Preview of the final structural form for all those Wherefore illustrations I posted a while back.
Category: Art
(Because I love you.)
Essentially, these are preliminary images from the project I’ll be doing over the summer with this here (not really very) hefty (but still insanely and awesomely useful) scholarship. I tried to take climactic or iconic moments from throughout the storyline and give them a bit of illustrative weight. Numbers 4 and 5 appeared in a previous post, but I’ve added them again here for the sake of continuity.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy!
Splitting this update into two posts, ’cause image gallery settings in WordPress are silly and I can’t display things the way I want unless they’re in separate posts. SO.
The greatest (and most stressful) part of the qual was getting to focus on nothing else for 10 days. Unfortunately, having missed a huge amount of class in the preceding weeks due to being deathly ill, this left me pretty screwed over after I turned in my materials on Monday. With a large-scale figure drawing project due the next morning at 9, I loaded my thermos with coffee and trekked into the studio at 10:30pm. Fortunately, I was home by 3am, which I consider a miracle — and even more miraculous was the fact that said project wasn’t a pile of poo! Isn’t it great when a plan comes together?
“Gettin’ Outta Dodge,” as it was ultimately titled, involved large rolls of craft paper, black and white charcoal, and a very sharp box cutter. Oh, and some strategically-placed scissors installed by Russian studio stylist D. Lemeshchenko. Brilliant man, but his prices are astronomical…
Enjoy the boobs!
So, apropos of my previous post, here’s the skinny on what I’ve been working on for the past week.
All students at Reed need to complete a Junior qualifying exam (commonly known as a “qual”) to prove that they’ve got the chops to complete a Senior thesis and haven’t just been, well, dicking about for the last three years. For Art majors, this means a 10 day process involving the creation of 10 preliminary studies, one finished piece, two papers discussing one’s artistic practice and previous works, a showing of the qual work and previous pieces, and a 45 minute oral examination. It’s hefty, but also a whole lot of fun. We’re given an essay to respond to at the start of the week, which can (loosely or otherwise) inform the final piece. Susan Stewart’s On the Art of the Future proved dense and somewhat infuriating in its unnecessary intellectualism, but was ultimately fruitful and thought provoking (and surprisingly relevant to comics).
Anyway, no time to discuss that here. ON WITH THE PRETTY PICTURES!
[slideshow]
(Things the photos don’t quite do justice to: the incredible, deep sea sheen of the book cloth, the veins of shimmery gold in the marbled paper, and the delicious, physical sensation of playing with this thing. Bookmaking is so satisfying to me because you get to handle and interact with the product in a way that’s totally different from our standard approach to artworks. Mm, tactility.)
The OTHER exciting news is that I was recently selected as a recipient of the Kaspar T. Locher Summer Creative Scholarship, a $1750 prize designed to fund independent art/dance/music/theater/writing projects over the summer. I’ll be using the money to back a longer comic (tentatively titled “Wherefore”) based around my youthful days and the strange sense of misplaced identity that comes from being raised between cultures and continents. Terrifying, but thrilling. There will, of course, be copious documentation for you all to enjoy throughout the process SO HOORAY FOR THAT.
(Part two of this post appears separately because WordPress image display options are icky.)
SNEAK PEEK TIME.
(Contains tits and stuff so, y’know, don’t show your boss.)
***
WHAT COULD IT BE?
I have no idea.
Ladies and gents, though I am sick as a very sick dog, I have spent the majority of my Spring Break slaving away in order to bring you new visual goodies. AND HERE THEY ARE. Well, in part. A couple larger illustrations from my final project for the IPRC program. The story, which I’m trying to get a grant to finish over the summer, deals with belonging and language through the lens of dual citizenship. Keep an eye out for more of these as the week goes on.
OH, THE MELODRAMA!
A few quick studies from my figure class to be going on with. Some proportion stuff, some value studies. Apologies for the miserable quality of the photos. Mostly quick and dirty documentation between poses in class. Should have all my coursework properly scanned by the end of the semester. Then there will be OH SO MANY BUTTS. Fine art butts, of course.
To tide everyone over while I scramble around for documentation of other recent projects, here’s a quick one page comic for a zine the IPRC class is putting together. The theme was “revolutions.” Churned this out in a couple hours with no reference, so on the one hand I’m proud of the bits where all the figure drawing I’ve been doing pays off, but on the other there are some heinous liberties being taken with space and anatomy. Ew.
But hey, boobs!
Those of you who have been following this blog since its inception will probably remember a very enthused post I wrote back in August extolling the virtues of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Well, it turns out that this week there’s a push on the raise awareness about the programs they offer and the extraordinary caliber of the people involved. Fortunately, this is something I hardly need an excuse to do. As is often the case with small programs (even ones as miraculous and epic as CCS), drumming up a diverse and talented pool of applicants is often as difficult as raising funds to keep the school afloat in the first place — and arguably more important.
My experience at CCS was incredible not only because of the excellent instruction I received, but also because I was surrounded (for the first time in my life!) by 36 other people who all loved comics. And not only did they love them, they made them. And they all meant business. That experience alone, the process of being inspired by work so different from my own, the camaraderie of powering through page after page together in the studio late into the night, was worth more than I can say. The best professors in the world are only as good as the students they teach. A class who will dedicate themselves to the material at hand while pushing each other to new heights of creativity and exploration is crucial to the continued existence of any institution — and CCS is no exception.
So this is for all those aspiring cartoonists and makers of things who spend their time creating while thinking that what they really need is a group of people to bounce ideas off of, be challenged and inspired by, and stay up all night kicking ass with. Go here. You won’t be disappointed.
GUYS. guys.
Okay, I know I’ve been AWOL for a while, but HERE, live and direct from my delirious haven’t-slept-in-way-too-long crazybrain state, is some STUFF. Nothing to do with comics, but that’s coming soon too. Also: printmaking and…sleeping? At some point. I’m sure.
SO. I’ve been working on this triptych for about 8 hours solid now and I’m immensely happy with the way it’s going — though that may be the delirium and caffeine talking. I’ll post pictures of it properly trimmed and mounted after the critique on Tuesday, but for now:
Fuck yeah.