphic novel Orbiter, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Colleen Doran. Published in 2003 the novel was dedicated to the lives, memories and legacies of the astronauts who died in the 2003 Columbia disaster. Both Doran and Ellis are spaceflight enthusiasts, as I am. I was so taken by the story, that I looked forward to meeting Doran and obtaining a space related sketch. My only instructions were an astronaut, and Doran's sketch is fabulous. I like the Peter Max style background landscape.

Ten years after the Space Shuttle Venture mysteriously disappeared, it returns. Of its original crew of seven, only one remains, in a catatonic state. The ships contains san from Mars. Three scientists investigate the Venture and its astronaut to try to learn its secrets..

Doran signed my copy and inscribed it "Reach for the Stars"

Charles P Wilson III - Astronaut Pooh

2016.07.10 Garden State Comic Fest, Morristown, NJ

This is my second sketch from Wilson. I first met him at a Wildpig Comic Con in 2010, and picked up a great sketch from the series The Stuff of Legends...

Always a fan favorite at the local show, Wilson has provided the cover art for the Garden State Comic Fest Programs...

From Comics Alliance:  This article shows his work outside of Stuff of Legends, drawings of superheroes and his blending the world of Pooh and the superhero world. Imagine a Hulk Pooh, a Captain America Pooh... well I imagined a Pooh in Space and requested such a sketch. The results is another great sketch from Wilson...

Wilson has also provided a more serious tone of art for the IDW series The Wraith, written by Joe Hill.

The FDC features the Alan Shepard stamp honoring the first American in space. Yesterday John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth passed at the age of 95. I post this cover in his honor and in honor of all men and women from all nations with the courage and spirit to travel into space to explore the universe.

Shepard and Glenn were members of the Mercury Seven, the first seven astronauts selected by the US and NASA to become astronauts. The other Astronauts include Guss Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Wally Shirra, Deke Slayton

Joe Simko - Garbage Pail Kids

2016.08.27 Monsters and Robots, Somerset, NJ

I attended the Monsters and Robots show to obtain a few sketches from the Garbage Pail Kids' artists that were going to be in attendance... They were coming from the GPK Convention held in Las Vegas. Since I am not a collector of GPK, but an aware of the product I thought it would be great to pick up a few sketches...

As soon as I made my request of Joe Simko, he knew immediately what he was going to do. Since I do not know all of the characters, the sketch he provided of Haley's Vomit was a great surprise an pleasant surprise...

Joe Simko has contributed to Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages. He is the author illustrator of the book Sweet Rot as well as creator of his own line of trading cards "Cereal Killers"
Simko also designs CD covers and posters for Rock bands...

The original concept of Haley's Vomit (also known as Inter Stella) card #318 from the 8th series, 1987, was created by Tom Bunk...

Just wanted to show 2 recent purchases, although not sketches, that have a space theme...

FDC Cover Center 1962 Christmas issue with Santa riding a rocket to the Moon. I still appreciate the simple 2 color design over the more modern full color all-over printed covers from today that hid the stamp and postmark. 

Georges Melies, was honored by France in  1961. Melies was a movie maker during the silent film age. One of his films was "A Trip to the Moon" 1902, which had strange and surreal imagery, most notably the rocket crashing into the eye of the moon..

This image was also used on a different version of the GPK's Haley Comet..

Melies vision is the primary inspiration behind the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Sleznik, published in 2007 and the movie adaptation Hugo, 2011. Both excellent...

Astronaut

In honor of Astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned to earth on March 1, 2016 following a 1-year space mission, on board the International Space Station, to study the effects of weightlessness on the human body, in a effort to aid future flights to Mars...

I picked this up on ebay. I do not know who the artist is, except for the initials AH. I purchased it because I liked the presentation of the astronaut. I can only guess that the use of the Year 2000 first day cover and the ancient figures moving from the stamp demonstrate man progression from early times to the space age...

I usually do not provide critiques but kudos to this unknown artist!..

I have been a collector of space related material since I a child. I can remember being ushered into the school auditorium watching a black and white TV that had been rolled into the room and set up in front of the students. As a group we watched John Glenn's ascent into space, and ever since I've wanted to be Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Commando Cody reaching out into space and finding adventures beyond the comic book and television screen. I will still choose to watch a space related movie or book over anything else...

I had the opportunity to meet US Astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Russian Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, when I attended the World Stamp Expo, Nov 1989 in Washington, DC.  I did bring covers with me to created first day covers, but I also brought a blank book to create a journal of the event. ..

each page of the journal had a stamp canceled from the respective country in attendance, to which I added appropriate art. The first page featured the Space Day cancel with the joint-issued US and Soviet Union space issues.

