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).

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!

I have a solo show coming up in October in Philadelphia! The working title of the show is “Mummers, Monsters & Mascots”. The opening will be on October 7th,  at InFusion in Mt. Airy, where the show will be hung. Stop by if you are in the area! The show will be up through the beginning of November.

I also have another comic that I am writing. It is going to be a really fun one. That is all I should probably say for now.

I update this blog pretty infrequently, I know, but there are reasons. I swear. I will have to get back to you on what they are though. If you want frequent updates, follow me on twitter. Be warned, though: things can get a little weird on there. I have been known to use inappropriate language when talking about sandwiches and launch into multi-tweet rants about artistic integrity or world building in Minecraft.

Also! More excitingly (for me), I have jumped on the Tumblr bandwagon and created one to update the internet on my sketchbook habits. I plan to update it often with little doodles and comics, so check it often! Seems like an awesome little platform for a guy like me, who just sorta starts drawing compulsively all the time.

Some other quick updates: I added an installation section to my website, where you can see a bunch of projects I did in 2006-07, when I had tons of space (and time). I also put a short CV up, for those interested.

Cheers!

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.

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.

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.

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.