Lately: December 2011

In addition to doing some last minute artwork for Save The Date and teaching at SAIC, I've mostly been working on A Matter Of Life, the next autobiographical book which has stories mostly about fatherhood and religion. Here's part of a cover design sketch on the top left. On the top right is part of my drawing for the retailer incentive cover for the first issue of Adventure Time comic book (in this month's Diamond catalogue, so order at your comic shop now). The bottom left is a drawing of Racky, based on one of John Porcellino's King Cat covers, drawn as a thanks to John for speaking to my class at SAIC. The bottom right is part of the cover to a minicomic I created in conjunction with the New Trier Literary Festival. I gave a talk to students, then had them write a comic with me - I sat and drew thumbnail pencils while they gave suggestions for what the comic should be about and what should happen next. I inked the comic at home later on and failing to think of a good title, settled on naming it after an Anders Nilsen book.

Sundance 2012!

About five and a half years ago I got an email asking if I'd ever thought about writing screenplays, and so I started working on a story. The final idea turned into a screenplay that I co-wrote with Egan Reich and Michael Mohan. The movie, Save The Date, ended up being filmed this summer, and now they've scheduled the premiere. It all feels fairly strange, but exciting.

Where I Draw

Jordan Shiveley, who runs Grimalkin Press, started a new blog displaying artist's working environments. You can see my non-coffee shop drawing space there now.

Funny Misshapen Obstruction

Once again I put my comics students through the obstruction exercise - inspired by Lars Von Trier's film The Five Obstructions, I had students re-draw a comic of theirs with some restriction specific to them. These included not using panel borders, using different materials than they normally do and limiting dialogue or text. I felt it would be only fair that they be able to give me obstructions as well. They chose to have me draw with a panel layout that wasn't a grid, use animals not people, use pastels and draw it big. They also tried to get me to draw more cars but I nixed that one. I chose to redraw this two page sequence from Funny Misshapen Body, and started out by thumbnailing a non-grid layout of how I could re-draw the pages.


I wasn't going to go buy pastels just for this, so I used colored pencils, and drew on some standard issue Dark Horse comic art board. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it, but I think it turned out okay, and more importantly it was interesting to get outside my normal comfort zone. I don't think working like this would work for me in general, and the effect of having an entire book of pages like this wouldn't feel right for my autobiographical comics, but it's something that'll probably sit in the back of my head and be of use somewhere down the road.

Busy

It's been a busy two months, most of which I've spent finishing up the artwork for my next book with Chronicle, which should be out next year for Father's Day. It's been a lot of fun to draw, but I'm glad to have most of the pressure off for it. Meanwhile, I've been teaching a comics class at The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago again. This past week's exercise was for the students to try and duplicate a panel from a comic, and then re-draw it again in their own styles or without trying to copy directly. I did a quick example of this panel from Uncanny X-Men #192.

Chicago Comic Con

Tomorrow morning I'll be taking the train out to Chicago Comic Con (formerly WizardWorld). Top Shelf won't be exhibiting this year, so I'll be at table #3006 with Change-Bots 1 and 2, Clumsy, Process and Oscar mini-comics, hand drawn trading cards and a few other odds and ends.

Secret Headquarters

This Friday I'll already be back in California (after another exhausting but great San Diego Comicon) to sign at Secret Headquarters, who will also be hosting an art show featuring all the zombie/Beatles art from the book Paul Is Undead. SHQ will also have for sale a bunch of special 'Process' artifact packets, packaged without the minicomics.