News!
I’ve snagged a table for the 2012 MOCCA festival, an indie comics fest that’s been held in New York City for the last 10 years. I’ll be tabling with a friend under the name Blood Bakery where we’ll be selling comics, postcards, pins and more! I’ll also be selling a few of my comics/prints/books so get those fat wallets out of your pockets.
A few other friends and I have started a comic collective called Three-Armed Squid– and we’re making a comic anthology together! There are 4 of us so we decided the theme should always be items in groups of fours. This time around, it’s the 4 seasons. My season is Autumn so I’ve been making some sketches about pumpkin kids.
So where is Hearts & Holes? I took a comics seminar to help me finish up the ending, but the class ended up giving me more questions than answers. It’s not a bad thing at all — I’m smarter and more careful now because of it. Plus, I’ve worked on it for almost a year now… I don’t want to waste all the time I’ve invested into it. I’ll be making a small update on that soon.
I’m being productive, see?
Welcome back to the blog to me. I’ve been welcomed with a badly hacked WordPress (damn you!) that i’ve spent the last 5 hours fixing. WHY DO YOU TORTURE ME INTERNET.
Aside from that, here’s what I’ve been up to.
For a new silkscreen book
Hearts &Holes
I Look like this a lot
More soon. Promise!
I’m feeling productive.
MIA– drawing always makes me MIA. I’m having too much fun drawing the final pencils (they’re my favorite part) that I lose track of the blog… but not today!
If I had to rank from my favorite parts of making comics to my least favorite, it’d be like this:
- Penciling
- Inking
- Script
- Thumbnails
- Revised Thumbnails
- Revised Revised Thumbnails (it doesn’t always need this)
Ugh, revised thumbnails feels like busy work but I know it’s necessary.
This is what I’ve been doing. Turning these dreaded revised thumbnails:
Into:
That’s right. My thumbnails are pretty much stick figures depending on how lazy I am. It’s the idea that counts right? As I’m penciling more, I’ll update more here!
I reteach myself how to make comics every few months. Why? Because I like reading about how different every artist’s process is in drawing comics and I’m drawn(haha, pun!) to how they approach teaching it to others. That’s why I’ve started to follow the exercises in Ivan Brunetti’s Cartooning.
Cartooning is a short 88-page book that lays out Brunetti’s 15-week lesson plan to get you to break down the anatomy of comics and determine your visual style. Each week’s lesson has a few exercises and a homework assignment.
Here are my two favorite exercises from week 1:
Exercise 1.1: Draw items from memory at with decreasing amounts of time:
Exercise 1.2: 25 famous cartoon characters from memory:
I usually post drawings here done by hand, but I have a secret to tell you. There’s a side of me that I don’t show you… the side that loves giant pixels, anti-anti-aliased things, and animated GIFS.
This is my take on Eminem’s Love the Way You Lie.
I made this one last summer for Draw That Again, a year-long drawing challenge that a few friends and I did so we could all become better illustrators. I suspected most of us would become better artists(and we did) but I didn’t expect that we’d become better friends too.
Happy April Fools Day! This is not a joke though. It’s real. I’m serious!
So I’m a little late on the boat, but a few months ago, I was asked to help draw a side story for the ReMind comic by Jason Brubaker. It is an excellent story by Christopher Wrann of Aquarium Drinking. Parts 1, 2, and 3 are available online now and I’ll be able to show you my pages in 2 more weeks. It was really fun drawing things I normally don’t draw and I was honored to be a part of it. Cheers to collaboration!
For now though, here are the other cool artists I’ve been working with on the project.
Sarah Ellerton:
Jim Francis:
Joost Haakman:
Peter Hon:
Aviv Itzcovitz:
Kim Ku:
Daniel Lieske:
Mathieu Moyen:
Christopher Wrann:
After this, I’ll be working on my book and start posting more Hearts & Holes, my forgotten friend.
Still working on those jellyfish but now there’s some action going on.
I’ve been drawing so many that I think I’m getting OCD. Sorry about the bad scan– a weird shadow appeared when I put the drawing into the scanner.
Here’s a closeup. Does it gross you out? I can’t stand polka dots so it’s kind of grossing me out…
I’m putting my little drawing obsession with jellyfish to work into a new screen printed book. No jellyfish will go to waste!
Hello hordes of jellyfish.
I’ve been doing many things to distract myself from Hearts & Holes lately. Garrr!!
This is why. I screen printed an accordion book of pixelated coffee cups in NYC!
I’ve been taking a silkscreen class in SVA thinking that I could do Hearts & Holes related work but this just popped out. I do love making pixel artwork.
A close-up of the cover. Registration is not perfect but good enough.
The inside covers are screenprints of old newspaper articles about none other than Mr. Coffee.
In total, it’s an 8 page fold out– the coffee ranges from chain brands to NY-high-snob-factor. I tried to present you the coffee in every way possible without actually telling you what they are. Where’s the fun in giving that away right?
In my preliminary designs, I actually had more than 20 coffee cups but they couldn’t all fit into the layout. I want to go back to it again though. There are so many great looking cups in New York.
I have another secret project that I’ll reveal soon too. And yes, it’s another distraction from my comic.
It’s been about 2 weeks since I’ve worked on any serious drawings or comics. When I don’t seriously draw for this long, I start feeling like my muscles are losing their memories and I have irrational fears that when I do draw again, I’ll have to start from scratch, stick people style.
Good thing I’ve started drawing sandwich people (complete with pants) on the train.
I probably shouldn’t let this drought go on for much longer. I’ll start updating every other day again even though they’ll be doodles to start.