Open Road / Angouleme

I'm hitting the rails, skipping town for a couple of weeks. In particular, between January 25th and 28th, I'll be at the Festival international del la Bande Dessinée in Angouleme, France. If you're gonna be over there, try and come find me over by the Buenaventura / Kramers Ergot / Comic Art booths in the 'Espace Alternative BD' area. If you're not gonna be in France, but you may be in, say, Minneapolis, there's a Kramers Ergot art show opening at Macalester College on the 28th. A bunch of my original pages from Kramers 5 & 6 will be in the show. Here's one of them:
To my StL friends: see you when I get back home!

Famous Fictional Fotographs

HEY: Here's how those paintings I was talking about earlier panned out. The photos (click for larger views) aren't that great -- mostly because I used so much SILVER LEAF PEN on the paintings -- but they should give you an idea. I think the show is gonna be up for a couple more weeks down at Mad Art, so check 'em out in person if you're so inclined. Each painting is 36"x24" and is made of spray paint, acrylic paint, and SILVER LEAF PEN on Bainbridge Board.

Fearsome Fold-In

Last night at Drawing Club we all drew Mad Magazine style Fold-Ins. I have had some experience in this area before, but these things are still tough to do. Much respect to the master. It was made especially tough because I was trying to drink one of these stupid/delicious things while drawing:
Speaking of stupid/delicious, here's what my drawing looks like when folded in. Hint: the other theme of the night was HILLBILLIES!

Famous Fictional this Friday

Come down to the MadArt Gallery this Friday night (the 5th) for the opening of an art show that I am involved with. The name of the show is Famous Fictional because every artist was responsible for two portraits: a character from popular literature and a well-known comics/cartoon personality. Speaking of well-known personalities, lots of them made stuff for the show: Matt Kindt, Mardou, Ted May, Kevin H (spoilers), The Hurtt Locker, Jessi Kelley, Nathan P, RON DMC, etc. Since I neglected to photograph either of my paintings before dropping them off at the gallery, here is some background on my characters and some mouth-watering preparatory sketches. First are some doodles I made while re-reading one of my favorite books, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
The main character in the book, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a sort of modern Don Quixote figure who spearheads revolution at a pants factory in industrial New Orleans then later becomes a bucaneering hot dog vendor in the French Quarter. He lives at home with his mother but the main woman in his life is Lady Fortuna from Boethius' CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY. He's got a hyperactive Pyloric Valve and his favorite soda pop is DR. NUT. "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift (Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting)My cartoony character is Miss Buxley from the Beetle Bailey comic strip. In case you can't picture her, she is the "bombshell" civilian secretary at Camp Swampy where she works for General Halftrack, a golf and sexual harrasment enthusiast. She has dated Beetle Bailey, Zero, and Killer in the past, but her current relationship status is unclear. In the 80's Miss Buxley received a politically correct makeover, in which her neckline was raised and mini-skirt lengthened, but my painting features the original version. (You're welcome, fellas!) Missourian Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey, also created the comic strip BONER'S ARK.
"Maybe she can't type, and the only filing she's good at is her fingernails, but she's always one step ahead of her foolish old boss" - The King Features website
Anyway, if you have any interest in seeing how the paintings turned out you should drop by. I have seen a bunch of everybody else's stuff and what I have seen is dynamite*. Also, I think there will be food and a cash bar and that sort of thing. And If you 've never been to MadArt before, it's worth the trip alone. It's a converted 1930's art-deco police station, with functioning jail cells in case you party too hard... or not hard enough. See you there!Above: postcard drawing by Luby, Jason Robards, and Matt Kindt.
*If anybody is putting together a show of portraits featuring 70's sitcom characters, please get in touch.

Frontier Yuletide

Merry Xmas!

