Mother & Child with Water Stairs

Big breakthrough last night due to a couple of great bloggers out there. Dani Draws and Zen Textures along with the ever present bittbox who provided me with all the advice and even some of the tools to create this piece above (bittbox is giving away beautiful photoshop watercolor brushes). The drawing is really a pencil doodle I did in my sketchbook that I later inked to pass the time and scanned to see if I’d use it someday. It turned up here when I was experimenting with the textured backdrop I got from Zen Textures for free! Beautiful scans of photoshop textures that makes it look like you’ve been traveling through the outback and had to make a drawing of a dream on an old folded open cereal box left in your backpack from 1972. Then I drew in the stairs in a color layer below the line layer and texturized the color with an eraser tool texture on a really large scale to make it look as if it had been printed in 1972 as well and the ink has peeled away. All of that texture combined with the dreamy nostalgia of the mother and child sitting so peacefully on the water stairs looking toward some gentle place not too far away, but no longer nearby.

That segues nicely into making it well known that I have a two week old little boy living in my house with me and my wife now. Alas, it has been a beautiful experience sensing my heart breaking open to loving a little human animal so currently unaware of its future status aside from what we project onto him.

He is living in a state of reflexes, nerves, accidental smiles, grunts, phlegm, boobs, and milk. We love him like it hurts. It’s a vague, but pulsating sense of needing to tell him, but feeling unable to communicate it. Right now that can be blamed on his inability to understand words, but I have my suspicions that I’ll be feeling it just as deep when he’s 12. Or 18. Or 50 if I live that long. Wow. It’s coming on slow too. Which means, I don’t have any idea when it will reach full capacity. Here’s a glimpse. Some drawings to come about babies and me. Meanwhile, meet Eli Jupiter Foss.

Finding the middle by starting at the ends

This is a series of drawings I recently did for a presentation about the extremes I’ve experienced in my life. They’re all drawn right in my sketchbook with ink and brush. Each is about 7″x10.” The stories are beneath each drawing.

When I was two, my parents found me walking on the foundation of our new house before it was built. My mother had to carefully talk me down. I’ve always imagined this image as symbolic for my life. Being willing to walk up to the ledge and look out. Strangely I’ve always been scared of heights.

This image describes a comforting ritual I have when I go swimming. I spend as much time underwater as I can. I think it’s a desire to return to the womb sometimes during my busy life. I come up long enough for a breath and then dive to the bottom over and over.

I plug my ears in the shower sometimes and close my eyes for the thunderous sound and warmth of the water to quiet my overstimulated nervous system. Also womblike.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve enjoyed sleeping while someone is vacuuming in the next room. It’s partly because it’s nice not to have to be doing chores, but also because it’s such a nice sound. 

This is the opposite of calm, where I fell on my shoulder and neck during an unfortunate backscratcher attempted while skiing off a jump. I caught my tips I think.

This image describes a moment when I was trying to rewire the electric box for my kiln. Two 220 wires touched together and exploded like a gun shot. It terrified me. I took a shot of gin and carefully replaced the wires back in their sockets. I’d thought I’d turned off the main power, but I had not. This is why I draw now. Probably the closest to death I’ve come since the wires were so close to my fingers that my forefinger had smoke on it. yikes!

You Gotta Ask Your Heart

This is a series of images, the first seven out of seventy-five that are intended to accompany a song I’ve written, not so much as a music video in comics, but more of a live performance accompanied by projected drawings. I’ll put up the video when it’s done. What I’m excited by is the desire to work with two tones of wash directly on cold press Arches watercolor paper. Again finding I miss the old methods a little, simplifying my process. Each image is only 5×7 and so the sum makes a lovely little stack of originals that I’d like to enclose in a hand made box upon finishing. I’ll also make reproductions into a book hopefully. But for now, here’s a peek at what I’ve gotten scanned. I’ll put some more up soon. I tried to scan them so the torn edges of the paper would show so as to maintain some of the analog feel of a book despite the finals being projected. I’m also thinking of shuffling through them by hand on video so it shows the tactility of the paper more while it is accompanied by the song. I’ll attach that later once I’ve made the mp3. I’m still mixing it down. The song is called, You Gotta Ask Your Heart.

 

Getting Home

My most recent comic project. I’m doing what I can to develop a series of short stories during the time constraints of grad school and going to baby birthing classes. This, I hope is the first of many. Keep an eye out. This is also the first autobio comic I’ve tried, though the guy doesn’t look like me, this really happened. I was the biker and I’m not proud of my reaction. It’s a real conundrum what to do about the feeling that, as a biker, sitting at a red light feels ridiculous when there are no cars, and yet it also seems ridiculous when a driver so righteously yells at a biker as if it’s going to help. Paradox seems ripe for comics. I mean for this piece to be read slowly, and I hope the pacing helps with that. It’s like a mini parable.

Enjoy!

Take it slow.

So here’s the updated, finished piece I made for Dana as a birthday gift since we’re having a baby in April. The piece is based on the sketch from my last post. It’s on thick Rives BFK printing paper 8.5 x 11 painted with ink and watercolor. No digital color. This piece needed to exist as an object in a frame and the paper really holds its own. It felt good to work this way again. Check out Joseph Lambert’s fantastic comic Turtle Keep it Steady, that appeared in this years Best of American Comics 2008, ed linda Barry. Joe’s comics was Part of my inspiration for this piece. Thanks for sending the comic, Joe, she loved it!

Since this might be the final post of the year, I might have to wax a little philosophical. It has been a tremendous experience to begin returning to illustration in this way from my former focus on ceramics. The link between the two eras is the drawing since I used to illustrate most of my ceramics. My love of objects still holds, however, and my suspicion is that I’m transferring that love to the form of the book. This doesn’t suggest I’m dying to become a book artist, instead, I see the final destination of my work mainly in book form, most likely contracted out. This could be really small runs or hand made books, still, but I suspect I won’t be making them myself. This also could be how I returned to ceramics someday, finding a way to design objects for a separate maker.

As the new year begins, I will be experimenting like crazy. I will probably be able to post once or maybe even two times a week again as I expect there will be many more drawings to share. If you read my last post, I’m entering an experimental phase in my process, and leaving some of the book research behind (as soon as I finish my theoretical paper on Chris Ware’s comics, that I’ll post sometime in February). So I look forward to sharing that much more with you and hearing all the great input from you, my wonderful readers! 

Happy Holidays!