sigh

You’ve been good to me, WordPress. So good. But Tumblr is just fitting my needs better right now. Forgive me. I have been regularly updating everythingisweird.com, my new sketchblog, with everything from quick sketches to shots of gallery installations. So from now on, go there instead of here. Also, have I mentioned that I am on twitter? I have been on it for a while, but just in case– follow me here.

 

First Friday show @ Drink Philly

I will be showing some work at Drink Philly’s  First Friday exhibition, November 4th, 5-9pm. I will be showing some of my “crowds” series that have not been exhibited before, as well as a couple other works dealing with protests and monsters. There will be excellent beer and other drinks, and a few other talented artists showing their work in what looks to be a great space, so it should be an excellent time.

Drink Philly–  Friday 11/4, 5-9pm
239 Chestnut St, 2nd Fl Unit B, Philadelphia, PA

My solo exhibition is still up at inFusion until October 31st. Check it out (info in previous blog posting).

Monsters, Mummers & Mascots

My first solo show (!), “Monsters, Mummers & Mascots” opens October 7th at InFusion: A Coffee and Tea Gallery in the Mt. Airy area of Philadelphia and closes, fittingly, on Halloween. InFusion is easy to get to from the Chestnut Hill East and West regional train lines that run through Philadelphia, situated at 7133 Germantown Ave., a couple blocks from the Allen’s Lane and Sedgwick stations.

The show focuses on work from the past two years dealing with people in costumes, creatures real and fictitious, and the feeling of magic and transformation, from which there arises a sense of ambiguity between the real, the imagined, and the imagined made real.

The pieces above are part of a larger series I have been working on for the past couple months. There will also be several larger ink and watercolor works in the show, as well as a few mixed-media pieces and some new wire drawing-sculptures.

I hope you can make it by to see the show!

site update

Just a quick note that I’ve added a selection of pages from A Walk in the Park to my main site. (click for link) 

it’s done.

Well, the book is done. The Thesis Show went up and went down. I graduated and got my MFA. So now I am simultaneously basking and wallowing in the netherworld that is post-graduate life. It’s going to take me a couple more weeks to fully reboot my productivity and art making ability and probably longer just to adjust to non-school life again, so in the meantime I am organizing, publicizing, and reflecting.

The Thesis Show was well attended and got some nice press. Here are some shots of my work in the gallery:

I count the final product of my thesis work, the short graphic novel A Walk in the Park, as a success. I have always been interested in sequential storytelling — it just took me until last year to muster up the cajones to take something this big on. I plan to write and draw a bunch more stories like this one, along with some really different kinds of comics, including a webcomic, an action (!) comic, and various experiments with narrative and figuration.

I plan to get the book printed and hopefully distributed soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s a quick anecdote from it.

MoCCA & **NEW** Works

I’ve been remiss in showing some new projects I’ve had, so here they are. This weekend, April 9-10 is MoCCA’s annual comics festival. I’ll be selling the following wares at a table (B-13) with some other talented folks.

The Shaman of Beer – a short silkscreen accordion book / advertisement for mystical drunkenness. Only eight copies left for MoCCA!

I also made some limited edition 3-color screenprints of art from A Walk in the Park! They’re about 8″ x 10.5″ and have hand-deckled edges, so treat with care.

I’ll have an advanced copy of A Walk in the Park for a select few to look at, but it’s not for sale. Yet. (if you ask me, maybe I’ll show it you…. maybe. the password is FISHPANTS. points for reading this blog.)

Branwell – At last, the prodigal son reaches print. The infernal, probably misguided life of the other other other Bronte sibling is the subject of this mini-comic I made last summer. This story involves 19th-century British colloquialisms, laudanum, extramarital relations, TB, and insane bitterness. You have been warned.

I may also have a special sketch zine ready for the show, depending on time constraints.

**EDIT** I’ll also have high-quality giclee prints on entrada rag paper of the following spread from A Walk in the Park.

INFINITELY KICKASS ANNIE

I was commissioned by Annie Koyama, founder of Koyama Press and overall amazing person, to draw my own version of her logo. A number of really talented people have already drawn their own version. This was a fun one.

“i ain’t no punk fish!”

I did a portrait of classmate Daniel Fishel for our Thesis show postcard, who does some pretty nifty illustration and design himself. Fish has recently remade himself as a snazzy dressin’ lady-chaser, but he’s still a grungy straight-edge punk at heart, as evidenced by the speech bubble and weird, abstracted nose ring (which he doesn’t really wear anymore, but I couldn’t help myself).

 

building character

At the risk of destroying the story for some of you, I want to provide some insight into how the main character of A Walk in the Park came into being. The story of Charlie the Assistant Office Manager began as many great ideas do — with a late night beer-fueled discussion. It was just a normal night, watching the miracle of modern filmmaking that is The Tribe with some friends.

Zach and I were talking about how things like this gain so much steam, and then started talking about internet memes. We then developed a conspiracy theory about a businessman who lives in the woods and makes his money by creating memes. He lives in a cabin in the woods, but still wears a suit every day.

This somehow mutated in my brain  and then on paper (the memes disappeared) to form a story about an ordinary guy who meets someone different, and that ordinary guy became Charlie. After a couple of terrible sketches, I got a basic notion about him — a short, chunky, meek guy with big glasses, an awesome mustache, and not a lot of hair left.

I didn’t fully know how he should be drawn though, so I started looking for reference.

I couldn’t help but think of Stephen Root as Milton in OfficeSpace, but I didn’t want Charlie to become that character. I wanted him to be less awkward and pathetic, a little more fun and relatable. Also, there was another movie character in the back of my head who seemed closer to his character, but I couldn’t quite pin it down.

Finally, I realized that I was thinking of Bud Cort’s bond stooge character in The Life Aquatic. He had character, despite being framed as a boring clerk type.

I started drawing from reference at this point, and slowly Charlie took form. His development wasn’t done, however — he continued to change as I drew and redrew the page sketches.

The level of realness/cartooniness was something I had a bunch of different ideas about, but in the end I wound up using more iconic cartoon features to describe him. Big bespectacled bug eyes like Dr. Shima from Paprika made it easy to show Charlie’s various states of shock and awe.

And the blocky nose and swirly mustache just seemed to add to his character. I’m a huge Saul Steinberg fan so the doodley line quality, especially in the mustache has been fun. Having the mustache go over his mouth, of course, makes him seem more passive, more like a victim, and also more lovable, I think.

I wasn’t really thinking of Pelinore from Sword in the Stone here, but I’d be lying if I said that movie wasn’t often in the back of my head.

head too thin/tall…

not quite right, but the feeling is there. His features and proportions still shift a bit from page to page because… well, because I don’t mind it. But after these sketches he became the guy you see in the pages I’ve posted. More to come.

 

a finish?

I’m thinking… maybe… this is what a finished page looks like?

(Click the image to see a larger, more detailed version.)

Yeah, I did. I did spend hours inking the night sky with a nib. And I’ll do it again, because there are like 15 more night time pages.  If there were a switch on me that said “HARDCORE JESS MODE”, this would be the time to hit it.

 

“‘Gulp,’ said Harry. Yeah, gulp that one down.” – Wizard People, Dear Readers