Second page from the book with the First Day cancel for the 20th Universal Postal Congress stamps showing future of mail delivery (e-mail, texting, twitter were not mentioned)...

Knowing Buzz Aldrin's aversion to signing philatelic mail I asked him to sign a blank page in the book, to which I later added his portrait. There were no stamps placed or postmarked on this page. This way even though the entire book is a philatelic item, the page he signed was not directly philatelic in nature...

Justin Leiter - Alien Astronaut

2015.07.25 Garden State Comic Fest, Mennen Arena, Morristown, NJ

Justin Leiter has almost two decades of experience in illustration and graphic design, starting in the apparel industry working with top licenses such as Mickey Mouse, Toy Story, Curious George, Power Rangers, Speed Racer, Monster Jam, Spider-Man and others.. 

Leiter has also created designs for top retailers including Target, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, JC Penney, Kohls and Family Dollar...

2015.04.29 Red and Rover by Brian Basset - because I still love comic strips and this is one of the best...

Robert McCall - Space Accomplishments

1992 US-USSR Space Accomplishments (Artmaster cachet w. McCall sketch)

Robert McCall (1919-2010) has done more than any other artist to enable the general public to envision the accomplishments of the American space program. His first illustrations were of Alan Shepard aboard his  Mercury space capsule, up to the launch of the Space Shuttle. His works are viewed by millions very year as part of the National Air and Space Museum displays in Washington, DC...

NASA invited many artists to capture history in the making and McCall was on site at the beginning of the US space program. Although photography was extensively utilized, NASA administrator James Webb first invited artist James Dean, in 1962 to create art inspired by the fledgling space program. The following year the first group of artists, which would reach about 350 artists, started recording the history of maned space flight. The list of artists includes Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Paul Calle, Robert Rauschenberg. The concept was that different artists would view the same subject in different ways the mind sees, feels and reacts, as stated by Dean... The art collection would grow to contain paintings, sketches, sculptures, poetry, dance and song. The majority of the collection are housed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum...

McCall would also design several stamps for the USPS. His first stamp design for the USPS was the 1971 Decade of Achievement twin stamp issue. Others include the 1973 Pioneer Spacecraft, 1974 Skylab, 1975 Apollo-Soyuz, 1978 Viking Mission to Mars, 1981 Space Shuttle (pane of 8 stamps)...

McCall has also worked on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Star Trek movies and Disney's The Black Hole...

I had written to McCall on several occasions to obtain an autograph on a space fdc, for which he signed and return. I was never lucky enough to have obtained a sketch on cover. When I found the above on E-Bay, I had to bid and feel very lucky to have this as part of my collection...

Issued May 29, 1992 in conjunction with the World Columbian Stamp Expo `92 the block of 4 stamps feature most of the significant moments of the previous 35 years of both the American and Russian space programs. The stamp above features a Russian cosmonaut and the US space shuttle...

Paul Benincasa - Astronaut

2011.11.05 Wild Pig Comic Con, Somerset, NJ

Messenger Space Mission FDC

Paul Benincasa is a freelance cartoonist, illustrator. His first comic Transient Tales was published in 2010, an anthology comic with one contributor and with each story featuring a different genre of story-telling: science fiction, spy mystery, horror and superhero...

The science fiction story "5 Minutes More" features a stranded astronaut, running out of oxygen who is forced to leave a friend behind to find help...

The story reminded me of the "Fallen Astronaut", a small statue left on the moon to honor those who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration...

The statuette (8.5cm aluminum) was commissioned by Astronaut David Scott, to feature an astronaut in a spacesuit, with the requirements that the sculpture could not be identifiably male or female, of no specific ethnic group. The statuette was created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck.

On August 1 the Fallen Astronaut was placed on the moon by the crew of Apollo 15, (Scott and James Irwin, with Alfred Worden orbiting the moon) and along with a plaque bearing the names of eight American Astronauts: Theodore Freeman, Charles Bassett, Elliott See, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Edward White, Edward Givens, Clifton Williams and six Soviet Cosmonauts: Vladimir Komarov, Yuri Gagarin, Pavel Belyayev, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov...
Scott noted "Sadly, two names are missing from the plaque, those of Valentin Bondarenko and Grigori Nelyubov." At the time secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program did not release news of their deaths.

Paul's art can be seen on his web-site Yeah I Drew It!, which features sketches, works in progress and Paul's finished projects.
 Amy Chace was the model for the cover of Transient Tales issue one.