Shapes as People as Shapes

Crap, the punchline to this is blurred. Let me know if anyone can't read it. I didn't mean to end up doing this comic in pencil instead of ink, but sometimes the characters just kind of fall out of me without warning. I'm going to see if I can use these characters in the future, or at least other people in Shapeland.

I went to an art exhibit today at the Tennessee Arts League. The featured show, entitled "Heroes, Villains, and Comic Book Art," had been open for a couple weeks, so a lot of the paintings had already been purchased. The exhibit had another wing with more experimental assemblages and paintings that ranged from Orphist swirls of color to traditional Americana landscapes.

UPDATE: Turning up the contrast fixed the blurring. Enjoy the comic!

Clark the Clown

I have successfully moved in here at Vanderbilt. Getting the freshmen moved in was a truly rewarding experience, and I'm glad I was able to help so much. I would also like to give a big thanks to both Sean and Daniel for helping me carry all my boxes and furniture from East Nashville over to West Nashville. I bought a new bookshelf to house all the books I have acquired in the past four month, which has helped immensely in organizing my dorm so far. Feels like home already.



My final schedule for fall semester:

Relief Printing -- Mark Hosford
Shakespeare: The comedies and histories -- Andras Kisery
Survey of Calculus -- Linda Hutchison
Elementary Spanish I -- Jackie Willey
Sources of Contemporary Art -- ???

Books: The ballasts of our lives

Haha! Because I am so smart, and because I am so clever, I have waited until the last minute to start packing all of my belongings into cardboard boxes. I am scheduled to move into Vanderbilt either today or tomorrow because I am doing a week-long community service project with the campus recycling group before classes start. I have put in my two weeks notice at the Bound'ry, and am now in the process of remembering how heavy my possessions really are.

One of my coworkers took me to the sketchiest bar in all of Davidson county for my birthday, where I had a conversation with a stranger about the right way to lay electric wiring. Luckily, Michael rescued me by calling on the telephone to wish me happy birthday, which gave me an excuse to abscond after thirty minutes or so.

…And Now Miguel

So tonight I have officially reached my halfway point for the project I alluded to last blog post (yes, only halfway; give me a break I am working two jobs). I was looking at some of the panels that I will not be able to use in the finished product and decided this one would be good for a for-fun promo. The working title is Tilly (not be confused with Leo Lionni's Tillie and the Wall), and the pages will be 6" x 12." Right now the plan is 60 pages, but I have been consistently trimming that number down since I finished the script at the end of June. I have been going for a rather simplistic art style using cut-out shapes, but avoiding the flat South Park-y feel by mixing watercolor, acrylic, and india ink. Don't worry the typography will DEFINITELY not look this crummy upon completion.



Additionally, some fiction blurbs:

Bone by Jeff Smith
--Currently working through this, and I can't put it down. Smith spent about 13 years of his life inking this graphic epic novel, and his storytelling is superb. It is about three cousins exiled from their rural village and forced to question the nature of dream and reality to battle an evil monarch.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
--A bizarre story of a carnival family's grotesque and glorious self-destruction. Born a mutant in a family of mutants, the main character deals with gender roles, the nature of chance, and conceptions of the self through a life that puts the insidious ahead of the wholesome in the name of family unity.

The Great Divorce by C.S Lewis
--A short novel giving an fanciful interpretation of the afterlife, a topic that seems rather important to Lewisian Christianity. I couldn't buy into all the points he raised, but the descriptions of heaven and hell were refreshing and interesting.

The Avocado: Fruit not Vegetable

Yes it has been a while since I updated, and I'm sure you all have been worried sick, so here is a little ditty I put together just for you. I've been working on other artistic pursuits lately, which leaves me little time to do the quick sketches I generally like to post here. Hope you like iambic pentameter.

First of all, the Bound'ry is back open, to follow up on the last blog post. However, I am only pulling about a shift a week over there, possibly because my manager has caught on to my nefarious plan to abandon him once school starts back.

I did play laser tag last Saturday; the science center hosted a game of employees versus volunteers, which was lots of fun. The floor plan is already designed to foster plenty of running about, so giving everyone weapons made it seem very action movie. To give you a feel of the dynamic, most of the volunteers were in high school, while most of the employees were sophomores in college (there are six of us that are the same age--weird, right?).

The science center puts me in contact with a lot of children, so I am surprised I have managed not to get sick yet. How can children be so adorable and yet so filthy? One little boy liked the rides so much that he invited me to his birthday party at Disney World. Another one spat in my face (it was not malicious; he was simply unaware of what people generally do when they talk to keep spit from flying out).