First SPX!

This past weekend I went to SPX for the first time, and it was so great. I came back with a bunch of great comics and about 400% more psyched than I was going in. Below you'll find a silly sketchbook comic I made to document the event as well as some photos of *part* of my haul (Includes a signature from Chris ware on the copy of Lint I brought along from home).

 

Things in my hands

Get ready for a bunch of mediocre-quality digital photos! I have no work on Fridays (so far...) so I decided to take some pix of things in my immediate vicinity, and then to upload them with limited explanation. Explore results below.

Bonus embarrassing photo of me trying to stuff everything I own into two suitcases in my new room back in Providence.

View from the front porch of my Montreal apartment. It's  really nice, I swear.

My room here opens out onto a second floor balcony sort of thing. It looks like a pretty grim scene from this photo, but actually usually this area is filled with happy little hasidic children arguing and playing (i think it is a Hasidic elementary/day care). I swear, every jewish kid in this neighborhood is required to travel by A) bike B) scooter C) tricycle at all times. When school gets out, you have to keep aware or they will steamroll you in packs.

Proof that I'm still making things.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for comics. I received my copy of Battle Ass  from a trade I did with the artist. It's very Mat Brinkman / Brian Chippendale inspired and bound in some crazy zig-zag way that I need to learn. 

But the real excitement came when I found that my Pre-order of Happiness Comix #2 arrived as well!  And damn, look at all those things that came with it (note pogs!!!!!). I don't really feel like writing up a review right now, but hopefully it is good enough to say that if you have a few bucks you should send them this way instead of blowing em on yr starbucks. Also, it features A.T. Pratt, a fellow RISDoid.

This is what greets you upon opening Happiness #2. Convinced yet?

The third reason it was a triumphant day for my comics collection.  I am working on adding the sound effects to another Shigeru Mizuki manga that D+Q is putting out  in english next year, Kitaro. The letters for the sound effects in Nonnonba are the same that are being used for Kitaro (see below), so I've been looking at Nonnonba for reference. I asked if I could take it home to actually read for the weekend, and my boss actually said I could have it for free. LOVE THIS JOB.

The aforementioned sound effects

A sketchbook comic from Thursday, my long day of transit and finally arrival in Montreal.

 So in conclusion, errything is pretty okay. D+Q is the best and I feel at home in the city already. Here we go...

Spoils of New York

Yesterday, I went down to New York with Anita to visit the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MOCCA) and waste some money down at Midtown Comics. While the museum was way tinier than expected, it was still worth the trip and I recommend that anyone with an interest in Bat Man and/or Bat Manga checks out the current exhibit before it closes in late April.

Anyway I came back to PVD with three things.

Left: Acme Novelty Library No. 20 by Chris Ware. Anything Ware makes just destroys me. After I finished Jimmy Corrigan I just laid around for a day in despair. So buying this was dangerous. But, like everything by Chris Ware, ANL20 is depressing in the most beautiful and intricate ways...definitely worth picking it up if you get the chance (I won't ruin the story).


Center: The Aliens by some woman named Helen Olian. I have no idea who she is, but this early 90's book is the best one dollar I ever spent (bought this at Strand). This book is amazing. It’s full of all these really bizarre early 90s paint program cartoons, all about the same stereotypical little-green-men type aliens. From the foreward: “Helen Olian is a published cartoonist whose work has appeared in UFO mazgaine for the past several years […] Helen has exhibited a long-term commitment to the UFO mystery and an unswerving devotion to the human effort to solve this mystery and discover its cosmic core.”

My favorite pages. On the left it says "Why the aliens wear coveralls." What?!

Right: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Brian Lee O'Malley. I've always wanted to read Scott Pilgrim, but for some reason the RISD library doesn't have it. I almost expected to not like it, based on the amount of hype surrounding both the series itself and the movie adaptation (which I have in fact seen). But I really enjoyed this comic, despite of myself. Pretty harmless and fun reading, with a tolerable level of kitsch and self-consciousness. I'll be looking to read the rest of the series whenever I can...


