Yeah, I know the con is ACTUALLY running this entire weekend from 10/11-10/14, but I'll only be there on Thursday and Friday.  I'll be helping out at BOOTH 607 (Listed as Absolute Comics & Statues) all day from 3-9pm Thursday, 10/11 and and 10am-7pm Friday, 10/12.  I'll also be selling prints of some of the Line It Is Drawn pieces you've seen here on DA this year, stuff like: , , , , and of course the viral internet sensation .

11x17 prints are just $10 apiece, or 3 for $25.  Quantities are limited, so buy early and buy often!  My buddy Lonnie will have lots of great comic books for sale there, too (Please note that Booth 607 is on the MAIN FLOOR at the Jacob Javits Center, NOT in Artist's Alley).  So stop on by and say hi!  

So my piece for this week's The Line It Is Drawn seems to be spreading around the internet.  As of this writing, my initial posting of it on Facebook has been shared 139 times (probably more than that when you factor in the folks who are sharing it second and third-hand), I've gotten over a dozen FB friend requests, 74 favorites here on DA, and an interview request from a website.

Comic book artist Phil Jimenez said it was one of the funniest things he's seen in years.  This morning I was told that even DC head honcho Dan DiDio commented on it on Facebook!  (He apparently said, "Ummm sorry, can't place the faces.")  I didn't get to see the comment myself, but I'm working on getting a screencap of it.

I also want to say hello and a big "THANK YOU" to anyone who saw my piece online, and came here to follow me.  I really appreciate it, and I hope that you enjoy what you see here.  Please head over to Comics Should Be Good! every Thursday [link] to see my latest pieces for The Line It Is Drawn.  And be sure to track down all the other great LIID artists here on DA!

I'm glad folks are liking it so much, but I also recognize that it doesn't have a great deal to do with me, I based it on the classic cover of UNCANNY X-MEN #141 by John Byrne & Terry Austin (Visible Here: [link], and I obviously touched a nerve with other comic fans who have strong reactions to the New 52 from DC (And for the record, although I'm not personally a fan of a lot of the changes that DC's made to their books recently, I am regularly reading and enjoying FLASH and AQUAMAN right now & sampling other DC books).

Unfortunately, having your art circulate around the web also has a downside: People who post your work without any credit to the artist who created it or to the website that first posted it.  About 20 minutes ago I saw this on the John Byrne forum, Byrne Robotics:
[link]

As you can see, someone went to the trouble of blacking out the URL of my DeviantArt page, and then reposted it online.  The ONLY reasons that anyone would do this is to either deny me credit or try to take it for themselves.  As an artist, I love that so many people are enjoying my work, but I HATE that someone is trying to deny me credit for something that I worked very hard on.  If anyone out there has the ear of William Roberge of the Byrne Robotics site, could you PLEASE let him know that my website address was deliberately removed from the art that he posted?  And if you see it posted elsewhere without attribution, please bring it to my attention and let the posters know to credit me.  Thanks!

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that the person who posted my art on the Byrne site probably thought that my URL was in violation of the "Do not post any self-promotional material" rule over there.  This seems plausible to me, so I'm thinking that it was done without malicious intent.  Still, I made sure to give John Byrne, Terry Austin and Neal Adams due credit when I posted the piece online, so you'd think the least this person could do is return the favor & say exactly WHO drew the piece he posted there.

So I have some exciting news: Tomorrow morning I will be flying out to Los Angeles for my very FIRST trip out to the west coast.  Why am I going out to LA?  Because I've been invited to be a part of the PixelDrip Gallery's show SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE, a show featuring art inspired by the TV show COMMUNITY.  You may remember this piece I did for The Line It Is Drawn back in March:



PixelDrip curator Mark Batalla saw the piece here on DA and wrote to me, asking me to submit the piece to the show.  I agreed, and my piece will be featured at Monk Space in Los Angeles this coming weekend along with over 130 other artists!  I'm REALLY looking forward to meeting so many other passionate and talented COMMUNITY fans, as well as some of the cast and creators of the show.  It should be a once in a lifetime experience!

So if you're out in the Los Angeles area, please come on out and say hi!  The Monk Space Gallery is located at 4414 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90004.  I will be there all day Saturday, June 23rd and part of Sunday the 24th to meet & talk with people as well as sell color prints of this piece (The original B&W line art will also be for sale at the show, framed).  But if you can't make it this weekend, don't worry!  The show will be running at other galleries in the LA area through September.  You can find all the information you need here: [link]

Thanks for all the support, and hope to see you there!

