The scanner has had enough of my mess or so it seems. It turns on and all that, the computer even recognizes it for a few moments. Then nothin'. I dunno.

I did get one last thing scanned.



I love love love Winged Victory of Samothrace. (that's what that the painting is of, if you were unaware) Something about the idealism and established terms of beauty is comforting. I dunno. I long to see it in person, though I may have. But going through the Louvre at age 5 didn't leave me with many specific memories.

Since the great scanner crash of last week I've made one more painting thing. It was done in a wonderful blur of spur of the moment type drawing.





I'm so pleased with it. Other tossed around tag lines were, "Beards: Making your moustache less creepy" and "Beards: Making you more awesome since puberty"

Those took up too much space so, I'm fine with what I've got.


And finally, today I make the first "entries" (?) into an artbook exchange type deal with this awesome person here. I'm all kinds of excited. All kinds.

Start to Finish

Bird Skull on a cut out page. Gesso and watercolours.







Gesso is a new beast that is a joy to tackle. Usuaully I sketch it out, outline what I want in india ink, and slap on some watercolour. Now, I have to sketch it out, apply several layers of gesso, wait almost a day, then apply the first bit of colour. After all that some more gesso goes down and the waiting begins anew. With all that time I actually end up thinking about the end product a bit more. Who knows where that'll lead.

Elephant Graveyards

Finished another drawing, but only maybe. Every third drawing or painting ends up feeling incomplete for long periods of time before I figure out what the missing piece of the puzzle is.



I almost stuck a blank speech bubble on there, but it didn't feel entirely right. Plus, the weird sponge applicator for the liquid paper doesn't allow for the total accuracy I'd want for such a thing.

In Which He Ceases to be Lazy... Sort of

Basically my brain exploded for a long period of time (till about April to be perfect) from the torture of a poorly run Colour Theory class, a Graphic Design class that did most everything except graphic design, an Art Crit class that had amazing potential then got weird and I stopped waking up, and finally a directed study that crashed and burned kind of quickly. It's an unfun long story of which I'm still dubious of the final portion. Regardless, I eventually pulled myself out of the colour theory busy work and actually did stuff I wanted to do. Here we go.


















So that's everything that was scan-able from the past several months. I have a couple paintings in the works, but my scanner is more than a bit too small for them and my camera more than a bit not too good. And in theory some holiday cards for sometime next month.

Week One Exercises

Exercise 1.1

Using my sketchbook and a pencil or pen spend 3-4 minutes drawing a car. Then start over and draw it in 2 minutes. Then 1 minute. Then 30 seconds. Then 15 seconds. Then 5 seconds. Repeat with four other objects: a cat, a castle, a telephone, and a self-portrait.

Ok, so it took longer due to sheer laziness on my part. Anyway here we go.

While looking around Bookpeople in Austin, I came across Comic Art Annual vol 9, a rather thick and well designed magazine with huge articles about comic history and what have you. I also took note of a little book that it came with. Anyway, I bought it and looked at the little book on the way home. It was by the illustrious Ivan Brunetti and was titled Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice. Inside is about a 15 week course, shaped after a class he teaches at Columbia. My goal/project/whatever is to actually make it through the whole thing. Each week I'll post the exercises I have to do and if you, I suppose mainly and possibly only Kellyn, will bug the crap out of me until you see the end products up on here that'd be quite helpful. I need to buy a new sketchbook first, otherwise I'd have started already.

The first week focuses on spontaneous drawing. I've never actually timed my drawing speed, but I'm going to have to do most of the drawings in under 10 seconds.

The point of all this is to force my self to get used to making comics and drawing and what not. Also so I have something to do all semester, and sadly/awesomely this might be more rewarding than the two directed studies I've taken so far which together cost me over $5000. Such is life. Check back tomorrow for the first week's exercises.

With all the best intentions a new project shall, depending on my ability to wake up later today, began sometime later today. If I weren't extremely tired I'd type it all up now, but bed for now. Just check back later.

"My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go." - Last words of Oscar Wilde

I don't know if anyone else suffers from this, but every couple of months or so I completely lose the ability to draw. Well draw with satisfaction of the end product. It just surfaced again last night while attempting to sketch out a picture of Oscar Wilde for my next painting. Hopefully I'll overcome it soon enough, especially since I need four or five more paintings by this Friday so I can get a decent grade in directed study.



Also, thanks to the unleashing of free American Elf archives I kind of feel like thinking about starting a journal comic again. We'll see how long that idea sticks around. I plan to acquire a box of markers over Christmas break and begin sketching out that one dream/comic idea I had like two years ago during that Sigur Ros show. My aim is to work on it next semester during directed study and submit them to the Flight forums in hopes that the editors of Flight take a liking to it and consider putting it into an upcoming volume of Flight.

I love almost nothing more than this song. Sigh.

30 paintings, sort of.

This was a rather ambitious project I attempted to tackle last Wednesday at 10 PM before I went to sleep. That didn't happen so much, but I was able to do a large volume of paintings with in a few days time. I'm pleased with most all of them. I plan on doing the final 10 sometime this week, but I also have a large-ish research paper for an english class so it'll have to be balanced with all of that.

So, here we go. Also, as a side note of sorts. If you see these and like them and would like my services as an illustrator for most anything other than bringing about the end of world, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me email-wise at (toastman18@gmail.com)

One More Cup of Coffee

New stuff, oh yes. A children's book, written (to some extent) and illustrated (entirely), by me is very much so in the works. I'm excited.