Original Art Sundays No. 158: Jury sketches

I'm pleased to report that the next page of The Surrealist Cowgirls is completed, and will be scanned this week for posting next Sunday.
For this week's offering, here are some sketches from the jury box of the trial on which I recently served. I will make a separate post later this week discussing the case itself, with some accompanying comics!
These were all done in ballpoint pen on yellow legal tablets.
There are still occasional illustration jobs doing courtroom sketches. There are some courts (like this one) where cameras are not allowed, and newspapers and magazines still occasionally hire courtroom artists, though the practice is dying out.
I did about 70 sketches during the trial. I may organize them into a comic of the trial at some point down the road. But now, here are the most interesting of them.

Prosecutor, opening remarks

Judge Kyle

Key witness, day six

Same prosecutor

Prosecution Witness, Day Three
(nowhere near as mean as this sketch makes him look!)

Diagram of Ponzi scheme, Day three

Key witness, Day three

Key witness, day three

Key witness, Day five

Cross-examination by defense, day six

Defense witness, day seven

Witness from SEC, day six

Defense attorney

Defense team, day one

Prosecution witness, day two

Prosecution witness, day two

Defense Attorney

Defense witness, June 4

Defense witness, June 4

Defense witness, June 4

Key defense witness Frank Vennes

Defense witness, June 5

Defense witness, June 4
(this was the sweetest guy, just did a bit of accounting work for the defendant,
got no cross-examination, for which the entire jury was grateful!)

Prosecution closing remarks

Defendant during closing remarks

Original Art Sundays No. 156: Sketchbook: SF scenes

Jury duty and reduced scanner access continue to hamper the conclusion of the Surrealist Cowgirls story (I anticipate 3 -5 pages for completion of the current story). However, it appears that my commitment to the jury will end this week (though there's no way of knowing for sure).
In the interim, here are some more sketchbook pieces. These are from the same volume as last week's Omaha work, again circa 1992.
Inspired by the recent and largely ignored demise of SF great Jack Vance, whose adaptation of his story The Moon Moth made my Best Comics of 2012 list, these are SF themed sketches. I stubbornly refuse to use the term "sci-fi", though I know it's a losing, if not lost, battle.
In doing these, I was influenced by Kelly Freas and James Pitre (the latter for emotional content more than style- for the sleek stuff I don't mind Vallejo, but prefer Julie Bell). I don't pretend to be in the same league as these folks, but that's where my inspirations lie.
Next week: either more sketches or the next page: the jury is out (literally) on which!

Alien Landscape 1, #4 pencil, marker
and metallic marker

Klingon, #4 pencil and metallic marker

Vulcan Romance, critter looking on,
#4 pencil

Alien Kitty, #4 pencil

Original Art Sundays no. 154: Surrealist Cowgirls, p. 17

Here we are again after numerous delays!
I'm very excited by this page.
When we left our hapless troupe, they had found their intended witch doctor at the bottom of the onyx ziggurat.
Still having no idea that they are being followed by a mystery man and his snail, they face their potential savior.

I like a great many things about this page. It's dramatic, uses grays nicely and has greater drama in the figure poses than some others in this story.
I also really like Master Pah's pose and attitude, the latter of which will figure prominently in the next few pages.
The next page has been giving me some layout frustrations, but I think I've arrived at a viable solution. 
I anticipate this story seeing completion within eight pages. Very excited to see it resolve!
Between jury duty (I'll post more on that later) and reduced Service Bureau hours at work, my scanner access is limited for the next few weeks, so the next Original Art Sundays will again be inventory work.
Thanks for reading and keep the faith (as Stan Lee used to say)!