mining the nooks

leveling up. (and taking a plunge)

2012-01-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

A few things I should to do level up my craft:

~Take a Life Drawing class from the local community college to sharpen up my anatomical drafting skills.

~Subscribe to Lynda.com and learn a few new tricks in Photoshop (not to mention Illustrator).

~Find and implement additional online tutorials and tips and tricks to freshen up my process.

~Take the plunge and upgrade to the current Photoshop version.

~Obtain Corel Painter. (and learn how to use it. Thanks Lynda!)

~Utilize my community of writer and artist friends for feedback & criticism on my current art projects

~Target those specific areas/subjects that I am weakest at drawing and study the hell out of them. (For me, that would be architecture, furnishings, backgrounds, location-specific scenes, scenes containing multiple figures, {the list goes on}...)

~Etc, etc, etc...

And also...

~Sign up for the Illustration Masters Class. (Which I just did. **GULP/GASP!!!**)

doodling in math class: infinity elephants (i love Vi Hart)

2011-12-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

serious brainy doodling. (i love Vi Hart)

more and more and more here.

icy cold stuffs for Apex Magazine.

2011-12-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Issue 31 of Apex Magzine just went live! It's an amazing line-up of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, edited by the amazing Lynne Marie Thomas. Oh... and I got to do the cover art :)

I met Lynne at World Con this year, where she brought up doing some art for the December issue, "Something cool and atmospheric".

It was a delight to work with Lynne to create the cover, and the content inside is just delicious. So go buy a copy! You won't be sorry :)

down time, Bones, Sean Bean Death Reel, new tricks, etc.

2011-12-05T16:14:00.000-08:00

As a way of taking some downtime between projects, I recently immersed myself into episode after episode of Bones (yah, I'm a later starter: currently in the middle of season 3.. SHHHH!! don't tell me *ANYTHING*).

Bones and body organs and body liquification... (Haven't gotten to that episode yet, but wow.) (Plus humor, drama, sexual tension, Oh yes.)

In addition, I've been reading a lot of good stories. Almost all of them written by friends and acquaintances. ( I am blessed.)

Also, indulging in just some straight up doodling in my sketchbook. For no reason what-so-ever except I want to:

Then learning a new Photoshop trick where-in I am able to 'lift' the drawing off the page, for easier coloring. (VERY helpful, as I still prefer my analog natural-hand-drawn lines to what I can sketch out on the wacom tablet) This isn't the best example of the trick, but here's what I did with that previous sketch:

Oh... and random, but have you seen this montage of the many cinematic deaths of Sean Bean?? (warning: Spoilers. And death. Violent death. Over and Over and Over.)

Anyhow, enough with the downtime. I need to get right to work on internal illustrations for the FISH anthology, finish up the cover art for Bibliotheca Fantastica, do an illustration or so for the December issue of the Lovecraft Ezine, Illustrate an essay for Sunstone magazine, gear up to do some illustrations for the Bronies anthology, and get prepped to start work on the cover art for Wendy N. Wagner's debut novel, Dark Depths. (omg... SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!)

Ready Set Go.

The Troupe (by Robert Bennett)

2011-12-01T09:37:00.001-08:00

Bragging rights~ I read the early draft of The Troupe. It is AWESOME.

Now, you have got to go RIGHT NOW to the book's website and get a tiny taste for yourself (readings, music, easter eggs, etc).

It's hard to choose... but I think that the scene for Stanley is my favorite:

Alrighty, now, you have got to pre-order your copy of The Troupe on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Booksamillion, or google Ebook, or indiebound, or iBooks, or Mysterious Galaxy, ( etc...) You Must Have This Book!

((It was a pleasure to work with Robert Bennett, creating the illustrations for The Troupe's website. His vision and talent are astounding.))

mad photoshop painting skillz.

2011-12-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

Seriously. Wow. (Thank you, Jacob Ruby, for showing me this )

I've been trying to Photoshop in a more painterly way. Pushing pixels around like how I used to push pigments. I have to admit, the ability to have every object on a separate layer for easily re-sizing, moving, flipping etc, is... well, is a lot easier than doing that with pigment on canvas. It's easy to feel "lazy" or that I'm "cheating" with photoshop. This especially on my mind as I look into attending the Illustration Masters Class, where there will be a lot of emphasis on traditional mediums.

Anyhooo... I try not to pay those feelings too much mind. Right now, I'm merely trying to take my photoshop skills to the next level.

Here's my latest:

Sleep Cycles. by Jaym Gates.

2011-11-29T10:20:00.001-08:00

Remember the 24 hr comic we did a while back?

Well here is Jaym Gates' contribution, Sleep Cycles:

((Viewing online falls short of how these pages are experienced in real life: they are incredibly textural, mixed media pieces and my scanner simply has not done them justice. You'll just have to wait your turn to
actually hold them in your hands.))

Sleep Cycles. by Jaym Gates.

once upon a time, night and day were two realms.
instead of cycling around humans, humans revolved through the endless cycles....
slumber...
dream...
nightmare....
gentile, quite, refreshing.
humans liked it here.
many refused to move
staying in slumber for as long as possible.

most, however, moved on to dream.
bright things, beautiful things.
anything possible.
the dark dreams too.
sometimes we have the same dreams.
these are the wild places.
nothing comes here intentionally.
only the lost, the mad dreams.
and those things... those things hunt us all.
caught...
fighting....
fighting to go through.
sometimes they escape into the twilight.
that's where they meet the champions, from the day.
sometimes they hunt the lovely things
only found in darkness.
the darkness cares for it's own.
and for everyone passing through.
and so day comes again,
and night dreams
thank you jaym!

Orycon 2011

2011-11-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

Oh how I love the Pacific North West.

Much appreciation goes to Wendy Wagner who opened her home to me for this convention. (And to Andrew for taking me rock climbing. Plus all the other exceptional friends and fellow creatives who helped make the trip amazing.)

Orycon was fabulous and I was especially pleased to have my work win the Directors Choice award for Best Horror in the Art Show. (Undead Evening Gown, nabbed me the ribbon.)

A bit overwhelmed with all the things I could (and should) say about the event, I will instead just share a few a few snapshots of what I sketched during panels and readings:

and

and

Okay, that's all. That's all for now.

World Fantasy Con. Doodles and Drawings.

2011-11-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

There is so much I could say about the events and proceedings of World Fantasy Con... but instead, Here: a few doodles I did and a table full of collaborative drawings done with others during the convention.

heading to WORLD FANTASY CON

2011-10-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here's programing for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Here's the schedule of various Inkpunk events and appearances (we're all over the place, wow.) I'm nervous and delighted to be on a panel myself: Beautiful Monstrosities with Sue Dawe, Nancy Hightower, and April Lee! (*in awe*)

And also, just because it's SO COOL.... here is Chef Morticia's Super Rad Hotel Room Cooking Challenge (for people who do con's on a budget: how to make healthy yummy food in your hotel room using a rice cooker and a clothes iron :P) (ROLLERDERBY ftw.)

Undead Love Song (by John Anealio)

2011-10-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

With a heads up, the song is a bit... "salty" ;)
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://johnanealio.com/track/undead-love-song"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Undead Love Song by John Anealio&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

John Anealio's tribute to Rigor Amortis, with a special nod to Steven Scearce's story, Second Sunday in September. It was a pleasure to create the art work for this, Thank you John.

Ode to Erika and Jaym (Rigor Amortis Re-Released!)

2011-10-17T06:34:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard yet. Rigor Amortis is being re-released! Go, right now, and read Paul Goat Allen's review for Barnes and Noble. Here's an excerpt:

"...this anthology will amass a cult following almost instantly – I’ll guarantee it. Anyone who is into “dark erotica” should seek out and read this deeply disturbing and relentlessly sexy anthology immediately..."

To commemorate the re-release, John Anealio wrote up a dirty undead ditty then he and fellow Functional Nerd Patrick Hester invited several of the Rigor Amortis contributors (Steven Scearce, Andrew Penn-Romine, John Nakamura Remy, and I) to join them for a podcast.

That was a tremendous amount of fun. As is usually the case, when all is said and done and the recorders are turned off, then you remember all of the things you wanted to say but forgot to.

Therefore, a few tender thoughts about it all and the beginning that Rigor Amortis represented for me. It was my first time working with editors Erika Holt and Jaym Gates, as well as being one of my first real gigs as an illustrator. Erika and Jaym cheered, coached, encouraged, supported and gave incredible feedback as I grew into the process.

Then, after Rigor Amortis, Erika and Jaym put their brilliant heads together again and created Broken Time Blues. When it came time to get cover art for the book, they took a chance on me. Specifically, they went to the publishers and asked THEM to take a chance on me. Then they cheered, coached, encouraged, supported and gave incredible feedback as I grew into that particular process.

It has been an auspicious beginning that has led to many many other wonderful beginnings.

Thank you, Erika and Jaym. For being so full of awesome.

Broken Time Blues, (internal illustrations by Evan Jensen and I):

The Rigor Amortis trailer featuring illustrations by Miranda Jean and I (cover by Robert “Nix” Nixon)

24 hr comic day wrap-up.

2011-10-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

This year's 24 hr comic day was a success with much awesomeness created by all.

Specifically, I direct you to John Nakamura Remy’s amazing multimedia interactive creation “All Paths Cross in Time” (live-blogged here)
Jacob Ruby’s live-blogging of his own venture:
Jaym Gates dreamy mixed media assemblage comic:

My own creation: a 10 pg comic based on Jaym's story "Song In My Bones" (on flickr , +Google, and live blogged)

In addition, here is the Comic Alliance write up w/ links to many many other artists and groups that participated in 24 hr comic day: Quite pleased that Jacob, Jaym and I were included in the write up!

mish-mashed sort-of 24 hr comic day thingy

2011-09-29T18:50:00.001-07:00

My 24 hr comic starts a day early and will probably end up being more like 12 hours spread out over two days. We'll see. (Update: It ended up being 25 hrs spread out over 3 days!) Also, I am breaking the official rules by using a piece of flash fiction, "Song In My Bones", written by Jaym Gates as my script. Pretty dang excited to do that too, so there.

(For a bit more about the project I direct you to my Functional Nerds post and John Remy's Mind on Fire post.)

Alright, let's do this.

*******

Day 1:
6am. I had set the alarm for 4:30am... but...... Anyhow. Doing some initial panel layouts before spawn gets up and I get him off to school. So, assembling my tools. I will be this digitally, getting inspiration from a few comic technique books and the comic adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower. (Big thank you's to Carrie Cuinn & mfranti for the books!)
6:46 am. got the basic template laid out in Ps. and started character studies. (realizing how much time I spend doing characters studies... I'll have to be careful about that). Okay, stopping here, will start again after spawn is off to school
8:45 am. Spawn at school, next 8 hrs: DRAWING!

10:00 am. have Jaym's characters sketched out. now on to paneling out the storyline.
12:30 pm. Over two hours later, and I've only roughed (REALLY rough) out three pages.
1:30 pm. A dialogue-heavy page made my head spin a bit (writers, always using WORDS)... but I think i got it nailed (er, as in, really roughly sketched out...) Lunch now, then moving on.

4:00pm. Six pages, *almost* roughed out: word bubbles placed, rough sketch of panel content.... I think there will only be 8 pages total in this comic~ I didn't script it all out page by page before hand, just doing it as I go. My bad. But I think it will work regardless.

5pm. Rushed to finish pg 7 (which included the mouth-full-of-bloody-splatter panel that I have been looking forward to drawing this whole time). Now time to get my spawn, do the dinner/evening routine. Be back to drawing later this evening.

7:30. Dinner made, ate, cleaned up. Spawn entertaining himself with legos. Time to draw again.

10pm. Spawn is in bed and Jaym's story has now been completely quick-sketched into 10 pgs. Now I'll find out how much steam I have left to bring it all together.

