I haven't see a lot of
Tone Rodriguez's work, but I was anxious to meet him because I wanted his autograph in my copy of
The Stan Sakai Project. That book is a tribute to 30 years of
Stan Sakai's character
Usagi Yojimbo and his medieval Japan world. It was also a fund raiser to support Stan's efforts to care for his wife when she was dying of brain cancer. It succeeded wonderfully at both.
There are 265 artists featured in the book and I'm trying to get all of their signatures. I'm at 95 and they are harder and harder to get. When I saw that Tone was appearing at
Eastern Rim Funny Book and Vintage Con in Baytown, TX a mere 45 miles from my house, I knew I was going.
It turned out to be a really fun show and admission was free. If you are interested, you can read about it
here.
Anyway, as I was saying before I distracted myself, I really was unfamiliar with Tone's work. So, I did a little reading and he's been quite busy. When I got to the show I discovered that he's both talented and friendly. I really enjoyed talking to him. In a different post, I'll show what he did in my book, but this is about this piece of art.
After talking to Tone, I decided I wanted him to add to my "Artist's Choice" sketchbook. I reserve it for folks from whom I'm unlikely to get a commission (usually due to no ideas or their schedules). They get a page in the book to draw whatever they want, but they have to write on the back of the page WHY they drew what they drew. I wanted to see what he would draw and why because he's an interesting guy.
I have to admit that I haven't read the preface material so I was surprised when Tone turned to the opening page and added this wonderful remarque. We had a long talk about the book's production and art handling.
The remarque looks like it was printed in the book.
