I’d been working conventions with Top Shelf for years before I decided to start a sketchbook.  Not having read comics until I was well into my twenties, I don’t have a favorite Marvel or DC character that I swear allegiance to.  So I went with a theme of a different sort: Renderings based on my baby picture.

The Ugly Truth will be the second of four recurring features on this site, wherein I post one of these renderings.  Lest you think the artists are being cruel, I should point out that you’ve never seen my baby picture.  Nor shall you, unless you find me at a convention and ask me for a peek.  After years of having people tell me that the photo couldn’t possibly be as bad as I make it sound (all babies are beautiful, right?), I now carry it in my wallet.

First up is Jeffrey Brown, who was kind enough to mail me a sketchbook from his own stash, complete with a blow-up of the photo for visual reference and a piece of cardstock to keep the ink from bleeding through to the subsequent pages.  An all-around good guy, that Jeffrey Brown:

Notice the positioning of my teeny forelimbs.  This is a key trait that has become a frequent theme throughout the sketchbook.  And for the record, what Jeffrey has depicted is a true story—Dad really did deny me when tested (somewhere, surely, a cock must’ve crowed).  Who could blame him?  When asked if I was a beautiful baby, even my maternal grandmother answered in the negative.  Ever the optimist, though, she also said that I would do great things.  Still waiting for her prediction to prove true . . .