12midnight. Just ran out of steam. But polished up pg1 and part of pg 2. Family coming into town tomorrow, may not get to the rest of the page until Sunday. We'll see.
DAY 2:
7:30 am. Not sure how much I'll get done to day. Little bits here and there between family stuffs. But right now, getting a few minutes in, while we all sit around the table involved in our own projects.
Also, a glimpse at pg 2. One of the reasons I chose this story: Jaym wrote some pretty amazing body-and-bone imagery.
11:30 am, Day2. Have spent the morning doing laundry, cleaning the toilet, helping spawn w/ homework... and also drawing. Three pages are now "finished" (tho I want to go back and add grey-scale values, not just b&w.) Now heading out to a family gathering that will probably last the rest of the day. Hope to get back and finish this before tomorrow ends.

12Midnight, Day2. Home from family gathering, my body has informed me that I, in fact, do NOT have the energy to work on this anymore today.

Day3
6am, Day3. Getting a few more hours of drawing in before going back for more family gathering action.

9am, Day3. Final drawing done on 5 out of the 10 pages now. Will come back to it after spending a few final hours w/ out-of-town family.

2pm. Day3. Family has been kissed, hugged, and sent home to their various distant destinations. Settled in now to finish this thing.

11pm. Day3. DONE. Well... except I want to go and add grey scale and do some clean up. But that will come later. I just tallied up my hours: 25 hrs (approx) spread out over 3 days. /Whew!

here's the Flickr Set and slideshow, as well as my +google album.

24 hr Comic Day

2011-09-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

(cross posted from Functional Nerds)

An invitation to the 8th annual 24 Hour Comic Day: This Saturday, October 1.

The dare: To complete a 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours.

Back in 1990 comic artist Scott McCloud thought of a creative exercise to improve his drawing speed. He decided to challenge himself (and fellow comic artist Steve Bissette) to draw a complete 24 page comic book in 24 hours.

McCloud recalls that first venture:

"Feeling increasingly alone and silly, I called Steve to see how he was coming along on his comic to discover he couldn't do it that day after all because of family obligations. This made me feel even more alone and silly of course, but I kept going anyway."

Since that first solitary experiment (which you can view here) the challenge has taken off to become a bit of a phenomena with many notable artists and writers participating. Also, it is not longer a solitary event:

"On April 24, 2004, the first annual "24 Hour Comics Day" (more comics, fewer hyphens!) took place at comics stores all over the country, producing thousands of pages of comics in a single weekend. By 2007, the celebration had grown to events in 18 countries, involving over 1,200 artists and an estimated 20,000+ pages of comics."

For more information about participating in the "official event" check out this interview with ComicsPRO executive director Amanda Emmert, and see here for the rules and requirements (and various noble failure options). This Saturday it's gonna be happening all over the place, maybe near you? (And if not, you could get one going.:))

A few years ago, John Nakamura Remy invited me to do this with him and a few friends. Our version was a scaled down 18hr deal which we shared with each other via twitter, blogs, and flickr. See the invitations here and here; Final products here and here.

Now we're gonna do it again. My personal variation this time around: I'm going to start Friday and will be breaking a rule by using a short story written by Jaym Gates. I plan to have it turned into a 12 (ish) page comic by sometime early Saturday (before family arrives from out of town). Feel free to join in using whatever parameters best fit your life and your creative goals.

John and I will be sharing the process via twitter (@johnremy, @galendara and hashtag #24HCD) and google+ ( @John Dewey Nakamura Remy, and @Galen Dara).

So there you go! Collect your art supplies, your ideas, a stock pile of microwavable food & caffeine, and join us for a 24 Hour Comic Day!

Traitors and Tyrants FINISHED.

2011-09-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

THIS JUST IN: All 22 pages of the comic Traitors and Tyrants, written by John Nakamura Remy (set for publication later this month in the forthcoming anthology Monsters and Mormons).... ARE NOW FINISHED!

Seriously, I cannot wait for you to read this comic: John created something extraordinary with this alt-history tale of highly trained polygamist sister-wife super-spies.

Now, I have all SORTS of stuff I'd love to share about what I learned, the process, pros and cons of doing it in such a concentrated amount of time... But I'll save that for later. (Still rather tired at the moment).

Instead, I'll just give you a small work-in-progress glimpse at one particular two page spread that I completed in 12.5 hrs. (Which was sort of a record, many of them took 20 hrs or more.)

******

DAY 1:
Approximately 1 hour in: Panels are finally in place with initial sketches & word bubble placement:

4.5 hours later, I'm about half way through the first page:

6 hrs in and I am *ALMOST* done with the first page... *ALMOST*.

8.5 hours in and I am halfway through the second page. (Unable to push any further, I crash into bed.)

DAY 2:
Get up the next morning ready to go back at it... After three hours (11.5 hrs total) the two pages are *ALMOST* done:

Finally, at about 12.5 total drawing hours, these two pages are finally finished: (So I moved right on to the next two page spread :) )

At that point, of course, John had to go back and fix all my typos and choose a better font than what I was using. 'Finished' is rather relative.

BTW... a serious big thank you to Bear Weiter for helping me figure out the ps Pen tool: that helped immensely in so many of these scenes.

Also, see here, here and here, for a tiny taste of some of the other amazing stories that are going to be in this anthology. Yummy!

More to come about it all later. Meanwhile... I need to try remember what I did with myself when I was not drawing every spare minute of ever day. Hmmmmm......

247 days in. (No 365 this year)

2011-09-04T13:57:00.001-07:00

This sketchbook now spans one full year. Aug '10 to Aug '11. (Here, from just over a year ago, when I was preparing to make the jump to this book.) I've marked this period on the edge of the pages in red and black: noting the passage of time in visual ways being a personal quirk.
Wonder how long it will take to fill the remaining pages? Almost two thirds of the way through right now. Here's what the one year page looks like (not a planned page, just the randomness of how the marks fall):

This year filled up good and well with so many real art jobs that the 365 exercise is indefinitely on the back burner. But here's the set with what I have done and continue to do in sketchbooky marking making, for this year.

she kicks ass.

2011-08-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

a few random and slightly related tidbits:

~My post on female comic artists just went up over at Functional Nerds; This Lady Likes Spandex.

~I am *almost* done drawing the comic that John wrote about four polygamist super-spy wives.

~Mia Nutick *WAS* able to do the Women In Fantasy artists gallery for this month's Realms of Fantasy . Part of that was an interesting dissection of the Urban Fantasy Babe/Woman Warrior Babe trope. (The essay is not online, go buy the magazine, it's worth it, on many levels.)

~I just stumbled onto this tumbler of pure awesome: Women Fighters in Reasonable Armor. Niiice!!!!! Where has this been all my life?! (But wish there had been better accreditation for the creators of said images. /sigh)

~This short film... I want to be her. And have that gun too. (And have her guns too.)

Okay, that's all. Just wanted to put this all in one place, for my own benefit.

working on the road

2011-08-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

I just got back home from a busy World Con weekend.
So much to be said about all that happened there (wow).

But first, real quickly, I wanted to report that my new Intuos4 tablet, the one I got *hoping* it would be perfect for working on while traveling... It worked PERFECTLY. Waiting in airports, on layovers, set up on my in-flight tray table: it fit just right and performed brilliantly.

However, my bright idea to take"before" and "after" screen shots to track how much progress I made on my project during travel indicated that, yes, it is silly to expect to get a lot done while attending a convention. So, now back to real life and serious work.

(Stay tuned: more about the events of World Con weekend to come!!)

Broken Time Blues lives!!!!

2011-08-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

Remember that book I did the cover art for?
It can now be yours.

"Announcement
Hey, you! Toss on your glad rags and get a move on. Broken Time Blues is roaring into Reno for WorldCon. Be the first to get a gander at tales of moonshinin' and alien burlesque; flesh-sculpting artists and chickens on the run. If you're hip to the jive, slip on down to the release shindig at 2pm on Saturday, August 20. But don't be slow, and speakeasy: the bulls and hawks are always listenin' in."

Authors include Shirley Jackson winner Robert J. Bennett and game-author/Heroic Adventure author Ari Marmell, along with Weird tales from Frank Ard, John Dewey Nakamura Remy and Andrew Romine; beautiful, touching stories from James Sutter, Lucia Starkey and Barbara Krasnoff; and action-packed romps from Morgan Dempsey and Jack Graham; and dark tales from Amanda Davis and Ryan McFadden.

Interior art by myself and the amazing Evan Jensen.

You know you want this. You know you need this.

(Huge thanks to Jaym Gates and Erika Holt for making this collection happen. AND, incidentally, for providing all the text for this post :) You ladies are amazing.)

digital speed painting. Firefly.

2011-08-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed. Wow. Especially because, at this exact moment, I am hard at work on my tablet, wishing I was this fast. AND this good.

Process. (and things I learned from Jo and Joyce)

2011-07-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

I just did a guest post for SF Signal spotlighting Jo Chen and Joyce Farmers (they are both amazing, go read the post).

Something I didn't touch on too much in that post but which is HIGHLY applicable to me: Their working process as artists.

Jo works very much the way I do right now: initial sketches with pencil on paper, then scanning it in and creating the rest of the piece digitally. In her panel at SDCC she talked about what that means when it comes to selling art, when the 'original' is just a sketch and the 'finished' piece is a digital file. That's something I've been coming to terms with as more and more the only physical manifestations of my art are throw-away sketches laying around my studio.

And another thing: See here, on Jo's deviant art page.. look down under the image, at her description... That absolutely amazing cover she did for Marvel's Girl Comics no.3 last year... she did it using CS2. I use CS3 and in the back of my mind I occasionally think "I need to get the most current version... then I'll be a real artist." Um, yah. apparetly, latest versions of software aren't required.

Which brings me to Joyce. Joyce created every page of Special Exits with old fashioned pen and ink, using whiteout to make corrections. The pages were never touched by a computer. Very similar to what I was doing last year when I did illustrations for Rigor Amortis and Cthulhurotica. Oh... and also, she was losing her vision. She developed macular degeneration and to combat the effects she had to wear an eye patch and work with her face about 6 to 8 inches from the page. Um, yah... the things I gripe about...

My own working process changed dramatically when a generous friend gave me his old used intuos2 wacom tablet. Whoa, whole new worlds of possibility were created with that gift. The recent cover I created for Fish was done almost entirely in the computer using that tablet. And right now I am hard at work using that tablet to finish the comic Traitors and Tyrants for Monsters and Mormons (a joint project with writer John Nakamura Remy).

Anyhooo... I keep thinking "if I lose my tablet or my laptop, I am toast" But then, I remember Joyce, with her old fashioned pens, and her eye patch. Never say die. (But also, shit, I had better take good care of this tablet and laptop!)

Meanwhile, here's sneak peak at work in progress for Traitors and Tyrants:

Distilling my one day at SDCC

2011-07-22T10:46:00.000-07:00

San Diego Comic Con continues but today I am back at my day job. Missing lots of good stuff, but happy I had yesterday.

Several posts will be forthcoming (oh yes) but I need to distill it first quickly (making good use of my day job, yes I am).

******
The Oh You Sexy Geek panel was... interesting. And disturbing. Supposed to be a critical discussion of the sexualization of fangirls, instead I think some folks just read the title and came thinking they would see sexy chicks. Case in point: While I was waiting for the panel to start a guy came up, sat *right* next to me, pulled out his Jabba the Hut action figure and told me he was hoping he could get a Slave Leia to "do the dirty" with it. Um...?
Anyhow. Moderated by Katrina Hill, with discussion between Bonnie Burton, Adrianne Curry, Jill Pantozzi, Jennifer K. Stuller, Kiala Kazebee, Clare Grant (so of course Seth Green showed up) and Clare Kramer. Oh.. and Chris Gore finally showed up towards the end (I think he was hung over).

I have a lot more to say about this panel. but that will come later.

******

Jo Chen is just awesome.

******

Joyce Farmer, Trina Robbins, and Mary Fleaner discussed underground comix, and using the Graphic Novel as a medium for high art and literary storytelling. (Awesome, but with a disheartening overall dismissal of genre writing & comics that I wished could have been addressed with a bit more nuance.) (More on this later.)

