Recent sketches

Here's a few sketches I've done lately...

This drawing corresponds with a recent blog post

I purchased a Japanese brush pen and this was my first experiment with it.

I've started doing quick sketches of performers at stage shows. I cleaned it up and added color in Photoshop

Playing around with free-hand drawing in Photoshop and finishing in http://pixlr.com/o-matic/

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

~ J. P. Jacks, Education Through Recreation (1932)

[via Austin Kleon's Tumblr] 

 

Lynn J.

 I must admit right off the bat, I am pretty unfamiliar with the comic strip For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston. I recognize it, sure, but I can't say I've ever "read" it. Like Chic Young's Blondie and Family Circus, it shows up, but it has stayed below my radar pretty much.

What is strange is, from the drawing side of things, I probaby should study it a bit. Johnston has an aesthetic like my own, with a style that falls somewhere between really comicky (think Far Side or Wizard of Id) and pretty realistic and to scale (think Prince Valiant or the Hernandez Brother's Love & Rockets).

I just stumbled onto her website. Despite not knowing her comic, I will say, I love her website! It is the most interactive site of its kind I've ever scene, especially as far a cartoonists go. From her daily "Coffee Talk" section where she posts comments from readers to a wonderful "behind-the-scenes" section on how she puts together the strips (she inks the eyes first in the frame!).

 

I recommend checking it out... HERE

Free August Calendar for you

 Hey, friends:

As part of my Kickstarter project to help fund getting CHOP to FringeNYC, I created a PDF calendar of Donnie Rocket Toaster-Face comics. I wasn't going to start it until September, but I ended up getting up off my ass and getting it done early. So, I have a bonus August 2012 page!

And I offer this bonus page free to you. Download, print, share, whatever.

Here's the link... LINK

If you are interested in the full 2013 Calendar, I'll have them on sale this fall via Etsy. They will be signed, limited edition and snaptastic! Drop me an email and I set aside one for you.

Anyway, Happy Summer!

Fire Retarding CHOP banners

About to go in the mix. I'm using a flame retardant that meets NY Fire Marshall code.

Setting out on the drive way to dry. It is 105 degrees outside in the sun.

Part of the many hoops and stipulations of having a show at FringeNYC is that all set pieces must be treated with flame retardant (this beyond the fact that no open flames are allowed on NY stages). So, today, I soaked and dried my tablecloth and sideshow banners that are used in CHOP.

UPDATE: I brought the banners in and were refolding them to pack away for transport when I saw tire tracks on the Queen of Nails banner. Tire tracks! It means some ass-face backed into my driveway while the banners were out drying in order to turn around or something. I am not enchanted with this neighborhood. I am glad my set pieces are supposed to look beaten in. If I had a pristine white screen for shadow puppetry or something, I would have pitched a fit. Seriously, tire tracks!?

Woody Allen on Comedy

"It’s one way of dealing with life. People think it’s very hard to be funny but it’s an interesting thing. If you can do it, it’s not hard at all. It would be like if I said to somebody who can draw very well, My God, I could take a pencil and paper all day long and never be able to draw that horse. I can’t do it, and you’ve done it so perfectly. And the other person feels, This is nothing. I’ve been doing this since I was four years old. That’s how you feel about comedy—if you can do it, you know, it’s really nothing. It’s not that the end product is nothing, but the process is simple. Of course, there are just some people that are authentically funny, and some people that are not. It’s a freak of nature.

This is from a great Woody Allen interview in the Fall 1995 Paris Review. I appreciate that Allen doesn't put a value judgement on being funny, he just explains, in a very straight-forward fashion, that if you are funny, it's not really a big deal. It is a natural thing. For some...

As a performing artist - improviser and actor (as well as a director, for that matter) - I'm often coming up to situations where I'm working with people slightly out of their element. That is to say, people who are expected to be funny, but who are not naturally good at comedy.

Upon reflection, this might be why I work rather exclusively with the same people from project to project. Like my friend and frequent collaborator, Jeff Swearingen... he's funny. It is not a big deal when the two of us are working together because we are in our element. I keep working with him, especially on comic projects, because of this. He's just one example, too. 

As a director, I have a list of actors who I wanna work with on other kinds of projects. There are actors who can sing well and move well, who look at the world a certain way. But my list of comic actors... oh man, I kinda hoard that list. 

You can't tell someone who isn't funny how to be funny.

Read the whole Paris Review interview HERE.