Sketchbooks 'Till Spring

Doodled while watch the movie "Hands of the Ripper."

You've Got A Lot of Blogs to Check Out

Hey! So remember that super secret extra special comics project I teased around New Years? Well I'm starting to post it on my tumblr! New pages are going to be going up there every Tuesday and Thursday from now until the far distant future! I'll of course keep updating stuff on this here blog as the project continues to develop, but ya know, you can just start following my tumblr if you wanna see the good stuff as it's coming out. And oh, there is indeed some good stuff a-coming.

Also! While your checking out things on tumblr, why don't you check out my good buddy Nick Patten's new blog too! Nick's one of my favourite dudes, and he tends to pump out some pretty slick looking stuff. Also! You should check out some of the cool stuff my buddy Keith Jones has been putting up on his tumblr lately as well! He's been posting huge chunks of the current book he's working on, and it's looking goddamn beautiful! So yeah, remember to check those out too!

Sketch Sketch Sketch

Tumblarrrrrrrr!

So after a bit of an unofficial hiatus, I've decided to start making an effort to start uploading things to my Tumblr again. Mostly sketches, some of which won't be showing up here. So, ya know, feel free to start following if you are the sort of person who likes following other people's tumbles. Tumbleers? Tumblrars? Micro-blogging.

(Though of course, feel free to continue checking this here blog as well. I'm likely going to start doing a fair bit of cross-posting between the two spaces, but this blog is the only place you'll be able to get some of those sweet sweet words to go along with the pictures. And words accompanying pictures is what it's all about!)

Europe Sketches, Part Three

And finally here are the last of my Europe sketches. Hope you all have
enjoyed the previous parts of the series so far. This last one focuses on my sketches from London, Paris, and a couple of different airplanes in between.

I think Paris was probably my favourite part of the trip overall. Above, you can see me livin' it up with some fresh bread, a glass of beer, a bowl of French onion soup and some escargot. Surely this is the best of all possible worlds! Then on the plane ride back we watched "The Lucky One." Which was, you know... horrible...



Overall Europe was a frickin' blast, and I definitely want to return to spend a bit more time at some of the places we visited some day. Because I am a huge nerd, however, I think at the end of the day one of the things I remained most excited about on the trip was the fact that it afforded me a chance to pick up a butt-ton of...



Like seriously, oh man you guys! I grabbed some Moebius, a couple of early collections of Blutch's work, a sketchbook collection of this guy Guillaume Guerse, and the third album of Christoph Blain's Gus and His Gang which hasn't been printed in English yet and is frickin' amazing! *drool* Never have I been so happy
to be bilingual than when walking through a beautiful French comic shop in the middle of Paris. So watch out Europe! I will return one day to raid your stores
of Franco-Belgian comics yet again!!

Europe Sketches, Part Two

Alright, Halloween's over so back to posting those Europe sketches from this past summer! These are more of the sketches I did while in Barcelona. They're primarily from the beach which - aside from all the architecture and the Segrada Familia - was one of my favourite parts of that city. Now that its started to get cold outside, I look at some of these sketches and want to go back IMMEDIATELY. Winter, why are you doing this to me?? Una cervesa, por favor!

Europe Sketches, Part One

Hey internet! How's shakes? I've been up to a whole bunch of stuff lately, the
most exciting of which being that I recently spent a bit of time in Europe this past summer! (In the below picture, imagine the terrifyingly large beer mug represents Europe, and the hapless lad in the plaid shirt represents our beloved protagonist)

I visited London, Barcelona and Paris with my good friend Allison, and it was preeeeetty rad overall. We saw a lot of sights, ate a lot of food, and I managed to fit in a fair bit of sketching while we were out and about. This first batch was all done while in Barcelona, where we spent the majority of our time.



More sketches to come!

Spring = Sketchbooks!

The Nose That Dripped Blood...

More backing board sketches, except this time with colour. 'Cause why not! Click the image if you want to view it bigger. I'm busy getting over a cold right now, so I don't have too much to report (outside of things gross and mucus-related, natch). For those less interested in news of that nature, however, you can busy yourself by checking out the new trailer for the upcoming Cartoon College documentary! I'm gonna appear in it, and also did a bit of work for it, don'tcha know.

