On the rare times that there's free time at work, I try to draw as much as I can. Unfortunately, I don't really do well with random doodles and I think I do better when there's a specific direction or purpose to my sketches. That is why when a co-worker put out an open call for art trades on Facebook, I immediately jumped on the chance. Eventually the other co-workers saw me working on my trade piece and after explaining how it works, they decided that they wanted in on the action too. Since I'm pretty envious of Rob Cham's portrade shenanigans, I thought it would be awesome to turn this exercise into an art trade mini-series for my blog's Sketches and Stuff series.

Also, I didn't have a theme at first but I found myself requesting a lot of X-Men characters from my co-workers so yeah. First up, the one who got this so-called ball rolling: Alek!

Alek is an art director at Havas Media Ortega, and I think he's the one who sketches the most out of all the people at work. I asked him to do a female version of Colossus, and here's what he came up with: