Chrissy Cutler (April 2010)

Voting for the 6th annual Inkwell Awards has ended, the ballots have been tallied and the comic book inking advocacy now prepares for its third live awards ceremony at the 2013 Heroes Con June 7-9 to reveal the highly-anticipated results.  Voting was done online through the group’s web site and heavily promoted through Facebook, Twitter, comics sites and other outlets.

“After a long year of fundraising, programs, conventions, promotion, various duties and all of the passion and effort involved, the Inkwell family is always ecstatic to celebrate our goal of promoting the art form of Inking and the industry’s best Ink Artists” said Bob Almond, the non-profit organization’s founder and director. “We can never show enough gratitude to Heroes Con promoter Shelton Drum and his staff for making this mission an annual reality, supporting inkers in the community with the respect and recognition they deserve.”

This year the organization will have several members in attendance including ambassadors Adam Hughes, Cully Hamner and Mark Brooks, contributors Louis Small, Jr., Randy Green, Jay Leisten and Dan Panosian, plus committee members past and

present, and many more. The Inkwell Awards plan to have model Chrissy Cutler, the first and original Ms. Inkwell from Pittsburgh Con in 2010, return to portray the Ms. Inkwell spokesperson character this year at this show.

The Inkwells will be set up in Artists Alley, offering for sale their annual 2013 Donation Drive book, which sports a sexy Ed Coutts Ms. Inkwell cover (based after the likeness of Chrissy), as well as previous donation books, which collect submitted donation art from contributors. Fans can also purchase the best-selling Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge books, color art and model photo prints, t-shirts and various donated items. Proceeds help fund ongoing efforts to fund operations, philanthropic programs like the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund to the Kubert School and their mission to educate the public & promote the art form of inking.

The award ceremony is scheduled for June 8, Saturday afternoon at 12:30 in room 209/210. Guest speakers include Almond as host, Cully Hamner as Presenter, Jimmy Palmiotti as Keynote Speaker, and tentative surprise guests.

Cully Hamner

Jimmy Palmiotti

The organization will present the winners from the five categories of nominees, as well as the recipients of the Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award (now handled internally by the core committee, associates and former award recipients) which each year recognizes two artists for a minimum of 25 years of outstanding career achievement.

Former Joe Sinnott Fall of Fame winners include Joe himself, Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, Klaus Janson, Al Williamson, Kevin Nowlan, Wallace Wood, Mark McKenna and Scott Williams. Current nominees included Murphy Anderson, Dick Ayers, John Beatty, Ernie Chan, Frank Giacoia, Dan Green, Tom Palmer, Mike Royer, Josef Rubenstein, Joe Simon, Bernie Wrightson; plus Special Recognition nominations for Joe Kubert (legendary creator, Editor and former Inkwell Ambassador) and Violet Barclay (AKA Valerie Smith), one of the few female Inkers during comics’ Golden Age of the 1940s.

Almond continued, “Choosing was tough for all. Each nominated artist certainly deserves the award but we could only choose two masters to be recognized this year. We hope to see an even better turn out this June in order to celebrate along with them.”

For the Inkwell Awards-sponsored Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund, this year’s winner and 4th recipient was Ji Wook Moon! And with perfect attendance to boot!

To see all of the 2013 Winners click this link!

The Kubert School Annual Scholarship Ceremony; Presenters — Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Pete Carlsson, and Jim Reeber.

Classes Involved: All Students

Pictured — (back row, from left to right) Pete Carlsson, Adam Kubert, Esau Figueroa, Alexia Veldhuisen, Ares Taveras, Damien Torres, Dov Smilovic, Josh Zingerman, Cody Robertson, Andy Kubert, Jim Reeber (front row, from left to right) Ernesto Sin Alos, Moon, Lloyd Briggery, Aysegul Sinav, Allen Watson

Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship – WINNER: Ji Wook Moon

PERFECT ATTENDANCE WINNERS: Joa Heijndermans, Alexia Veldhuisen, Ji Wook Moon

Three years after the passing of his wife, J. David Spurlock announced today on his Facebook page of the passing of the artist himself:

I went to Reading PA yesterday to buy Steranko and Adkins dinner. Neither Steranko nor myself had been able to reach Adkins. After dinner with Steranko, I hit the road back to New York only to be phoned by Steranko who had just received word from Adkins’ son that Dan left this world last week. In addition to many other credits, including T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Dr. Strange, lots of sci-fi illustrations, and much of the best inking ever done for Marvel, Adkins served as an art director at Marvel, was key to Wood launching Witzend, and he also mentored a number of young artists including Paul Gulacy, Val Mayerik and P. Craig Russell. He is missed.