******

I finally meet Geardrops irl!!!

******
The No Damsels in Distress Here panel offered another critical look at sexism in spec fic. Authors Marie Lu, Kathy Reichs, Chloe Neill, Jeanne Stein, Merrie deStefano, Carrie Vaughn, Seanan McGuire, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Maryelizabeth Hart discussed gender and the characters they write about, and all agreed that they very much look forward to when a panel like this will just be called "Writing Great Characters."

******

I'll have more to say about all of this, I'm sure. This was just for me to do some initial processing (I'm still spinning a bit from the rush of the trip).

Meanwhile, here are two sketchbook pages I started while waiting in lines (there was a lot of that) and sitting in panels:

San Diego Comic Con. (Quick and dirty)

2011-07-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I get on a plane to San Diego. Tomorrow night, I get on a plane heading back home. Yep, that's how my first San Diego Comic Con experience is gonna be. It's all good. I only was able to get a ticket for Thursday, and I have to be back to work on Friday. So, yes. Going to do this the quick and dirty way. (Just like the Phoenix comic con was. Eventually, I'll be able to go to the full thing one of these days.)

Here is my wishful thinking line up for Thursday:

10:00-11:00 Comic-Con How-To: Heroes & Villains: Creating a Character-Driven Story with Maxwell Alexander Drake

10:30-11:30 From Fan to Creator: Goal-Setting for Creative Types— Which side of the convention table do you want to be on, professional or fan?

10:30-12:00 Comic Book Law School 101: "C" Is For Creator (and Copyright!)

10:45-11:45 Oh, You Sexy Geek!— Does displaying the sexiness of fangirls benefit or demean them?

12:00-1:00 Spotlight on Jo Chen

12:00-1:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #2: Graphic Representations of Otherness.

12:30-1:30 Dumbrella— Artists from Dumbrella, one of the most popular online comic collectives, discuss webcomics, independent publishing, and subverting popular culture.

1:00-2:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #3: Digital Comics— Nick Langley and Ron Richards (Henderson State University) ask whether the move to digital comics will doom paper or help comics reach a new audience.

1:15-2:15 Books vs. Graphic Novels and Comics

2:30-3:30 Joyce Farmer: Special Exits, A Memoir— Can graphic work become serious literature through excellent artwork, writing ,and subject matter?

2:30-5:00 Comic-Con How-To: Live Painting Demonstration with Lucio Parrillo.

3:00-4:00 Comics: Comic Color 101.

3:30-4:30 Spotlight on Frank Stack.

4:00-5:00 No Damsels in Distress Here— Female voices in sci-fi and fantasy create kick-ass heroines.

5:00-6:00 Figure Drawing for Popular Media— Emilio Soltero, Ph.D, along with Alex Niño (Mulan, Marvel, DC) and Stephen Silver (Kim Possible, Clerks), presents a primer on drawing the figure for popular media.

***

Actually, that last one, the figure drawing one.. that is right about the time I'll be hoping in my cab and heading back to the airport, which really sucks. That's one I am *very* interested in going to.

And.. you may have noticed, to actually go to all of these panels would require me to be in two places at once. Going to have to do some hard picking and choosing. Also, going to have to pack a lunch....

Drink and Draw round up.

2011-07-17T19:21:00.001-07:00

So the the other nigh we got together on twitter and had a little Drink and Draw. There was a fabulous turn out and the following is a brief collection of links to give you a sampling of who was drinking and drawing what:

@aldoojeda's worked the life drawing and portraiture like none other
@atfmb started with iPad apps, moved to a sketchbook, and never lost touch with his inner nerd.
@KathleenManz (opps, now @MamaKathy_) drew Dr. Who/Star Trek mashups.
@abrymora .. wow... airship!!!
@scourger took time out from ReaderCon to join in with some precious... awesome... amazing... doodles.
@traciewelser showed what she can do with a sharpie and some suggestions from her offspring.
@renesears kept it classy with wizards, fairies, and unicorns pooping rainbows (yep.)
@inkgorilla did, surprise surprise, a simian-harry potter mash up! the Chimp who Lived... Harry Wooly... and Severus Ape (....BWAHAHAH <3)
@jacobRuby made some surreal imagery while reclaiming an old sketchbook that a toddler had gotten a hold of (also, his iPad work is beautiful)
@MarlyseComte's work is just always sublime. Always. (Drunk or no.)

Did I miss anyone? please let me know if I did. (This post is the result of a bit of tricky work looking back through my over-full twitter feed.)

Meanwhile.. I had a bit of fun combing drawings with real objects at hand:

And then I sent them to photoshop where I drew over the top of them. (Also, I pirated @palecurve's mug for a bit of fun :) I think my favorite one of the evening was where I didn't draw anything at all on the pad of paper, just took a photo of it and added all of the drawing digitally:

Anyhow... the first functional nerds drink and draw even was a smashing success. We shall definitely be doing this again.

Art Nerd (Drink and Draw!)

2011-07-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

Oh, yes... btw... I am now the Art Nerd blogger over at Functional Nerds podcast!

Last month's post was about the drawing game Exquisite Corpse. Fun Fun stuff.

But I am particularly excited for this month's post that just went up: I got Booze Nerd Andy Romine to help me gear up for a Functional Nerds twitter Drink and Draw. That will be going on this friday night, come join us on twitter! You do not have to draw: Only if you want to. Also, you do not have to drink: Only if you want to (and you can drink *whatever* you want). Feel free to come hang out on with us on twitter, chat a bit, laugh a bit, retweet some of the creativity, etc. (Follow me @galendara and Andy @inkgorilla as well as hashtags #drinkanddraw and #functionalnerds)

Looking forward to seeing you there.

I made the cover.

2011-06-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

actually... as of now, I've made three! Here they are:

for Broken Time Blues (coming out this August).

For Sunstone Magazine (Both front and back covers)

And, just revealed today: I did the cover for the forthcoming anthology Fish: (which is still accepting submissions, you really need to write a story for this one!)

transitioning studio space (a process)

2011-06-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

It's time to move.

Currently, I have a whole room to myself to use as my studio. That will change in this move as we transition to a tiny little place in town. Exchanging the luxury of space to spread out for the convenience of close proximity.

So, the plan is that I shall fit my 'studio' space in and around our 'living' spaces: The corner of our bedroom, the east wall of the front room, the extra storage space in spawns room, the porch?... (I think my speedbag will go perfectly in the kitchen, but DH is pushing against that just a bit. We'll see how that goes down.)

Anyhow, I am past the mourning phase, but by way of coping mechanism I shall be photo-documenting the transition on twitter. I'll probably add some of those photos/notes to this post, as I progress.

But for now, let's just do this.

----------

June 11, 9:30 pm update: it's amazing how much just 'stuff' I held onto, just because I had the space to hold onto it. Tackled one shelf today. Here is the "before and after shot". Most of it was hoarded rusty stuff and collected odds and ends that I just needed to let go of. Sheeesh. Took several hours.

June 12, 9:00 AM. spent an hour going through (and mostly discarding) old studies and sketches and scratch paper doodles.

June 12, 10:00 PM. Not much studio prep, just spent the day painting the new place. (Red, yessss.)

June 13 4:00 PM. Started out going through old sketchbooks. I had planned to throw most of them away, but it was difficult: I used to keep sketchbooks in an intensely personal, life-record keeping way. Hard to throw out. Lessie, John, Lucia, and xJane talked me out of discarding them.

June 15, 11:30 AM: Studio transition took backseat to painting the new place. Mostly finished there, except for a deep space mural in spawns room.

June 17, 9:00 am: Yesterday I went through all my old paints and inks. Bottle and bottles and tubes of acrylic, oils, alkyds, inks, watercolors, and gouache (plus brushes, painting mediums, solvents, gels, etc). Kept only what would all fit nicely an old hard-body suitcase I picked up somewhere.

Also, eliminated a lot of just *stuff* I had accumulated/held onto thinking I *do something* with but never had. Slowly fighting my way through these shelves.

June 18, 9:00PM today, I made a galaxy in my offspring's new bedroom:

June 19 , 10:00 PM: Making headway on clearing out, consolidating these shelves.

June 21, 10:00 PM. finally started to take down "my wall" (keeping some things, letting go of others) Here's a few detail pics.

June 22, 10:00 PM. last of all, I dismantled my speedbag for relocating. The studio is packed up, ready to move. Next step is finding how it will work out in the new place.

Phoenix Comic Con 2011 (doodles and notes)

2011-06-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

What I dressed up as when I went to the Pheonix Comic Convention last month: Aspiring Artist, Here on Business. Thank you very much :)

-------

I only was able to go to the Saturday session, but here is a collection of notes and doodles jotted down as I sat in some of the panels that day, listening to writers and artists talk about their trade:

From the Saturday Morning Sketchoff:

"Do one drawing every day. Even if it sucks. You will get better"
"A degree can't teach you how to *keep* drawing"
"A business class is a must"
"perks of being an artist/writer: going to work in your boxers"

From the artists vs writers throwdown: "the audience comes for the art, stays for the writing.... a badly written book can be sold by good art.... no art can possibly match the image in my head... being good friends does not mean you will be good creative partners..."

From Wonderful World of Webcomics, Spike Trotman, Randy, Milholland, and DAnielle Corsetto:

"Nothing that I learned in art school applies to what I do right now. I had to draw, every night, alone to get here."

"Know your rights, pay attention to what you sign, learn the business"

"The lesson from the guy who created Men In Black: 'Exposure' is WORTHLESS (he didn't see a cent of the movie franchise revenue)"

John Layman and Rob Guillory discuss Chew:

John was "laughed at for sticking to his stoopid bird cannible story, so he did it on his own, no support"
Rob: "I didn't draw like anyone else, it was just me screwing around. I sucked at mainstream comic style"
John: "when every person in the business rejects you for 10 years, you get humble"
and also: the importance of having an end. Chew will end at issue 60. (Compare to Mainstream tendency to keep characters and stories alive indefinitely. "Comfort food comic reading")

-------

hmmm... well that ended up being more random than I anticipated: it all seemed very cohesive and, and *vital* as I frantically scribbled it down while sitting in the sessions. I guess that means you just had to be there. Which, I am very glad I was.

(More pics here.)

World Horror Con (a collection of sharpie tattoos)

2011-06-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

This post is way over due. Life was busy. But now I have a moment to breath, so here you go.

I went to the World Horror Convention back in May!! Here is Andy's write up (which I found very inspiring), Andy's set of photos, Steve's set of photos, Bear's set of photos, and John's set of photos, documenting the event. (I used to be good at photo-documenting... but not so much anymore.)

Oh... and I was in the art show! Here are some photos John's took regarding that. :)

There is so much I *should* say about the whole experience. But mostly... I got a chance to take my sharpy out and put some tattoos on a few friends. That_was_awesome.

Here's a glimpse of some of them, thanks to the photography of Andy and John:

And then Andy drew one on me! (I am seriously considering getting it made permanent.)

draw365 for 2011 (49 days in)

2011-02-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm 49 days into 2011, I have a bit of a system going that is working quite nicely.

On the one hand I am doing these work-in-progress pages, where I add (or take away) a little every day and the way they are photographed becomes part of the piece.

On the other hand I am uploading old drawings from sketchbooks past. It has been good to re-visit them, diving through the history of my brain's creative pathways. Yes, not technically "a drawing a day" .. but I am already drawing every day on other projects, so, I don't sweat it. Right now I am picking and choosing from three sketchbooks that span across 2002 and 2006 but will branch out to others as well. (I have a lot of old sketchbooks.)

It's been nice, because neither of these systems is too time consuming while still being a good outlet for exploring, experimenting, and remembering.

Maybe I'll have changed it up when another 50ish days have passed. We'll see.

Now for your entertainment, a slideshow of 2011's 365 so far:

bleeding pages

2011-01-30T21:27:00.001-08:00

30 of 365, originally uploaded by galendara.

