Reverie Day 2

Day 2 pictures here.

Somehow the day ended with hanging out in a hotel room with four artists and a red tail hawk named Dakota. Everything else is an art infused blur.

Start time was mercifully late, given the party the night before. Intros and keynote were at 1:00. It took a while to get through the introductions since there are With 60 instructors here it took a while to get thrpugh introductions. I was happy for it, though -- it's amazing what kind of talent we were standing next to witout realizing it, not knowing what everyon elooks like.

The keynote was given by Lorne Lanning who talked about many cool things but stressed the idea of world building and ownership -- creating your own worlds that can be explore across many platforms: paintings to books to comics to toys to movies...Lorne was followed by Frank Beddor, whose Looking Glass Wars has been doing just that.

However, whatever is happening on the main stage is only part of the action at these things. At any one time there two dozen demos going on. If you are an artist, the thing to do is just sit yourself down next to these guys and start drawing and painting and bombarding them with as many questions as possible. Me, I walk around peering over shoulders a lot, taking to students and instructors and trying to catalog every promising lead I can. I saw lots of great portfolios and work doing done on the. (Any workshopers out there: I know we have the business day on Tuesday but feel free to grab me whenever you see me.)

I got to meet two artists I just hired before coming down here: Vance Kovacs, who will be painting covers and interiors for Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon series for Tor. In fact, I was able to hand deliver the manuscript on Saturday night. After watching him paint for a few hours, I got even more excited about the project. And I met recent Spectrum award winner Kekai Kotaki who had emailed me some kick-ass sketches late last week.

I met a Marvel talent scout, C.B. Cebulski. Talk about an awesome job, he travels the world looking at artists and bringing them to Marvel. We'll have to compare notes back in NY. I only just got a moment to check out his blog, but it seems very envy inducing.

We had to have lunch with a couple of great animation artists, Dustin d'Arault and Yashar Kassi.

Scott Brundage has been our meal buddy most of the days. He's a great watercolorist whose trying out digital for the first time here.

Ringling alumni are all over the place and looking good. Ringling will take over the art world.

A few Master Class alumni are here...making me both nostalgic for last year and excited about the upcoming summer.

And....somehow by the end of the night I was in a hotel room with Greg, David Levy, and Dakota, Manny Carrosco's beautiful red tail hawk.