Chickens, Commissions and Yolanda

The above image is up for silent auction this Saturday at Comic Odyssey in Fully Booked, Bonifacio High Street in Taguig, in conjunction with the “Art with Heart” fund raising for Yolanda victims. All proceeds from this auction will go to the fund. If you wish to bid, please get in touch with Sandy Sansolis of Comic Odyssey at his FB profile. Starting bid is P1000.

For more info on “Art With Heart“, please go to the official Facebook event page here.

Because I’m usually busy with my comics work, I haven’t been accepting sketch covers/commissions. I made the exception during Komikon, as well as “Art with Heart” specially because funds earned from these drawings would all go to the Red Cross for Yolanda victims. I thought I could finish these kinds of drawings easily and proceeded to accept FIVE pieces during Komikon. I knew I drew very slow, but I thought I could do the five drawings in the entire day I was at Komikon. Counting from 9am to 7am that would be TEN hours. I could do one drawing every 2 hours. I thought it would be a breeze.

Ha! ha! It wasn’t. By 2pm I was still working on my FIRST drawing. Not only was I slow, I had to stop often to sign books, which was a lot. Apparently, I had grossly overestimated myself. In the end, I was able to do only THREE drawings. But since the remaining two had already paid, I agreed to do these other two drawings at home.

For “Art With Heart”, I’m being very conservative about what I can draw so I accepted only TWO slots. Which were quickly filled. One was willing to pay 1K, and another was willing to pay 2K. I thought wow. All the better!

So after finishing that GALLUS REX drawing above, I’m doing my two leftover drawings from Komikon and just do the two new commissions on the day itself. That means I won’t be able to accept any more after that.

Someone asked me if I would accept sketch commissions during my signing at National Book Store here in SM San Pablo on November 30. Unfortunately not. I only have 3 or so hours for the signing so I will be signing only. If I accepted sketches, the way I draw, I will not finish one single sketch and I will end up not signing anything, which kind of defeats the purpose of the thing.

After “Art With Heart”, I’m afraid I will no longer be able to accept commissions for the time being. It really does take a lot of time, and I have a lot of comics to write and draw. A publisher has practically commissioned me to create a whole book so that will pretty much take over all my free time outside of my Marvel work. Sorry guys!