So we went this weekend to the musuem, to look at the 15th-century altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo cathedral.  Now the exhibition was interesting for any number of reasons: nifty medieval paintings, delving into the artistic techniques of the period, getting to see the artists' sketches beneath the paintings through this cool infrared technology (yay, underdrawing!); plus there were several rooms of Spanish painting through subsequent ages, including an Immaculate Conception who looked like she was standing on three severed baby heads (they were cherubs).

All of which was pretty cool.

But the thing that had me really freaked out?  There's a hole in the Ecce Homo from the altarpiece ... that was put there during Wellington's siege on the city in 1812!  I got to see a hole in a painting put there during the Napoleonic wars!  OMG SQUEE!

/nerd

As part of my continuing efforts to have a real career as an artist, I fired off a submission to do Marvel Sketch cards a couple of weeks ago ... and lo and behold, I got in!  So I'll be churning out a ton of Marvel sketches here in the next little while.  Woo!  The pay's not great, but who cares?  It's the cachet (if that's the word I want) (yes it is) of having done work for Marvel comics, of all people!

Now I've just gotta finish drawing some comic pages, polish up my demo reel, apply for some more jobs, cross my fingers, and ... guys, I'm excited about where things are going!

So cesario came up with the idea of a Young Adult Vampire Novel Contest (YAVNC!) this past week, and although I wanted to write a story of my very own, I just plain didn't have the time.  But then she added the idea of matching willing artists with writers, to come up with cool cover art for the various stories.  I got matched up with mattador, and here is the cover I came up with for his story:


I dunno if you can call it "cool" or not, but it's done before the deadline, at least!