Bill Sienkiewicz commission digitally colored by Gerry Turnbull

This here post is evidence of the nice people you meet in this hobby. (Well, technically I have never met him but he is at least virtually nice!) Since I am a huge Dr. Strange fan I have become aware of other Doc fans, as they have no doubt also become aware of me. There are a few of us out there, not too many that they can escape my notice at least. One of these folks is Gerry Turnbull. He is also a colorist, and my longtime and faithful blog reader will recall he colored my Nebres commission. Well when I posted this Sienkiewicz Superman commission and Gerry expressed interest in it I knew he would not be able to contain himself. It may have even been less than an hour or two after posting it that I had an email from Gerry saying he had colored it. No charge, no hard sell, just "hey look at this!". That is a nice guy. He even used my nom-de-plume for Bill, Billy da'Sienk, in the file name. Gold star for Gerry!

So check this out.

Digitally colored version by Gerry Turnbull

It really makes me speechless. Luckily I can still type though. '-) I originally wanted a color commission, but have grown to love the black and white version I ended up getting. This gives me the best of both worlds. It really is indistinguishable from the original I think. Beautiful, Bill and Gerry, just beautiful!

Mike Allred commission now colored

Gerry Turnbull took a go at coloring the Mike Allred Dr. Strange Beach Party commission and did a groovy job! Take a gander -

The reason this came so long after the original commission is because I never let Gerry go until I okayed the Hawaiian shirt I wanted for The Ancient One. Eventually I just told him to go for it and then he was nice enough to include another version as well. Here is the second version, closer to what I had initially envisioned. I would prefer the trees and colors randomly oriented, not so orderly. But this commission has never been about what I wanted as much as what the artists were able to bring to it, so that is fine. I think I like this second shirt better.

Either way, Gerry did a great job a brings a lot to the pieces he colors. Thanks Gerry!

Here is a link to the original Mike Allred inked, b/w commission.

Strange Dr. Strange commission

As I stated in my last post, there are basically 3 types of comic art: true comic art-pieces produced for publication including pages and covers; convention sketches; and studio commissions. Basically. I spend a lot of my comic art hobby money on commissions. Some of them (such as those by Paul Smith; Simon Bisley; Dean Ormston; Andy MacDonald; and Ulises Farinas among others) are among my favorites in my collection. But I have grown weary of the single figure commission (although I just ordered one yesterday, so sue me!), somewhat weary I guess, and more weary of spending big bucks on a commission in general. But  I sold a bunch of art a few months ago in anticipation of the July Heritage comic art auction and when I did not bid high enough for the pieces I wanted I had some money sitting right there that had come from selling some pretty cherished in my collection.

Hmmm.

I'll spare you the 2000 words describing the process, but eventually I decided on a commission from either Art Adams or Mike Allred. I had enough for good Mike Allred piece or a bit more than half an Art Adams figure. The Art Adams is a real priority for me, but the Allred pieces were 4 figures for $1000 and I had an itch I figured I may as well scratch. The time seemed right. You see, when Mike Allred started taking commissions I immediately did what I always do when a great artist announces commission openings, I thought about what I would get. now I have never read Mike's magnum opus MADMAN. Maybe an issue or two here and there but never really. But RED ROCKET 7 and SUPERMAN / MADMAN: HULLBALOO were big hits in my book. SOLO. I just loved the zany sense of fun and chaos in his comics. It was clear he was having a ball. So I immediately got a vague notion of Valkyrie and The Defenders playing volleyball on the beach, all drawn by Mike. I never really thought it through and never needed to go any further because it was clear: if there was to be a Mike Allred commission in my future it was going to be based on this idea. And what do you know? My future had arrived.

But wait, what could I do? The Valkyrie and The Defenders would be around 8 characters, and that was too much money. Because, and this is important, commissions do not have good resale value. They are high risk (too specific to your tastes, too weird DING!, they come out poorly, usually expensive, they could come out poorly, and did I mention...they could come out poorly). So spending all that money is one thing, but spending it on a weird and quirky idea is quite another. So The Defenders as a group was out. After trying to decide who to cut and who to keep in I decided to go in a different direction and go with Dr. Strange's posse. I even went the extra $200 for a 5th character when I decided on Doc, Clea, The Ancient One, Wong, and Rintrah..And a short time later, with facillitation by Simon Miller of www.gotsuperpowers.com, I had this-

Dr. Strange and friends - a day off at the beach by Mike Allred

Pretty cool, huh?

Rudy Nebres commission - colored by Gerry Turnbull

Well, I usually don't go for digital coloring but have made exceptions once or twice before. But that awesome Rudy Nebres commission that I got last week was so good I wanted to see what it would look like in color. And this time I decided I would contact a fellow Dr. Strange fan, Gerry Turnbull, because I thought he would really enjoy working on it. Gerry has been doing some coloring and showing off his mad skillz (yes, I did that!) on the comic art fans website. I may be wrong but I do not think he does it professionally, although his work is certainly of a professional quality. So I emailed Gerry and he agreed to take it on. And that same night I got the results. I think they are wonderful, but see for yourself.

Wait, we're not done! When I had Tom Smith color a Jae Lee commission (also of Doc, and Tom did great work as well) he was nice enough to throw in an alternate coloring scheme. Well, I must have been correct about Gerry enjoying the piece because he did the same thing and I soon got this as well. A little more of the night music in this one.

And we are still not done. In the morning I got another and it is a beaut!

The flourishes are all Gerry, even the ripped edge on the top! Masterful. He really outdid himself and I could not be happier with his work.Now I can't promise that you will get all these extras, but I can promise that you won't be disappointed with his work should you choose to employ him. Check his gallery on CAF (http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=3603) for other examples of his coloring skills, as well as a stellar Dr. Strange collection that rivals my own for sure. In fact, between Gerry, Robert Turner and John Sisson I better keep acquiring these Doc pieces or they will leave me in the dust. Keeping up with the Jones' has never been so fun!

EDIT: It turns out I was wrong and that Gerry Turnbull does have professional colorist credits. He was one of the colorists on John Byrne's FX (IDW) and has colored the official posters for the Mid-Ohio Con and Cincinnatti Con for the past few years. Sorry about that Gerry!