Studio Yolo Comic

I was the guest writer at Studio Yolo this month, here's the comic I made. I found that working from my own script was less of a challenge and allowed me to take it in a more personal direction. I should do diary comics like this. It's a bit of a leak, since the rest of the comics submissions for this month's challenge won't go live for a few more days. I took studio mate/fellow YOLO brolo Dean Haspiel's advice and kept everything simple. Click to read.

Rabid Rabbit #14: Love Letter

 

I never posted the complete version of the Love Letter comic I did for Rabid Rabbit. I think the book itself is very beautiful. The production team at Rabid Rabbit did a beautiful job. My messy desk makes an appearance.

Hey Hey

It's my birthday today. I got up at 5am and made some funny self portraits. I have been thinking alot about Margaret Kilgallen, who is one of my favorite artists. She lived in the Mission in San Francisco and played the banjo and wrote on trains and painted funny ladies and pretty leaves. She died of breast cancer three weeks after her daughter was born in 2001. I have wanted to do a portrait of her for awhile, and am really happy with this piece.

Blessing of the Fleet, Part One

 Via Wikipedia:

The Blessing of the Fleet is a tradition that began centuries ago in Mediterranean fishing communities. The practice is predominantly Catholic and a blessing from the local priest was meant to ensure a safe and bountiful season.

Biloxi's Blessing of the Fleet was this past weekend, where they encountered some rain. You can read more here. The Reverend that gives the blessing is from St. Michael's, "The Fisherman's Church", in Point Cadet, a neighborhood in Biloxi just before the bridge that crosses the bay into Ocean Springs.. It happens to look like a giant shell, which is awesome. Here is a picture St. Michael's after Katrina. The flags covering the shrimp boats are really sweet. I'm taking an etching/bookmaking class this summer, so I should have a larger series (hopefully, a book) on this by the end.

Strange Fruit, Page One

Drawing Club

Charmingwall Show June 4th

I'll be showing these wee little paintings at Charmingwall Gallery on June 4th, a Friday. It's on West 4th Street. It's a cool concept called the 6x6 Project, the participating artists buy canvas from the gallery and they're hung together in a salon style grid. There's a wine reception and the work stays up for a month in the gallery and 3 months on their website. If a piece is sold you get an 80/20 split, which means you have a decent chance of getting your initial investment returned. Stop by the gallery and go for it, the openings are always a blast and it's cool to be in a show with so many talented artists. Plus it's in the West Village and not Red Hook so your friends from Jersey will totally come.

Ok?

I haven't gotten alot of sleep lately but I have been really lucky to get work done and see many inspiring friends. I wish I could work on these a bit longer, it was a rush to get these done in less than a week. This project made me realize I haven't painted (especially on canvas) in a super long time, and the gouache was not into the surface at all, it kept beading because I added too much water.  But a fun time indeed!

Swampy pt. 2

Almost there....need some bigger black parts, esp. behind the birds.
They're imaginary birds so they don't really look like anything, though in the next piece I want to make a page full of White Ibises, I found out they like swamps, they are SO AWESOME.

There may be a color version of this in the future but right now I'm working on just getting a bunch of stuff inked for the residency. Eeep!

Swampy

I am making a series of drawings for a comic book residency, here is the first one, it's not finished yet but I wanted to preserve this stage/show it off because I am pretty excited about it. The brush pen was drying out and the paper is a nice soft texture with a heavier weight so I got some cool brushy things happening. I basically picked a bunch of stuff I wanted to draw and put it all together for fun. I had an idea for a story but I'm a crappy writer so I thought this would help me get past the dread of not being witty or cool enough to make it in the first place.
Also my friend Suzan told me about this embroidery thing, Hoopla, it looks pretty cool and it's FREE to enter/no limit on submissions. Get stitching everyone!

What the Heck Man

Super Duper

Here's a comic I made for SUPERTALK.

Endymion Floats

Waiting For Spring

yee haw

Here's a nice brushy thing I made for that zine I mentioned in a previous post. I am having more trouble than I would like to admit trying to piece together images in photoshop because the scanning bed was a few inches too narrow...going to rescan the snow pieces tomorrow. But for now I'm going to make dinner and make more weird paintings. Update you on the flip side!

Oh La

Here's excerpts of this two page comic I'm doing for a new zine, Paper Bag.
I was also thinking of how cypress trees look really nice with plastic flags, and how overgrowth in the natural world seems compatible with overgrowth in the man-made world. Plus swamps are really cool.
And a few sleepyheads just because I found some pictures I liked.

Problems With Easy Solutions

Happy New Year.

shoot your stars

Embroidery experiement:

new painting

sketchbook

don't lose yourself

I haven't noticed summer because of the ridiculous amounts of rain. Apparently, in Mississippi there has been a drought for as long as we've had all of this freakish precipitation in NYC. I just read this book and I'm feeling dismal about being a part of global warming/the human race in general. I really am not the hippie type and I think Al Gore is a capital d-bag but there is a big problem no one is addressing, save to recycle a few yogurt cups. I wonder if I get my feelings of apprehension of the coming apocalypse from my father's side of the family.

Here's a painting I did. I need to paint more, think less.



Also, Ernie Barnes is really great. I discovered him via this great interview with Judith Linhares.

Ernie Barnes Paintings:



In other news, Vibe Magazine and Nickelodeon Magazine folded. Maybe I should go to grad school and teach kids in rural Mississippi how to make books.