Giant XXL Special Edition MoCCA Fest Blogstravaganza!

I’ve actually been drawing quite a bit over the past few days, but I’ve been doing so in Maine, where I sadly don’t have access to my scanner. Luckily, I still haven’t blogged EVEN ONCE about the wonderfulness that was my experience at MoCCA Fest NYC last weekend. So this is the perfect opportunity to do that.

Last Saturday, I intended just to “stop by” MoCCA Fest, but I accidentally stayed for about four hours. I talked to a whole bunch of artists all of whom are doing really interesting things in the intersecting worlds of comics and illustration. I also bought a metric shitload of comics:

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Keep in mind, none of these cost more than $5, and most were $1 or $2, and some were free.

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And that’s not even everything…

I’ll probably end up doing more posts on some of the comics and, especially, ideas I acquired at MoCCA Fest, but for now I just want to do a round-up of some of the cooler stuff I ended up with. (Generally the reason I have dubbed these comics “cooler stuff” is because they are in richly-printed color, which tends to make my eyes pop out of my head, in a good way, and I do most of my comics in color, so I’m always looking for tips on how to successfully make the transition to print.)

Okay! Let’s go.

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Above is just ONE SPREAD from an issue of the Comix Reader, an ongoing series of anthologies, printed on newsprint, in which each of 20 participating artists gets one page to do with whatever he or she wants. It’s committed to being fun and iconoclastic and hilarious… and it is all of those things. Also, it’s sold for just $1/issue, which means I bought all four that have been published. Aaaand I will absolutely be doing a post dedicated just to these so I’ll move on to the next thing for now. Suffice it to say that the Comix Reader is fucking fantastic.

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This one, by Kaisa Leka, is kind of important to me because its form is so interesting. Little Fish Big Fish is printed on both sides of a long accordion-style book, which is something I’m considering exploring for print publications of my own. I found it at a table dedicated to Finnish comics, and it smells like an empty crayon box, which is a bit weird but not necessarily a bad thing.

I asked the woman who was tending the table how exactly Little Fish Big Fish was printed and she said it was done on a couple long pieces of card stock, then folded and glued together by hand. Very intriguing.

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This is a tiny bit of a BEAUTIFUL comic (drawn by Ellis Rosen and colored by Sam Marlow) called HomeQuest. It’s a satire of fantasy quest narratives, especially those found in kind of your run-of-the-mill RPGs, my personal favorite genre of videogame.

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Okay in service of not making this post entirely NSFW, I am only including a small piece of the cover of this anthology which is descriptively titled Pizza and Sex. Inside you can find short comics and visual narratives by a bunch of artists, all about, well… pizza and sex. Some stories have people having sex and eating pizza; some are having sex WITH pizza; there’s also some pizza having sex with other pizza. Basically it’s hilarious, and a well-orchestrated example of a ridiculous concept that ends up inspiring some pretty excellent art.

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On a um… completely different note, Here’s a part of one of the many gorgeous pages in Molly Ostertag‘s Khutulun, which is based on the true story of a Mongolian princess-slash-warrior. (This is the same artist who does the visuals for the ongoing webcomic Strong Female Protagonist.)

I talked to Ostertag about her process, because I fell in love with her art style—specifically the really delicate-yet-bold way that she colors her work. It turns out she colors in Photoshop! This blew my mind a bit, because I am such a proponent of doing things “the old-fashioned way” when it comes to painting (for my own work; I definitely don’t look down on other people’s methods, regardless of what they are!). Not that I’m going to stop using actual physical paint any time soon, but I am super impressed with how real-actual-paint-ish many artists can make their Photoshop-painting look.

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Above is a tiny, hysterical piece of Sylvan Migdal‘s Rho. Oh uh… that link is probably NSFW. Sorry bout that.

Anyway, I was already familiar with Migdal’s work on (definitely NSFW) Curvy, which is a lovely, smutty sci-fi/fantasy adventure story. Thing is, I actually was sure that Migdal, who sometimes goes by the pen-name M. Magdalene, was a woman! Maybe it’s just because there are so many different types of queer ladies in Curvy. But when I saw Migdal at his table at MoCCA Fest, I said “Oh, I like Curvy,” and he was like, “Thanks!” and of course I immediately said, “YOU did Curvy?? I thought you were a woman!”

Everyone at the table thought that was pretty funny. Comics: defying gender stereotypes!

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You’ll notice that this last thing isn’t in color. It also isn’t really a comic. But it IS a fortune-teller about global warming. So obviously I had to buy it.

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It came in a $2 “grab bag” of comics by Hazel Newlevant.

Whew. Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll be sure to go into more detail about individual comics at some point, as well as talk about various things I learned from talking to all those artists, other than what I briefly mentioned above. More soon!

What Is Happening: Clip Art & Crustaceans Edition

That’s right: It’s time for another installment of What Is Happening! Here’s some of what I’ve been up to in the last week or so.