Just now I added that gash on the left-hand side of this work in progress page. Bleeding pages. (Because Brandilion said so yesterday :))

Truth be told, while my pages have sustained many_wounds_before, I am not feeling all that cut up at the moment (thank the elder gods). In fact, today I have spent the afternoon up to my elbows in green fabric, creating fun squishy organic thingies (something a tiny bit like this.) (Maybe pics will be forthcoming. We'll see if they turn out.)

So it was kind of an odd shift to put a gash on this page just now. BUT... I did need something easy to use as my drawing of the day, and I am so very adapt at bleeding_stabbing_wounds. So.. there you go.

(What? Morbid? Me???? Never. :P)

drawing and writing

2011-01-21T18:34:00.001-08:00

21 of 365, originally uploaded by galendara.

an experiment...

At the beginning of this year I changed how I used this book. I stopped doing individual little drawings tucked into available space and began instead to turn these pages into work-in-progress art pieces.

And when that happened, I found I stopped writing on them.

But the fact remains that I very much depend upon these pages to be a place where I can write it all out too.

So I'm going to try writing the things I need to write on the pieces of the tracing paper I keep a stashed in the little pouch at the back of the book, [[i love you moleskin]] and then folding and gluing them into the pages here.

To become part of the larger piece of the whole page while remaining accessible for when my need to go back and obsess crops up.

We'll see.
Next month, I may totally change it up again.

paper parkour

2011-01-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

have I mentioned I like animation?
I've been doing little drawings on folded pieces of paper lately and so a friend of mine showed me this:

::swoon!::
Cool Paper Parkour Animation - Watch more Funny Videos

a begining

2011-01-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

The other evening, inspired by a friend who's doing some cleaning, I tackled the bookshelf in my studio and did some organizing. Hence, I stumbled upon the sketchbook I got a few years ago for the express purpose of writing/drawing out my first graphic novel.

At that point, it had been a while since I had drawn much on a regular basis.
It was discouraging for a while.
But it was a place to start. That, at least, was something.

Eventually, I started piecing together the ideas. It was not quite the story I originally had in mind, but it was a start.

More piecing together became Being Born for the Sunstone comic edition. Again, it was not the story I originally had been telling myself in my head (by this time I was starting to recognize I had a few things to learn about story telling). But it was a start.

Currently, that little story is on the back shelf again as I am hard at work fleshing out the final panels for a comic that John wrote which was accepted into the Monsters and Mormons anthology.

But eventually, sometime, I'd like to brush off the original idea of an outrageous first-woman archetype who lives in a house made from rib bones, takes swords away from angels and hangs out with snakes.

Here's the first page from that sketchbook, a beginning that I am still working on:

drawing under drawings

2011-01-01T21:53:00.000-08:00

(Warning:: Contains some NSFW images)

This past Christmas I collected a bunch of scrap pieces of paper (mostly white butcher paper and torn brown paper bag stuff) in order to spin out a bunch of little doodles and finish off my draw365 project.
By the end of the day, I had succeeded. But looking at that page of little doodles I knew it was not finished. I HAD to add connective tissue to those doodles, in and out and between; on top of, and under, and around all those separate scraps of paper. So I did.

Here is the page as it is now on the surface, and then as it looks as you lift each consecutive layer of doodles to see what lies beneath. (Like, undressing the drawing.)

(And, sry about the blurriness, something is wonky with my camera's lens ::grimace::)

Of course, looking these pics now I realize I simply must add drawings to the UNDERSIDE of those little doodles!! #amdrawing.

365 days. (Finishing 2010. Looking at 2011)

2010-12-31T15:59:00.000-08:00

On Christmas day while hanging out with family, I gathered a bunch of little pieces of scrap paper and spun out a whole bunch of small doodles. For fun. But more especially, to finally wrap up my 2010 draw365 project.

This has been a formative little project for me, begun mostly on a whim back at the beginning of January this year and becoming a pretty important part of my artistic development and artistic opportunity. It's also fascinating to look at a couple of posts I wrote during the year as the project progressed: early on at 31 days in, then at 65 days, and again at 276 days.... Mostly it's a fascinating awareness that I am a much more experienced artist now than I was 365 days ago.

So now I am looking at 2011 and thinking about what sort of 365 project I can do for this year; originally I was thinking that I might change up the emphasis; concentrate specifically on a certain medium, or a certain method, or weak area, etc. but at this exact moment, what I really want to make sure I focus on, is doing something every day. I think it was that sort of flexibility that helped me get through 365 drawings this last year: whether it was a small mixed media painting, or an almost completely digitally created illustration, or pen and pencil wordless comics, or a tiny doodle the size of a postage stamp, or a piece of a larger project, or a drawing on a piece of tea-bag wrapper, or even an experiment in using stuff from my surroundings... I was at least doing something artistically. (Here is the whole set of 365 drawings for 2010.)

I'd like to keep that kind of momentum.

I am excited to see what I can do and where I will go with my art-making over the course of these next 365 days.

Meanwhile, that page that has those 15 little doodles on scrap paper... I am enjoying filling in and around and under with even more doodling and drawing (mildly nsfw). I am really liking how these pages are turning out.
#amdrawing

MORE thoughts on Audience

2010-12-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of a project that has me feeling my identity crisis and noticing how weak my commercial-art muscles are.

I am supposed to be creating playfully titillating images and instead keep veering off into obscurely disturbing images. (BTW, yes, Matthew Barney is one of my inspirations and don't click on that link unless you are prepared to be a bit disturbed.)

But I'm trying to rein that tendency in. Drawing lots of studies of how other artists do "fun" and "playful" (and, yes, "titillating", Woohoo.) I've been delighted by Erika Moen's boobie drawings, and Jess Fink's dick doodles , and amazing 19th century ukiyo-e prints of Tanuki and their unusually large testicles.

For this particular project, I am also trying to take inspiration from the art of Katsushika Hokusai, Hayao Miyazaki, and Dr Seuss.

(To top it off I have been revisiting various artists from my beloved Anthology of Swedish Alternative Comics, but most of them lean towards disturbing, so it's a really back and forth battle.)

Mostly, I'm trying to keep in mind who the particular audience for this project will be, balance that against what I would do with it if it was purely for my own entertainment, (and meanwhile figure out who the hell my audience is anyways.)

Anyhow. I just had to get that out of my system. Now back to drawing.

------------------------------------

(by way of example and for your viewing entertainment....)
here's a recent page full of sketches as I try to nail anime facial features (fun? Playful?):

and then here's a recent personal piece (obscurely disturbing?):

splashy big paint

2010-12-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to watching Pollock.
Loving the movie on many levels.
But the various painting scenes throughout are really stroking a need for big surfaces and splashy messy creating. (I've mentioned that need before)
It may be a while before I ever do anything big or messy again. But the thought of it is still thrilling.

surgery in my sketchbook

2010-11-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. I keep mine in my sketchbook.
And sometimes, I perform surgery on it. Just because.
A spontaneous mixed media personal project this week. On a whim, I documented the work-in-progress. Tearing, making marks, gluing, cutting, destroying, putting back together,

I need to paint more often.

Cell by Cell [animation]

2010-11-21T19:45:00.000-08:00

I've previously mentioned movies that make me tick.
Here's a few animated films that just take my breath away, make my fingers tingle, drive my urge to create.

From Ireland: The Secret of Kells.

From Japan: Princess Mononoke

And from France/[Iran]: Persepolis

enjoy!

promoting un-dead love

2010-11-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

November was whirlwind back-to-back Rigor Amortis promotional events. Crazy, exhausting, and so very fun. Just had to share the highlights:

Andrew Penn Romine and John Nakamura Remy drove to Tucson to join me at Tucson's Comic Con.

John took a bit of video of us setting up:

He also was the only one of us to photo-document the event. (thanks John!)
(BTW... we sold EVERY book we brought,)

The day after the Comic Con we did a Rigor Amortis reading at the coolest little Coffee shop= Revolutionary Grounds. (Zombie erotica at a Marxist Coffee shop? Yes indeed :D).

Tucson Weekly showed up to record the reading: Yep, here is John and Andy saying things like 'penis' and 'vuvla' (and a whole lot more) ON VIDEO!

John:

Andy:

The next weekend I headed to LA, to join the Rigor Amortis group signing books at Dark Delicacies. It was awesome to finally meet fellow Rigor Amortis contributors Kaolin Fire, Lucia Starky, and Pete "Patch" Alberti, as well as online writer friends Adam Israel, Jenn Reese, and Chris East (AND just pure amazing folks Carol Penn-Romine, and Isaac.) (/whew!\)

Blessed Carol documented that event. (Did we really break your camera? Sry!)

Then I came home and prepped for a 109 mile bike ride. That's why it's taken so long to get this up :P

Here and here are Andy's blog posts on the subject (in case I missed anything).
Go team Rigor Amortis! Woot :)

Make Me F*cking Care

2010-10-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

[warning. this post contains expletives.]

From the Good Fucking Design Advice Store:

"Believe in your fucking self. Stay up all fucking night. Work outside of your fucking habits. Know when to fucking speak up. Fucking collaborate. Don't fucking procrastinate. Get over your fucking self. Keep fucking learning. Form follows fucking function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad fucking ideas. Find fucking inspiration everywhere. Fucking network. Educate your fucking client. Trust your fucking gut. Ask for fucking help. Make it fucking sustainable. Question fucking everything. Have a fucking concept. Learn to take some fucking criticism. Make me fucking care. Use fucking spell check. Do your fucking research. Sketch more fucking ideas. The Problem contains the fucking solution. Think about all the fucking possibilities."

yah... I pretty much fucking suck at every point on this list. (Except staying up all night. I actually do that quite a bit.)

therefore...
gonna try to care more, collaborate more, procrastinate less, have a concept, Etc...

it's called NaNoMangO (Plus Sunstoned!)

2010-10-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

After my previous post,where I mentioned doing my own personal NaGraDraMo next month, someone drew my attention (/snicker) to NaNoMangO; the OFFICIAL art/comic-drawing alternative to NaNoWriMo.

Sweetness. I just joined the group.

(Disclaimer: yes, I have a bunch of unfinished art commitments I gotta tie up before I put another time-consuming project on the table.. but really, I am really getting excited about this!)

The tagline of NaNoMangO is "30 pages in 30 days", which is more pages than I was originally thinking... but here's how they broke it down.

Either: 1) 30 pages penciled. OR 2) 15 pages inked OR 3) 10 pages "finished"

Thinking I'll aim for the long distance endurance version of 30 rough penciled pages, for the "wow-do-I-have-that-many-pages-of-story-in-me?" experiment.

In other news, guess what came in the mail today??!!!

Zot! Pow! Sunstone!

Nestled in this edition (an amazing collection of LDS comic artists and comic aficionados) is the little comic I drew up; Being Born. My first ever published comic (not counting Bloody Eve ). AND, I get a mention in the intro! Noting the breadth of style, the vastly different kinds of comics Mormons are making, guest editor Theric Jepson queries:

"Look at Galen Dara's earthy mysticism (pg 60). Witness Nick Perkin's bobble-headed National Treasure (pg 84). Then ask yourself: How could they be more different?"

Thanks Theric. :)

It really is a stunning and eye-opening collection, chock full not only with a vast array of Sequential art by folks w/ ties to Mormonism, but also with multiple insightful essays about appreciating comics, Mormon artists, the new Wonder Woman, Crumb's Illustrated Bible, how it all ties into the Mormon experience, etc.

It was a pleasure to be a part of it.

Murals, Comics, NaGraDraMo, etc.

