Category: Portland Maine Illustration

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Hand Drawn Type Pattern Portland Maine Illustration Sketchbook Text

Mostly Moving but Still Working

Moving is such a drain on creativity, resources both financial and mental, and time.  Since my wife and I found out that we had to move, we have had our noses to the ground trying to make a bit more money, find a house, and keep ourselves sane.  Throughout this process the only thing that has kept me okay is sharing my friend Shirah’s studio space.  I have a show coming up in February and another in May.  I have several projects on the drawing boards that I wish to give my attention so much more than I want to give my attention to a move that at times I feel so completely nonplussed by.

That said, there is no way around the move.  It will happen, and so, that studio space has become a bit of a safe haven for me.  Recently I began to think about the pieces that I was making in the different divided segments on the 6″ X 6″ panels.  I wondered if I couldn’t combine the ideas of pattern that I had been studying in Franz Boas’s Primitive arts with the ideas behind those segmented images.  Franz Boas suggested that patterns change vertically but become repetitive or symmetrical to the left and right.  This mimics change in our everyday setting.  Consider the skyline, treeline and land.  They are three different segments to our everyday which change vertically but repeat in a sense laterally.

I have always felt like I work better in constrained proportions.  Long vertical or horizontal pieces have always seemed more comfortable to work in than the traditional canvas shapes.  When I have been stacking these pieces I’ve realized that I am actually creating a different type of pattern.  Check out the images below.

In addition, I’ve been trying to do more index card pieces for the show in February.  It is a show of advice and words of comfort from media, relatives and my own sketchbooks.  These word based pieces have struck me as slightly uninteresting as of late, but this morning I started using one of the new sketchbooks that my wife got me for Christmas.  I started to think about the word based pieces as text out of silent movies.  Here is the result.

The patterns grow.  I am beginning to think of words as a really complicated pattern.  That is all that a pun really is; manipulating the patterns that we have created for letters.  I’m off to studio for a bit more work.  I hope you enjoyed the images.

Peace
-Mike

Categories
Daniel Clowes Emo Graphic Novel Love Story Nausea Portland Maine Illustration Sartre Tragedy

Hole in the Chest Boy, Good, Deep Friends, and Confidence

I have wanted to make a graphic novel for a long time.  I have never had the patience to really work on one, however.  Usually a writer will provide you with a script and it seems like they are not looking for you to add or subtract from the title.  The illustrator’s input appears to not be needed for the story.  This isn’t a very good outlet for me though.  I prefer to write my characters, understand them, and make them more about the words and poetics of the situation than I do to show my immense ability to move a character around into a million positions.  In fact, I don’t have an immense ability to move my characters around in a million positions.  I am constantly attempting to get better with this, but am definitely not as good as other artists. 

I have been teaching illustration for the past year at a local community college, and this is giving me some more confidence in my work, however.  I have found that by teaching the students the proper steps to go through to build a character and a plot, composition and layout, I find that I am more and more capable of doing so myself.  That leaves the only issue with making a graphic novel the unfortunate fact that most people that seem very interested in writing work for a graphic novel are interested in some fantasy character, science fiction, or violence.  I am not particularly interested in any of these.  I am more of a sensitive kind of guy.  I don’t draw to work out dragons or mythical creatures.  My idea of cool is much more reading Sartre and listening to the Cure than it is watching the newest season of Game of Thrones or watching the new Batman series.  I am more the speed of a Daniel Clowes than I am a Rob Liefeld, but everything that I grew up with was more Liefeld.  It took a long time for me to admit this, but once I did, I realized that I can get into this graphic novel thing if it is just a little more sad.

As I was chatting with a friend at work, we began to talk about our writing and drawing styles and it dawned on me that one of my characters aligned very well with his writing.  We met yesterday and started talking more ideas for our character, plot development, and supporting cast.  The result was an idea influenced by Sartre’s Nausea, Emo records of the nineties, and a bunch sketches from sadder times in my life.  I am very interested in looking into these characters from the sadder spots in my life as I feel like it will help me identify the character more when he shows up within me.  Perhaps by fully understanding him I will be able to help myself when that character comes around again.

Here are a couple panels from what I’ve been working on so far.

I am very excited about this project.  I plan on printing the first book in two 8 page zine formats and sewing them together.  The outside cover I think will be a black construction paper cover with a piece of fabric sewn over top.  A hole will be left out of the center of the front cover in the fabric showing the black construction paper behind.    The whole book will be 5″ X 7″.  This should be rad.  I’ve been drawing for it pretty much constantly since I met with my buddy.

Peace
-Mike

Categories
Lewis Acrylics Linework Pen and Ink Portland Maine Illustration Sketch

Skate Decks

I am working on art for skate decks tonight and it’s pretty exciting since that is the first thing that I attempted to do when I graduated with my undergraduate degree in illustration.  I think I know less about Illustrator now than I did then, but I think I know more about art and illustration now, so this should be interesting.  I’m wondering how much of the Illustrator I will remember as I move along here.  Some of it comes back relatively fast while other aspects I am sure will take me an entire evening to understand again.  It is a worthwhile venture though.  It is also a venture that people who don’t know all of the details will say things like, “Why don’t you already know everything about the program since you are an illustrator?” or “You should understand all of the tools at your disposal”, but I think that equally important is probably the fact that I understand how visually I can create an image far better than I could when I was 22.  So I guess all things considered, I am glad to be operating the way I do now.  I’m going to make this work, because I want to, and I may need to, and frankly, it would be nice to finally have that job at the design firm, whether it be “selling out” or any of that b.s.  I would be happy for that sale if it were offered to me.  Check out the original sketch.  Tis one of those awesome marble boards.

Wish me luck.  I would like more of this type of work.  I think it would be good for me, and it might even make my parents rest a little easier, which after all of this time would be an incredible blessing.

Big ups!
Peace
Mike