Going to Wonder Con

This coming Friday morning I will be heading to San Francisco for the annual Wonder Con that is to be held at the Moscone Center from April 1 to April 3. It’s been about 7 years since I have attended Wonder Con, simply because I have opted to attend Comic Con, which is the one big “vacation” that I take each year.

What changed this year, you may ask? I received an invitation to attend the annual fete as part of the press – the first such invitation offered to me since I began writing for NiceGirlsTV nearly two years ago.

While Comic Con is known the world over as “the” convention to attend because of the amazing celebrity guests who attend year after year as well as all the fantastic panels that are planned, the opportunities to purchase unbelievable collectibles available in the exhibitor’s hall and sitting in on all the sneak peeks of upcoming movies and television shows; Wonder Con is much the same – just on a smaller scale.

Some of the more notable panels scheduled for Wonder Con include a presentation by TNT of their new summer series Falling Skies, a special exclusive screening of an upcoming episode of the CW series Nikita, several panels focusing on the Green Lantern – both the box office film and the animation version, a sneak peek inside FOX’s new show Terra Nova as well as inside looks at the upcoming box office films Cowboys & Aliens, The Three Musketeers, Hanna, Priest and Immortals (among many others).

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Wonder Con doesn’t just focus on television and films; it covers all of pop culture, including comic books, video games, animation, art work and much, much more. If you are in San Francisco this coming weekend, I would suggest you consider attending this prequel to Comic Con. You can purchase day passes at the door.

For more details please visit here.

Beneath the Fairie Moon by Sue Dawe

Artist Spotlight: This month’s artist’s spotlight is on Sue Dawe, who was born and raised in Glendale, California. One of her earliest art influences were the very art nouveau illustrations in the turn-of-the-century Elson Readers (old textbooks) for which her mother used to read out loud to her as a child. As she grew older, she became fond of other artists like Maxfield Parish, Norman Rockwell, the Pre-Raphaelites (like Waterhouse and Alma-Tadema), and later contemporary illustrators like Michael Parkes and the Hildebrandt Brothers.

Inspirations for her artwork come from many different sources; namely, anything that moves her such as a fantastic sunset, a piece of music or even “things” that she cannot have, which is why horses play a big part in her artwork. Later on strong and mysterious men played a big part in her drawings and paintings as did places where she would like to be even if that were a world in which fantastic beasts and noble knights existed.

Remarkably, Susan’s original career path was veterinary medicine, as she was a graduate in animal science/pre-veterinary medicine from San Luis Obispo’s Cal Poly University, but that changed to illustrations when the box office film Star Wars came along. This film had, and still has, a powerful influence on her life, allowing her the courage to switch careers that eventually allowed her to make a living using her artist talents.

Susan works in a wide variety of mediums such as traditional oils, water colors, and airbrush/acrylic/mixed media paintings. The medium for which she works in depends on what the project at hand is and how much time for which she has to paint. She gets her best results with oils, though. However, she is best known for her airbrush acrylic/mixed media artwork, which is much more time-consuming than the other mediums. She does all of her small artwork – like collectible card game art, which is rarely larger than 8” x 10” – with watercolors on hot press paper.

A creative writer by hobby, she has sketched a career as a visual storyteller, coloring it with her own unique and distinctive style. Her images evoke surreal dreamscapes populated by fantastic characters both human and mythical, transporting viewers to worlds that might have been. As evidenced by her featured piece, called Beneath the Fairie Moon, Sue states the piece, “borrows a lot from nature” and “was created because I wanted to design an image that incorporated both a unicorn and a faerie together”. The faerie was made life-size with wings of a ‘King Fly,’ allowing Sue to play with rainbow effects and the unicorn is reminiscent of Gandalf’s mount in the Tolkien classic “The Lord of the Rings”. As for the disappearing path leading into the forest; that is inspired by the mysteries of “the path not taken” – for which Sue has been interested since childhood. These paths were “calls to adventure” in Sue’s imagination that she incorporates into her artwork.

Her work has been published world-wide on posters and prints, greeting cards, back-to-school products, fabric arts, calendars and porcelain collectable plates.

Sue enjoys fantasy and period costume design, and teaching painting at San Diego Miramar College. She resides in Ramona, California with her husband Michael and their border collies, Floss and Andy.

If you would like to reach Susan, you can email her at suedawe@inetworld.net and you can see her artwork here.