Face Boy

Or, boy-face. Just quickly dashed off, on thin paper, which crinkles a little, and actually gives it a bit of dimensionality. I don't know who this is. I'm not that good at most faces. A well-known artist I've met has no memory for faces at all. If you meet him again, he won't recognise you. I'm not like that, but maybe I'm a bit like that. Worse than other people?

The Poet's Mind

I feel sad about pushing the previous picture down, because it's so relatively pretty. This is one of the more bizarre things I've drawn, while watching Chelsea Walls: a movie I got a kick out of, but is like a horror film to me. The filmmaker seems to be in on the joke, however. I love poetry, but poets take themselves way too ssriously, and are no fun to live with.

Snake Girl

It's a drag not being with the family at Christmas, but it's fun to paint silly pictures and put them on my blog. This is something that wasn't working, but I kind of fixed it. The new paints helped.

Technical note: one thing you should never never do, is try to re-wet the front of a piece of paper that's been painted with little shapes in a strong colour - say, red. They will bleed and run on you. Of course, you can do what the cat does after falling off the table... give the impression that you meant to do that.

Kind of a pagan subject for today, huh?

Pony Tail

A bit of colour, for Christmas eve. Bought a couple of new colours: Payne's gray, and Burnt Sienna, and wanted to try them out.

Basement Confrontation

A couple of guys facing off, in what turned out in the drawing to be the basement of the Olympic Stadium. A place I prowled around when doing some work on the Stadium episode of the TV show. Saw it again in the Bon Cop, Bad Cop movie, which is out now on DVD.

Little Lines

Actually, everything looks better with little scratchy lines on it.

Couple of Drawings

Just a couple of drawings. Nothing too fancy. Was working hard for a while (which was good), and can relax a bit, I think, before the Christmas thing.

Scribe

This high-powered scribe is pluggin' away at his next big TV pitch. There's this robot, you see, who falls in love with Paris Hilton .... It's gonna be boffo!

Scott McCloud

(click the pic for more photos)

As promised the other day, here's Scott McCloud at the Librarie Millenium (sic), Saturday afternoon. Nice turnout, and I hope they sold a lot of books. Unhappily, there weren't many of McCloud's books on hand, because his visit was a bit of a last minute thing, and getting comics in is a hit-or-miss business. I'm happy I don't work in comics, but love the medium.

McCloud is on a nine month or so tour where he hopes to cover all 50 states, and is taking detours to likely spots in Canada, as well. A little like Bob Dylan, endlessly on the road.

DVDs and Extras

Above is a drawing of a slightly scuzzy artist type, leading a glamourous Pre-Raphaelite babe somewhere. Above, ghosts of bearded guys from the extras for the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring DVD set.

I actually did work on a "Lord of the Rings"-related project. Look at the IMDB if you don't believe me. This was packaged in the deluxe edition of "The Return of the King." I was brought in late to work on the project when they wanted a more elaborate documentary element to the concert DVD, rather than the five minutes of rehearsal clips that was originally going to come after the live concert show.

The end product was neither fish nor foul (I think the documentary inserts that interrupted the concert would have been better as "hidden tracks" you could jump to when a symbol popped up, the way it worked in the Matrix DVDs, but that would have cost money). You'll actually have to watch the DVD to understand what I'm talking about here).

Still, even though the parties in different parts of the world were picky and hard to please (I dealt with simultaneous conference calls linking Montreal, Los Angeles, Auckland New Zealand, and New York), I seemed to come though on my end, writing an "editing script" that used the scant footage we had in a plausible way (though Howard Shore came in at great expense to record some more comments). So it was a nice launch for me on what's proven to be an interesting and profitable career.

At least I'm better off than I was struggling doing little art and journalism gigs, and being a film extra, as below...



That's me, egging on a few children and other villagers around me, as we execute an accused witch/husband killer (and romantic lead) in the Quebec film Nouvelle-France.

Actually, I ended up doing some interesting and not so interesting things in different films (some embarassing things, too), and meeting interesting and crazy people. Some of these stories I might post up here, but I now think they'll make an entertaining article for some magazine.

Tomorrow: comics sage Scott McCloud is coming to Montreal, and I'll try to be there.

Panels

Four pictures on one page, each one from a different story. (only potential, at this point)

Reader

Here's a reader guy. I feel a little like this, because have gone through some trouble, lately. But things are looking up.

Studio 9 Comics Shop Anniversary

Yesterday, I went to the Studio 9 comics shop for their second anniversary event, and a signing for artists involved with a comic book based on the "Planet of the Apes." This is part of my ongoing project to document the Montreal comics scene at the present time, at least as far as it intersects with me.

Please click on the photo to visit the set. I'll do more linky goodness when I'm in the mood.

Better Comic Book Covers

Thought I'd try something different today, rather than the usual what I was drawing, and a dashed-off comment (though those aren't stopping). This is an informative post from Toronto's Chris Butcher about what makes a comic book cover work. I think it could be extended to what makes certain illustrations appealing. [link]



But here's another sketch. I rescued a drawing from last night which wasn't looking so promising. I like Mr. Firehead, but his girlfriend looked too boyish until I cut down her jaw-line (though her neck is a little long). It's interesting how the scanner lets you see these things. It still drops out lots of tones in the media I use, such as watercolour or coloured pencils. So nice gradations are out of the question, reds look raspberry, and all one's mistakes show up extra badly. Still, there are things I can fix, and surely all my "realistic" drawings will look like Alan Lee in a short while.

Truthfully, I don't want it to be too slick, because I like the roughness. But I am working on technique, also underlying contruction, and proportion, so I can draw nicely if I want to, and even capture a likeness at times. As I've always said, it's the journey that's interesting. Still cool if you can do a knockout picture or two, once in a while.

Player Couple

Tryin' to colour in photoshop. Even with the cool graphics tablet, I still prefer working on the watercolours.

Left-Wing / Right-Wing

The feature "Ask an Expert" was dropped out of the McGill paper last time. But it should be out in this week's issue. Here's my illustration for it, a question about how the terms left and right wing originated. (during the French Revolution)

Poilu

A French soldier from A Very Long Engagement, a movie which was kind of like Amelie without cuteness, and war instead. Watching The Devil and Daniel Johnston at the moment, which so far is a dismaying (or at least jangling) movie for a self-taught artist.

Strongman

After all the people visiting to look at the expozine pictures, it seems very few of them stayed around to check out sketches. Then, I don't post for a week or so. Some painful, distracting stuff happening in the family, also a head cold has mucked up my thought processes. Even so, I'm still intact inside my little capsule in wintertime Montreal. Have to re-evaluate some personal issues, though, but I still feel lucky compared to many.

Wasn't drawing much. Didn't know if I wanted to post this, because it's a little stereotyped, but I was listening to a radio item about dictators in Africa. However, did you know there have never been as many democracies in Africa (and comparatively speaking, as little war) as there are now?