d r a w e r

Mas Seed Toss

2009-07-02T09:43:00.001-04:00

More Seed Toss updates. As always, email me if you want to be on the mailing list.

"O Percutor Harmonico" by Andr� Lemos (review)

2009-06-28T22:45:00.003-04:00

Based on Sergio Leone's 1968 Western Once Upon a Time in the West and drawn in Andr� Lemos' characteristic heavy-brush style, O Percutor Harmonico is a sort of translation of the opening scene of the film, though not at all a straight re-telling. There are no words - in the art alone Lemos skates on the surface of Leone's work, picking and plucking and placing images in an order that creates something new alongside the original story.

O Percutor Harmonico opens with a Lemos version of the Paramount logo making it clear that he's drawing from a film. Once Upon a Time in the West is famous for being full of references to other Westerns so it works well that Lemos is choosing his own motifs and references to play with. A train, dusters, a windmill and of course, cowboy hats. There's also, just once, a harmonica, something very important to the original film.

This way of translation reminds me of a song by "Mole" called "Monument Valley. The lyrics are lines pulled from (I think) John Ford's classic Western Fort Apache, but they are similarly plucked and reshaped to make something that is certainly of the original piece but something wholly new as well.

Lemos' art fits the gritty dirty subject well with his careening violent brushwork. The images don't clearly or easily tell the story, but they add up anyway. There's a slim thread of a narrative (a train arrives, some guys face off, a gunfight), but Lemos doesn't open a window for us to gape though - he re-edits the film in ways that don't always seem to make sense and gives us an experience that we find, one that we piece together. This is close to an Eisensteinian way of making comics - drawing not only from film's more obvious narrative capacity but also from it's mysterious juxtaposing power.

I'm not sure how one could get O Percutor Harmonico other than to email Lemos directly though his Opuntia Books site. Here's a review by Portuguese critic Pedro Moura. O Percutor Harmonico is published by AO Norte. All these sites are in Portuguese. I should add that since I can't read Portuguese, and the essay in the book is in Portuguese, I may be missing something critical about the whole project. I like being confused though, so this language barrier has not been a problem for me.

All images � Andr� Lemos. "Monument Valley" is � Mole - if you are Mole and want me to take it down I will but I couldn't find you online anywhere to ask permission. I hope you're ok with me spreading your glory.

more Seed Toss updates

2009-06-25T11:46:00.001-04:00

More postcards up here. I'm still back in ancient territory - these cards are from 2002! I'm still doing them though, so send me a mailing address if you want one.

Crabapple by Franklin Einspruch (review)

2009-06-18T16:23:00.004-04:00

Crabapple, like many of Franklin Einspruch's other webcomics at themoonfellonme.com, is a sort of haiku - a freshly observed moment that unfolds and unfolds. He is a painter and it shows in both the beautiful handling of watercolor (the lively lines, the careful blending of colors, the spontaneously precise rendering) and in the observations the pieces are about. He sees things but finds them by making.

What isn't expected is his startling ways of making these images and words into comics. He is frequently subtle and sneaky in how he makes the pictures underscore the text and vice versa. In Crabapple, the first image is of a brown, almost crispy bush. No background, a line of brown (maybe dead rotten brown or maybe soil, sleeping, maybe waiting).

In the next image: the bush again, still brown but with green leaves, pink blossoms and a green carpet underneath. What amazes is the sky - this tree has blue sky all around and through it. The first tree was alone, separate, dead but this one is alive, penetrated and one with the world.

The final images in the piece, two similar pictures of flowers and leaves on branches take this theme further. The color of the leaves bleeds into the branch marking them as un-separate, as one. (The images I'm presenting here are out of context - the actual piece has a lovely side-scrolling motion, revealing itself as you look.)

His lettering also adds to the effect. In the first (all brown) text area the break of "down" where its ascender reaches up for the descender in the "P" of "pull" mirrors the image of the maybe-dead bush. The next text, after that beautiful tree image, is blue like the sky. The final text is green like the sprouted leaves.

This piece, like many others he has made, has such fresh observations and thoughtful, subtle ways of finding the world by making, is the best apology he could give.

All images � Franklin Einspruch

Seed Toss updates

2009-06-17T13:57:00.003-04:00

Updates over at Seed Toss - more postcards and some street art from out San Diego trip.

NASCAR #5 paint scheme (review)

2009-06-17T13:48:00.002-04:00

Over at Rowdy.com I posted a review of Mark Martin's #5 paint scheme. Yes, it's NASCAR!

Or Else 3 by K. Huizenga (review)

2009-06-14T16:46:00.003-04:00

This book is a mix of new work and stories reprinted from earlier comics but somehow Huizenga makes them all seem parts of a whole. Part of this could be the craft - his drawings match his writing - seemingly casual but very careful and precise. It's easy to look at and read his work but he always keeps something there that doesn't allow a reader to merely skim by. In this book there's what seems to be standard slice-of-life poignant comics - his elderly neighbors, his mom's disease recurrence. We've read things like these before, but Huizenga adds something more, something that overarches all the stories in the book, something that ties together these seemingly disparate stories. He makes the non-fiction feel like fiction: artificial, non-mimetic and, somehow, more real.

