After
an astounding premier live awards ceremony at Heroes Con on June
4-6, the non-profit Inkwell Awards is gearing up for their fifth season
of recognizing inking excellence in the comic book community and
promoting the art form. One highlight is the recruitment of additional
star talent to the roster of Inkwell Ambassadors, a role that adds
exposure and credibility to the organization and it's mission. Two of
the three additions from their 2011 Inkwell tour stop at Pittsburgh
Comicon are artists Phil Jimenez and Eric Basaluda.
Artist Phil
Jimenez is known for his work as a writer and penciler, often
inking his own pencil work, and has a reputation for utilizing
meticulous detail in his art. First hired at DC in 1991, his career has
propelled him to notable runs on series such as Wonder Woman, The
Invisibles, Team Titans, Tempest, and event projects like War of the
Gods, 52 and Infinite Crisis. For Marvel he produced fan-favorite art
for Amazing Spider-Man, Astonishing X-Men and New X-Men among others. In
addition to his comic book work Phil also teaches life drawing at the
School of Visual Arts on New York City.
Eric Basaluda (AKA Ebas)
developed a fan-following from his early work at Top Cow Productions
for Marc Silvestri. Adroit at both penciling and inking, his work has
appeared for publishers as diverse as Marvel, Zenescope, Dynamite
and DC, and he is well known as a cover artist for properties as Red
Sonja, Vampirella, Witchblade, Tomb Raider, The Darkness, Magdalena,
Grimm Fairy Tales, and many more. Eric's good girl and erotic art has
grown in demand among the art collecting community.
And after
some correspondence between Bob Almond and living legend Joe Kubert last
week, Joe wrote back accepting an invitation for the role of newest
ambassador for the advocacy. "The realization that this master of the
art form since the golden-age has just joined the team is just too much
for me to absorb" said Inkwell director and founder Bob Almond, "it's
truly a dream come true!"
Joe
Kubert has worked in comics since the beginning of the business. In his
seventy-plus years of working in the medium he has produced countless
stories for countless characters, including DC Comics' Hawkman, Tarzan,
Enemy Ace, Sgt Rock, Batman and the Flash as well as his own characters:
the heroic caveman, Tor, and Abraham Stone. His list
of accomplishments is lengthy. A quick rundown: penciler, inker,
letterer, colorist, one of the creators of 3-D comic books, newspaper
strip cartoonist, school founder and teacher, correspondence course
developer, author, artist and editor. Joe Kubert lives and works in New
Jersey. The Kubert School website link is: http://www.kubertschool.edu/
Last
June Cully Hamner was added to the ambassador line-up that includes
Adam Hughes, Mike Marts, Ethan Van Sciver, Mark Brooks, Mike McKone,
Sal Velluto, Trevor Von Eeden, and J. David Spurlock (
http://www.inkwellawards.com/?page_id=413).
Some recent developments from the Inkwell Awards include resuming their fundraising auctions on eBay this fall (
http://www.ebay.com/sch/merchant/theinkwellawards),
they initiated the successful 2nd Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge by
inviting ink artists to participate, they're polishing up and further
developing their revamped website with all of the resources from the old
site, and they just sent out invitations for the next Nomination
Committee.
"I got jammed up this summer with work assignments
but since then, for preventive maintenance, we've been trying to
delegate various operational duties to the team so things won't get
held up again", said Bob Almond. "We have the Joe Sinnott Inking
Challenge Gallery book going to print this fall, collecting the
contributions of several ink artists over the blue-line pencil art of
Joe such as Terry Austin, Mike Allred, Joe Rubenstein, Klaus Janson, Bob
McLeod, Ernie Chan, Pablo Marcos, Dan Parsons, Jay Leisten, Mark
McKenna and many more. And this year's Challenge should be just as
popular, allowing us to further educate about the craft and raise funds
from the donated pieces. And we have the Ms. Inkwell Gallery book in
the works, collecting renditions by the artist community of our
attractive spokesmodel, again, to raise funds for our charity, all
allowing us to continue operations, afford various related expenses, and
maintaining our philanthropic efforts such as our COMPliments Program
which supplies our Hall of Fame recipients with comps of their work and
the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund at the Joe Kubert
School of Cartoon & Graphic Art."
The 2012 Inkwell Awards
ballot is scheduled to go online in April with the actual awards
ceremony to be held at Heroes Con on June 22-24, 2012.
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