Illustrators' Workshop: Airing of Grievances / Feats of Strength

Here's a pile of stuff I generated while working on a recent illustration. It might give you a window into my working process. You could either look at this or come over to my actual window. The drawing was for an annual event put on by Downtown St. Louis shopping association called Festivus. Below: spec's doodled in my lined sketchbook. I am jealous of people who can keep nice sketchbook, because all of mine are filled with production notes, long division, and things to look up on wikipedia once I get home from White Castle.And here's the first idea I had, focussing naturally on the "airing of grievances (via radio)" and the "feats of strength (via greased-up armwrestling)":
Here are some tighter thumbnails, including more stuff that would attempt to describe what the actual event entailed (shopping, holiday merriment):
I got some feedback, gathered some more reference, and drew this revised sketch at the bowling alley. I mixed and matched elements from the thumbnails and worked out a palette when I got home:Once I got the go-ahead, I started the final drawing by constructing the shapes of color - which I wanted to have an old-fashioned, mechanically flat look - with vectors in Illustrator. I also laid out the letters, pulled from a font called 'Breite' which I scanned from an old book of decorative carnival typefaces...Then I did an ink drawing, tracing the vector shapes on a light-box, for the line-art parts... I wanted to do an overall background color behind everything, but due to the fact that this these posters were gonna be xeroxed and a full-bleed wasn't possible, I decided a rough, dry-brushed style edge was the way to go. Having tried to artificially simulate this kind of texture in the past, this time I decided to get my hands dirty (literally) and break out a little stub of charcoal found at the bottom of my art supply tacklebox: Having already thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this illustration I decided to do one last thing in photoshop and add a layer of distortion, suggesting an underinked silkscreen or letterpress. Fun Fact: I got this distrissed texture by scanning in the inside back cover of a beat-up old copy of a Milt Caniff's Male Call.Then I combined everything into a crazy frankenstein file which made me wish my computer was faster. I would get into the Photoshop nitty-gritty but I'm boring myself just thinking about it. Let's all go to the batting cages instead. Anyway, here's the final:

12/01/06

Humanoids / Vans / Eyeballs

There's a hot punk show happening over on Wyoming at South Grand tonight. There might be some t-shirts available with the drawing I did (above) printed on them. Both bands (Off With Their Heads from Minneapolis & The Humanoids from Parts Unknown) are great. Boy, it is getting harder and harder for me to do a drawing that does not involve eyeballs popping out of sockets. (Help?!)
In other Greg Stinson related news, here's a poster I drew advertising his business a long time ago. This must've been done prior to my heavy eyeball popping phase. Nowadays I would have eyeballs popping out left and right, from headlights, guitars, hubcaps, everywhere!

Butternut Squash, Here I Come!

Crime Blotter Funnies

Courtesy of Unreal and Concierge Preferred magazine: "... He holds up a jar — it looks like a pickle jar, but there's this black stuff in it. He says, "Her last request [was] she wanted her ashes sprinkled at the hotel..." India Ink and charcoal on Bristol board, 10" x 6 2/3"

STL Int'l Film Fest / Star Clipper Signing

There's gonna be a lot of great movies playing around St. Louis starting this Thursday, as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. I'm lucky to be a part of it, having done the illustration for the program cover, posters, ads, badges, etc:
Also, Jeff Harris made a series of sweet trailers for the festival using my drawings as raw material:



In conjunction with the Film Fest, I'm gonna be involved in a signing at Star Clipper this Saturday, sitting alongside Terry Zwigoff (director of Bad Santa, Ghost World, & CRUMB), Monte Beauchamp (editor of art/comix anthology BLAB), and Tom Huck (printmaker extraordinaire). I reckon I can sign copies of my recently published work in the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase, Kramers Ergot #6, or Private Stash. Or I could doodle on the SLiFF program cover (which would be FREE) or a used Falafel wrapper from Al-Tarboush. I think it starts around 4 o'clock on Saturday. Dear friends, please come by so I don't get lonely! Also, bring me a falafel from Al-Tarboush.

ps. GO VOTE TODAY!

Trick or Treat?

Top 5 Pumpkin-Flavored things I've had this month:

5: Pumpkin Cheesecake Cappucino from 7-11
4: Pumpkin Spice candles I bought from Big Lots
3: Jack's Pumpkin Ale made by Anheuser-Busch
2: Pumpkin Muffies from St. Louis BreadCo.
1: The Great Pumpkin from Ted Drewe's custard stand

Dishonorable mention goes to the Reese's "Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cup" which isn't pumpkin flavored at all, just a normal peanut butter cup shaped like a pumpkin. Booooooo!

Have a safe Halloween everyone!

Let's Go You Redbirds!

Above is the first page of a new comic strip I drew about the magical 2004 National League Championship Series, when the Cardinals played the Houston Astros. It will appear in the next edition of the long-running comix anthology Not My Small Diary. As special as that playoff run was, it can't compare to this season's run, which will hopefully end tonight, with the Birds-on-the-Bat taking care of the Tigers in a way that the beloved '68 squad (pictured below) couldn't. This is for you fellas!

Edited to add more info on my pal Will's playoff beard. Apparently he's gonna be on the radio tomorrow talking about it. UPDATE! Will was on the radio. Listen to the little story here.

Pissed Jeans at the Slaughterhouse

Show tonight! (100% analog flyer made with a Motec Japanese Brush Pen, White-Out pen, home-made Zip-a-Tone, and xeroxes lifted from a book of old carnival typefaces):If you haven't heard the Pissed Jeans LP put out last year on Parts Unknown Records you are missing out. Plus it also has a swell cover drawn by the great cartoonist Ron Rege, Jr.:
I'm sure there will be a radio at the show to listen to the game. I'll also have a few of those 'Pond Scum' shirts (see below) with me. See you there!