Here’s a gif preview (thanks to Mike Pascale)!
PLEASE SHARE and check out the auctions when wave one launches in our eBay store Saturday April 15!
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 <dmralmond@gmail.com> and senior contributor Tom Schloendorn <tom_schloendorna4@comcast.net 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 (https://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
1/7/2017
This photo and below: submissions from last year’s 6th annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge with Deadpool and Spider-Gwen.
Front cover: Bill Sienkiewicz, back cover: Mike Okamoto
Finally! 5 years in the making, Bob Almond’s personal pet project is a physical reality! Unlike the Inking Challenge books which target both education on inking and act as a fundraiser, this ‘Good Girl Art’ Gallery book is strictly for fundraising. At 116 pages, this full color book with cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Mike Okamoto examines the creation and history of the non-profit Inkwell Awards’ sexy spokesmodel since her debut in 2010. It reproduces past covers, collects Ms. Inkwell artist donations, and in the gallery we present 32 b&w and color interpretations of the lovely India Wells along with prelims, pencils before inks, alternate versions, and comments from several of the contributors. Plus the live spokesmodel photo rollcall of ladies in black and their show stats. All editions will be signed by co-creator Bob Almond and present spokesmodel Hailey Skaza-Gagne. This will be added to the Inkwell store but for now you can email Bob at dmralmond@gmail.com and pay $20 plus $5 for domestic s&h (international buyers can ask about s&h). 25 copies are on hand with more coming early in 2017! While supplies last! See preview pages below:
Mark your planners! This is the verified and official list of conventions and events we’ll be attending. I’ll be traveling with/setting up for the non-profit along with spokesmodel Ms. Inkwell Hailey Skaza-Gagne at each stop unless it says otherwise. This is going to be a much busier than usual year for us but besides our regular con supporters some new supportive shows are bringing us out to new locations and that certainly helps with exposure. FCBD is pending for me.
INDIANA COMIC CON: April 14-16
KUBERT SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIP CEREMONY: Friday May 5
FCBD: Saturday May 6 (tbd) ??
ALBANY COMIC CON: Sunday June 4
HEROES CONVENTION: June 16-18
TAMPA BAY COMIC CON: July 28-30
BOSTON COMIC CON: August 11-13 (w/ Hailey but no Inkwell Awards set up so not an official non-profit stop)
TERRIFICON: August 18-20
RHODE ISLAND COMIC CON: November 10-12
TODAY is the 2nd non-profit Inkwell Awards BLACK (ink) FRIDAY! All items listed in our website’s Store is 50% off the listed prices this weekend (as long as funds are received by midnight Sunday the 27th EST) plus s&h. Books! DVDs! Prints! and more, while supplies last! (T-shirts are a flat $5 each but please email us to ask about the remaining designs, colors and sizes as they aren’t presently listed in the store.) You can follow the instructions when you add items to the cart like about using a special code to activate the discount. If there are any problems while shopping please simply email Bob at dmralmond@gmail.com
UPDATE, JULY 12: While we waited for the ceremony video to be uploaded and prepared, I posted the full, original transcript on June 23 below. Tech-God Rhys Evans was able to set up the video above today and upon viewing you’ll see that I clearly had to improvise and cut out most of my prepared speech to make time for all of our guest speakers and award recipients who made statements. Now we have the best of both worlds. (Video taken by James McGee) Bob
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Welcome to the Inkwell Awards 9th annual, and 6th live, awards ceremony! To all the new attendees, a sincere thanks for your support for the recognition of and promotion for the art form of comic book inking, and for returning attendees and members, much gratitude for your ongoing solidarity. This year we have a special treat and privilege to share with you. We are tossing the script and usual structure of the ceremony for a more than worthy reason as we will be starting off with a milestone, special appearance and presentation by Jim Steranko. But before I officially present him, I want to make a request and a note: please refrain from using any flashbulb photography while Jim is on stage. And second, Jim will be discussing a variety of things related to inking and among those things will be mentioning of a couple of notable ink artists who happen to be the latest lifetime achievement award recipients. They will be further mentioned later when I present all of the 2016 award winners. So now that we have that all covered, I am truly honored at this time to call to the podium, illustrator, publisher, author, musician, escape artist and Eisner Hall of Fame comics creator, Jim Steranko!”
<Jim speaks>
Before proceeding I want to give a Heroes’ thank you to Shelton Drum who reached out and welcomed us six years ago for this convention to be our host show. I also want to pass the love on to Andrew Mansell, Rico Renzi, Trey Alexander, Karla Marsh and the entire Heroes Con staff. Unlike some, Shelton and company are not dismissive of ink artists. They are true supporters, friends and fans of inkers and it’s thanks to them that we get our own day to be heard and recognized.
“Very cool. I’ve always understood how penciling, coloring and even lettering styles can differ from person to person. Never could quite wrap my head around inking though. This shows the same pencilling inked by different inkers. I think I finally get it.”