Tone It Down A Bit

The front and back covers for a client's self-published self-help book.  We both wanted it in a style similar to that music poster I did in the spring.  She requested warm, summery colors, and I think we got there, somewhere between New England afternoon and Saharan scorcher.  The back cover is, of course, way calmer than the front; I love the way certain bibliophiles use themselves as bookmarks. 

The original color comp was, for some reason, almost entirely bright orange.  Like, painful-to-the-eye road construction orange.  Never again!

Variations On Freaking Out

 

 

Shut Up! Shut Up!: A Retrospective

Yesterday I went with Bing Bing and So Jenn to the art museum in Philly. It hurt an awful lot, mostly in the soft tissue that pads my cerebral cortex. Brain hemorrages from laughter, this is unexplored territory. My favorite bits were the suits of armor and that statue of the baby squeezing a chicken.

Brothas Befo Druthas

Some characters from the kids book I'm woikin' on.

Stop Work, Shop Comic Books

Little in library ad for the teen comic book workshop I started yesterday. It continues through the summer, nearly each Tuesday from 2 to 4. We'll be working on characters, stories, dialogue, and layout while making various mini-comics-slash-li'l-zines galore. Yeah, an' I might make a few here and there, too, with all the unfussy fun flyin' 'round. Dang, them kids is inspirational conflagarations, fawoosh woosh! Micron, sharpie, and marker on paper.

Case Officially Opened

Last week was my first Jury Duty Summons. Though truancy was tempting, attendance was proved the better option. Our attendee confessed that it was a good day to appear and, indeed I hardly had time to bang out a few sketches before we left. Naturally, we were all rather flustered, our morals torqued about and so forth, our years of indentured servitude spoiled in three measly hours.


Honestly, the most productive I'd been for a while.

And Figure, Two

A bit of figure study snuck in at the library. The first is a musical storytime, the second is the Delaware First State Orchestra. It's a wild, wild, institution.





Why pay for models when people do it for free? Clothes are a bonus.

The Slaughter Mouse Club

Reading Alan Weisman's The Earth Without Us was like being sanded on all edges. He wore down all my agitated, global frets. Microbes breaking down nuclear waste. Microbes breaking down those wretched, ubiquitous plastic shopping bags. They'll figure it out, no doubt... in a million years. A slightly reduced burden on the daily conscience.


Of particular revelation was the "lost menagerie" chapter and how the fabulous ground sloth, mammoths, and other megafauna disappeared in a brief timespan. One researcher felt humanity's arrival on the continent explains everything:


Check out the time line for added comfort: http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

The Ketchup Game

Went to Jenn's BFA show at UD. Riveting. Spellbinding. Crazy. And ridiculously great. Kudos.

Unfortunately, Jenn's stuff ain't up online, so my comical journal (above) will haveta do.


Also caught the tail-end of Marianne's kickin' combination lock of printwork, drawings, and (handbound!) artist books. Her website's blooming as I type, so be sure to check her stuff at http://mariannedages.com.



As for me, I've been fooling along without documentation far too often. Am posting more frequent-ish. Beware.

Color Doodlin'

Inchin' Along

Fast of the Dough Deacons

Mäk and I headed south this summer, deep into the uncharted forest of confederacy known as Linville falls, North Carolina. A particularly memorable trail blazed was Chimney Rock, home to relatively summit-level vistas, innumerable rickety stairways, energetic packs of sandal-slippered tweens, and former shooting locations for the '92 version of Last of the Mohicans. A set up to stop all pacemakers.


This week, on our newly ongoing column 'Mäk Writes':



I immediately remembered a sketchbook page from earlier this year, scrawled briefly after our retrun from the smokies and slightly past my late night library rental of the same film. Nothing like previously unreleased road trip pics:



Can't you just hear the soundtrack fiddle pumping? Doesn't it make you wanna turn insomniac?

Back to Biz

From the strange land of no blogging, I return with many books trod upon.

Recommended reads:


Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – Makes me want to settle down in a Savannah townhouse and drink gin. Almost.

Isaac the Pirate – Wow. Read in one go, half the time on the can. And I don't spend much time on the can these days. Wow, with flat-cheeked applause.


Feed – M.T. Anderson read Maxim magazine and eavesdropped tweens at the mall while writing this. Needless to say, I love it, unit.

Miracleman : Olympus – Finally caught up with this out of print puppy. Gorgeous art. Ridiculously gorgeous art. Eye-popping stippling action unheard of in Photoshop.


Not recommended reads:

Crooked Little Vein –Wretchedly single layered, a 275 paged scummy film best wiped from memory asap.



And here are some random sketchnook pages:

Legs Benedict

A small ditty drawn out in one go, assembled on the laptop, homage to the fabulous revolutionary narrative The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Book I: the Pox Party by M. T. Anderson. A strange, brain-stroker of skewed colonial philosophy milked with equal parts lyric verse and gorgeous diction. Makes one yearn for the good ol', multisyllabic days and obese, rosy-cheeked pale-skinned intellectuals composing writs with much ado.

And it's just the first half.


Highly recommended, my brethren turncoats.

Supah-Hydronic-Boron-Powered

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaah, well, been a whiled number since last post, but don't despair or disrepair, this is your one stop for weird jawn-jawn. Behold:


I've been listening to Frank Herbert's Dune on library audiobook, and the hours spent painting the bathroom today certainly weren't wasted, either. I've tipped past the halfway point (12 of 22 discs) and the experience has begun to bubble. I've particularly been enjoying the Fremen method of roughing it in a desert world. Imagine, a sealed suit that reclaims and recycles almost all of your body's water. Jared imagined it for you in the scene above, except his wants to wander off. Everyone knows that stillsuits are crucial to survival, and Jared recovered beautifully. What better temptation than a clear cup of water?

Note: the lack of images and posts belie the cumbersome clunkedness of this six-year old desktop hulk. It's claimed too much of my makings, and it's certainly not finished yet.

Bringin' da Neat Box Home

Watching a bit of tee-vee with the rents. The history channel's promoting an upcoming series called "Ice Road Trucking." Behold mass media as they scrub down global borders.

Obsession with libraries perpetuated today. Went to the other nearby county branch for a couple hours, racking up near darn close to the ninety-nine item checkout policy. Definitely a telling sign of some kind.

Spurred on by great children's illustrators like Chris Van Allsburg, James Stevenson, and others I can't remember at the moment, I got all wrapped up drawing last minute tonight. The characters above were all used so far in the so far along comic of six pages.

Don Queithote and Sanchadd Panzadd

A road trip with Mäk is gonna feel something like this:


Been listening to Don Quixote on audio cassette... even a grocery trip proves exhilarating when narrated by George Guidall.

Gotta Mod Job

Check my new digs! Full blown library aid maid man:

Fetch a Nook, Brawl a Sook

A few sketches from the sketches books on an afternoon during which the sun was particularly sunny and sunbather friendly:


asadjin bala steeple... riven pour ebay.

plus, bionic parag triplets serenading emma.


all in a day's noodle.