fisticuffs

Old timey.  "Fisticuffs" is an underutilized and underrated word these days.

mug shots

I've been reading this book by the guy who helped to pioneer the FBI's Art Crimes division, and spent several years chasing down art and artifacts that had been stolen or were otherwise being sold or traded under dubious circumstances.  When I looked at the photos section (people who have read a lot of true crime books will be familiar with this), I noted that most of the people who were arrested for shady dealings were real characters.  I wanted to draw them, so I did.  Apparently, you don't have to have a mustache to get arrested by the Art Crimes division, but it certainly does help.

welcome to my castle

So, I recently resumed work on a painting I abandoned in the fall of last year, and it is slow going.  I never actually took a painting class despite my art degree*, so I'm teaching myself as I go.  Anyway, this has taken up a lot of my time lately, so I haven't really worked much on other projects.  Also, much of my sketching these days has been done at a weekly meeting that takes place at Cafe Racer, so yeah.  Not a lot of sketching going on for me.  I know, I should get back on it.

Anyway, a little while back, I took these pictures of my drawing space.  I know nobody really cares about one's (makeshift) studio unless one is famous, but here it is.  

*I can just hear all of the "does not compute" thoughts going on here, because when most people think of art, the first thing they think of is painting.

The incredibly well-organized top of my filing cabinet.  Note high-tech items such as the coaster, mostly-empty bottles of ink, and multiple rolls of tape.

My drafting table and (1970s?) office chair, which I snazzed up with a flag purchased several years ago at 826 Valencia in San Franciso.  The window and the top of the table are all overexposed because I, uh, meant it to be that way.

The table top, featuring actually invaluable items such as the full-spectrum lamp and the Vyco board cover.

you so crazy!

Nom nom!

 

eavesdropping for fun and profit (okay, not really for profit)

The story behind this begins way back when I was in a teenager and I started writing down random things that I heard people say.  Eventually I had quite a collection of these quotes in my notebook, and many came from my then-daily rides on the Metro buses.  In 2003 I mined this material to make a one-page comic called "Overheard on the Bus," which was published in Seattle's alt weekly, The Stranger.  This comic is unfortunately not online anywhere anymore; I have a copy of the file somewhere on a CDR, but hell if I know where it is.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was given a copy of Syncopated (vol.3), an anthology of nonfiction comics.  Imagine my surprise when I reached the third piece in the book, "Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo  -- not only was another weirdo out there writing down overheard snippets of dialogue, but she had also written a comic about them!  Her comic is very different from mine, as she actually reflects upon the nature of these acts of voyeurism ("The majority of overheard conversations are more commonplace, even mundane.  But it's often these that intrigue me the most..."), in addition to including a whole collection of funny, mysterious, and otherwise thought-provoking fragments of conversation with fictionalized speakers.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking through my notebook and rereading some of the quotes I'd written down.  I'd been wanting to do a finished one-page comic for a while, since for the past year-plus I've been primarily working on the seemingly endless rough draft for a graphic novel.  What better idea, I thought, than a sequel to the original "Overheard."  So I dug out a couple of my old notebooks to reference along with the current one, and the result is what you see here.  Ta da.

p.s.  I wanted to have the text appear after the comic, but realized that on many peoples' screens (such as mine, ahem), parts of the panels would be obscured by all the crap on your right.  I can't make the comic smaller, because it is already more blurry than I would like at this size.  At the end of the day, after hours of coloring and other stuff, I am too tired to figure out doing anything about this.

beer me

sketch of graphic novel characters from a couple of weeks ago

Rule to remember when drawing in a cafe/bar: before you put your sketchbook down on the table, make sure you're not putting it in a puddle of beer (it was a small puddle of beer, but still).  You can't actually see the stain on the page here, owing to the b&w scan, but I just thought I'd put that out there as a warning.

doodles

Drawn on two pieces of scrap paper, approx. 6x9, that I have a whole pile of at work.