I think the key is in an adaptation of an excerpt from Franz Kafka's diary where Huizenga draws a man encountering strange things on the street. The man seems amazed by it all, but separate from it, removed. He say to himself while watching two men fight "Stop fighting, gentleman." Huizenga repeats this panel later in the book, having the man and then a cartoon animal both say it. It's a thin strand but it seems to be a tiny fiber of a poem woven through the stories - "Stop fighting, gentlemen." The dying neighbor, the sick mother, the soul-sucking job: "Stop fighting, gentlemen."

PS I read this book in a crowded mini-van while being shuttled from home to my car which had been serviced. On a multi-lane sprawl street we all heard the droning monotone of some weird song from a car stuck next to us in traffic. One lady next to me giggled, then I did. I looked back down to the book and thought, "I should draw that in Huizenga's style."

4 years old!

2009-06-08T13:49:00.000-04:00

and don't forget she has a blog.

Black Cat Skate show

2009-06-06T22:03:00.002-04:00

I didn't blog this yet... Last December I had a piece in the "Broken Boards" show at Black Cat Skateshop here in Charlottsville. Andy, the owner, gave out broken skate decks and a bunch of folks made some art with them. Here's mine:

and some details:

I took the deck, painted it with thick gloppy house paint and then drew on it (and taped some stuff too).

Violet made one too:

Yes, that's pink paint, glitter and a pipe cleaner. So punk rock. Here's hers on the wall:

and the proud artist at the opening (and no, she didn't get any of the PBR Andy had for the party):

Oh, and here's mine on the wall:

I'm sorry I didn't get any shots of Sean Samoheyl's great piece all made from cardboard! There were lots of good things in this show... It's funny - I don't ride this kind of skateboard anymore - I have a, Earthwing SuperGlider longboard and a Gravity Ben Wei mini, both for hills and hard carving - what my old pal Marc always called "landsurfing."

Made in California

2009-05-29T11:59:00.001-04:00

Made in California
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

Violet's morning art project.

some design

2009-05-28T23:38:00.002-04:00

some design
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

I like how they used perspective to indicate which seat is which - Sorry
for the bad phone pic.

The Dot & The Line animated

2009-05-17T23:03:00.003-04:00

In case you don't want to print and fold.

Speedy

2009-05-15T16:55:00.003-04:00

Sarah at slang from chaos did a little post about my old old old Xeric-grant winning book Speedy. That picture above is by her... Thanks! It's weird to see that I'm still obsessed with the same things 13 years later - I should put it all online sometime...

Affordable Art Fair 2009

2009-05-06T11:05:00.002-04:00

Look for my work this week at the Migration Gallery booth (C-204) at the Affordable Art Fair in New York. They have lots of pages from HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, a few that are left from my piece in the Ghost Comics anthology (one seen above) and some new big (2 ft x 2 ft) ink drawings like this one:

Thanks Rob and Laura - hope you guys have fun!

ha ha

2009-05-04T11:22:00.002-04:00

Made long long ago for usscatastrophe.

Seed Toss updates

2009-04-30T11:35:00.002-04:00

See new trouble over at Seed Toss.

Everything

2009-04-25T22:31:00.001-04:00

Everything
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

some puffs of smoke

2009-04-22T00:02:00.001-04:00

Comics in medicine

2009-04-21T13:48:00.001-04:00

Comics in medicine
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

Sorry for thebad phone pic. Found in Ginger's ear medicine packaging.

Books at Anteism

2009-04-19T21:42:00.004-04:00

I'm glad to say that the folks at Anteism are including my little DIY PDF books in the book orders they send out - in fact I'm making special Anteism branded versions of several of the books just for them. So go buy their stuff!

This kind of thing is exactly why I make these books as PDFs with a creative commons license - to get the work out into the world. I'm excited for the same reason I was excited about the book that printed in C-VILLE, a local weekly here in Charlottesville - many many more people were going to see the weird things I make.

A writer whose work I like says that the problem with art in the internet age isn't piracy or not getting paid - it's not getting noticed through the seas and seas of other content out there. I'm copying him and others when I adopt a "dandelion" strategy for my works distribution - send all the seeds out I can in all the ways I can think of and I know that some, a tiny percentage maybe but still some, will grow.

Posted Its all over town

2009-04-19T16:07:00.001-04:00

Posted Its all over town
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

One of many. I should googlemap all my drops.

Hurrah!

2009-04-11T22:43:00.001-04:00

Hurrah!
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

Some waves

2009-04-10T14:37:00.001-04:00

Some waves
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

Some shells

2009-04-06T12:40:00.001-04:00

Some shells
Originally uploaded by wcraghead

I'm at the beach.

Einspruch on freedom

2009-04-05T10:20:00.000-04:00

Franklin's talk. Amen.