I made these months ago, but it seems they slipped my mind and I neglected to share them here.
Both of these are samples from some stories I was kicking around. This is all you'll see from either of them (for a while anyway).
The first is called 'The Valley', a western with imagined supernatural tones, and the second is the Celtic myth of Cuchulainn and his growth into a man, which I've mentioned here before.
FYI: I'll still be attending the San Diego convention this year, but unfortunately due to a variety of abrupt circumstances I won't be having the published collection of short stories that I promised quite prematurely before. I should have some other goodies on hand however, including a few portfolios. Hope to see you there.
I finally got around to creating an online portfolio. It's a fairly comprehensive collection of all the work I'm proud of to date. I'll be adding more and more comics available for view as I make them. There is store section that will be up and running eventually that will have prints, original art, self-published material, etc. Have a look around.
And for anyone who cares or is free, I'll be in NY this month (June) from the 18th to the 21st. And I'm still looking for a place for late August if anybody knows of anything.
This past year I was accepted to be a part of the Uppercase Gallery publication, "Work/Life", which profiles various canadian photographers and illustrators and, obviously, their daily practices regarding work and life. Here's what I submitted:
Again, this looks kind of poopy on blogger, see better color on the Flickr link on the right.
It's looking to be a really great book so far, I'm proud to be a part of it. It was put together by Janine Vangool who is the prorietor of the "Uppercase Gallery", a great design-oriented shop in Art Central, right in the heart of downtown Calgary. If you're in the area I highly recommend dropping in, it's the best place to find some very strange books.
The book launch is June 4th, and on June 5th you can come down to the uppercase gallery for the exhibition opening featuring most of the work from the book.
Buy the book here:
http://shop.uppercasegallery.ca/
http://www.uppercasegallery.ca/
Some good friends of mine will be in the book as well, be sure to take a look at their work:
I apologize to anyone who's been looking at this blog with any regularity for the lack of updates. I've finished up with my art-related academics (for now) and therefore the frequency of assignments having to do with single illustrations has decreased drastically. I'll try to keep the updates coming here by delving further into my sketchbook explorations. I appreciate those of you who have been looking here by the way.
All that being said, I have indeed been keeping busy. I'm glad to say that what I'm keeping busy with is comics, so that means I can't really put much up here that is seeing publication. What I'm doing mostly is writing and illustrating short stories for some anthologies and potentially a couple other larger projects.
The first is for Popgun Volume 2, due out late July I believe. Edited by Mark Andrew Smith and Joe Keatinge.
Even though the story I did is a year old and a little embarrassing to look at, I'm proud to present it as my first published work in comics. I'm also considerably thrilled that the cover of my first published work was drawn by Paul Pope, who is obviously hugely influential on my craft.
Here's a panel from the story written and drawn by myself titled "Out of Focus"
If I'm not mistaken Popgun is going to be released at the same time that San Diego Comic Con is getting started. I'll be attending SDCC for the first time this year, and I'll be slinging a collection of some of my short stories that should clock in at around 50 pages. If you want a copy (no table for me) or just want to talk comics, drop me a line and we can meet up there.
Alberto Ruiz-Diaz recently published "Eye Candy From Strangers" vol 1 and 2, and it looks like I'll have an image featured in each of them.
You can order it at Alberto's Brandstudio Press where you'll see collections by a number of notable artists that he's published. In case you don't know Alberto already, he is an amazing artist in his own right, and he does a lot of great things for a lot of great artists. So, if your at the NY Comic Con or the Calgary Comic Con, be sure to stop by his table, say hi, and give him all your money.
And, for anyone interested in getting into the next volume of "Eye Candy From Strangers", he just put up a call for entries on his website.
Apologies for the color quality on this, I can't seem to upload it with out it taking a drastic decrease. If you go to my flickr account, linked on the right, you can see a more accurate version.
Here is a quick mock-up from a personal comic i've been kicking around for a while. I was looking into self publishing it, but I'm wondering if that's necessary with so many independent publishers popping up. Does anyone have any valuable information on that sort of thing?
If you’re at all concerned with the ideas surrounding assimilation, originality, copyright, and influence, particularly when it applies to any art, these two items are undeniably worth your time.
In these entries, the incredibly pop culture-savvy author Jonathan Lethem discusses the validity of artists mining the ideas and fruits of other artists, and the convoluted functions of copyright practices since there was a market for publishing anything.
As an art student, I'm painfully aware of how touchy a subject this is with young hopefuls (myself included). For reasons that I blame strictly on the general structure of the publishing world (including art & design, literature, music, ect.), I feel a genuine pang of guilt and defeat whenever someone accurately cites one of my primary aesthetic influences, those names being Mazzucchelli, Pope, Hanuka, Jean, Risso, and Muñoz. The preferred doctrine that is especially popular in academic areas is that strong influences should be avoided and originality revered. I believe that’s true to an extent, and that originality and ingenuity are rare virtues, but I don't believe that good ideas are harvested from the ether.
In his essay "The Disappointment Artist", Lethem talks about a writer named Edward Dahlberg, an apparently brilliant man who never managed to acquire an appropriate level of recognition partly due to his inability to embrace alternative ideas, and his self-enforced alienation from his own industry. This painfully reminded me of Alex Toth, who is arguably the most technically gifted cartoonist of the 21st century. Despite his inexhaustible talent, he was unable to manufacture an admirable body of work comparable the scale of comic Celestials like Kirby and Eisner. It is understood this is because of his energy and efforts being focused on resistance to change, and admiration for out-dated and questionable ideals. He was a famously difficult person, and I am very sad to mention, apparently very lonely and enraged in his later years. I wonder if its vanity, an over-developed sense of self preservation, bad luck, or something completely immeasurable (the likely answer), which puts an artist in that position.
It's a fickle problem. The assimilation process can be inspiring, but if unchecked can cause you to loose grasp of your own voice and be nothing more than a watered-down version of the original, while the resistance of these things could create friction, sending you into a black hole of cynicism that will swallow everything it goes near. In fact, a good portion of what I've written here is assimilated from everything Lethem said. Does that make it invalid? Probably, but hopefully someone will get some value from it. The only thing I can say with any confidence is that experimentation and a laboratory process is required for credible ingenuity in the arts. Comparing this to an actual laboratory, it would be absurd for a theorist to disregard all previously developed concepts for the sake of his or her own self-proclaimed and universal truth.
"1. Gazelle leather sports coat nutmeg brown 2. Coconut straw hat deep beige with pugaree band 3. Light tweed jacket with dark buttons, plaid slacks, alligator shoes, soft brown shirt, narrow bow tie, brown felt hat with narrow sharp brim 4. Creamy white shetland wool sports coat with dark Oxford gray slacks, solid burgundy four-in-hand tie, plaided handkerchief to match, plain white shirt and tie. Collar slightly stiffened.
I don't know much about the industry, but I would consider it rare to have the opportunity to endorse a product that you both use daily, and love.
The Moleskine company got a hold of me recently to ask if they could put my physical sketchbook up on display at the London Book Fair this year. It's to show how people use their moleskines. Sound interesting, aparently it will be open for the public to flip through. Should be something along these lines:
It says on the website that the fair is April 14-16, so if anybody happens to be in London around then and going to the fair, take some pictures of my babies for me. In the meantime, here are a couple of sketches I made before I ship them off. 3 cookies if you can guess what they're from.