— J. David Spurlock

For those not familiar with Dan and his career, Mark Evanier has posted an article on him. The Inkwell Awards extends it’s sincere condolences for his family and friends for their loss.

The Inkwell Awards Committee Team

While seemingly off-topic, it’s actually not, as many ink artists were effected.  I want to help circulate more attention for my friend Enrica Jang of Red Stylo Media who has formed We Win Con, a non-profit organization set up to help the artists who took a financial hit due to the cancellation of the Boston Con this weekend due to the recent threat of the Boston Marathon Bomber. Below is their statement:

The details: 
We Win Con is helping independent artists and fans who lost money and opportunities from the postponement of the Boston Comic Convention to be able to recoup a little of what they spent.

Artists who are out cash, travel and most importantly SALES this weekend can be featured in an online convention at wewincon.org. We’re also helping raise funds for charity in the process.

To help artists recover some costs so they can get through ’til BCC is back, visit http://wewincon.org/

Our goals:
•Bringing fans to the artists since artists couldn’t get to the fans.
•Gas Card Drive to reimburse artists that drove to Boston and had to turn back.
•Charitable giving for the organizations who were set to receive donations from the show.

Artists will get a FREE featured post, complete with links to their own online stores. Those without stores, Red Stylo Media is donating online space in their store to help promote sales. Any interested artist can email info@wewincon.org 

http://wewincon.org
facebook.com/wewincon
@wewincon on twitter

Trophy lineup from 2011

Click This Link To Vote Now

Joe Sinnott with his 2008 trophies for Favorite Inker and Hall of Fame

(New Bedford, MA/USA—April 14, 2013) The Inkwell Awards, a non-profit organization devoted to educating and promoting the art of inking, invites the public to vote for the industry’s best of the past year. The official public ballot will be available on the Inkwell Awards’  homepage from April 15 through April 30. Voting is open to everyone, whether fans or professional peers. The winners will be announced at the live awards ceremony at Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC June 7-9.

Trophy lineup from 2011

The only noteworthy change this year will be that while the ballot will still list the nominees for the Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame lifetime achievement award, the public will not be able to vote in that category. Bob Almond, founder and director of The Inkwell Awards (AKA “The Inkwells”), said, “Due to reader/fan turnover every few years, we’ve found the public can often be unfamiliar with many of the master artists from a decade or more ago. Thus, the award inadvertently becomes a ‘popularity contest’ with the voter ultimately choosing only familiar names from recent/favorite work, not from a culmination of the artist’s career accomplishments. We decided to have the internal and separate Hall of Fame Nomination Committee (made up of the core committee, former committee members, ambassadors, contributors and existing Hall of Fame award recipients) that chose the original nominees to then vote for the two deserving winners.

Mark McKenna receiving the Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award in 2012 (with Presenter Marc Deering)

“We’re so excited for this event, where everyone’s hard work will pay off and the best of the best ink artists and their work will be recognized,” Almond continued. “Inkers have their own fans and followers, and often go unsung or glossed over in traditional awards events. Ours caters specifically to ink artists and allows several to be recognized and appreciated in various categories.”

Ballots and instructions can be viewed at The Inkwells’ web site beginning on tax day, April 15. A direct link will additionally be posted on their Facebook group page, where people may also ask any questions.

Click This Link To Vote Now

Progress and failure.  It’s the stuff of all things, The Inkwell Awards not excluded.

I was thinking the other day about what once was and where we’re at today.  There’s been mostly development and improvement, but there’s been lessons along the way.

WEBSITE: that itself is the most obvious change, no doubt for the better and I’ve already based an Inkblots article on that.

SOCIAL NETWORKS: there’re a necessary evil, but who can keep track of them all, let alone update them all all the time?  We’ve certainly tried, especially with Stacey Aragon and Sarah L. Covert.  But I’ve learned that they can inexplicably go out of fashion. We used to have accounts with MySpace (set up by Bob Shaw) and ComicSpace (set up by me).  CS tried revamping their network which failed miserably and we stopped that option.  MySpace had been dying a slow death for years now to the point of not being a real force anymore.  We later added Twitter (Stacey).  I’m personally not a fan of the limited message venue, but it has it’s followers and we have ours so it’s survived.  Facebook (Group Page set up by Danny Best) has been the one venue that we jumped on early on and has grown stronger every year due to it’s accessibility and many diverse features (in fact Sarah later added our Fan Page).  In fact, it’s our default forum (see below).  One of the last things that Stacey set up before leaving us was the Google+ and YouTube sites.  I think the jury’s still out on those but we continue to keep them updated, especially the award ceremony recordings on YT.

