Cowboy Acknowledgement

I'm laying out comics this week so here's a messy cowboy.

2001: a Space Odyssey

I live in New York now. Also if you have a cheap apartment available let me know.

I'm working on comics mostly, but I've just made an editorial poster for 2001: a Space Odyssey. I was testing out whether or not I would do a series of all of Kubrick's movies on weekends and stuff. I will. There is so much to learn from his movies. There is also a ton of conceptual and thematic substance to his work. Kubrick makes it so easy for viewers to connect with his movies in individual and specific ways, so I feel like I should have no problem making some worthwhile art based off his films.

2001 seemed like a good starting point because it is such a classic. Familiar symbols etc... I decided to focus on the the mysterious nature of human development the film presents. Here are a couple sketches I started with.

I went with the first one because it felt truer to the atmosphere of the movie. Here it is inked.

And the final.

Update: Painting and Moving

Oh hey there. Give me a second to get this all together. OK.

So I missed a couple weeks there because I was painting this mural. It looks almost exactly like this except 25 feet long. It took a while because of it's 25 feet long.

If I hadn't been slogging away at that we would have celebrated this blog's one year anniversary. Hooray! Everybody celebrate with me. I thought about doing some sort of reflective post about this year, but just like, scroll down and you'll get a sense of it. Maybe hum something melancholy while you do. 

I'm moving again, this time to New York City, so I couldn't get great scans of stuff in transit. Here are some low quality scans of unlettered comics. This book is almost wrapped. I can give some more details later, but it's written by Sam Costello. It's not always this guy on a phone, but these are some of my favorite pages from it where he is.

Sketchbook Judge Dredd...

And some life drawings with fast color slapped down on them. The only life drawings in my sketchbook that I've inked right now are a couple from Pecha Kucha STL.

Episode 2

New Pages! Read them quickly! I've got a bunch of stuff planned on this, but getting a little done in between other projects here and there.

Edit: This is the whole episode now. Whoop.

Mural Prep

Almost finished designing a mural project. It's a cool project. They wanted a STL Cardinals piece with some action going on. Because of the location legibility at a distance was important. To keep it exciting I wanted to keep the narrative simple. Here are some sketches.

After talking it over the client and I went with sketch 3 after some changes, and variations.

After incorporating some elements from both I mocked up the color.

Mostly final design:

Axe

Diverse stuff going on this week. Was making this thing in my sketchbook, and I accidentally worked it up to being pretty finished. Something about work being pretty tough and ongoing lately made me invest more in this piece than I anticipated or probably should have.

Blaze of Glory

Warning, Spoilers I guess?

I was watching The Wild Bunch recently. Maybe it's just because that movie tries to define manliness so hard, but it got me thinking about macho-ness in westerns. One trope that I never really realized bothered me is the "blaze of glory" ending.

I remember when I first saw Spartacus as a kid, and Spartacus got crucified I was pretty into it. I'd never seen a movie kill its main character like that. It felt truthful-- bleak but necessary. Spartacus sacrifices himself because that is the only way to complete what he sets out to do. It completes the story, and is pretty metal about it too. I liked the brashness. The willingness to destroy what we just spent three hours building.

Whatever about Spartacus though. Later I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Those guys were macho. They had to keep going because that was the only way they knew how to live. They lived their lives shooting and by god they were going to go out shooting. Those guys had to die because otherwise... Wait hold on. They were proving that... um. They can get shot real good? Look how awesome we die.

I find myself thinking The Wild Bunch is so damn cool, but taking a step back: why is that part of this macho fantasy cowboy thing in my head? Getting gunned down on your own terms is just wilting with a countdown.