Wow! What an event. What a fantastic turn out for the fantastic cause that is the Toronto Sick Children’s Hospital!

The day started out with me taking an out-of-the-ordinary train trip into town. (Well, the train itself was ordinary — what’s extraordinary is that I’ve lived within walking distance to the train station for 13 years now and never once have I taken it into downtown Toronto — and what a stress free way it is to commute! …but I digress.)

When I got downtown to the event, it had already started. I briefly said my good mornings to my fellow artists who were already there — Arnold Trinidad (founder of Spent Pencils Studios) who organized the event, Marvin Law (Slam Comic, Conquer Entertainment), Gogz and Marv (Powie Studios) and Khanh Nguyen (Spent Pencils). I quickly took my seat between Paul Limgenco and Gerard De La Costa (both incredible talents from Spent Pencils) — they were already sketching away.

From the minute I sat down at 9:30 to 4:30, I sketched non-stop with the exception of a 15 minute pizza and bathroom break. On average I had 4-6 sketches in queue and at one point I had eight (nine if you count the one I was working on.) It all started with one lady asking if we could draw from a picture (or was it an iphone?) and it went nuts from there. People went up to their offices and printed out pictures of their kids, family, and pets and brought them to us to draw. What a steal for $5 a sketch! But many were generous enough to donate more. At one point, a lady asked Gerard and Khanh to do a multi-panel page with full scene and background descriptions — I would have said no, but they graciously accepted the request — a real trial by fire for their first event sketching under the Spent Pencils banner. Kudos to you guys! (And that’s to not mention the hazing endured by those two from Marvin (who has a history of initiating Spent Pencils recruits for Arnold.)

Sadly, because I was so busy, I didn’t get a chance to meet Agnes Garbowska (Girl Comics#1 -Marvel Comics) nor Francis Manapul (The Flash -DC Comics).

By the end I was totally exhausted, but it was fun. All in all, we raised over $1,500 in the 7 hours that we were there.