2010-10-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

Just a few things of note:

1) Yesterday, just for kicks, I pulled out some house paint and doodled on my studio wall. I have been doing so many small, controlled illustrations and thumbnails lately, I really just needed to do something large, messy, spontaneous, and unplanned. It was VERY therapeutic, and I liked how it turned out too:

2) I'm in the process of hammering out specifics on a graphic novel I'm working on with a friend... and realizing that it's high time I brush up on my Illustrator and InDesign know-how. Especially when it comes to adding word-bubbles etc. My patchy Photoshop skillz just aren't going to cut it for the current project. Here's a quick glimpse at a quick (VERY rough) page study w/ my very insufficient dialogue and word-bubble additions:

3) Which leads me to my next personal project... In solidarity with my writer friends who are participating in NaNoWriMo next month, I'm planning on doing a second attempt at NaGraDraMo. This is dependent on if I can wrap up the current projects I am committed to, but I am hopeful and excited to give this another go around. I only have a vague idea of a cast and story line; but my idea is to aim for 18 to 24 pages, B&W, low-tech, and probably pretty wordless. (I will be using Tyler Stafford and Noah Van Sciver as inspirations for low-budget-but-way-cool comic making.) /Fingers Crossed!

okay, that's all.

on this, the 276th day of 2010 (a #draw365 post)

2010-10-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

I just drew no.237 of my draw365 project.

As you may have noticed, I'm behind by 39 drawings. But here's the thing, as this year has progressed, I have been picking up work as an artist. It started with getting a slot in a comic edition of Sunstone, from there it was a chance to do some illustrating for Rigor Amortis, which segued nicely to doing some illustrations for Cthulhurotica, cover art for Little Death of Crossed Genres and working on a graphic novel with a friend. Plus a few more things coming up on the horizon.

So while I am behind on the official "draw365" projects, I have actually been putting out hundreds of drawings/sketches/studies lately that haven't lent themselves to uploading and sharing as such....

I had an epiphany late Friday night as I was drawing like a madwoman, rushing towards a midnight deadline: what I was doing right then, that evening in my studio, I would not have been capable of 276 days ago.

(Here's the post I wrote when I was only about 30 days in, and then later at 65 days.)

Draw365 has been a pretty formative little project for me.
Now, I AM still planning on getting 365 drawings uploaded as such. On principle. Meanwhile, I"m going back to my sketchbooks to keep working on early Mormon apostates, Japanese bathhouses, shinto temples, Ninja Monkeys, tentacles, zombies, etc...

#amdrawing!

Rigor Amortis Rising

2010-10-02T10:13:00.001-07:00

Seriously... "SQUEEEEE!!!"
Remember that zombie erotica book I decided to get involved with so many months ago? Well, Yesterday was the official Launch of Rigor Amortis and thanks to the hard work of Erika Holt and Jaym Gates at creating some buzz about the book, within just a few hours it had risen to #30 on Amazon's Horror list! (Just above Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, just beneath Bram Stokers Dracula.)

(As I write this, it is sitting at #52, just underneath Stephen King's The Waist Lands & Stephanie Meyer's Eclipse, just above Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.)

BTW, Bitten By Books hosted a release party and Jaym had this to say about us artists:

"Each section has a beautiful, full-page illustration from artist Galen Dara. More illustrations fill the book, the surreal, grotesquely-beautiful things from Galen Dara’s pen, and the dark, strong art from Miranda Jean. Rigor Amortis wouldn’t half of what it is without the hard work of our artists."

Gotta love those who appreciate the arts :)
(Oh! thrilled and flattered that a print of one of my illustrations is the take-home prize for the winner of the Zombie Recipe contest. More info here.)

It's been a serious fun ride and this whole week is Zombie Week, dedicated to continuing the buzz on facebook and twitter. Join the Rigor Amortis Facebook group, and/or follow the twitter hashtag #rigoramortis or #zombieweek for more updates, story-line teasers, plus me and Miranda tweeting illustrations.
Oh.. and go buy the book!! :)

just for kicks.. here's the trailer, featuring artwork by Miranda and myself:

comic panels and pages (mining for favorites)

2010-09-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

The other evening I took my sketchbook and went to the graphic novel section of my bookstore and just started looking. Looking for ideas and inspirations for a comic project I have undertaken with a friend. I did a lot of rough sketches, snapped a few captures.

At the end of this evening when I took stock of what I had collected, I found a unifying theme: Everyone of them was mixed in their media and short in their words.

Guess I'm predictable that way.

Here's a brief run down:

~Totally completely in love with artist Catia Chien, subtle, simple, profound and so very sensitive. I found two of her stories (Tumble weed, and Fall) in the (seriously amazing) comic anthology Flight.

~Quite taken with the gritty, dark, painterly work of Ashley Woods (SFW wiki article, NSFW artist blog). This image is from his work in Metal Gear Solid

~Another lucky find from that anthology Flight, was the mixed media collage Dummy Brother, a mind-tripping, surreal visual journey by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson.

~Then, going back to the gritty side, I stumbled upon the magna BioMega, by Tsutomu Nihei. (A great review here.) The silence, the stunning layouts, the crazy, painfully beautiful handling of his forms (not to mention really liked the combination of organic + mechanical)... It really had me.

Now hoping a bit of it all rubs of on me as I start laying out our panels and pages.

last page/first page

2010-08-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

Yep, at the beginning of this month, I was on the last pages of my book, it took me until yesterday to finally finish off that last page. I did it with this drawing. (Which I toyed with in photoshop to create this).

This book spans over three years!! I have NEVER made a book last that long (at least, not without misplacing it, which happened only once).

But anyhow, I start to get funny when I come down to the last page... what to put/draw/write on that page??? I get sort of hung up on the momentous-ness of it, assign all sorts of weird meaning, and even superstition to it. (Wtf?? I'm a skeptic!! But still... yah.) Eventually, I get over that and just fill it with whatever.

So now, I've done that last drawing on that last page... And now, laying on the table before me is a pristine, crisp, virgin moleskin sketchbook, with these gorgeous blank cream-colored pages.....
And I'm getting a similar funny make-it-MEAN-something feeling about making this first mark on this first page. But whatever. Here I go. I #amdrawing.

Btw, here's my journals and sketchbooks set.
And here's a few pages BEFORE the last page of the last book:

to do list (art projects)

2010-07-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

1) finish up the few remaining illustrations for Rigoramortis (deadline aug 1).
2) draw up my contribution to the Little Death of Crossed Genres (deadline, aug 10).
3) draw up illustrations submissions for Cthulhurotica (deadline sept 15).
4) draw up illustration submissions for Monsters and Mormons (deadline oct 1).
5) draw up illustrations submissions for Scape e-zine.
6) start creating panels for the webcomic. (shhh, it's a secret)
7) catch-up on my draw 365 project (I'm about thirty drawings behind).
8) get serious (AGAIN) about creating a painting a week. (/sigh).

This list is hugely weighted towards speculative fiction illustration, which is fun; it's me getting back to my roots (as a kid, I cut my drawing teeth on dragons and demons.) But I also want to pursue the fine art side as well; to continue painting and creating mixed media assemblages etc. Hoping that I can find the time and the balance to do both. Or create a sort of funky middle way. Or.. something.

dreams, demons, fairy tales...

2010-07-18T09:01:00.001-07:00

Dreams, demons, and fairy tales: that's the kind of stuff that makes me tick. Especially as they are rendered upon the silver screen.
Some of my favorites, from off the top of my head:

Mirrormask

Labrinth (more jim henson! plus David Bowie. /swoon)

Jan Svankmejer's Alice

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Pan's Labyrinth

and finally, the truly horrific, Jacob's Ladder

Ernesto Neto

2010-07-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

I think I have mentioned before that I like organic internal-organ-like type stuff. So of course, Ernesto Neto's installations have a very special place in my heart.

From this article:
"...his materials are gossamer-thin, light,
stretchable fabrics in nylon or cotton. like fine membranes fixed to the ceiling by stretched threads his works hang down into the room and create shapes that are almost organic. sometimes they are filled with scented spices and hang in tear-shaped forms like gigantic mushrooms or huge stockings,sometimes he creates peculiar soft sculptures which the visitor is allowed to feel through small openings in the surface.... Neto’s art is an experience which creates associations with the body and with something organic. he describes his works as an exploration and a representation of the body’s landscape from within."

His work reminds me a bit of Louise Bourgeuois's work. Also that of Magdalena Abakanowicz (w0w, I can't believe I haven't done a post dedicated to her yet. ) And reminds me how much I used to love hanging things from strings, making installations, etc...

For more images of Neto's work, see here, here, and here.

Daniel Dos Santos (and Silvia Moreno-Garcia too)

2010-07-08T01:51:00.000-07:00

The current issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine has a great article on artist Daniel Dos Santos who specializes in painting tough girls. Well, I like tough girls too. And the whole article had some great bits about his process, his inspirations, his evolution as an artist, his book covers, etc. For purposes of brevity though, I just wanted to mention his thoughts on the push-pull between digital art vs hand skills, because it's something I've been grappling with myself:

"It's this constant inner battle, and skills versus digital. I think that the love affair with digital is a fad. In twenty years time people are going to miss analog skills. The're going to want to see painting."

Dos Santos uses photoshop for prelim sketches etc.. but for the final product, it's traditional oils that are his medium of choice. I am still in the experimental part of finding the right balance between my hand- crafted works and my digital works. It was interesting to get his opinion on the subject.

Btw, want to see him in action at his easel? Wow. And he puts out one of these every two weeks:

"It takes me two weeks to do a painting, including reading the manuscript, model shoots, and so on. I wish I had three weeks for each painting, but I don't. I have to paint two a month to make a living."

Yes, I have envy. And awe.

Now, random, but speaking of tough girls, I just listened to a wonderfully intense and raw short story, Jaguar Woman, (not for the faint of heart) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I will definitely be looking out for more of her work.

(image source)

bleeding it out in ink

2010-07-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I get anxiety (sometimes I get depressed). During a particularly trying evening full of tension I found myself drawing line after line in my book and was surprised at how successful it was at drawing out the toxins. (...the violent creative act of sharp object marring pristine blank surface...).

It's good to be reminded of this very easy and accessible coping mechanism. In my mind, I see a tiny similarity to the ritual nature of the sand mandalas created by Buddhist monks (that link is to a fascinating video, you really should watch it) but that's mostly my ignorance showing about said mandalas and monks. An atheist, I think that art making is one of the only forms of ritual or worship I currently practice. And, I guess, it's also frequently my therapy.

So, on a recent weekend, during an extended family gathering for the holidays, as the emotional wear and tear took it's toll, I retreated quite a bit into my book. And it worked. (Well, I survived anyhow).

Here's a glimpse at some of what I scratched out:

Big Bang Big Boom (by Blu)

2010-07-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

just.. wow. Have I mentioned I like stop-motion animation? And street art? Here both are used to make "a short [9 min] unscientific story about evolution and it's consequences" (see website)

Josh Howard's take on Eve, plus thoughts on audience

2010-06-29T07:29:00.001-07:00

image source

Well, it's old news now, but here's Josh Howard's spin on Eve:

"Journey back to a time when magic still thrived, dragons and fallen gods roamed the earth, and man was just a myth. The Garden of Eden was a place of perfect peace and tranquility. That is, until its keeper, Adam, went missing. Now, his newly created wife, Eve, must venture outside the safety of the Garden for the first time to go in search of her husband, all the while battling monsters,beast men, wizards, demons, and even the gods themselves. It's the fun and adventure of Samurai Jack mixed with the epic scope of Lord of the Rings." (more, plus preview here)

Just ordered my copy, interested to see his take on it.

Now I just need to get back to work on my own version; it's been on the back burner while I negotiate kids during summer vacation, working more hours, and taking on fun little side projects.

Meanwhile, something on my mind is how to successfully reconcile (or successfully split) my various artistic persona's. Those persona's being connected to divergent and fairly incompatible audiences, I'm starting to feel the push/pull more and more, the distressing tension that lies between the work that gets exposure & recognition among the intellectual/feminist/LDS community, vs the work that gets exposure & recognition among the speculative fiction/horror/graphic novel community. There is some overlap, but not much.

Option B: find contentment dwelling in that tiny niche where they DO overlap, but that seems to be a marketing dead-end and I AM trying to think of that part it too. (BTW, existing in a small isolated niche = story of my life. x_X )

Anyhooo, to end, one of my own Eve studies:

pages 3 and 4 (Being Born)

2010-06-09T16:52:00.001-07:00

I really do like how these two pages, in particular, turned out. (If you click on the image, you can see it larger.) (Here's more about the story.)

a painting a week (take 2)

2010-06-09T14:10:00.001-07:00

Heheheh, I just realized it was almost a year ago that I decided to try making a painting a week. It didn't go so well (life gets busy) but I did do a few paintings . Anyhow, going to try it again. Starting now. This will sort of go hand in hand (hopefully) with the Drawing a Day I am doing. These will mostly be smallish paintings (11x14 inches or smaller), mixed media, revisiting ideas and images I am already working on.