FORUM: We used to have a separate forum site on Proboards constructed by Bob Shaw, once that took over or merged with P.J. Magalhaes Inkers.org forum which had grown stagnant.  We retained maybe half of the members from his forum but eventually gained more members than he had over time….it was a slow, gradual gain with slow, gradual traffic activity.  But no matter what we did, we couldn’t maintain that activity so after the main Inkwell Awards website was revamped by Kris Fenol and Sarah, we transferred the forum to it and closed down the separate site.  Regrettably, activity here was worse than the other one.  I’m told it’s not our fault, that the public has turned away from forums and message boards and grown finder of Facebook.  I expect that we’ll soon close down our site forum. (in fact, I just checked and it’s surprisingly inactive…but probably no one has noticed….time to check in with the Sarah the Techno-Queen).

AUCTIONS: For a brief time we tried an alternate auction venue after having successfully used eBay for fundraising.  After Bob Shaw set up our ComicArtFans gallery, we started our CAF gallery Auctions account which short term contributor Phil Healy handled as a contributor,which had a nice feature of being totally free to use with no fees whatsoever.  In fact, we ran our first Sinnott Inking Challenge auctions there.  But even while more than affordable, there were diminishing returns compared to eBay (even with their fees).  Between that and even less accountability for handling customer-related problems, it simply wasn’t worth spending any more time there after a few months and we’ve remained strong on our eBay Store page ever since.  Plus it didn’t hurt that Sarah and I eventually opened up our own Store at our website.

ROUND-TABLE INTERVIEWS: Does anyone still remember these?  Starting with our first season in 2008 we would hold an interview with all committee members as well as Joe Sinnott and whomever else we could get about inking, why we exist and what our goals are. Participants included Mike Marts, Tim Townsend, me, Danny, Bob Shaw, JimmyT, Bill Nichols, Dave Simons, Mark McKenna, Dan Panosian, Ernie Pelletier, Nathan Massengill and Tom Schloendorn.  We held three of them (2008-2010) which were moderated/assisted by Jennifer Contino, Danny Best and later Charles Edward Sellner.  For 2011 we started one with C.E. Sellner but only myself, Joe Sinnott and incoming Mike Kellar turned in their replies and while waiting for everyone else, we decided that with all of the duties and deadlines to get to that took precedence, that it was perhaps better to drop the tradition. Perhaps one day we’ll add the partial, cancelled interview here at the website.

CLASSIFIEDS: One of many ideas  suggested to us over time was to create a classified section at our site in order for inkers to find open work positions and employers could seek out inkers in need of work.  Up it went and barely anyone came to use it, including the guy who suggested it. We’ll probably keep it going and it’s a good idea in theory, but only time will tell if we can find a way to make it work better.

These are the areas I though about.  If I think of more I’ll make that the topic of another blog entry, but a lot of these kinds of highlights, good and bad, have been discussed briefly on the History page which has become more like my private journal where I share everything, warts and all.   Feel free to share memories of days past that I’ve obviously spaced out about.  Survival is about constant adaption. We’re still here and so is inking.

Artist Larry Dempsey is not a name the general public may remember. But for many ink artists in our community and those fledgling artists who sought out info about the art form of inking, Larry’s Inking Survey site was around for a few years long before the Inkwell Awards existed in 2008.

His site consisted on links to almost 400! artists who had completed a survey on several questions like on the tools they use and their approach to inking. It also incorporated inking tutorials and other inker-centric resources, elements that our own website utilizes today.  

In a time when there wasn’t many venues to bring attention and education about Inking and the artists who ink, Larry Dempsey was an appreciated and respected advocate and, along with P.J. Magalhaes’ Inkers.org forum site, his presence was a bridge to what became my non-profit advocacy on promoting and education about inking.

In later times he grew frustrated with outside parties using his material without his consent or credit. Combine that with some personal life traumas and this is why the website no longer remains on the internet. Many have asked Larry to return it and I had offered to post his work efforts on our own website, especially dedicated to him.  Larry declined and I truly respect his wishes and won’t ask him again and hope others will accept this reality.

I posted this blog entry because some have recently brought his name up on our Facebook group page and an individual suggested naming an award after him.  I’ve been contemplating the idea of having  The Larry Dempsey Award awarded to those individuals or organization (non-Inkwell Awards members) who have made or have been making an effort to bring more attention to the art form of inking.  Those eligible could be artists, promoters, retailers, publishers, etc. including fans who love inking like Larry. (Of course, this would only occur with Larry’s consent.)

So let us know what you think.  And please let me know if I have any details incorrect above or if you can elaborate as I have built quite a rep for my short term memory.  Should this new category be added to the next ballot for public voting?  Or do we have enough categories already. Or maybe it can be awarded like our special recognition awards with a silver inkwell trophy solely at the live ceremony when someone is deserving, not annually mandatory?  I’m anxious to hear what you all think.