Call me a Ka-Blamgelist!

My friend cartoonist Mark Martin recently coined the word, "ka-blamgelist" to describe those of us who are enthusiastic about the low cost digital comics printer Ka-Blam. Well now I can confidently say Ka-Blam is well worth the praise! My new Blue Kid books just arrived, and they look fantastic!







So call me a Ka-Blamgelist!

These will not actually be for sale anywhere. I'm using them as samples of how I'd like my book to look when traditionally printed. This is for my Xeric grant application. The Xeric grant is a special grant for comics self publishers.

Figure drawings

I just started a figure drawing group at Natsoulas Gallery here in Davis that's being held every other thursday. it's been about 12 years since I've drawn from the model, so my figure drawing chops are very very rusty. For the past 12 years I've been drawing mostly from photographs, and occasionally from life here and there, but I haven't done any serious figure drawing in a long time.

So here are some recent figure drawings, warts and all.

For the first few sessions, most of my drawings were pretty embarrassing, but here's a gesture drawing I was pretty happy with:



These are about 15 minute poses each:



This one has a tiny head, but I still kind of like it:



And here's a longer pose. Everything is more or less in proportion, but it's pretty labored and stiff. You can see where I was fussing with one of the hands.



I've still got a long way to go, but I'll post more so the curious can track my progress.

I've also been taking these video anatomy courses that you can get:

here.

I don't know if he really teaches you to "draw the figure from your mind" as it claims, but if you have patience with it, he definitely teaches you anatomy. here's some work I've done through the course:





Ultimately strong figure drawing requires, most of all, a lot of drawing, observation, drawing from life, and more drawing. I'm trying to be more disciplined with keeping a sketchbook, but it's never been a habit I've been good at maintaining. It's never too late to start, though! Here's a sketch I did in pen on the airplane, flying up to visit my Dad on his 85th:

Comic Book Making Class!

The First Appearance of Dude in a Fishbowl!

These are some of the mini comics that the kids in my comic book making class made. (Excuse the bad digital pics)



This one has some crazy inventive page layouts. No boring rectangles here:



An Alien Cheese:



And who could miss the next issue, introducing: "The First Appearance of Dude in a Fishbowl"?



Some Manga action here:



A story about a detective who identifies with eggplants. Quite a bit of character development in this one:



Excessive coffee drinking, and a comic book making contest:



An Exquisite Corpse!

From the handout:

An “exquisite Corpse” might sound kind of creepy, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with corpses. It’s a technique invented by a group of artists who called themselves “Surrealists”. It was based on a game called “Consequences”. Each player writes on a sheet of paper and then passes it to the next player. Each player then covers up the writing of the previous player so the next player only sees what the last player wrote without being able to see what had been written before.

There are lot of variations of the game, and People have played it using many different art forms. one variation is even done with music.

In 1998, a cartoonist named Art Spiegelman decided to apply the game to comics. 69 cartoonists collaborated on a book called “Narrative Corpse” using the exquisite Corpse technique.

So this is our own version of an "exquisite corpse":

New Logo by Mark Martin! More to Come!

I'm putting together a self-published digitally printed comic for the Alternative Press Expo this year, and Mark Martin and Rick Grimes have generously offered to allow me to publish their work! 18 pages by me, 4 by mark and a whopping 8 from Rick Grimes! I've been a fan of both for years so it's a treat to have them in my book!

I particularly recommend the Rick Grimes Fansite! It needs your love! (warning: some of the art on this site is of an adult nature and may not be work safe.)

Mark Martin designed this amazing logo for the cover! (I decided to embrace the whole "vanity publication" aspect of the thing).



Why No Recent Posts?

I haven't been making any new posts for a while because I've been busy with a lot of stuff--the class I've been teaching, I organized a new figure drawing group (won't be posting any figure drawings for a while--I need more practice before sharing), a Xeric grant application, some anatomy drawing practice, and putting together the new comic. We also took a little vacation to the mountains. Also the Elephant factory was a big undertaking. (Pfew). But maybe I've been a little bit procrastinatey too! No more excuses!

I've Been working on a new Children's lit illustration, this time for "The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle". I've finished inking the background, and so this week I should at least be finished with the ink drawing. Coloring next week and I should be done! In the words of Yule Brenner, "So it shall be written, so it shall be done".