We'll see how it goes this time around.

Feeling a bit ambitious this week, I have already done TWO paintings! and here they are:
and:

rigoramortis

2010-06-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

zombie erotica anyone?
heheh, eeeEEEEwwwww!!!!!

I'm Doing some illustrations along that line, but here's my conflict: to lean more explicit R-rated gore/sex? Or lean more towards pg-13 dark humor.

Probably a nice middle ground between the two will suffice. I'll have to a bit of drawing around that question.

And now, a few of my undead love roughs:
(and yes, I suck at text. I know)

(Just for kicks, here's a sampling of various ways Zombie Jesus has been done. I'll start there for inspiration.)

Keith Haring, Cecily Brown, and Wombat pOrn

2010-06-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

Here's two of my favorite artists: Keith Haring and Cecily Brown. You don't get much different than them, Keith having a strong graphic, pop-art comic style, and Cecily displaying amazing painterly expressionism.

I guess this pretty much sums up my own pull between the two styles (sometimes swinging towards the graphic, sometimes swinging towards the painterly). It probably also sums up my own proclivity towards explicit subject matter: Here's Keith's Bathroom, and Here's Cecily's Hard Fast and Beautiful. (WARNING, Explicit!)

I was thinking of both these artists when I drew up this quick sketch on a dare: Wombat p0rn (WARNING, Explicit!)

It isn't a very good tribute to either of them, but at least it put them back to the front of my mind again.

Two things:
1) work to reconcile my 'style'
2)work to uncover the reasons behind my proclivity towards the explicit, so that it's not just a shock-and-awe gimmick.

One more thing: tonight I spent an hour or so painting, and it was wonderful.

angels.

2010-06-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

So the character that didn't make it into my last comic was The Angel (not enough room, story-line went a different direction, etc). Now feeling the need to revisit and explore Eve's encounter with him. Previously, I have had her tie him up and cut off his head, beat him to a bloody pulp, or just do a little wrestling (taking a page from Alexander Louis Leloir).

Why all the violence?

Well,the angel is guarding the tree and it's fruit so, he's in her way . But also he's got this special sword (a flaming sword!) that she needs. Why? Well... I think she is going to kill God and needs that sword to do it. (Just a guess you understand, I'm still figuring that part out.)

So Angels will be on my mind and in my sketchbook/paintings for the next little bit as I work it all out.

For your entertainment (and for my inspiration) some fallen angels :Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as murderous angels in Dogma, and the most amazing Tilda Swinton as Gabriel in Constantine.

RIP louise Bourgeouis (who died yesterday at age 98)

2010-06-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

“I have a religious temperament, I have not been educated to use it. I’m afraid of power. It makes me nervous. In real life, I identify with the victim. That’s why I went into art.”
~Louise Borgeois (a professed atheist)

to quote directly from the NYTimes eulogy: "it was her images of the body itself, sensual but grotesque, fragmented, often sexually ambiguous, that proved especially memorable.... Fragility and fierceness were, in fact, the twin poles of Ms. Bourgeois’s art."

some glimpses of her art:
-a ginormous spider
-a whole room full of her drawings and sulptures (LOVE her fabric creations)
-a bed full of..? (more about that show here)
-the ever graphic fillette (and the mapplethorpe portrait of her carrying it under her arm)
-matching parts for parts w/ fillette, Janus Fleuri, also hanging by a wire.

And here's a video: Louise Bourgeouis, The Spider, the Mistress, and The Tangerine.

lazy artist.

2010-05-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm a lazy artist.

My usual MO is to just sit down and dig in to a piece with only a little bit of forethought or planning. Sort of making it up as I go along. "Opps, I didn't plan that... ah well, it works, won't bother changing it". That sort of thing.

Well, for the project I am working on now, I can't get away with that kinda shit. It must be planned. Constructed. Carefully put together with forethought and intention. And this process is exhausting creative muscles I didn't even know I had!! Whew I'm tired, every day from it!

But it's good tired.
Guess I needed a little exercise.

sunstone comic! (being born)

2010-04-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know, Sunstone is doing an issue for Mormon Comic Artists. (Woot!)

The deadline is coming up and I am getting serious with the pages allotted to me.

So, after months of drawing around the images/concepts, playing with style, taking them off into all sorts of random directions, I am now bringing it all together; taking all the loose ends and trying to coax them together (sometimes with gentleness, sometime with bailing wire), filling in the gaps that I've neglected up until now, ironing out the awkward transitions, etc.

For your entertainment, here's my written synopses (complete with links to the various images/ideas/concepts that haves been my studies for the past year. Warning, a good number of the images are fairly graphic.)

What I'm working on in particular:

~making the shocking imagery more subtle, finding the fine line between challenging and outright offensive and off-putting.

~balancing the gender aspect of it.

~finding the gaps that leave the reader/viewer confused.

~making it sequential (I am better at single panels but need sequence to tell this story)

~ etc

***************

Anyhow, feedback, thoughts, (constructive) criticisms are suggestions are welcome :)

#draw365 (now 65 days in)

2010-03-06T23:05:00.000-08:00

I am now 65 days into my #draw365 experiment.

A couple of items of interest:

~I discovered a vibrant and active community of other #draw365-ers on Twitter and that creative interchange has been extraordinarily stimulating.

~Right around day 52 I really started to feel like I was making some break throughs in my method and process.

~The past couple of days, I have spent quite a bit of time polishing and cleaning up and editing the 'sketches' (digital illustrations, really.)

~I miss charcoal and paint and fast sketching. I mean, I am really liking the drawings I am doing right now, but when I look at some of the pieces being produced by other #draw365-ers, it makes me want to pull back a bit from photoshop, and take a detour back into some hands-getting-messy materials.

~I think I need to set a time limit. A friend recommended this and it really resonated. One obvious plug for a time limit is that I'm busy with lots of other things on my plate... but that's not the real reason. I am remembering exercises we did in an illustration class where we had 30 min to quick-draw out some concept and discovering that I did really good work when I couldn't afford to over-work/over-think it.

So there you go.
I have another 300 drawings to go.
We'll see where this takes us.

dirty sex

2010-02-15T14:30:00.000-08:00

[Warning, this post contains disturbing content.
View at your discretion.]
[scroll down for content]

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So, Nancy Elliott recently went off
on a graphic and explicit rant about
gay sex.
Makes me wonder
what her thoughts are about
lesbian sex.

365 sketches

2010-01-31T09:18:00.000-08:00

If nothing else, I am hoping to accomplish at least that this year. A drawing a day. A sketch rather, usually done quite quickly, then scanned in and clean up in Ps. I've been doing them at the end of the day and while I usually have an idea what the sketch will be, I find that most times it takes on it's own life and mind as I move the pen across the page.

I'm also finding that I do not have that knack for knowing when to stop: I frequently over-work the sketch.

Also, I am discovering a tendency for disturbing imagery to emerge. I have a sketch for every day, but several of them I have on private simply because they are fairly graphic. (I blame it on that whole "mind of it's own" thing. It's not me. Really.)

There's a lot of other goals I have for this year as well (things like brushing up on my digital art skills, getting some computer programing knowledge, launching my web-comic, doing a painting a week, doing more with my etsy account, etc.) But we're already a month into 2010 and so far, I'm doing good to just put out a sketch a day.
(Interesting note: it was only last spring that I started drawing again. I had been on artistic sabbatical for quite a while before that. So, at least it's something.)

published

2010-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

Bloody Eve is in print.
Well, one copy anyways, self-published.
To hand over to my instructor so I can get a final grade on the course I signed up for last year.
It has A LOT of mistakes: In the writing, in the style, in the flow, in the medium, in the editing, processing, formatting (etc etc etc). But they were good mistakes, the 'learning-from-them' kind, and since this is my first time, I'm okay with them (well, I can tolerate them, for now, at least. As long as next time is better. Yah.)

But here you go, if you want to see a preview of what it looks like in book form (it doesn't show the last few pages, but those are only a collection of sketches and paintings anyways; a sort of last minute add-on appendices I used to pad the page count)

Here's the final images:

Starting with the cover, front and back

Then the inside pages:Then there's this other two page spread that I ended up taking out of the story line, adding it at the end as part of the appendices (with the some of the other Eve vs the Angel images):

So there you go.
Be gentle, I'm new at this.

pgs 9 - 12

2010-01-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

So, it took me months and months to do the first 6 pgs, but now in less than a week I have started burning through the last 6 with a good deal of ease and excitment. Yay for the holidays being over!! (Yes, I blame it all on xmas.) And also, Yay for neighbors who watch my son in the afternoons so I can get a few more hours up to my elbows in paint. (And too, I should credit the decision to remove almost ALL of the text/diologue. That has really helped me out. Words are so not my thing.)
(These are not finished, by any means, and two pages are on another panel that I neglected to photograph, but I thought I'd throw this up here anyways.)

Note to self:

2010-01-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

don't quit your day job.
(or.... um, find a day job.)

James Jean

2009-12-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine tipped me off to James Jean and while there's a lot I should say about how much I love his extensive and diverse body of work, I simply must post his tree of life, because... wow...

only 6 pgs?

2009-11-30T11:46:00.001-08:00

I've been working on eve (well, working off and on, and more off than anything) for how many months? Certainly longer than my proposed NaGraDraMo of November. And now I am still only 6 pgs in?! (Do those last two pages even count? They are still a work in progress... so... I'm guessing not). I'm struggling through a learning curve: narrative sequential artwork not being my usual MO. I have also been struggling with a pretty strong avoidance tendancy surrounding this project (directly relating to the fact that this project is not my usual MO). But, then, working on those last few pages I really felt like I had hit a good stride... was finding my groove, was getting the HANG of it~ but that was over a week ago. Work Obligations and Family Obligations and Holiday Obligations hit. So now I have to go and find that nice little line, that feel good spot, but I'm back in avoidance mode, writing BLOG POSTS about it rather than doing it. Oh, and I'm hungry, need to make some lunch first. Then, it will be only a short time before it's time to pick up the little guy from school, then homework, then making dinner, then cleaning up, then bedtime routine.... Another day gone forever. Brooke's poem is close to the front of my mind right now.
Yah, I'm whining right now. Pay me no mind.
Anyhoo... if you want to see these two-page spreads individually see the flickr set here.

Oh... and because this looks AMAZING (and hits so very close to home): the trailer for the documentary "Who Does She Think She Is?" (women and mothers who are also artists)

[wishing I was so cool.....]

wordless (and style too)

2009-11-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

Because putting words in is my least favorite part of making a comic. And anyhow a picture = 1k words to start with:

Davide Fraternali

Michele Toffalori

Robin Ha

[click on the thumbnail sets to be able to read each page.]

Also, I've been struggling a bit with style. That's another reason I like the aforementioned comic artists, the styles they are working in absolutely blow me away. I am trying to reconcile my initial tendencies towards comic-book hero type renderings, working to meld my visual story telling into a more sophisticated (sophisticated = wrong word, but close enough for now) method that more closely approaches my painting style.
(Yes, still working through my identity crisis.)

That's all.
Except here's the trailer to In The Realms of the Unreal, beautiful documentary about the work of Henry Darger. Because his work almost brings tears to my eyes.

NaGraDraMo

2009-11-02T07:01:00.000-08:00

In solidarity with my many friends who are NaNoWriMo-ing this month, I shall be GraDraMo-ing. Graphic novel Drawing Month (not a National event yet, but who's counting.)
Because I have a class deadline coming up.
Because it is a personal goal.
Because all I have done up till now is sketch, plot, experiment, and doodle thumbnails yet have successfully avoided just jumping in and doing the real thing; and because I have reached the end of all my avoidance techniques (including writing posts about it. Heheh.)
Therefore I declare this month to be my offical NaGraDraMo. Starting... NOW!

