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June 30, 2010

Liz Prince Thank-You Paintings

As some of you might have seen on on my other blog, I recently bought a Pinball machine. This all came about because of my good friend Liz Prince, who put me in touch with the previous owner of the pinball machine. Not only that, but Liz also introduced me to my amazing girlfriend Claire. Liz ALSO put me up at her place a number of times while I was visiting Claire's family in Santa Fe, traveling to a comic convention and buying the pinball machine. I therefore decided that a thank-you painting (or two) was in order!

I decided to take a leaf out of Gabby's book of tricks and try to do paintings of Liz's two cats, Wolf Man and Dracula, whom she loves very dearly. Step one was to find some reference of Liz's cats, which was super easy, because Liz has tons of pictures of her cats up in a Flickr set. Below is an example (can you guess which cat is which?)


Next, I wanted to get some reference from some old monster movies, because Liz had no Wolf Man or Dracula MONSTER stuff in her apartment. I found some old posters with really great hand lettering:


Next I drew the cats, and the lettering, then lightboxed them onto some watercolor paper and painted them. I used some Martin's Dyes for the lettering and bases, to really make the color pop. This is not the best scan in the world, and as you can see, I'm no Gabby Schulz, but you get the idea.  (Click on the image to make it bigger!)


I waited for a few days, and didn't hear back from Liz...  I was starting to get worried that the paintings might have gotten lost in the mail.  Then, one day I found a letter from Liz in the mail!  (Click on the image to make it readable!)


You're welcome Liz.  Thank YOU!  So yeah,  if somehow you don't already know, Liz is a really great cartoonist.  You should totally go take a spin around her site, LizPrincePower.com  It's got an awesome art section, with tons and tons of her comics posted online for FREE, and there is also a store section, where you can buy all of Liz's minicomics (including her BRAND NEW comic, I Swallowed the Key to My Heart #1).  She's one of my favorite cartoonists, so if you haven't already, you should definitely go check out her work!

2 comments:

Liz Prince said...

I like how round Wolfman is!

Alec Longstreth said...

I was trying to capture the feeling of
this one. It seemed the most dramatic!