One Month Later

A lot has happened in the past month...

I spent a week in Chicago with family and friends.

There was a hurricane in NYC.

And then there was a snow storm.

None of these are really excuses for not updating my blog. They just all happened when I just so happened to not be updating my blog. So here's an update on some stuff. Yay!

For Halloween I dressed up at Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd.

The top one is Moss (played by Richard Ayoade) and the bottom one is me, in case you couldn't tell.

A quick sketch of me as Moss.

Today I got a chance to go to The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival and see selections from the 2012 Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation (which plays annually in Chicago, but was replayed in part for BCGF). I got to see a lot of cool artists and view some interesting animation. I also spent way more than I should have on comics. 

BDGF swag and the Eyeworks program (cover designed by Ivan Brunetti ).

I was lucky enough to get some of my comics signed by some pretty cool artists/authors like...

Lilli Carré

Rina Ayuyang

and Aron Nels Steinke.

I came home from all the fun today to find a notice from the post office. They tried to deliver my Don Hertzfeldt DVDs, but they wouldn't fit in my mailbox. Now I have to wait until Monday to pick them up from the post office. Oh, and just so yous guys know, I've got a little freelance project I'll be working on for the next week or so, so I probably won't post again for another week or so. Anyways, here are some more Snapshots to hold you over until then.

Snapshots 04

Pink

Felt like doing some work on the computer. 

Sketch

Final

Snapshots 03

Another round of Snapshots.

Snapshots 02

A couple more snapshot comics. See Snapshots 01 for more info.

Snapshots 01

So here are some of the comics I promised you. When I first started doing daily comics back in January, I was a little intimidated by the idea. So to ease into drawing a daily comic, I started small. The whole month of January I drew one panel comics. I wanted them to be a sort of snapshot of something that happened to me that day or how I felt at that moment. All of these comics were drawn on the date written on the bottom. I almost forgot several times to draw my daily comic so many of them were drawn when I was sleepy or drunk or some magical combination of both. Anyways, enough explanation. Enjoy! 

More to come.

Another sketchbook has come and gone...

I think I'll call this one "Pinky". It is a bright pink sketchbook that I received from a co worker. It was a little shorter than I'm used to when it comes to sketchbooks at only 70 pages. I'd say about half of it was filled with figure drawings and the other half with some pretty absurd sketches, some that were finalized into illustration pieces and some that were just rough, head clearing, mindless meanderings with no future. Since you've probably seen most of the figure drawing pieces here are some of the sketches. Enjoy.

Boy climbing fence.

Rough sketches for my fire escape piece.

Me and my sister acting goofy.

Random model.

Freckled chick.

Some person.

Guy afraid of the HOUND.

Some goofy little ditty.

And now for some ridiculous sketchy self doodles.

Don't ask.

Apparently I didn't feel like finishing the panda.

 So it's official, drawing myself in my underwear is a thing. Also, if that first self portrait made me look way uglier than I actually am, then this drawing is giving me way too much credit.

This is about right.

So lastly, and possibly most importantly, I'd like to take this time to announce that I am officially dropping my daily comics drawing as a thing. I've got about six and a half months of daily comics done (January, February, part of March, June-August, and part of September). As it turns out they are not for me. This isn't to say that I don't like drawing comics, the opposite is true. I love drawing comics, it's just that my average day to day is pretty boring. Also, over the months I've tried a few formats and couldn't find anything I really liked. I also found with drawing a daily comic, I was forcing myself to draw things I didn't really care about and tended to force myself to not draw more of things that I think were actually interesting things that happened to me. I don't think I will ever stop drawing journal comics, that are comics about interesting things that happen to me, but I will no longer be drawing them on a daily basis. By doing this I will be able to draw comics that I think have more substance. So yeah... I'm currently working on spending time daily to finish inking those comics and plan on posting them on here fairly regularly until I have posted them all. All the while concentrating on other things. So there's that. My guess is that most people just look at the pictures on this blog anyway, so I doubt this will really make any kind of difference to anyone, as they probably didn't know I was drawing a daily comic to begin with.

