Ewige Blumenkraft!

Apparently Macy's was selling Illuminatus and other NWO (not to be confused with the nWo) themed T-shirts a while back. The Riverfront Times trys to figure out the who, what, when, where & how. I made a drawing. Purely speculative, mind you.

Beasts! Book 2: Giant Squid

I've got a four-page comic strip in the new monster/ cryptozoological/ mythological anthology published by Fantagraphics Books, BEASTS! volume II. I am honored to contribute a tall tale featuring Architeuthis Dux, also known as the Kraken, the Leviathan, and most modernly the Giant Squid. While doing research I came across a bit in Richard Ellis' book THE SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID about sperm whales (natural enemy of the Architeuthis) that mistake undersea electrical cables for squid tentacles while hungrily scraping the deep sea floor for food. This led me in a direction that involved the laying the first Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, it's subsequent breaking, and the gigantic ship commissioned to locate it. Here are some bits of reference I used in the first page of my strip (shown above):Particularly helpful was everything on the HISTORY OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE & SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHY website. The geography and timeline of the voyage coincided with lots of 19th century squid sightings and battle stories coming from the North Atlantic, especially Heart's Content, Newfoundland. This was also the exact place where the great cable connected to the mainland. Here are what the thumbnails for strip looked like, and some anatomical notes I made on the squid itself:More info on this sure-to-be-great book here, or you can buy it here or here. In conjunction with the release of the book, there's a print show happening in Seattle with an opening this Saturday, December 13. I wish I could be there! My print -- mentioned in earlier blog posts -- is meant to be a sort of commemorative print of the events that take place in my comic. Here's the original art:
And just for the heck of it here's another nature drawing I made featuring the Giant Squid:
And now I've got some of these, courtesy of my pal Andrew "Feelin' Up" Robbins:

Cherokee Print League TOMORROW

I'll be setting up on Cherokee street tomorrow to hawk some printed wares. More info here and here. It should be a cool thing, and a chance to get an awesome burrito. I recommend the place on the corner with the white picket fence, or right across the street at Tacqueria el Bronco.

Pirates of Puntland

I've been sorta obsessed lately with reading about the exploits of the modern Somali pirates, and here's a couple of quick watercolour sketches I did last night.

James Buchanan Eads: Master Engineer of the Mighty Mississipp'

Here are some nuts 'n bolts from the creation of my James B. Eads poster, the most recent entry into my screenprinted St. Louis Hall of Fame. Below is a crummy snapshot taken with my steam-powered digital camera: EADS: 3-color screeprint on chipboard, 18" x 24"
Here was my first idea on how to organize the print:Initially, I imagined the great and iconic Eads Bridge itself to be the primary focus of the print, as it was the thing that had initially drawn me to Eads as a local hero.The "St. Louis / Illinois Bridge" under construction, c. 1870sThe more research I did and the deeper I got into Eads' biography -- particularly this program -- the more fascinating information I found that I wanted to build into the print. The fact that he patented one of the first submersible Diving Bells (fashioned out of a 40 gallon whiskey hogshead), that he made a fortune raising shipwrecked steamboats off the floor of the Mississippi...... that he named every one of his hi-tech surface snagboats SUBMARINE (nos. I - XIII [hey he was a revolutionary engineer, he didn't need to be a creative ship-christener]), that he unwittingly brought about the first outbreak of "The Bends", that he built the first inland "brown water" ironclad battleships for his buddy U.S. Grant...... the idea that the Scientific American nominated him to be President of the USA on the basis of his scientific knowledge, was all too good to leave out. So I started sketching to figure out how to squeeze as much biographical info I could:Although we love James Buchanan (named after the president) Eads like a native St. Louis son, he made many enemies and engineering rivals. A friend described Eads as "… a bitter and unrelenting foe. … To him the unfolding of great and correct principles was more than personal friendships. His beliefs were his friends."You can see I moved to a more symmetrical diagrammatic layout in an effort to carve out more space for fun factoids:And it worked somewhat. There was still a lot more, like the fact that during the grand opening of the Eads Bridge they drove a fully loaded locomotive -- in addition to an elephant --across it to assuage public concerns about how much weight it could handle. Anyway, here's how it turned out:
EADS: vector art, Adobe Illustrator v.CS3
Here is a scan of the only known remaining drawing done by Eads himself:BIBLIOGRAPHY (of the print and this blog post):
American Experience: Secrets of a Master Builder, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eads/index.html
Kouwenhoven, John. "The Designing of the Eads Bridge." Technology and Culture, October 1982
Petroski, Henry. Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America
Washington University in St. Louis Library, Special Collections, http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/
Woodward, C.M. "A History of the St. Louis Bridge: Containing a Full Account of Every Step in Its Construction and Erection and including the Theory of the Ribbed Arch and the Tests of Materials." St. Louis, 1881

R 'n R Craft Show / New Prints!