Bleep Bloop Bleep

Another pile of backing board sketches. Click for bigger. The drawings on the right are largely copied from Mort Drucker's Mad parody of the movie "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "Hack, Hack, Sweet Has-Been, or Whatever Happened to Good Taste?" And the dog in the bottom right corner is copied from Taiyo Matsumoto's "Tekkonkinkreet." In other news, started reading some Raymmond Carver for the first time recently. Man, that dude could write.

Craig Thompson

So I went to see Craig Thompson talk at the Toronto Underground Cinema a couple days ago, after a friend reminded me about it last minute. This was possibly a bit of a deal for me.

Reading Thompson's "Blankets" for the first time was a big part of what originally got me thinking about making comics more seriously (I'd been producing my webcomic for about a year at that point, but had never considered pursuing comics as an actual career prior to then). So he's always been someone I've admired pretty strongly.

What struck me the most about seeing him talk, however, was less the impressive nature of his work (though there was certainly a great deal of that) than the relate-ability of it. This is someone who, historically, I've always put on a bit of a pedestal. I love his work, but it also always seemed so unattainable. So I was a little surprised to find myself nodding along to his talk about exertion and process, and the slog of working on a longer piece. "Yeah man, yeah... I know how it is."

Then afterward, met up with some friends to go see Dark Dark Dark and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, which was pretty rad as well.

Also! Something I forgot to mention in my last blog post! But my friend Bryan has just started putting a huge chunk of his old comics online these past couple months! If you like comics (as presumably you do) then these are some comics worth reading. Especially the Onion Head stuff. So you know, maybe go check it out!

Flip It, Flop It, Davey Crockett

More backing board sketching! The lady in the top left is copied from Steve Morris's extremely impressive book "Blessed Thistle," and the rest are copied from some random Phaidon photo collection. Whatever gets the juices flowing, right?

Cardboard Sketches

I've been busy with many things lately, and have had less time to blog than I'd like. And I've realized that there's a lot of drawing that I do that I often don't get around to putting online, and maybe should? So in place of anything of actual substance to report, here are some random doodles done on comic backing boards while at my "day job."

One more on my flickr. The sketches on the latter page here are mostly inspired by a book of paintings by artist Lucian Freud. His portraits are such an amazing mix of the beautiful and the grotesque, it really gets my juices flowing in interesting ways.

I wanted to point out as well a recent series of interviews that the Comics Journal podcast did with some Center for Cartoon Studies alumn. I've been mentioning CCS a lot over the past few blog posts, mainly because I've been putting up comics from that period, but also because going there was a fairly significant experience for me. And I feel like these interviews - particularly the parts with Melissa Mendes, who was in my class, and Joe Lambert, who was part of the community while I was around - paint a fairly accurate picture of what being there was like. So, you know, consider giving it a listen. And consider checking out Joe and Melissa's blogs as well, because both of them just happen to be ridiculously talented people.

Sketchdump!

Sketchdump sketchdump sketchdump!







Way more on my flickr. So go check it out!

Burlesque Sketch

So it seems I unintentionally took February off blogging? Sorry guys! It was mostly because I've been busy the past couple working on some additional pages for Steve Bissette's upcoming Tales of the Uncanny project. More on that, hopefully, in the next couple of weeks! In the meanwhile though, here's some sketch pages of ladies in various states of undress! (Note: potentially NSFW)

Christmas Sketchbook

I started a new sketchbook recently, and decided to use it as an opportunity to try out a couple of new pens. Also to draw people wearing winter clothes.









There're a few more over on my flickr as well.

Super Fresh

This here's a quick drawing I did recently as a going away gift for a friend, based off of a ridiculous inside joke. Meet "Super Freshe," the illegitimate mutant daughter of Ed Mirvish whom he named a convenience store after. She is enthusiastic about large pumpkins, and will sell one to you for several hundred dollars.



You may have noticed that I've recently gone through and added tags to all my blog posts, just like the "real bloggers" do. I figure this should make it easier to keep track of re-occurring themes, like my posts on people you should know. Plus it makes me look more tech savvy. Anyway, speaking of the "friends and neighbours" tag...

Nick Patten is one of my favorite people. He's an honest dude with an honest moustache who understands the importance of the "Die Hard" movies more than any person I've ever met. He's also another of the editors of the Werewolf! anthology, and is currently offering up his contribution to the third volume in it's entirety over on the Werewolf! blog! I've been laughing my butt off reading the "Horrible Lump Man" comics he's been posting over on his blog recently too. With such a bounty on offer, how can you say no? Answer: you can't. So check out his blog already, ya big jerk! http://unreachablebeasts.blogspot.com/