Sep 26 2008

Certainly the Germans Have a Word for this

Everyone knows the famous Andy Warhol concept of “fifteen minutes of fame,” but surely there needs to be some sort of phrase applicable when you’re mentioned in a list of people or entities that are so utterly out of your league that your only reaction can be: “Well, that makes no kind of sense at all, but I almost feel famous by accident!”

In my case, that list would come from MAD artist extraorinaire Tom Richmond’s blog, where he’s hyping the new issue of Stay Tooned magazine and notes that it will feature, “Interviews with Jules Feiffer, Berke Brethed and Ben Towle.”

In other recent news, I recenty purchased a bottle of 1998 Dom Pérignon Rosé, a 1945 Mouton Rothschild and some Night Train.

Sep 24 2008

Building a Cheap “Frame” for Original Comics Art

I’ve occasionally been asked to display some of my artwork in gallery shows or similar situations and this always poses some problems for comics art.  A page of original art can’t just be hung on the wall like a painting; it requires some sort of frame.  The problem, though, is that getting art framed can be really expensive and unless you sell the piece, you’ll be stuck with a framed piece of your own art–and unless you’re more of an egotist than I, that’s a pretty useless thing to have lying around.  Add to that the near-certainty that if you need to display your artwork again in a similar setting it’ll be a different page, and getting an original page framed professionally for display seems to be an even sillier prospect.

So, I decided that what I’d do is try to build a cheap, but hopefully decent-looking, “frame” (I use the term loosely) that would be reusable for different pieces of art.  Its construction was, in the words of Doctor Finklestein, exceedingly simple.

Here’s all you’ll need:

  • Two sheets of clear acrylic or Lexan.  I went with 18″ x 24″ Lexan, which is a little pricey at $14.00 a sheet, but if you work smaller than I do and go with acrylic, you’ll spend more like $8.00 a sheet.
  • Six 8-32 x 1/2 in stainless steel machine screws – about $2.00
  • Six 8-32 stainless steel wing nuts – about $2.00
  • Two “ring hangers” – These things for some reason come in packs of three, but they’re only about $3.00 a pack.  You can find them with the picture hanging hardware at a Lowes or Home Depot.

Once you’ve got all that stuff, you just drill three holes on each side of the acrylic, drilling through both sheets at once so they’ll line up nicely, and making sure to leave about a half-inch border so you don’t risk splitting the acrylic.  I set the middle holes slightly higher than center since this is where I’ll be mounting the ring hangers and it’ll hang a little better if there’s more weight toward the bottom.

Once drilled, you basically just clean the acrylic, slap your artwork in the center, and then bolt the two pieces together with your hardware.  Remember to add the ring hangers to the center two screws.  Finally, just use some regular old picture wire through those ring hangers.  Here’s the completed item.  The piece on display is a one-page story I did for Signal to Noise Magazine about the legendary ’50s R&B/Soul group The “5” Royales.

frame_1

frame_2

I don’t guess it’d pass muster at the Louvre, but it’s decent looking, functional, reusable and can be made for under $25.00.

Sep 24 2008

25% Off Sale at SLG

slg_logo

My venerable publishers, SLG, are currently having a store-wide 25% off sale on everything in their webstore.  So, if’n you’re looking to pick up any of my stuff on the cheap, now’s a good time to do so.  Just type in “bigsale” in the coupon code field on the checkout screen to get your discount.

You can find all of my stuff conveniently grouped on my creator page, from old stuff like Farewell, Georgia to my most recent book, Midnight Sun.

Sep 19 2008

Sketchbook 09/19

My next solo book (not this Ameila Earhart thing!) has a sea serpent in it and I’ve been doodling a lot of sea monsters as a result.

sketch_091908

Sep 15 2008

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures – WK3 Exercise

The in-class exercise for week three is the “wrong planet” assignment here.  We’re doing the assignment collaboratively, with each student tackling one section of the story.  My section is #2, “lands on the moon…”

This assignment has been around since well before this book came out, and has been posted over at teachingcomics.org for a while.  It’s from that site that I got the assignment when I tried it out in a classroom environment the last time I taught a comics class and, while the assignment looks fairly straight ahead, it’s actually pretty tricky.  Part of the challenge is that it’s not worded very clearly: specifically, it’s not made clear whether the moon was the wrong destination… or whether he’s returned to the wrong “home planet” after visiting the moon.

I assumed the latter when I did this exercise in class, but that creates a storytelling problem in figuring out how the astronaut couldn’t realize that he’s on the wrong planet until he’s actually on the ground.  I’ve been tempted to think that maybe what’s really intended is the former interpretation–that he was meant to go somewhere other than the moon–but the assignment very specifically mentions a wrong planet… and given that the only planet in the whole scenario is the home planet, I guess that’s the “wrong” planet in question.  Very confusing….

Anyway, fortunately for me, since I’m dealing with part two of the story, I don’t really have to tackle that confusion head-on.  Here’s what I’ve got:

wk3_e1