Drink & Draw

Last Thursday was the first Las Vegas Drink & Draw that was initiated by Justin Newberry (writer of the upcoming graphic novel Super coming out from Aberrant Press later this year - I've seen several pages of this and it looks great - check out www.aberrantpress.com). Drink & Draw started as a monthly artist get together in Los Angeles by comic artists Dave Johnson, Dan Panosian, and Jeff Johnson (they put out a gorgeous art book from those monthly meetings through Image last year naturally called Drink & Draw and they hope to do a Vegas version in the future).

In this photo from left to right are the three sponsors of the first Vegas Drink & Draw, Jay from Maximum Comics, Derrick from Comic Oasis, and Ralph from Alternate Reality Comics. Jay and Derrick are great guys and they have great stores so I'm not going to tell you where they are in fear of people deserting my store for their four color offerings (grin)! This is us inside Mickie Finnz the bar where Vegas Drink & Draw happened.

Holly (she works at Comic Oasis) with her uber cool Iron Man holding up a shot glass drawing and Charles Holbert Jr., resident artist and friend of Comic Oasis' Derrick holding his great drawing of Holly. I already knew that Charles was a great artist (he has a short story appearing in the Sentinels Anthology coming out in June), but I had no idea that Holly had some great drawing chops (I looked through a notebook of hers with her illustrations and immediately hated her!) - look them up on Deviant Art online.

So the plan is for Vegas Drink & Draw to happen every first Thursday of the month. I didn't find out about it until just about the twelve o'clock hour last week so other than having fliers in my store, I wasn't able to do much promotion for the first one. Having said that though I (and Jay, Derrick, and Justin) was very encouraged with the turnout. I'd pick Mickie Finnz (on the corner of Fremont St. and Las Vegas Blvd.) as the regular location if it was up to me as I thought the bar has good space, very good tunes, and good brew (and they serve food so smokers have to go outside the bar, but the outside of the bar is cool also). Anyone can come to the Drink & Draw and you don't have to draw, but it's fun to do so even if you don't think you're that great (and who knows maybe with enough brews they'll bring out your inner Jack Kirby, Rob Liefield, or Brian Bolland!). Paper is provided and prize drawings are held every half hour so how can you go wrong (just remember to drink and draw responsibly)!? I'll hopefully have more info shortly about the second gathering so stay tuned and sharpen up your pencils and pens!

As I'm finishing this entry, I had a customer while looking at new arrivals, order a strawberry banana pancake to go from IHOP over his head phone system! I think that's the first time a customer has ordered food while shopping at my store - and who knew that you could order to go from IHOP!? Actually if I wasn't a vegan, a strawberry banana pancake would sound pretty good!