Getting close to launching my own webcomic on a separate site. Which brings up the question: do I keep putting occasional cartoons on this site even if they’re already on the other page? Oh the dilemmas of life.
Click here to see more artwork!
My first full-color cartoon is also a multi-panel production. Can you handle it?
Click here to see more artwork!
Everyone has known that person that seems to be good at everything; specifically, the person that is better than you at everything. It even seems like the things that you’re especially good at are the things they are especially better at. If you don’t know that person now, you probably did when you were a kid, and it probably brought a whole host of emotions out of you.
When I was younger, I used to get angry and jealous of that person.
I loved drawing cartoons as a kid, and I was sort of good at it. Good enough to get noticed, anyway. Then I made friends with a kid who was particularly advanced at art. I was OK at copying a drawing from a comic book, but he could conjure up his own images that looked ready to be printed by Marvel. When he was around, I felt like he stole my thunder. I felt like he took away the one thing that made me stand out. Although I certainly admired his natural skill, I was also jealous.
I started playing guitar in middle school, and I was OK at it. As I began establishing myself as a musician, I took pride in my new artistic identity. I knew another kid who was younger and better at guitar than me. He played in a band that was more popular than mine, and he got all sorts of attention for his talents. I liked him as a person, but there was a part of me that was angry that I couldn’t be as cool as he was. As a result, I would find reasons why he wasn’t better than me and ended up closing myself off from enjoying his talents.
When I got a little older, I stopped being angry and instead wanted to join forces with that person.
Any time I met someone who I thought was better than me, I wanted them to be on my side. Part of that was to try to create something great with them; but an even bigger part was to try to keep them from competing with me. As soon as I met a great musician or songwriter, I wanted to be in a band with them. It was even part of the reason I wanted to be in Shaimus; I knew the songs would be good enough that I would wish I was in the band. (Good choice.)
Since I just got myself a sweet Wacom Bamboo tablet, you won’t have to deal with lame pencil sketches for my cartoons anymore! Next comes full-color comic goodness.
Click here to see more artwork!
While I don’t normally write reviews, I felt compelled to share my thoughts on the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop, which I recently watched. The film documents the underground phenomenon of street art, an artistic form of graffiti that tends to involve its creators surreptitiously painting, plastering and installing their artwork in illegal public places (while also attempting to dodge the authorities, naturally). It’s a sort of guerilla art, a counterculture movement that often beautifies as it vandalizes. Originally, the movie was meant to chronicle the making of these (often temporary) works of art by following top street artists such as Shepard Fairey (known for his Obey propaganda and the Obama “hope” poster) and the mysteriously brilliant Brit known only as Banksy (a self-described “art terrorist”). As it turned out, the man doing the filming, Thierry Guetta, was not a filmmaker. He was just a crazy guy with some cameras and a lot of free time. After seeing Guetta’s attempt at making a movie, Banksy decided to take the project into his own hands while advising Guetta to go back home and work on something else to pass the time.
The result is a film that captures the very essence—and dichotomy—of art better than almost any movie I’ve seen.
Banksy quickly realized that the eccentric man who had been following the world’s greatest street artists and filming them for years had unwittingly become the star of his own film. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Guetta was taking Banksy’s advice to heart to such an extreme that he decided he had enough knowhow to become one of the street artists he admired so much. And that is where the big, fat cherry is placed on top of Exit Through the Gift Shop.
You see, Guetta started out as a vintage clothing store owner in Los Angeles who filmed every minute of his life and sold $50 bags of clothing for $4,000 by simply calling it “designer.” As he gained the trust of several innovative street artists (and even became an accomplice), he captured an exciting new cloak-and-dagger artistic movement exploding around the world on tape; we eventually see what was once just glorified graffiti become accepted into the mainstream modern art community and embraced by collectors, with Banksy exhibits attracting celebrity A-list patrons and street art pieces selling for a half a million dollars. And finally we see Guetta, a man who seemingly has no innate artistic talents, hire a team of creatives to manufacture his own version of street art, culminating in a massive exhibit of his own work. And he has managed to construct such a buzz for beforehand, it leads to throngs of adoring new fans praising him as a visionary.
In early December when I was 15, my dog died. She passed away unexpectedly at the veterinarian’s office while they were trying to treat her for a sudden illness. It had been unseasonably warm in the few days leading up to her death—sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-70s. Although my dog always had fun playing in snow, it was this sort of summer-like day that she clearly loved the best, so it was nice to know that she got to enjoy a few more. She died in the afternoon and, oddly enough, that night the temperature plummeted and it started snowing.
Although taken before her time, she had been around long enough to have played a very large role in my life growing up. I remember that day vividly, much like you do with any emotional punch in the gut. I decided that since she had died while away from the house, I would go and see her body for a little closure. When I got to the vet’s office, I saw something lying on a table, covered by a blanket. The vet pulled the blanket off, and underneath was a dog that looked very much like mine. This was her body, to be certain, but it definitely wasn’t her. Having never seen a dead body in person at the time, I was somewhat taken aback. I stared at this thing in front of me that used to be my friend, but it meant nothing to me anymore. I wasn’t getting closure. It was like saying goodbye to the shell of a hermit crab who has moved into a new one.
We all know that our bodies don’t define who we are as people. But seeing something once familiar rendered nearly unrecognizable by taking something as abstract as life from it struck me in an unexpected way. I realized then that there is an intangible element that gives something or someone life—in essence, living beings have a soul.
I’m not necessarily talking about a soul in the spiritual sense, although if you are spiritual then you’d probably like to think of it that way.
He could also give out nuclear reactors, but my bet is on energy saver lightbulbs.
Click here to see more artwork!
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
