Jan 21 2005

Winter Arrives

I’m frankly not a fan of the cold weather… and Winston-Salem gets its fair share, being so close to the mountains. But, that being said, once it’s December or January, I’d just as soon have it get cold and miserable and be done with it and it looks like it’s finally happened. Daytime highs have been regularly in the thirties, and occasionally the twenties, for the last three or four days and we’ve even had a dusting of snow.

You know winter has arrived at “The Crackhouse” because I begin wearing my wool union suit pretty much 24/7 and Sheila begins sitting on the heating vents.

sheila vent

Jan 20 2005

What You’ll Wish You’d Known

What You’ll Wish You’d Known

What an amazing high school graduation speech. I wish I’d heard this at my graduation. My high school graduation speech was given by Admiral John Pointexter… yeah, that Admiral John Pointexter: from the Iran/Contra deal. The speech linked above is by millionaire/author/computer guy Paul Graham.

My favorite quote:

“I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they’d seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that’s one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it’s not our fault if we can’t do something as good.”

Jan 20 2005

Random sketch

Here’s a drawing I did a while back. I had pretty much forgotten about it, but I was rummaging around in my art supplies cabinet and found some sepia ink I had forgotten about buying. I then remembered this pencil draiwing that I thought might look good with a bit of sepia ink applied.

The brick wall in the background is an homage to a great rock/blues bar in Charlotte N.C. called the Double Door Inn. It’s the kinda place that Eric Clapton used to show up to for a few beers after a show at the enormo-dome, and all kinds of incredible bands had played there–big name legendary acts like Sam & Dave, but also local Charlotte faves from the 90s like Hobex, Jolene, Lodestar, The Extraordinaires, The Belmont Playboys, and my band, Come on Thunderchild….

door
(Click for larger image)

Jan 20 2005

Boxing Bucket Pg. 2, pt IV

…And here’s page 2 inked. I’m not as happy with the overall drawing on this page as I am with the first, but I like the panel layout. In most of my work I tend to stick to a pretty standard grid based on either 9 panels per page, or 6 panels per page. So many cartoonists try to get creative with their panel layouts and wind up doing nothing but confusing the reader, so I tend to err on the side of consertavitism when it comes to layout. Panel layout is like the bassline in a song: if people notice it, you need to tone it back a bit.

That being said though, I’ve been really enjoying Roger Langridge’s brilliant Fred the Clown book (I’d link to his publisher, Fantagraphics, but like the fools they are, there’s virtually no mention of him on their site). He uses some really interesting panel layouts that never get in the way of the story. So, in this story I’m goin’ crazy I tell’s ya, and using all kinds of circle panels and borderless panels and whatnot…

bucket pg 1 inked
(Click for larger image)

Jan 19 2005

JonathanStrange.com

JonathanStrange.com

I was just poking around this site while eating lunch–there’s a lot of cool stuff to be found there about this very cool book. It’s a difficult book to describe… but it’s kinda like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and J.K. Rowling all rolled into one. Interestingly the author, Susanna Clarke, sites comic book writers Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman as two of her favorites. At any rate, the book is great… my only complaint is the illustrations. I mean obviously this is what Strange and Norrell really look like: