WHAT IS IT?
The Inkwell Awards invites you to the seventh annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge. Our Hall of Fame Award is named after Joe and, with his approval and support, we have taken a couple of his pencil donations intended for our fundraising, originally rendered on blank variant cover comics, and blown them up and converted them to bluelines for inking. We have chosen ink artists who are A) part of our organization, B) Inkwell award recipients, or C) notable for their career inkwork ranging from the veteran embellishers of the silver-age through to the respected delineators of today, but any inker can take part, including novices. Since last year some of you who missed previous Challenges asked me to be added to the list and you are included here. For fundraising and educational purposes, we’d like to know if you would be willing to voluntarily participate in inking one or both of these pieces. We will take the final images and post them on our Comic Art Fans gallery in comparison to Joe’s initial pencil art in order to showcase to the public the contributions of various ink artists and what they bring to the table. Secondly, these pieces would be auctioned off to raise funds for our vital operational needs and philanthropic programs like the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund to the students of the Joe Kubert School and our COMPliments Program which allows HoF inkers who are singled out from receiving collections of their work from publishers to receive them through us and not have to purchase them, as well as trophies, flying in award recipients to the annual ceremony, etc. Last year’s successful program (not counting the Jim Lee spin-off) brought in over $3000 on our eBay auctions and this year we anticipate an even better outcome. You can see previous samples of donations from our first five years at our Comic Art Fans gallery (top left labeled links).
All proceeds raised go 100% strictly to the non-profit and the only members paid for their services are legal, accounting and the spokesmodel as a productivity incentive.
WHAT TO DO?
If you are interested in contributing please email BOTH myself and senior contributor Tom Schloendorn to confirm that you have the tools/capabilities to print up a hi-res blueline file on 11X17 2-ply Strathmore vellum board to ship back to me and we will promptly email you the hi-res file of either one or both images– please specify what you want…files will be emailed out within 24 hours of requests in most cases (THE SAMPLES HERE ARE LO-RES SIMPLY FOR REFERENCE)…or if you don’t and are an established, published professional and you’d like us to ship either or both pages of bluelined boards to you, please forward your shipping address to us in your reply. If you cannot participate, no need to reply, we totally understand about your busy schedules and lives making it a challenge (plus, if we do this again, we’d probably touch base with you again). But should you know of another notable inker willing to participate please pass on their email address so we can invite them….however, we have the right to not include a request and please be aware that no work is guaranteed to be included in our subsequent book collection. But to be eligible for the book you MUST send us a 300dpi hi-res scan at full size upon completion and before shipping. We will be following-up with friendly reminders prior to the deadline. The deadline is Saturday, March 25, 2016 (11 weeks). THE ART MUST BE SHIPPED AND RECEIVED BY Mark Sinnott at:
Mark Sinnott
44 Spaulding Lane
Saugerties, NY 12477
***Joe Sinnott will sign every page. If you leave his blueline signature blank then he will sign it there (but it won’t be in the scan if used in the book). If you ink in his sig, he will sign the page outside the borders or wherever there is a good spot. Mark will subsequently ship them to me to make out item descriptions. Auctions will run subsequent to that in 2-4 waves in April. (The less-inclusive Neal Adams Spotlight Challenge art will run in March.)
SPECIFIC INKING NOTES: You can ink it ‘as is’ or reinterpret it, bringing something extra to the table….this year we will have a Dr. Strange and a Wonder Woman, both somewhat loose, with no real tightly-pencilled option due to Joe’s tight schedule (very often what happens in an assignment). You are encouraged to ink the logos to motivate more auction bids but you don’t have to.
Please LMK if you have any questions.
SUMMARY:
* reply to myself and Tom if interested and request the hi-res blue line file(s) to be emailed or (to vets) the blueline print up(s) to be mailed with your shipping address.
* ship the art back upon completion to the Mark Sinnott address above. After that you can post it online publicly as long as you plug that it’s for the 7th JOE SINNOTT INKING CHALLENGE for the INKWELL AWARDS (http://www.inkwellawards.com) to promote and educate about the art form of inking and to raise funds for their non-profit organization and their annual Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund to the Kubert School.
* we will be happy to mail you tax-exempt receipts upon request for your contribution.
* we will contact you later if we plan to include you in the book collection for the previous year’s contributions and get your bio/photo/comment information.
Thanks much for your time, effort, and support, especially those who have been involved in this program for several years (you know who you folks are;-)).
Sincerely,
Bob Almond
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