Gah... I missed Inktober?!

2009-10-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Feeling crushed... I had no idea it was Inktober, and my heart is breaking.

What is Inktober?

In the words of Agent 44:
"It’s a month long appreciation of the art of drawing in ink and the practitioners that embrace that art. To celebrate I’m posting one ink drawing a day for the entire month. No pencils, no water colors, no photoshop, just the unadulterated black and white beauty of thick black ink on crisp white paper. Drawing with ink means commitment. There’s no hemming and hawing as to which pencil line you’re going to use, no sitting on the fence of values, no pussy footing with color. When you make your mark you better mean it. It’s black and white. True or false. On or off. And that’s what Inktober is all about."

(Or here, to see it in cool inked visuals)

(Thanks, Thmazing for bringing it to my attention)

Here's the thing, for years and years, a cheap ballpoint pen was my tool of choice for sketching and I always enjoyed the spontaneity/whimsy/creativity of those sketches... something my belabored "official" work (fleshed out in pencil, multiple erased marks at a time) DIDN'T have.

Grrr, I still struggle with this. A whole month of ink only may have been just what I needed. Maybe I'll do my own unofficial version of Inktober in November?
Hmmm, we'll see.
Meanwhile, a trip down memory lane to some of my earlier ballpoint pen sketches.

etc...

Lest They Should See (a comic in 18 hrs)

2009-10-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

From the initial handful of startup inspirations, (a few random images, and a random sentence on a page of a book) I wrote this brainstorm:

Food, Starvation, Fertility, Plenty, Want, Sterile, Poison, Wrath, God's Wrath, Full Bellies, Apocalypse, God watches, God Judges, God Giveth and He Taketh Away, Eyeballs, Watching, Take, Give, Need, [God is a Cruel God]...

Then, I begin putting pencil to paper, just drawing out studies, first from those starter images, then expanding out, and scripture verses began to come to me, Amos 8:12, Acts 28:27, Luke 11:34, John 7:34, etc..
anyhoo... the following are the 12 pgs of looking, finding, and losing that resulted.

Lest They Should See

They look from the north to the east, but cannot find it. The land is dry as bones

They look, but cannot find it. Until... one day... it's there.

A promise. Of harvest, of feast, of plenty, of multitudes of people and them all fed

Promises of fruitful loins, of posterity as the sands of the sea

All eyes are upon it, the promise, long awaited, long looked for. But, watched too closely, it cannot sustain.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

10-24-09

2009-10-24T05:07:00.000-07:00

Comic Challenge Day.

I will be updating and retweeting/facebooking this post throughout the day as I upload pages (or if I have anything interesting to say about the process) (Twitter hashtag #18hrComic, if you want to search it.)

4:30am~ get up.
tea and toast, read a bit.

5am~ loaded Neutral Milk Hotel on my iPod (thanks @aarontbell ), got three starter images from @johnremy (here, here, and here), picked a random phrase from the Fob Bible: "Remember that the full observance of the Feast of the Holy Mountain is necessay for an adequate harvest."(pg 151, from Ezra's Inbox) (thanks @thmazing)
k... time to start this.

7:30am~ Second Breakfast! (this time with hubby and kiddo). Narrowing down brainstorm/sketching ideas. have rough thumbnail layouts for the 24 pgs. Got layout ideas from Scott McClouds first 24 hr comic and from Nate Powell's Swallow Me Whole (btw, pg 6 simply has me drooling). Oh! And, for the heck of it, read the rest of Fob Bible's Ezra's Inbox... LOL!!!

11am~ just hit a rut. pacing problems. and monotony problems. and obscure-narrative/lack-of-story problems. Oh! JohnR's got several panels up, zombies! WAY COOL! go check them out!

2pm~ k, 16 pgs. That's my revised goal. The pages are rough-sketched, now to ink (and photoshop?) Check out JohnR's Flickr Set, Benjamin Lind's first panel, Angry Young Woman's first panel, and Bored in Vernal's set up here. Giving myself an hour to get my first... 3 pgs up?

4:30pm~ /groan!! this is hellish for a perfectionist! Just uploaded 6 pgs to this flickr set. Unphotoshoped, no text or color or anything... Not yet, I will add that as well as more pages... I swear it will make some sort of sense eventually.

11pm~ drained. brain dead. only pulled together 12 pgs. didn't have the energy to color of photoshop. Some panels I quite like. Many things I want to revisit and take more time on. Later. See flickr Set here, blog post here. And yes, it is an obscure, weird, wordless thing, but hopefully vaguely interesting.

comic challenge + zombie walk

2009-10-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

This Saturday I"m going to have to do some balancing between two awesome amazing events. It is the 18 hr Comic Challenge, but I have also discovered that it's the day Tucson is having a Zombie Walk (complete with Michael Jackson Thriller dance along).

So, I'm tailoring my Comic Challenge just a bit, to make room for a walk with the dead. I'll be doing a 12 hr draw (5am to 5pm) but still hoping to put out 24 pages (the Eastman variation "noble failure" may be an option).

Then me, the hubby, the kiddo (and maybe the dog?) will apply fake blood and head downtown. We'll watch the local undead do the Thriller Dance (in sync with thousands around the world) donate canned food to the food-bank, then meander downtown in a zombie-ish way looking for fresh brains.

Wow, what a day!
Pics of both will be uploaded throughout :)

18 hr comic details...

2009-10-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

So... this Saturday. Four more days an we're gonna do it. Our own version of Scott McClouds 24 hr Comic Challenge. I got to thinking about it and realized just how long 18 hrs will be: I will start drawing at 6am and have my final product (an 24 pg comic) by midnight (whew!), that's my plan. What are your various plans? Will you do the full 18 hrs? Or are you tailoring the challenge around other obligations? What are your goals? And, because I'm curious, what about this challenge intrigues you (or turns you off?)

Here's me:
I've made arrangements with hubby so that I have the full day to do this. I think I'll mostly just draw with pen on paper but I'm keeping my options open (refer to my first link for suggestions on the multitude of ways to make a comic). I will format it horizontally (landscape) for better viewing on the web (for print, you may want to format vertically/portrait). I plan on having no preconceived idea for the story, but getting spontanious inspiration at the start by some sort of random selection (ya know, open a book and put your finger down and read what's there, that sort of thing) but I DO plan on having a goodly selection of reference material available; for example, I will have handy my books on religious imagery, Janson's History of Art, and my favorite anatomy books.

Now, what appeals to me about this challenge- the immediate-ness of it and the immersion of it. I find I do these rather neat spontaneous sketches, but when I go to work on a "planned" piece it tends to fall flat. Exercises like this one help to merge the two ways of working, so I'm all excited for that.

But how 'bout you?

Now, for your viewing pleasure, @pizzocalabro posted a link to this video and I LOVED it, Milton Glaser on drawing, while drawing.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

Blasphemy Art

2009-10-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

A friend tweeted this article about the schism among atheists and it mentioned this art show in Washington DC, held at the Center for Inquiry, featuring artwork by Dana Ellyn (skim down through that link for images and articles about the art show).

A few brief conversations with some friends has made me aware of my own little schism, which is this:

~I am absolutely in LOVE with Dana's artwork~ Christ painting his "nails", Blood flowing from his wounds and into a wine cup (another version here), a quirky "Mary had a little lamb/nativity scene", etc. I love her style, I love her subjects, totally IN LOVE!!

And yet

~I do not consider myself one of those atheists who disparages belief systems and people of belief. I am FASCINATED by the faiths people have, the myths and rituals that are pivotal (or not) parts of their lives and don't intend to poke fun or mock.

So... how do I explain, how do I justify my proclivity for creating artwork that most believers would find fairly offensive? I'm working on my own slightly twisted slant on Jesus (not to mention my love for Zombie Jesus). The story of Eve I am drawing out is highly unorthodox, I'm obsessed with the underlying eroticism in Christianity, and wait till you hear some of my ideas for Mother Mary.

Yah, how to explain that I'm not TRYING to offend, just working out, through, around, and with all the symbols and stories and systems of my upbringing whose shards still lie embedded in my psyche (I paraphrased that last bit; something that Joseph Campbell said)..

anyhoo, just some thoughts this morning.

Fob Bible

2009-10-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm in love... swooning away wrapped up inside of these insideout tellings of old testament tales contained in the Fob Bible .
I'm a sucker for a good twist on orthodoxy. I can't help myself. (BTW, CLHanson liked it too.)
A few of the "plain and precious parts" are online here. Among those my favorites are Blood Red Fruit (a captivating conversation between satan and the snake), Genesis (the rib and the fall), Capitulation: Forbidden Squirming (childbirth and the fall), How Long Till Two Times (a newly fallen yet still ignorant Adam and Eve) Abraham's Purgatory (a horrifying, provoking take on the sacrifice of Issac), and Faith of the Ocean (Jonah as you've never seen him before).

This was just what I needed this morning, to get my creative juices flowing, many thanks to the Fob Family.

Invitation to 18 hr Comic Day!!

2009-10-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Please Join Us!!!! On Saturday October 24 2009, Me, John Remy, Catgirl, and a goodly handful of other friends are going to do our own version of Scott McCloud's 24 hour Comic Challenge. Here's a quick rundown of McCLoud's "official" rules but for the purposes of our comic challenge we're being flexible. (Hell, we already decided that we are just too old for the 24 hour version.)

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A COMIC ARTIST!!
Or even able to draw for that matter: comics are diversifying in very cool ways, for example: consider storytelling with Legos, or cookies, or paper cut-outs, or photo snapshots, or stick figures. One of my favorite artists sometimes just takes his iPhone for a walk (just turn it into a 'story' of some sort, and voila!). You can PAINT a comic. You can Sew a comic. There doesn't even need to be words (wow, SO in love with that last link...!!)

More info will be forthcoming, but part of the idea is to foster the community aspect of it by sharing, discussing, tweeting, (etc) both heading up to the 24th and also posting real-time updates, panels, (etc) on 24th.
(if tweeting, consider using hashtag #18hrComic for easy searching)

If interested please leave a comment on john's post, or send an email.

We understand if you need to tweek the day/duration a bit to fit your own circumstances, THAT'S OKAY!! It will still be awesome to have you and we'll find ways of including your work throughout the 24th.

Pleeeeaaaase say yes :)

pods and critters and things that come from inside us

2009-10-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

We come into this world sticky and squishy, squeezed through a tiny orifice located extremely close to the orifices intended for sewage elimination. Weird, huh? I love it. So, since it's on my mind, here's a few artists and artworks that touch upon these slippery slopes in delightful ways.

~Tom Karlsson's dark comic Tell Me About The Mountain in From the Shadow of the Northern Lights, a disturbingly twisted pregnancy narration by a true mad genius. (I was too lazy to scan in a page from the book and also not entirely sure of copyright laws concerning that, however you can see some of Tom's work here).

~Eraserhead, 1970's surrealist-horror film with all things embryonic and fetal becoming the stuff of nightmares. (here's the chicken dinner scene for a brief sampling.)

~On the not so disturbing just simply amazing side, a wordless comic by Tyler Stafford; Trees and Mountains , bodies plopping from seedpods, re-birth, new life... Love it!

~And, Just because, the 1970's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, plus cameo by Kevin McCarthy, Awesome!)

Muwahahahah!!!
Makes me want to revisit my vulva drawings, or my egg shell pieces. Or just pull out one of my anatomy books and do some studies of internal organs.
Anyhow, for your viewing pleasure, my latest sketchbook entry (brains, wombs, fingers...)

meet Eve

2009-10-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so BiV beat me too writing about this (and OF COURSE, she did it way better than I could), but anyways; I'm drawing a story about Eve. Yes, drawing, because really, I'm better at images than words... though we shall see if I can jump into the sequential nature of graphic novels with any success. Now I'm still working out the particulars, but the general run down goes something like this: After the fall, Eve returns to the garden to have it out with that angel who was placed as guardian. Whether she beheads him or just beats him to a bloody pulp I'm not real sure, but as with Virginia Wolf, she has to kill this angel to get on with what she needs to do. She also takes on the apple (see above, inspired by Brooke's delightful poem on eating the apple). Now I'm still not sure the exact outcome of all this, but Eve's bottom line here is to have a deadly serious conversation with God (who, of course, is also her husband Adam, because Brigham said so. Oh, and Adam is also Michael the archangel who helped create the earth, AND might just also be the angel guarding the tree. Maybe. Yah, serious identity crisis. Utterly fascinating.)

