A freelance colorist for comic book companies such as Zenescope, Image, After Hours Press, Antarctic Press and many others. In just a short 5 years, he had colored close to 200 comics and counting.
Jeff Balke has co-created his an ongoing comic book series, Urban Legends, for which he is also the colorist. He started up his own comic book publishing company launching in the Spring of 2015. The goal was to have 2-3 ongoing series by the end of 2015.
Jeff won the 2011 Shel Dorf Award for “Colorist of the Year” and has been nominated a number of times for an Eagle Award for “Favorite Colorist”.
Jeff is the creator of Sketch Coloring™ where fans bring him anything black & white, and he’ll color it by hand with markers on the spot. Jeff thus creates a “one of a kind, unique” item for you. No two Sketch Coloring™ sketches will ever be alike. Anything from sketch covers, b/w prints, clothing and pretty much anything markers will stick to Jeff will bring it to life just by adding markers to it.
Investcomics.com asked Jeff Balke:
IC: You must have met some incredible fans over the years. Is there a particular moment that remains the most memorable for you?
JB: Ive had a lot of awesome moments..but one that I can remember was the first time I had a girl and mom cry at my table (but in a good way..lol)
To make a long story short, the entire weekend at the Wizard World Chicago show, a mom and her daughter kept coming up to my table in artist alley checking out the prints and the books I’ve worked on. Sunday, the last day of the show, they came back up, looked around again, we all talked for a few mins, then were just about to leave..and the daughter picked out a couple of prints she really wanted. The mom said no, because they didn’t have enough. So I told the daughter (she was about 14-15ish) to show me which ones she liked, and which book(s) her mom liked.
She showed me what they liked, and I gave them everything they were looking at. Why? Because I wanted too.
The daughter started crying…wanted a picture with me, and the mom started tearing up and also took a picture with me.
That is a moment I will NEVER forget.
More on Jeff Balke:
Website: www.jbalkesart.com
Twitter: @Jbalke08