Hey, folks!  If you've ever been interested in how I create a piece for the weekly feature The Line It Is Drawn ([link], you can check out this album that I put together on my Facebook page that details the step-by-step process in drawing my pieces: [link] (The album is set to public, so as long as you have a Facebook account, you can view it).

Hope you enjoy!

I just submitted a portfolio to win a free trip to the San Diego Comic Con through DeviantART.  Details can be found here: [link]

I've never been able to afford a trip out to the SDCC, so I would LOVE to finally be able to go.  Wish me luck!

My Aquaman piece for this week's The Line It Is Drawn, is making the rounds on the world wide web!  It's featured on the Super Punch blog, along with Marco D'Alfonso's AMAZING Optimus Prime illustration: [link]

In addition, my buddy Rob Kelly is featuring my Aquaman illo over on his website The Aquaman Shrine, THE place to go for all things Aquaman!  Check it out here: [link]

Thanks for the support, guys!

EDIT: Just logged on to Facebook this morning (4/21) and saw a link to this feature from io9 in my newsfeed: [link]

They even used my Aquaman as the thumbnail in their promo!  Has the Line It Is Drawn crew officially gone viral now ?

Hello, I'm John Trumbull!  You might remember my art from such Line It Is Drawn pieces as Woodward & Bernstein, The Ghostbusters Meet Deadman, Watchmen in Tibet, Batman Vs. Mysterio and this week's Galactus & Darkseid: Attorneys at Law.

Well, now it's time to VOTE!  If you vote for me, I'll be able to become part of the regular stable of artists over at Comics Should Be Good and you'll be able to enjoy my work there every week!  Just follow the link here to vote for me: [link]

I'd love it if all of you reading this could take a minute to go over and show me some love, especially YOU, Bill Walko , Phillip Sevy , Marco D'Alfonso , Axel Medellin , and Cynthia "Thea" Rodgers .  You should all vote against yourselves and your own best interests and throw your support over to me.  >

Seriously, this has been a LOT of fun, and I'm thrilled to be in the same group as all the folks I listed above!  There are ALL really talented and well-deserving!  

Thanks for the support, and I'll be sure to report back here on how it all turns out!

John

So for the last few weeks I've been submitting entries to the comic book site Comics Should Be Good.  They have a weekly feature there called The Line It Is Drawn, where several artists all draw a piece according to the same general theme.  They have an open slot for a new artist right now, so I've been submitting pieces as a tryout.  The theme for this week was "Comic Cover Homages" and one of the readers had the inspired suggestion of a cover homage of TINTIN IN TIBET using the characters from WATCHMEN.  

It was GREAT fun to do, as I'm a massive fan of both comics.  WATCHMEN blew me away when I first read it back in the 80s, and reading Hergé's TINTIN books as a kid helped inspired me to become a cartoonist in the first place.  It was a neat challenge to reinterpret Dave Gibbons' character designs in Hergé's style, and I'm very happy with how it turned out, in both concept & execution.

I submitted the piece this Tuesday evening before the midnight deadline, and it went up Thursday afternoon, where it was very well-received by the folks on the Comics Should Be Good! site.  I soon posted it over here on my Deviant Art page as well.  I wound up with a little unexpected free time Thursday night, so, as a lark, I sent a link to the Deviant Art page over to Dave Gibbons on Facebook.  I'm sure he's inundated with correspondence on there (So much so that's he's long past his friend limit on the site), so I wouldn't have been surprised if I never heard back from him.  So imagine my elation when I got up this Friday morning to read this message from the man himself:

"That's great, John! I've tweeted a link..."

WOW!! So not only had Dave Gibbons taken the time to look at the link & respond to me, but he also SHARED THE LINK WITH ALL OF HIS FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER!!  That's a pretty cool way to start your day.  To say that this response was more than I expected would be an understatement.  I don't have the words to say how gratifying it is to know that one of creators who's inspired me in my art career looked at my work, liked it, and thought it was worth sharing with the world at large.  As my friend Rob Kelly put it while explaining it to my non-comic book reading sister, "It's like if John was a musician and he covered a Simon & Garfunkel song, and then one of S&G said publicly how good it was."

All day, I've had a quote from Conan O'Brien running through my head: "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."  I've let my art career fall by the wayside for the last few years after a few too many disappointments about my lack of progress.  But now I'm trying again.  If you had told me a week ago that Dave Gibbons would be sharing a link to my work with his 10,782 followers on Twitter, I'd have thought you were crazy.  But it happened.  I've got the increased page views today to prove it.  And I got a positive endorsement from an artist that I admire.  And the encouragement I need to keep going and see where my art can lead me.

So now, the next time I EVER get discouraged about my art or where my art career is going, all I have to do is remember one thing:

DAVE GIBBONS LIKES MY WORK.

WOW.