So here's the thing, several people have asked me why this isn't a story about Lilith (the usual suspect for uppity/aggressive garden of eden variety femaleness).

It's because I was endowed in the temple and, as a woman, was a stand in for Eve. I was dressed in her name, said things in her name, did things in her name, I was her and she was me.

And she was this silent and passive thing, created to please Adam. (Absolutely LOVE Lynnette's take on the subject. Wow.)

So instead of despising her, I wanted to re-invent her. To give her a quest. Give her a sword (she takes that flaming one from the angel). Give her a mind of her own and the grit to do what she needs to do which is different than what the 'authorities' are telling her to do.

I guess feel I owe it to her. And to me.

So that's why it's about Eve and not Lilith.

[Jan 24, 2010 update: I just self-published one copy of my first version of The Story of Bloody Eve. Woot]

Oh, and btw, I've written before about my artist's block and my neglected studio...
Well lately I'm back in the paint again! and it feels good. Just had to share :)

bitch-slapped by my muse

2009-08-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

I sometimes wonder how other artists do it.

Do they have an idea and then work till they have a product that matches the vision in their head?

I envy that.

It seems so often I have an idea, go to work it out, only to get smacked around by my Muse (masochistic bitch) till the final product is something quite a bit different that what I had initially envisioned.

I do what she tells me.
I'm her bitch.

(She also ignores me completely for long stretches of time.)

Just a thought I've had lately.

identity crisis

2009-08-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Bitter enemies; the commercial arts and the fine arts. In collage, it seemed the two departments couldn't be in the same room without hostilities breaking out. And I bounced from one to the other. Back and forth again, shifting my allegiances, both sides looked at me with suspicion and distrust.

I feel that pull now too. the dissonance, in my work.
And every time I encounter other artists work, from the both fine and the commercial fields, I experience an identity crisis; "oh, THAT's what I should do!"
Swinging back and forth.
I'll be like this, I'll be like that...

Influenced. It's what artists do. We are influenced by everything.
That's normal.

I need to keep it from becoming the halting choking disabling identity crisis.
MY work.
Influenced by a plethora of other styles/genres/every day objects and individuals...
absorbed, assimilated into MY style.
"Just be yourself!"

hahahahahahaha!!!!!.........

Boxes, coffins, death and dying

2009-07-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

My mom took me to the Tohono Chul Park art exhibit the other day to see the show "Re-Visions: Art from Reclaimed Materials". It was awesome, me being a sucker for old stuff and all. But I was particularly fascinated by the several assemblage artists who stuck all their stuff in boxes. Found boxes, fabricated boxes, filled with ephemera and oddities. I loved them.

(I got a thing for putting stuff in boxes myself.)

After the art show we went and visited my mom's father in the hospital. He's very old and got really sick over the weekend. Lying there in the hospital bed mortality seemed to lay very heavy upon him. He's in his eighties. Everyone accepts that it is only a matter of time.

Which is the same for all of us.

At a recent family gathering I was struck by how much I could see the writing of years upon friends and family members. Knowing they could see the same on me.
We are all just little wind-up toys tick-tocking away, the slow process of wearing down, wearing out, unwinding till we stop and are put in a box then put in the ground ourselves. In our graves.

Which brings to mind the recent cemetery scandal of bodies being dug up and the plots resold for profit.

It also brings to mind the art of Kiki Smith.

These things are always on my mind.

Christ + Blood pt 2

2009-07-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

Did a little sketching in church concerning my son's theological question; "how did Jesus put our blood in?" Here's what I came up with:

[color and burlap texture added in photoshop.]

Christ + Blood

2009-07-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

"Mom" my 5 yr old asks, "How did Jesus put our Blood in us?"

My son delights me no end.

So speaking of Jesus and Blood, my little bro (who's on a mission) asked me to draw some pictures of Jesus for him. All I could come up with for ideas was Jesus as a Night Elf, or a Vampire (re the whole blood thing).

Then a friend reminded me of the Zombie Jesus genre. So very very delighted, all over again.)

Here's a Movie Trailer

And some artistic renditions

(including, of course, the zombie last supper, where Jesus is consumed by zombie disciples)
Finally, my own favorite sketch of Jesus; my study of Jose Benjamin Lopez's 8 ft wooden sculpture of Christ where his wounds become large bloody sores covering his body

Anyhow... none of these are anything my little bro would appreciate....
But I'm excited for MY own next Christ-oriented art project

three items of interest

2009-07-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

1) I went to the art store and buy paint yesterday. It's been several years (?) since I have had to buy paint because it has been several years since I have used any of the paints I have. Also, the week before, I went and bought three new paint brushes. Because all the ones I had had been used only by young children for several years and were in horrible shape.
so nice to be buying art materials again.

2) I'm having to deal with the technicalities/complications of creating R rated paintings in a household frequently overrun by young children. "Mom, why is his head missing" my son asked of my latest painting. And I showed him how the naked lady had cut off his head and was holding it in her hand. And tried to make it sound... child friendly... (need to get a lock for my studio.)

and finally...

3) Note to self - 18 x 24 inches is too big if you are planning on doing a painting a week. Just too much area to cover. Keep it to 14 x 17 or 11 x 14 or smaller. Much better chance of finishing it in a week.

not a painting every week...

2009-07-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

Meh... only my second week into my attempt to finish a painting every week, and already I've missed my first deadline.
I had a sense it might happen; it was a week packed with family obligations and I had a houseful of kids that fully occupied two days and one night. On top of that, my right hand has been acting up, the knuckles and wrist are inflamed and achy. I'm worried my art making is to blame. I am paranoid that it bodes ill for future art production, but am hoping it is something temporary and easily reversed. (Keeping my stiff sore fingers crossed.)
artistic highlights of the week: I did start doing some thumbnails for a hypothetical Tarot Deck dedicated to Amanda Palmer. And I did at least start the next painting (I will have it done by Sunday. I will I will). It's something to be glad about.

shit, eros, and gods

2009-07-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across Break the Vessel by Vylar Kaftan at Pseudopod. If you're not into feces, or eroticism, or violent religious retribution (or horror in general), than don't bother going to that link. Me, those are some of my basic fascinations. Questioning faith and tradition, examining the gods we have created, exposing graphically explicit details about the bodily functions we usually hide behind closed doors... Kaftan's story will stay with me a good long while.

A painting a week.

2009-07-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Calan Ree's weekly haiku derived paintings, and jump-started by Amanda Palmer's offering of her nekkid body for artistic purposes, I have my new goal: a painting a week. Working with the cast of characters in my mind and the floating flexible exoskeleton of a story-line, It's enough. I'm sure. And I'm excited.

It's been a while since I have painted. Over 3 years. Such a breath of fresh air to get into it again over Amanda's body. I am surrounded by muses.

blood fail

2009-07-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

My veins failed me at the blood bank on Saturday. It was humiliating, I pride myself on my fat veins and their ability, when punctured, to fill a pint bag with astonishing speed. But not Saturday, which, when I thought about it (while eating cookies and drinking juice at the blood bank's cafeteria) was a fitting close to a week in which I indulged more than usual on things gore-ish, dark, gruesome and morbid.

I started the week revisiting the illustrations of Henry Darger before moving on to Hieronymous Bosch. Then our netflix queue delivered Sweeny Todd and Tim Burton delivered buckets of bright red blood splashed all over the gloom of London (plus amazing performances by some of my most favorite thespians.) To top that, I discovered two wonderfully talented, very inspiring (delightfully dark and morbid) webcomics: gingerdead by Calan Ree and unconscious ink by Joenis Norac.

Each of the aforementioned artists deserves a post all for themselves, but time is short at the moment. As my vein stopped filling the bag just short of a full pint and the phlebotomist tried twisting the needle back and forth, sliding it in and out, trying to get the flow going again, I decided to just make one post full of blood and needles and sharp things and dark things. Since almost a full pint of my own blood had to be dumped down the drain.

Have a nice day!

sex and the cross

2009-07-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain that I could not wish to be rid of it."

-the vision of St Teresa of Avila

A friend of mine just wrote a racy little tale of sex and religious innuendo. It tickled the hell out of me, religion and sex being one of my recurring themes at the moment; doodle after doodle of couples having sex on the cross, an obsession with St Teresa's orgasmic vision of God , and a sweaty palmed preoccupation with God's propositions to a young Jewish virgin.

I love the oedipal twist Richard Dawkin's puts on the matter of God's condescension: "...The Inventor of the law of physics and Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin [and] got himself born..."

The divine lover becoming the divine son.

The mistress becoming the mother.

Just some thoughts.
Now, to move beyond the juvenile fixation with the missionary style into something more sophisticated.
Or, maybe not.

Bruce Mau's incomplete manifesto

2009-07-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

So, immediately after getting just a little bit whiny and morose about feeling stuck and stagnant a friend linked to Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Some pretty darn good suggestions.

My favorites (numbered how they are in the Manifesto):

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism...

9. Begin Anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere...

18. Stay Up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world...

21. Repeat Yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again...

33. Take Field Trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment...

and

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it...

(etc...)
They are all good, all 43 points.
Something to kick me in the pants a bit. To jump start, to light the fire, something.

no time

2009-07-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

Or maybe no initiative?
Not sure.
It seems that all I do lately is rough studies of other people's art.
Just copying what others have done. This used to feed my own fire, lead into my own work, my own original pieces.
Right now I'm not getting past the copying phase and only doing that infrequently and with haste.

I was going to say it is because I have no time. But this past weekend I had to myself, and had the determination to spend several hours working in the studio. Not sure where those hours went, wish I could account for them, but they weren't memorable. Puttering and frittering (and facebooking) and making dinner and reading a book etc.

I should just admit I'm in avoidance mode and deal with that, instead of trying to whine about no time.
(I've written before about my artist's block and my neglected studio. Yet another form of avoidance: blogging about it. ha!)

Michael DeMeng

2009-06-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Old stuff, rusty stuff, odd stuff, makes my heart so happy. So of course, I am in love with Micheal DeMeng, assembler of all things discarded. (in fact he wrote a book about rusty stuff. Need to get that book.) Quirky little totems, intricate shrines, odd animal creations, altered books, tiny matchbooks... An eye for detail and for the odd. He's awesome. He also has a blog. My favorite post concerned his trip to the island of the dolls in Mexico; death and love and devotion (and Tom Waits too)... a little look into his creative process and what touches this artist of immense talent.

sunday sketching...

2009-06-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

Not getting much time lately to do a lot in the way of artwork. Church is kinda 'meh' for me at the moment, but really, honestly, it is nice to have the three hour bloc where I can sit there and draw. Don't seem to get much time to do that other wise. So here, some nice uplifting little thumbnails that my brain spit up today while sitting on a pew listening to Sunday School chatter.

Banksy

2009-05-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

I've found a new heartthrob in Banksy, the pseudo-anonymous street artist. Surreptitious stenciled figures spray-painted on surfaces around Brittan and beyond, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment. Small-scale surprises tucked away in alleys or large-scale blaring messages covering high-rise walls, confronting the masses. Asking. Demanding. Revealing. Tough Questions and Dirty Secrets. And also just because.

I think my favorite is the long drizzle of white paint trailing through the streets (of Bristol? Multiple cities?) and if you follow it far enough (across streets, through the park, around buildings) you will encounter a guilty looking man dressed in law enforcement garb crouched in some obscure place, holding the incriminating white crayon. Caught red handed. See a slide show of some of his outdoor stuff here.