The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass.

A comic production for Paul Karasik's class. All of Aesop's fables are pretty depressing when it comes down to it. I personally hadn't heard of this story before, so it was pretty interesting to envision this fable versus others which I've seen illustrated many times before (tortoise and hare, lion and mouse, etc.). I feel like my inking style changed a lot from the first to the last page, but I'm still pretty happy with it as a whole. We'll see if that feeling lasts after I bring it into class on Tuesday...

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.

Moebius Tribute

As (hopefully) many of you have heard already, my comics hero Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, died earlier this month at the age of 73. I was devastated, to put it lightly. Anyhow, I somehow was alerted to this project, which is a sort of collaborative tribute to Moebius via recreating the characters and scenes shown on a set of 89 "collector cards". I came a little late to the sign up party, but still managed to nab myself a spot.

Here is my contribution:

...and here is the original card inspiration, "Pooh"

Big Ole Watercolour & Gouache Update

I make a lot of things in this class. When one makes a lot of things very quickly, many of them don't turn out well. Some turn out okay. If the stars are aligned correctly and an elf gave you an eskimo kiss in your sleep the night before, one might turn out good. Here's some of the paintings that didn't make me want to stab my brushes in my eyes (mostly).

Christopher Walken portrait (1.5 hr)

Not so pleased with this one, but it passes. 1.5hr.

We had to show three figures, with one figure pouring "something" into containers of the other two. 1.5hr.

It's...me opening a dollhouse cupboard to find...me? I don't even know. 1.5hr.

Some embarrassing in-class paintings. Each about 30-40 minutes.

In class painting. 80 minutes.

Same deal is the one before. I wish I'd gotten a different angle, but all the other seats were taken.

A homework assignment - Five figures engaged in an activity outdoors. This is based of a picture of Maasai men prepping to bleed a cow. 1.5 hr.

"color switch" homework, where all colors in our reference image had to be altered. This one didn't scan too well.1.5 hours.

Homework assignment where we had to use colored paper and leave 30% of the surface untouched via masking fluid. 1.5 hr.

I still make comics (it's true)

I just haven't been posting them, I swear. Clodhopper is on the back burner, although I have page four thumbnailed and waiting for the right day to execute it. However I do have some stuff for my comics class with Paul Karasik that I'm really totally psyched about. Our first assignment for the class brought me back to the wintersession comics class I took with R. Kikuo Johnson freshman year: a one page instructional comic. As a little baby freshman I tried to do "how to rock climb" with...uh...medicocre results. It's really odd to think back to a time not so long ago when I didn't understand how comics work and was only vaguely aware of Moebius.

With two years of comics stuffed into my brain, I managed to create something with a greater level of clarity. We really finessed our instructional comics in class, and thanks to the advice of Paul & my peers I am pretty happy with the end result, below. My subject was "making a pb&j" (although if you can't figure that out from looking at the comic I failed to in my efforts at communication).

Disclaimer: I am a younger sibling, and this may have affected my portrayal of the older brother.

I'm currently working on inking the second assignment for Paul's class, which I should be able to finish over the next four or five days if I'm on my game.

Another recent development is that I made myself a new portfolio website on cargo collective, which you can find right here. It's much sleeker and more customizable than carbonmade, imo. Next step will be to get my own domain name...

Watercolor - Not my strong point

Below you'll find the two most recent assignments from my watercolor and gouache class + one in-class painting  from today. The two homework assignments are each 100% watercolor and three hours of work, timed fairly accurately. This week in class we started trying to combing watercolor and gouache within the same painting...which turned out to be a massive disaster for me and many others in the class. I'm too ashamed to post the other three paintings I made in class, and look forward to burning them at the end of the semester with great enthusiasm.

You can't see, but he is cleaning a knife on his apron. Assassin.

Assignmetn: shiny and/or reflective objects

A small flame of hope burned in my heart - that I would be able to make paintings that don't completely suck. But then I made the painting after this one and that flame was extinguished forever.

Clodhopper 3

So far I've been able to keep up with Clodhopper since my comics homework has been relatively light so far. And so I present to you, page three.

I'm not entirely psyched on this page, since I was trying out some nibs and other inking stuff in the making. I also used some spot blacks, which isn't something I'm used to and I was a little heavy handed all around, I think. However, I'm not too concerned about consistency of style between pages at this point, because this is more of a personal project than anything else.

Brought to you by Better Homes & Gardens

P.s. How do groups of people work, even?! Oh dear.

Note taking

I thought I would share a little of my sketchbook today, since working in it is such an essential part of my creative process. My sketchbook is essentially a record of all the stupid/genius ideas I come up with as well as a receptacle for random bits of paper, images, doodles, class notes. I know a lot of other artists use several sketchbooks or have one reserved for "good" stuff, but for me it makes the most sense to cram everything together as a sort of comprehensive record of my brain.

Anyway, here is the current cover of my sketchbook as well as a few pages that combine classwork or class notes with whatever my hand feels like drawing at the moment.

It's hard to tell, but this book is about the size of a math textbook. Perfect!

Left - studies of the Brian Chippendale piece 'home on the run' as a part of a comics assignment. Right - some quick figure drawings...and other stuff. 

Left - Psychology of gender notes. Right - first page of art history notes.

Continuation of art history notes - this part of class was a very fast slide lecture.