It’s day three of Visions of Lorelei, a 13-part artistic event that celebrates the recent publication of Lorelei: Sects and the City, a Mature Readers graphic novel that reintroduces The ’Warp’s first horror heroine. Today we have my all-time favorite convention sketch, done by an artist whom you may have heard has some familiarity with drawing spooky, redheaded femme fatales…
Flashback to 1989. About five minutes after I’d picked up my first-ever Lori sketch from artist Dave Simons (see yesterday’s post for that drawing), I wandered into one of the other convention areas and saw two guys sitting behind a table, promoting Cry For Dawn, a horror comic series they were about to publish.
One guy identified himself as the comic’s writer, Joe Monks; the other was the series’ artist, Joseph Linsner. What got my attention, though, was the painted art they had on display showcasing Dawn, the star of their comic. I asked Linsner if he wouldn’t mind doing a sketch of my redheaded femme fatale. He said sure, asked to borrow the Simons sketch for reference, and said come back in an hour. One hour later, I had this.
Absolutely stunning, wouldn’t you say? And most of it’s rendered in colored pencil! Linsner said he had to stop himself—he was enjoying the sketch so much he realized he was putting too much work into it. Hey, I didn’t mind. 😀
Of course, Dawn became Linsner’s seminal character—eventually becoming a cottage industry of prints and T-shirts and statues and cosplay contests and, yes, even more comics—and he became a pretty big name in the industry. Deservedly so, in my opinion.
