Rick2you2

Sorry, I never him, but he seems like a good man and was a great artist. There is actually an obituary for him in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Just a warning here. Sometimes, the artist doesn’t ink quite the same way as in the original. Only one visible error so far from the scans, and I actually like it a little better the new way, but it isn’t identical.

Thankfully, no must haves this time. Too much spent this year already.

I’m not a good candidate for someone to try and abuse.👿 But thank you for your kind thoughts.

He had actually volunteered to do it for free because he didn’t like the way the originals looked. Even though he didn’t ask, I sent him a little extra (as well as the PayPal fee). His work reminds me a little of Daniel Sampere, but it isn’t digital.

I don’t want to abuse him. He has two others to do this weekend, as well, and a fourth he is sending me that was fully inked. But for the volume and price, however, I will keep it in mind.

Good to hear. I just bought it, with a few others. Inking to follow.

I’m not sure what follows was such a good strategy, but sometimes I used to put in a relatively high bid early-on to discourage potential bidders from joining in the fray. But, the effect may have just been to raise the price at the end, so I stopped.

All valuable and insightful views, and particularly interesting to me because of a related thread I just started. With that said, I think I have reformulated my thoughts. Are you buying a piece of art, or a piece of history? Pieces with historical significance may better be left on their own, because their essence is not just their appearance but their creation. But most pieces are just bought for their appearance. So, if the restoration improves the appearance, without altering the original art, I think it should be okay to retouch, restore and repair. Ink away. On the other hand, I would probably leave early Spider-man Ditko’s alone.

This is an example of what he sent (with some of my editing), as well as an explanation. Personally, I love the improvements. Sorry, the first image is a bit blurry; there are some other pages involved, too: "About the PS pages: I went through my archive (a jungle) and I have all three of them, but this is how they look like right now: [see below] while working on Superboy, I was under killer deadlines; so I had to speed up the process by finishing the inks digitally, with the Photoshop Fill tool. If you are interested, I can ink them manually, and let me tell you, it will be a pleasure - digital inks are great for meeting deadlines, but it hurts to see them like this - nothing beats China Ink."

Perhaps it is time to pay closer attention to sub markets instead of referring to things like “low end” art or “high end” art. Viewed through prisms of different vintages, publishers, artists or subjects, were there any consistent threads? What about the independents or non-superhero art? Personally, I don’t care for most silver age art; too much of it is in relatively small static panels and as compared to the age of collectors, is getting kind of old. Other people revere it.

I am thinking of buying some pages in which the artist had done the artwork in pencil, and partial India ink. Due to time deadlines, he finished the inking with the Photoshop fill tool. He is offering to finish the inking of the actual pages with India ink. The result would be “better” art, but not the actual published page. Would you have him finish it or not? Would it affect value? I am leaning to having him finish them, but, I suspect some collectors would not like the loss of originality. Thoughts?

Everything is a function of degree. If there was a lot of faded black that was retouched, it might knock the value down (say, an arbitrary 10%) if done by a professional restorer. If it was by the original artist, the value should drop, but by less. If it is a valuable piece, collectors may not care. Also, I, personally, would care less if the restoration was for color. More so if inks, and more so if pencils.

What it suggests to me is a mature market. Instead of virtually everything going up a lot, buyers are differentiating, with older product that is less than premium grade not being bought as much as the population grays out. This has been predicted by some of us for a while. It would not surprise me if low grade Silver Age art begins to actually drop.

While I like a lot of what you get, I was wondering if you have any developing focus to your buys other than “I buy what I like”. I don’t expect most people to be as limited as I am, but you do cover a lot of different styles, artists, characters and layouts. Was the Rudy DPS panel squiggle for the layout intended to mean something?

Sweeney Todd.

I don't get to come here very often, but it's a nice change of pace. This is a page from Reign in Hell. The penciller is Tom Derenick and the inker is Bill Sienkiewz. I had been looking for a page from Tom by reason of his work on the Shadowpact series, but, as luck would have it, he opened his old storage container and this popped out. Orignially, he offered it on Facebook at $300, but when I saw other interest in it, I quickly pm'ed him and offered $400.00. He had my earlier IM's expressing interest in his work, and I won (I suspect the extra $100 helped). For a static 6 panel, I think it's quite good. Derenik's pencil work is always very good, and Bill S's "arty" side is in evidence in his ink washing of panels 4 and 5. As for Zatanna, that is one baleful stare. Why can't I find more stuff like this? (Although, I am regularly impressed at the high quality of the Morelock art).

I own two color guides. One of them was offered with the original pencil and ink art, so what the heck.The other is a stand-in for a page of OA I will never spend the necessary money to buy. If I couldn’t find some OA, or found an original color guide to something I own, I would also buy them.

Artists almost always have had the right to sell copies of their originals, even the old pen and ink varieties, unless performed under a work for hire agreement. Neal Adams did it for years at shows.

I’ve done this a few times so far. Artists involved in order of reception and L->R, T->B: Here are the ones that I have as examples (click here for a better view): Are you interested? What would it cost? If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Alex, Spend a little time writing specifications, eh? Now all you need is to divide it up into General, Products and Execution, and you can submit it the CSI. Rick

Directions are fine; I met that literally. One artist complained about someone who commissioned him and told him where he wanted the artist to locate the character’s arms.

Consider something no more than 3-4 sentences. If the artist has done something you really liked, mention it, particularly if you know he is proud of it or if it is obscure (something only real fans would know). Artists don’t always like drawing the same old thing, so if you want something different, like Hoppy the Marvel Bunny (part of one of mine), mention it. You want his creativity and his design; don’t micromanage (“his left arm should be holding a wand…”). Remember he is a person. He has his own time constraints; commissions are usually gap fillers between assignments. So recognize it. I like to send copies of things I have so artists can get a sense of what I like, and maybe stimulate some competitive juices. If they seem negative for some reason consider skipping the artist and move on.

I read it as the artist politely telling you, in a passive-aggressive way, he doesn’t want the assignment, but won’t come out and say it. I would have thanked him for his honesty (Written without sarcasm, even if you would want to, and even if deserved). Even if he did it, odds are you wouldn’t be too happy with the result, and possibly for good reason.

Your top income tax rate is higher than ours, too. Here, it’s 37% on income above $523k. There, it is 45% over 150k pounds. I suspect that is more than most dealers net, after taxes, but I don’t know.

Man’s gotta eat.