So, despite all the down time Anita and I ended up having (we thought the museum'd take longer) I'd call the trip a resounding success. Oh, and it definitely helped that I got to eat two falafel+hummus sandwiches in one day. Can't go wrong there.

Halloween Diorama

I don't really enjoy making cute things. Although I love me some kitsch now and then and I enjoy doodling weird monsters, drawing happy children is not my strong point. Despite this handicap, I pushed through on my "halloween diorama" artist's book assignment. I actually drew this out in pen and ink, intending to color by hand, but was told in class to try it with photoshop (and I'm glad I did). The only annoyances were having to pay a print shop to print out several copies for me and having to cut all the tiny little edges on the trees and kids a second time.

I can't get over how much I like doing the covers for these books. Something about thick, soft paper wrapped around a solid rectangle is really satisfying for some reason.

If only that horse costume was real

Disregard the ghost behind the book

Nothing on the cover for now

Furry Artist's Book for Fall

Real fur!
Real paper!
Real gouache!
Real ink!
Real words!
Real comfort!
Really tiny!

Studio Tour

Hey, so I spend a lot of my time currently in a queer art collective space in Providence filled with awesome comic artists/musicians/printmakers/textilers(?)/all around excellent humans. I built myself a studio there to work and sometimes live in from found materials and a lot of paint and fabric. Take a look!

Side #1

Front door and wall

"desk"

This guy looks familiar...

Inside wall (opposite first wall)

Fabric ceiling

Reading/Sleeping Area

Back wall

more webcam

i'm probably the worst blogger. this will be my second post in a row with a webcam picture of some unfinished paintings. this is pretty relevant since it will be my final project when finished!

a segment from my project proposal to give you an idea of what it's about:

Second life and other virtual worlds allow the user to enter an alternate, untrue reality which draws users in by the worship of its very falsehood. The distance from physical truth and body allows activities which would normally be mundane to transform into extraordinary out of body experiences in the eyes of the user. The body is in a state of rest/suspension while the mind engages in an escapist virtual experience similar to a religious vision or dissociative hallucination. The triangle symbolizes the elevation of this virtual world to a god-like status, dependent on its ability to separate the user from the physical world. The paintings will show the changes in perception of self and reality when one enters a virtual world in relation to the attraction of the digital nonreal.

sooo unfinished

this gif will be projected above the paintings

Late night

I've got three new paintings to post but haven't had the time/light to photograph them. Instead, please enjoy this poor quality webcam photo of two paintings in progress for this week. They're related, I swear.

Electric Canvas Nonsense

Three of five photoshop collages made overnight for our first assignment in Electric Canvas (my wintersession painting studio).

Derp

Here I am, at home, going a little stir crazy. And being almost completely unproductive. RISD beckons...

Here's a sketchbook drawing/painting I made, inspired by a fragment of a dream I remembered from a few nights ago.

see//taste wallpaper!

I made myself some computer wallpaper from my card back design. If you are so inlined, please enjoy it for your own computer as well! This version is intended for 1366x768 resolution, but in all likelihood it will look fine on other resolutions.

Lucian Freud Master Copy

I finished my master copy of Lucian Freud's Double Portrait this week and I'm fairly pleased with the outcome. Of course, the more I look at it, the more I see that needs tweaking, but for a three week effort it turned out alright.

Card Back Design

Part of my illustration final!

Fragment #10

It's 9am. I just finished this piece. Anticlimactic? Definitely. But I'm happy to have 10 pieces in my series, regardless. I'm not really capable of writing coherent sentences right now, so expect a post about the series as a whole some time in the near future.

I ran out of energy right in the middle of this one so I resorted to symbols. Fragment #10 is 100% acrylic paint.

Fragment #7

I feel like I've made hundreds of these. How am I only on seven?

Fragment #6

I'd say more but it would take too much effort. FINALS ARE RIDICULOUS

Master Copy

I worked for a while on my final project for painting, a master copy. I chose a Lucian Freud painting titled "Double Figure". It is about 1 meter on each side, probably the second largest painting I have ever worked on. So far I haven't got much past the underpainting, but hopefully in two weeks it will look something more like the original!

Original painting (colours are a bit off)

poorly lit photo of my progress so far