1. Uh… Crustaceans: There is seemingly no end to the weird shit I am going to have to learn to draw for this Secret Project I have mentioned a few times before. In this case, it isn’t necessarily that I’m going to have to draw any particular type of shellfish; rather I’m incorporating crustacean-inspired design elements into some stuff, so I’m practicing drawing them to internalize their parts and the ways their anatomy hangs together:

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I drew the above things (two terrifying crab-like creatures and I guess a tail?) based on a couple pictures in one of the amazing clip art books—yes BOOKS—that I discovered this week. Which leads me to the next thing that’s been taking up my time…

2. Clip art books are the best thing that has ever happened to me: They are seriously awesome. First of all they only cost like barely anything because all the pictures contained within are in the public domain. Second of all, they are better than the internet because you can have them all in one place and let’s be honest—for visual references, Google image search is ALMOST ALWAYS totally useless. Unless you’re looking for something incredibly specific.

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Clip art books are definitely better because I can have pictures of unicorns and men coming out of other men’s heads and overly ornate suits of armor and terrifying crabs without going to the trouble of knowing what I’m looking for before I find it.

For practicing drawing random things, and for fast visual inspiration in well-defined categories, I cannot recommend these more.

And also here is this picture of a woman dancing with a bear, which is going to be very useful in my artistic career:

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3. Victoria: I did another character design for Secret Project. This is Victoria:

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I haven’t figured out what her costume is going to be quite yet, but I have done a design of one of her swords that I’m pretty satisfied with:sword-1

She’s going to carry two of those, which may be very slightly different from one another. They are going to be proportionally ridiculous, in the style of Cloud Strife’s Buster Sword. But TWO TIMES that. Because there will be two swords.

4. 25-minute nude sketch: Here’s another one from my Art Students League life-drawing class. Like last time, I made this with pen and compressed charcoal:

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That’s all for the moment—I’m pretty deep into the next piece of Lost In Hong Kong and the first draft of text for part 3 of Manic Pixel Dream Girl, but I’ll blog again soon, promise!

Lost In Hong Kong: Introduction

If you know me, you know that I lack a sense of direction. (It isn’t BAD; rather it is NON-EXISTENT, like this.) I get lost a lot, including in my own neighborhood(s) pretty regularly.

As you might imagine, I get lost even more in unfamiliar locations. Sometimes funny or interesting stories come from times I’ve gotten lost, alone or with others, in exotic places. So I’m making a small series of comics about some of those times. It’s called Lost In, and I’ll be publishing it here as I finish pieces of it.

Oh, and not all of the stories will be about me getting lost because of my directional issues; though some will, there are many reasons we humans get lost. A lack of direction is only one.

Here’s the introduction to Lost In Hong Kong, my first story in the series (click to enlarge):

Lost In Hong Kong: Intro

All Hong Kong cityscapes are based on photographs Tom & I took while on our trip there. Painted with acrylics & water; inked in pen as always.

The next part of Lost In Hong Kong will be available soon! I’m already working on it. :)

What Is Happening: Gears & Gals Edition

Now that I’m doing art full-time, I am (not-surprisingly) drawing A LOT. So I think I’m going to do a regular feature on this blog just kind of taking you through some snippets of what I’ve been doing, maybe every other day or so. May I present to you the first of hopefully many such posts. Enjoy!

1. Elements of Steampunk: For this thing I’m working on, there are a few parts that rely heavily on the steampunk aesthetic, so I’ve been doodling steampunk visual elements to get a hang of them. I am definitely not like “into” steampunk at all, and I often actually dislike it, but daaaamn is it fun to draw:
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2. Julia: I also am finally happy with one of the primary character designs (not steampunk!!) for that same secret project. Below, meet Julia:

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She’s wearing chunky heels on the right, but she’ll usually be wearing flat lace-up “booties.” God I hate that word. What I mean is, you know, ankle-high boots. Can I just say that instead?

3. 20-minute Nude Sketch: Moving on… Today I started taking a life-drawing class at the Art Students League, which I’ll be doing two mornings a week to keep those particular muscles warm. Here’s my favorite thing I did in today’s class:

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I drew the outlines freehand with pen, and did the shading with compressed charcoal. It was a 20-minute pose.

More soon!

Life changes & exciting new things

Hello!

You may have noticed that I have been keeping a low profile for a couple weeks (also known as “neglecting my blog” but why use such language?). So here’s an update on what’s been going on:

First off, I left my day-job, and I wanted to spend the last couple weeks tying up all my loose ends there. Especially being secure in the knowledge that, when I was finished, I’d be able to devote ALL OF MY TIME to making art & comics & (hopefully) comics that are art.

So now that’s what’s happening: I am going to try my luck at being a full-time artist & illustrator for awhile. If it works out, I’ll be doing it forever. Obviously that’s what I’m hoping for, because as you may have realized, I really really REALLY love drawing and painting, and I want to be able to do what I love.

In the next few months (and hopefully much longer), I’ll be working hard at getting myself off the ground art-wise. I have loads of ideas and plans for various graphic memoirs and paintings and even fictional comics, possibly zines or booklets, definitely prints, and so on. As I work on those things, I’ll be posting progress sketches and the like here, as usual, as well as notes whenever something is published.

If you want to help me fulfill my hopes and dreams & be able to continue creating stuff indefinitely, first of all that makes me really happy. :) And second of all, here are some things you can do:

  • Follow me on twitter.
  • Read this blog & share any posts you particularly like.
  • Get in touch if you need illustrations or other artwork done and you think my work would be a good fit.
  • Keep up with my portfolio, which I update regularly with finished versions of things that I post here while they are in-progress.

Otherwise, just keep being wonderful and supportive, which I assume you are if you made it to the end of this post!

Thanks for reading & wish me luck!
Elizabeth