I bought a new press this week. It’s a used mid-size Ettan press and I am very excited. I’ll grant you I am generally pretty happy working smaller than 9″ x 12″, but it gets to feeling pretty cramped after a while. I should be able to just about double the scale of my prints now.
It will be a while longer before I can put the press into action. I have to find a place to set it up, so it may end up going into storage for a few months. You’ll know when the thing is up and running….
In other news, I was recently given the 2nd and 3rd volumes of Gunnerkrigg Court, by Tom Siddell. I’ve been following Gunnerkrigg Court online for years and I do recommend it for you comic reading pleasure.
I was struck by the difference in the experience there was between reading it online and reading it in a book. The online version is great, but when you get caught up, your options are ignoring your burning need to know what happens next for a month so you can read it in proper episodes, or following along and snapping up each dribble of story as it updates a page three times a week. Reading it in a book was quite luxurious. It was all there and easy to flip back to previous pages to savor them again. The problem of “what next?” is still there, with Volume 3 ending at a somewhat awkward place and no Volume 4 in sight. I guess you just can’t really win until the whole thing is done.
Also, I guess I’m going to have to buy more shelf space. Books are still winning the battle for my reading enjoyment.
I suppose there are some possible exceptions where electronic reading is preferred…
This week’s drawing is a summary of the show Noein. You can read my review of that show at the Megamoth Studio site.
It is now March. How Nice.
You are invited to enjoy February’s print, posted below or over in the gallery. It was sort of an experiment for me. It’s not technically à la poupée, since there is only the one color, but it’s as close to à la poupée as I’ve ever done for a personal edition. I found leaving portions of the plate un-inked was much more effective than trying to use white ink would ever be, at least when printing on white paper.
In other news, I did a review of the show Noein for Megamoth Studio. There’s a silly little drawing that sort of almost doesn’t really summarize the show in the review, so check it out.
Also, I just finished reading “The Gypsy” by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm. It’s a book about magical Gypsy brothers fighting the Devil in Lakota, Ohio in 1989. How could you go wrong?
In fact, the book was pretty enjoyable. Some of the scenes lose coherence when magic induced hallucinations start happening, but mostly it’s just fun to read. In the end, it’s not really anything more than another urban fantasy, but it has some strong, sympathetic characters, a strong, sinister villain and strong writing. It’s worth checking out, if you’re looking for something that’s not too heavy.
That’s it for this time. Cheers!
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
I recently finished reading A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I was not particularly excited by it. I did find myself thinking about it quite a bit this week so I guess it did something right. The book is a sort of bizarre, jumbled mess with the stories of several loosely connected characters being told all out of order. The narrative jumps back and forth through time and viewpoint with very little regard to the reader’s ability to follow it.
Each section is a character study of someone going through some portion of their lives, from early hopeful teen years (or depressing teen years…) to lying in bed crippled from a stroke. The whole thing moves jerkily forward from the 80′s until it explores the near future at the end. The book is more about the passage of time than anything else. Each character has their own conflicts and dramas but the overall effect is less about the specifics of what happens and more about the fact that everyone has their own story and time just keeps going. The world keeps going and people live their lives ending up in any number of states of being along the way.
As a point to a novel, it’s not a bad one. I’m not sure what to do with it, except to keep watching time go by while my life goes on.
The power-point slide journal chapter was actually kind of brilliant. I kind of want a whole book written that way.
This week we have what will probably be the last of this old batch of drawings for a while. There is a February print, but the ink is still wet and I don’t really want to muck up the scanner. I will probably post it next week.
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Terry Pratchett has a way with words. Sometimes I wonder if I should feel warm and safe and amused while reading about horrible monsters, world shattering terrors and casual murder. Sometimes it just feels right.
Anyway, here is a drawing:
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
I just finished reading The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. It’s a book about a magical duel in a magical circus, so it’s hardly surprising it was recommended to me. Wizards have always been a favorite of mine and circuses aren’t half bad either.
In the end, I found the plot to be pretty slack. It’s not really a bad plot. There are conflicts and consequences and rising action and all the rest of it, but it is not a particularly gripping plot. What kept me turning the pages was the description of the circus itself. The images and dreamlike concepts in this book are well worth the read and more than make up for any deficiencies in the plot.
It was definitely worth the read.
As for my own work, let’s just continue plumbing the depths of my rediscovered collection of claybord pieces:
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Here’s another one from my old claybord cache.
Cheerful, yes?
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
Preparations for Fanime have already begun. Hopefully getting an early start on them will mean the new Megamoth Anthology and other table preparations won’t end up consuming my life as completely as it usually does come May. I already miss having more time to draw.
Speaking of time not spent drawing, I was working on cleaning out some of the less organized corners of the studio today. The goal is to make the corners tidy so I can move all the stuff in the middle of every workable space into the corners again. While I was cleaning today, I found some claybord pieces I did a few years ago. I actually rather like them and, well, here’s one now:
Fancy that!
Saturday, January 21st, 2012
I just finished reading a book called Pandemonium and Parade – Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai by one Michael Dylan Foster. The book is a discussion of the way traditional Japanese monsters and spirits were viewed/believe in/studied over the last few hundred years. It is a pretty academic text, but I found it quite interesting.
The cultural conception of yokai has gone through a number of changes over the centuries, but I was fascinated to discover one of the earliest ways yokai were consciously studied was as an encyclopedia or bestiary. It is interesting to think about the current concepts of “monsters” in Japanese popular media as being bred from encyclopedic collections. Odd to think of something as frivolous seeming as Pokemon being the cultural descendent of Japan’s introspective obsession with it’s own supernatural/folkloric history. It is also interesting to note how the notion of making up new creatures for the sake of describing and collecting them as entertainment (Pokemon) actually goes all the way back to the author of the first recorded yokai specific encyclopedia, Toriyama Sekien.
If you’re interested in bestiaries, monsters and discussions of what these things reveal to us about the culture that created them, check out Foster’s book. If nothing else, the chapter about the late 20th century will make you wish Mizuki Shigeru’s work would get translated and released here in the US.
This week we get a new print in the gallery. I’m sure you all agree, this is very exciting. The February print is coming along nicely as well, so there is more excitement to come in the weeks ahead.
Saturday, January 14th, 2012
I spent most of my studio time this week drawing grass. It was exhilarating. You might think the prospect of spending several hours in a row rendering a field of grass would make doing just about anything else look attractive, but every time I had to stop drawing grass and go do anything else I always felt just a little sad. Go figure.
This week’s image also has a lot of grass on it. It is a color version of one of my editions from last year.
I should be pulling the January edition tomorrow, so look for a new etching next week.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go wrestle with some website code. Mental challenges keep you sharp, right?
