Peter Laird pottery at FCBD

    As readers of my blogs and Facebook page may be aware, back in 2012 I reunited with a long lost love -- making pottery! I'd done it for one semester in college a little over forty years ago, and then for some reason or set of reasons never put my hands on the clay again until I started taking lessons and classes with Tiffany Hilton, a local "practical potter", as she refers to herself. (Don't let that somewhat modest description fool you -- she's incredibly skilled and a wonderful teacher.)

    I haven't been drawing much in recent years, and the pottery has been a great creative outlet for me. I've enjoyed it immensely. Some friends and family members have dropped hints since I got back into doing ceramics that they wouldn't mind having a piece or two. That's flattering, and I have let one or two pots go, but I have to confess that I am kind of stingy with them -- I want to keep them all!

    But I decided that for Free Comic Book Day this year at Steve Lavigne's "Shellback Artworks" store in Wells, Maine on Saturday, May 7, I would donate a couple of pots for a raffle. One of them is from that first year -- 2012 -- that I got back into pottery, and the other one is from my most recent class in 2016.

    The piece from 2012 is a kind of goblet, although one more suited to eating something like fruit salad or ice cream than having a drink from. The goblet form was one I had a lot of fun making in that long-ago class in college, and I had to try my hand at it again in TIffany's studio. On this particular piece, I also used some rolling-bead texturing tools I'd made to add some funky textures.
    This one measures about five inches tall and five and a quarter inches wide at the top.


    The second pot I will be bringing to Shellback is this bowl from the most recent class I took in 2016. It measures about three inches high and six inches wide at the top. 

     This was one of a few bowls I used one of TIffany's newest glazes on, a yellow glaze which also has some cool light brown elements in it. This bowl would be well-suited to eating soup or a small salad from. (The quarter in the lower left of the photo is for scale.) 



     Here's a top view of this bowl which shows the slash of olive green glaze I used to decorate the inside.

    TMNT fans might be interested to know that in signing each piece before they were fired, I included with my signature a small Turtle head sketch, as seen in this example below.

    I'm not sure how Steve is planning to run the raffle, but I expect the rules will be made clear on Free Comic Book Day. -- PL

Inks!!!

Eric Talbot emailed me his scan of his inking of the TMNT group shot drawing I did for the print to be offered for the first time at Steve Lavigne's "Shellback Artworks" store on May 7 for Free Comic Book Day...





... and as I suspected, I was not disappointed. Great job, Eric! Now we look forward to Steve working his color magic on this piece! -- PL

Free Comic Book Day: May 2, 2015 signing at Shellback Artworks

I haven't actually counted, but I think I have done more signings at Steve Lavigne's "Shellback Artworks" comic and art supplies emporium than any other comic book store. This Saturday, May 2, along with Steve, I will be doing another one at Shellback, located at 1509 Post Road in Wells, Maine, for the annual "Free Comic Book Day" event. I believe there will be physical printed copies of issue #31 of TMNT Volume 4 for sale at Shellback (I've been told they exist, even though I have yet to actually see one!).

Should be fun! -- PL

[The photo above -- one of my favorites -- is from June of 2012, just before Steve opened Shellback Artworks... which means the store has been open almost three years. Way to go, Steve! Congratulations!]

Shellback Artworks exclusive print for Free Comic Book Day weekend event (UPDATED WITH COLOR VERSION! : 04-30-14)

I had some more fun inking this week. Kevin Eastman, Steve Lavigne and I are collaborating on a Shellback Artworks-exclusive color print for the "Free Comic Book Day" weekend event at Steve's store in Wells, Maine.

Kevin sent me this piece…

… looser than that great drawing he did for the IDW 30th anniversary comic book cover, but still replete with the signature Eastman elements of bold poses and interesting use of positive and negative spaces.

To make it easier for me to ink, I used Photoshop to remove the nifty blue shading Kevin had done, leaving just the linework.

Then I used the technique of copying the rough onto card stock, and printing it in a light blue color over which I would ink the drawing. Here are a couple of stages of the inking process…

… and the final inks, after cleaning up all the stray blue areas using Photoshop.

Can't wait to see what Steve does with the colors! -- PL

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UPDATE! 

04-30-14

12:26AM

And now I've seen it! Steve just sent me his cool color rendition of the piece, and here it is!