Some People I Admire

So it turns out that this is the time of year where all of my favorite artists decide to come out from hiding and do things like attend festivals and conventions and put out new work. Needless to say I'm quite too poor to do all things I wanted to do this fall. I'm not able to attend NYC Comic Con and it turned out I didn't have the funds to travel to Maryland to go to SPX like I wanted to. However, I think I made out pretty good with being able to see and get some pieces from some of my favorite artists.

Friday I was surprised to find that an original watercolor piece I ordered from Koyamori (her real name is Cynthia) finally arrived in the mail. I was even more surprised to find that it came in a cute personalized envelope with a nice little note and a couple of postcard sized prints for free! I've followed Cynthia for years on Deviantart and now follow her updates via her tumblr site. She is extremely talented and prolific. Cynthia, along with an artist named Aya Takano (whom I've mentioned on this blog before) are my biggest influences when it comes to inks and watercolors. I'm so excited to have an original piece of hers and can't wait to get a frame for it and hang it up along with so many other pieces I've collected from other artists I admire. 

 Friendly Fisher by Koyamori

All the other goodies I got from her!

If you like what you see, she has many other original pieces as well as prints and stickers available for purchase on her online store.

Also on Friday I got the chance to go to this awesome event put on by the Brooklyn Book Festival featuring Los Bros Hernandez. At the event the brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, did some live drawing, talked a little about their process and their experiences making comics, and did a Q&A. I've, unfortunately only read a relatively small selection from their many many stories (they published their first Love and Rockets book in 1982). However, they are huge inspiration in my comics making. I admire their ability to tell the stories they want to tell and not have to bend to the comics industry standards. Their artwork is beautiful, I absolutely love their style of drawing. So, anyways, the event was a lot of fun and inspiring and afterward I got the chance to meet them briefly and tell them how much their work meant to me. I also got two more books to add to my collection!
  

So last night I got the chance to see another comics idol of mine, Julia Wertz! This event also put on by the Brooklyn Book Fest featured seven comics artists including Julia Wertz all reading pieces of their most current work along with slides of the artwork. It was an absolute dream to see Julia in person, she was very funny and often made little side comments about things she was thinking about or how she felt while writing or experiencing particular stories. I love how honest her work is and she has been a huge inspiration in my own journal comics. I only wish I was half as funny as she is. Anyways, I got to walk out of the event last night with her newest book, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories. 

And lastly, even though it won't arrive in the mail for another month, I should mention that just the other day I pre-ordered Don Hertzfeldt's new DVD, Don Hertzfeldt vol.2, which includes his short animated trilogy turned feature film It's Such A Beautiful Day. As much as Don Hertzfeldt will consider himself a filmmaker as opposed to an animator, he has been one of my main animation/filmmaking inspirations. It's Such A Beautiful Day is a beautifully tragic yet funny trilogy and I can't wait to see all three films together as one. I've gotten the chance to meet and see Don live in person  a few times and the reason he is so inspiring is that he just always keeps creating. He puts out film after film and uses the money he makes on one film to fund the making of his next film. He has to be insane with the amount of work that he puts into animating especially since all the animation is hand drawn on paper, filmed on film, and all the effects are done in camera using double exposure and other fun camera tricks. I can't express enough how crazy the man must be, but regardless he loves what he does and his persistence is inspiring. 

Comics!

 So I recently participated in a comics exchange hosted by the website reddit.com. Not sure if any of yous guys are familiar with the website, but their gift exchange program recently won a Guiness Book of World Records award for largest world wide secret santa exchange. Anyways, along with doing the secret santa exchange they also host a slew of other themed gift exchanges. Now back to my story. For my gift exchange match I decided to draw them a comic along with the comics that I sent that for them to read. Below is a snippet of the comic I sent to the person who just so happened to also live in NYC. 

Since I am talking about comics I thought I might just post the little daily comic I drew today. I said before that back in July I restarted drawing a daily journal comic. I have no intention of posting them with any kind of regularity. I just wanted to post this one today.