The 5th Annual Sinnott Inking Challenge Launches!

Here’s the edited invitation with info on the 2015 Challenge below as it was emailed out to many artists on January 8. For those artists interested they can contact us with the info below but only for a limited time.

WHAT IS IT?
The Inkwell Awards proudly invites you to the fifth annual Joe Sinnott Inking Challenge!
Our Hall of Fame Award is named after Joe. With his approval and support, we have taken a couple of his pencil fundraising donations, originally rendered on blank variant cover comics, enlarged and converted them to bluelines for inking. Interested?
We’ve chosen ink artists and embellishers who are 1) part of our organization, 2) Inkwell award recipients, and/or 3) notable for their career inkwork, whether veterans of the past or present. However, any inker can request to take part.  We may ask for your credentials and have the right to refusal in the project or in the subsequent book.
HOW DOES IT WORK?

Simple! First, for fundraising and educational purposes, we invite to ink one or both of these pieces–your choice, our honor. We’ll take the final images and post them on our online gallery alongside Joe Sinnott’s initial pencil art in order to educate the public as to what ink artists like you actually do and how much you contribute to the artform.

Secondly, these pieces will be auctioned to raise funds for our vital operational needs and philanthropic programs like the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship Fund (for selected students of the Kubert School) and our COMPliments Program which allows HoF inkers who are no longer on publishers’ comp lists to receive collections of their work through us and not have to purchase them.
Finally, if and when we publish a print collection of the pieces like we’ve done in the past, your art, bio and info may be included (space-willing and not guaranteed) and, if so, we’ll gladly ship you a comp copy at our expense.
Last year’s successful program brought in over $2,800 from our eBay auctions and this year we anticipate an even better outcome. You can check out previous samples of donations from our first four years at our Comic Art Fans gallery: (See top left labelled links.)
WHAT TO DO?
If you’re up for the challenge and you’d like to contribute, please click “REPLY ALL” to this email and let us know if you have the capabilities to print up a hi-res blueline file on 11X17 2-ply Strathmore vellum board to ship back to us and we will promptly email you the hi-res file of either or both images (THE SAMPLES BELOW ARE LO-RES SIMPLY FOR REFERENCE). If you can’t print them and would like us to ship either or both pages of bluelined boards to you, just forward your shipping address to us in your reply.
If you cannot participate, no worries! No need to reply; we totally understand about your busy schedules and lives making it a challenge. (We may try next year if possible). But if you know of *another* notable inker willing to have fun with this, please pass on their email address so we can invite them (which we may or may not due to various circumstances; and please be aware that no work is guaranteed to be included in our subsequent book collection).
IMPORTANT STUFF: The working deadline is March 19, 2015 (10 weeks).
Please ship your finished art to:
Mark Sinnott
(CONTACT US FOR THIS SHIPPING ADDRESS)
Joe Sinnott will personally sign every page, then he will ship them to us to scan and write item descriptions. Auctions will run subsequent to that in early-mid April.
Please LMK if you have any questions.

QUICK SUMMARY:
* Reply if interested and request the hi-res blue line file(s) to be emailed or the blueline print up(s) to be mailed with your shipping address.
* Ship the art back upon completion to the address above and also email your credits/bio, site link, photo file and your thoughts about inking over Joe as we may use it for the book collection. If you can, please include a lo-res scan of your piece in that same email.

* You can ink the pieces ‘as is’ or reinterpret, bringing something extra to the table….this year we will have a “breakdown” version for inkers to finish (Wolverine) and a tightly-pencilled version (Spider-Man) but even the Spidey image could benefit from having the brick wall extended further on the top right. You are encouraged to ink the logo to motivate more auction bids but you don’t have to.

* We will be happy to mail you tax-exempt receipts for your contribution upon request.

* Committee member Erick Korpi <snakeeyes2003@hotmail.com>  will supply files/boards with me helping with files when necessary <dmralmond@gmail.com>and assistant director Michael W. Kellar <comicbookinker1971@yahoo.com> will be following-up along with Erick prior to the deadline.

Thanks much for your time, effort, and support.
Sincerely,
Bob Almond
(Special thanks to Theresa Kubert of the Kubert Art Store for donating the art boards.)