I've got ink all over me! This weekend is the big Rock and Roll Craft Show and there will be a bunch of my stuff -- including some brand spankin' new prints hot off the squeegee -- for sale there. The show is at the Third Degree Glass Factory and from what I can tell will be awesome. Consider this blog post your holiday shopping guide. (more recommendations here.)

1) Giant Squid! Huge 22" x 30" print. Four colors (metallic silver, grey, dark grey, orange) on warm white Stonehenge paper. Based on a comic I drew for the upcoming Beasts! anthology to be published by Fantagraphics Books. Signed and numbered edition of 50.
2) James Eads! The newest addition to my series of St. Louis folk icons. 18" x 24", signed and numbered edition of 75. Three colors (metallic silver, brown & red) on chipboard. More behind the scenes on the making of this print and my research on Eads later.
3) Mike Shannon! 18" x 24". Three colors (navy blue, white & red) on chipboard. Signed and numbered edition of 75. More info here. These are almost all gone so get 'em while they're hot.

4) Lou Thesz! 18" x 24". Three colors (metallic gold, navy blue & red) on double-thickness chipboard. Signed and numbered edition of 75. More info here. These are also almost all gone so act fast.
5) Star Clipper! 22" x 30". Two colors (bright blue, fluorescent orange) on Rives BFK paper. Signed and numbered edition of 34. More info here.
I've also got copies of some comics/zines/booklets with handsome screeprinted covers for sale too. Brand New is volume 1 of the collected Amazing Facts & Beyond, The Factoids of Life: And I'll also have copies of the classic Schematic Comics and Redbird #1:
I'll be working at the show all day Sunday and I hope to see lots of you there. Happy Thanksgiving friends!

Running on Fumes

Thanks to Cherokee Street for hosting a memorable comics night. Great places visited: Firecracker Press, APOP records, Taqueria El Bronco, and the Shangri-La Diner.

Midwestern Origins of Thanksgiving

This week's Amazing Facts and Beyond details with the feast served at the first "Midwestern Thanksgiving," which took place between French Missionary settlers and members of the Illiniwek tribe 50 years following Plymouth Rock. They called it "The Roast without Equal". Have you always wondered what that spooky dragon creature painted on the bluff on the way to Raging Rivers is? Now you know its culinary origins.
Many more views of the Piasa "Monster Bird" of modern-day Alton, Illinois here.

Driving Rain

(cross-posted from the STL Drawing Club Blog. We all drew "umbrella" themed drawings last night.)

Bowling End Days

The Bowling Hall of Fame in downtown St. Louis closed its doors last week. Here's an illustration I made on the eve of apocalypse, published in the Riverfront Times. If you follow my blog (or my LIFE) you know how much I love bowling so this was a sad day. I don't know how I resisted the urge to draw a(nother) bowling hot rod based on this exhibit:but I stuck to my sketch pretty closely on this one.Bowling has a long and storied history in St. Louis. MAYBE YOU CAN HELP ME? I'm working on a comic about the legendary Budweisers, the legendary STL bowling team that shattered the five-man team record back in the '50's. I'm looking for any sort of reference or writing about that night in 1958, particularly eye-witness accounts of photographs from the inside of the long-closed Floriss Lanes in north St. Louis county.
Goodbye, Bowling Hall of Fame. We will roll on without you.

Rocking the Vote

Drawn from the hour-long line at my voting place today. Glad to have remembered my sketchbook (and blue and red colored pencils.) There were many more funny details I couldn't squeeze in. Also: my pal D.B. Dowd is doing election-themed drawings all over St. Louis today, much better than mine.

Meat & Greet

I made my students draw big one page comics on sheets of newsprint in class this morning, based on randomized characters (e.g. Scuba-Diver, Person in Hot-Dog Suit) and the classic modes of narrative conflict. I did one too, and drew "Walmart Greeter" and "Man vs. Nature". 

Haunted Hotrod

Drawn at bowling tonight. I've been watching a lot of America's Pyschic Challenge. Happy Halloween!