Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a Marvel. - Katherine Mansfield

So, doings are afoot at the MMP!

As most of you know, I did 75 sketch cards for the Marvel Masterpieces trading card set from Upper Deck and Marvel which was released this past month. I'm also going to be doing sketches for the next upcoming set due out this Winter. Woo! I'll be doing another 75 for this set.
Yesterday, I got my Artist Proof cards for the last set, so I'll be offering SEVEN of those as commissions. Email me at dane [@] monkeyminionpress.com for details.

Also, Tomorrow is the last Thursday of the month, so that means that I'll be out at the Alberta Arts District Last Thursday Art Walk at This Place Blows glass blowing studio and gallery. I'll have a booth set up out front by the sidewalk, selling my prints (including my world premiere Zatanna print (see below)), sketch cards, watercolor monster greeting cards and Original Monster Paintings. If you're in the neighborhood, swing on by! I'll also be doing convention-style commission sketches.

some art!

Here's the zatanna print I'll have for sale tomorrow:






that's all for now, but tune in next time for more on the strange world of Monkey Minion Press!

Peace,
Dane

“Curiosity is the one thing Invincible in Nature.”

So, welcome to the first post of Monkey Business, the blog about me and Monkey Minion Press, my illustration and design company. So let's get busy!

Lots of new developments in the MMP world. But let's start off with a little history first: Remember last year when I was helping Steve Rude with some photoshop coloring touch-up work? Well if you don't, I just reminded you. Basically, what it was was that Steve was touching up the 20-some year old colors of his Nexus comic series for inclusion into the definitive printed verion of the stories in the Nexus Archives books from Dark Horse Comics. My job was to use photoshop to make the changes he needed made to the artwork. This included recoloring characters, pages and panels, making the effects more prominent, moving, deleting and rearranging word balloons, and so on, so forth.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, mainly because that gig has pretty much led directly to my new gig: doing color touch ups on Invincible for the new animated comic series coming out from MTV Mobile and GAIN Limited. Check this action out! (I would have embedded it, but apparently blogger can't embed flash vids.:() This is super huge for me because I am a HUGE FAN of Invincible. I've been reading the series since issue #9 when Ryan Ottley started drawing it. I'm really excited about it. AHH!

Also, I'll be doing sketch cards for the upcoming Marvel Masterpieces 3 set coming out of Upper Deck. I'm doing 75 cards, and hopefully I'll get to do most of them in color. Gonna be sweet!

What else? Oh yeah! Since moving to PDX, we have hooked up with a great group of artists here and have been showing my work around, and I have a show of my artwork set up in September at a small gallery here in town. And of course, I found an artwalk to participate in, the Alberta Arts District Last Thursdays! I'll be set up in front of This Place Blows a really cool little Glass Blowing Studio and Shop (This is also where my show will be in September).

So, I think that's enough for now. Check back soon, because I hope to have more news!