Esao is releasing some new prints today at high noon eastern USA time so you can check those bad boys out in his store on his website over here. Esao of course has some super-dense, intense sketchbook pages in Meathaus’s new sketchbook anthology available now, GO FOR THE GOLD! 3.
I was going to post about how Brandon Graham has all these cool drawings and news from his current comics projects like King City from Image Comics on his blog, but he fills his blog up with such insane comics flotsam that he digs up from the dank corners of the internet and his own collections that it was too hard to concentrate. Instead, I had to post this one page ad Brandon scanned from somewhere. Peter Hsu HATES ELVES! As always, stay tuned to Brandon’s blog for more.
Cartoonist and self-employed bohemian Steve Lafler has a collection of his writings about his business past and present called Self Employment For Bohemians, available here from lulu. (Tiny book image and unrelated Lafler art above). As a fellow cartoonist/designer/businessman/one-man-operation I knew that I needed to get this book to see what Steve had to say. At $12 bucks plus shipping, my risk wasn’t that big if the book turned out a stinker. But it was an enjoyable book, written in a friendly informal tone just like the blog where I believe most of it was culled from in the first place. It has all the charming rough edges of most self-published endeavors—and believe me that isn’t a judgment on its value.
As someone who works both in professional publishing and self-publishing, I draw no line to differentiate the two. I came up cranking out zines with buddies through high school, photocopied comics, self-released 7″ recordings, screen-printed flyers, and eventually ended up self-publishing the first seven issues of Meathaus with the rest of the Meathaus crew. Who paid for the print job or where you got the thing printed has never determined the legitimacy of the content, and anyone hanging onto that snobby notion should get their heads out of their asses.
Another way of putting that is that you can find excellently edited and composed writing, book design and art in self-published books, and that the self-published stigma should die.
Back in 2005 when we did our first book with a print-on-demand service, GO FOR THE GOLD! 2, we hit some major obstacles during the production. The print ready PDF was over 200 pages of images, and the technology the printers had at that time couldn’t RIP the size of the first few files that I tried to submit.
Our experience with our new book, GO FOR THE GOLD! 3, has been much better. Lulu has been cranking out books sometimes within a day of orders. The file size limit seems to have been increased so there were no problems with the new book having 242 pages of images. Their service has been refined over the last few years, and I was impressed when I recently began using them again and trying out their full-color printing as well.
All Lulu has to do now is to increase the resolution of their black and white printed pages to use a finer “screen” or however you want to describe it. When Lulu achieves a finer black and white image reproduction and perhaps a cheaper color printing cost, they will be perfect solution for anything and everything. I don’t know if they’re working on that or when the technology will allow it, but maybe I’ll check in again in a few years when we’re ready to do the next GO FOR THE GOLD! issue.
Finally, there is always the option of using professional printers for your self-published project. As I mentioned, Meathaus issues 1-7 were all self-published by our collective, but we used professional printers that also serviced real-deal comics publishers and other businesses. It was always an exciting process, but inevitably we spent a high initial investment of cash and ended up with more stock than needed because of the printer’s minimum print runs. Still, the professional printer is the only way to get that professional printer look—in other words, those of you with exacting standards on how your work reproduces will still need to print with the pros.
A book that I received here at Meathaus falls into that latter category of self-published but pro-printed. It’s called Arcade of Cruelty and it is a massive, formally designed art-book-style collection of a variety of doodles, collages of underwear models, prints, single panel comics and defaced yearbooks from the hand of Joseph Patrick Larkin. It is a unique book in that I’ve never seen such a combination of unrelated visual material by the same artist compiled and presented like this. Each scrap of paper and doodle has a formal title, date and caption. A lot of it is funny, most of it is designed to shock, and a good load of it is tasteless stuff that I don’t imagine many readers enjoying on any level. The art is not the strong point in that most of it does not rise above a crude doodle style, so instead the book rides on the strength of each idea in each comic gag or image/caption combo. There are some funny and weird sections where the author parodies or just rips-into other well known comics creators with abandon. The subtitle does a nice job of summing up this self-aware, self-centered, bizarre volume: “A Tender Cry for Help in Words & Pictures”. All together it is an impressive effort, and definitely not boring. Check it out at Also Ran, Joseph’s publishing group that puts out music as well.
Jimmy Beaulieu has an older blog here but a new site here with a newer blog, but check them both. He makes drawings with a power that comes from the fast marks on the paper made with skinny pens and fat waxy pencils. Both his blogs have many sketches and studies including lots of nude ladies rolling around in bed along with a sprinkling of Smurfs.
A generalized observation is that many French-language comics artists work in a looser pencil rendered/hatching fashion such as this whereas traditionally U.S. based comics artists from the underground to the mainstream seem to primarily use a more defined inked line no matter how the work is colored. Or is the difference mostly in the coloring—the colored pencils? Is that something you have noticed, or a somewhat useless discussion being that it is so generalized? Are there regional or cultural influences that could have shaped this? Probably it would have to do with the language specific material available to artists as they were influenced during their formative drawing years. And what brand are those colored pencils and where can I get some? ha.
In any case, Jimmy’s websites are great to look at and have more sketches to see than you can absorb in one sitting.
Jim Rugg keeps his portfolio of comics and illustrations over here at Flickr, and blogs here about his projects such as the new Afrodisiac book from Adhouse which is coming out soon. Check out the entire Flickr collection for sketchbook pages and studies for new works in progress, including these spot-on funny animal style studies and Afrodisiac illustration below.
Jim is clearly one of those illustrator/comics artists with a knock-out design sense on top of drawing skills in the tradition of greats like Daniel Clowes, Paul Pope, Tomer Hanuka, James Jean or Chris Ware. Jim’s comics can also be found in Meathaus 8: Headgames and Meathaus S.O.S. over in the store.
Meathaus man Farel Dalrymple has a new interview up at Vice over here. Interview conducted by Nick Gazin. Check it out to see new artwork from Farel’s upcoming comic book The Wrenchies, including the above panels. Also new on Vice is a comic by Farel over here.
Above is one of twenty big pages Farel has in the new Meathaus anthology sketchbook GO FOR THE GOLD! 3. Nick is also in GO FOR THE GOLD! 3. Arik Roper who painted the bad-ass demon goat VICE cover is in GO FOR THE GOLD! 3 too. That’s synergy, dudes.
The esteemed illustration inhabitants of The Pencil Factory including Friend Of Meathaus Josh Cochran have put together a promo newsprint zine showcasing their talents. Josh explains further on his blog that the contributors include Sam Weber, Jillian Tamaki, Leif Parsons, Jessica Hische, Chris Silas Neal, Ted McGrath, Grady McFerrin, Rachel Salomon, Gilbert Ford, Jennifer Daniel, Alex Eben Meyer, Zach O’Hora, Kim Bost, Joel Speasmaker and Josh himself, and that the project has its own website here where you can order one for ten bucks plus a free drawing if you order one of the first 100 copies. I have a feeling that deal is over considering the past tense nature of the description on this amazing flickr set of some of the drawings that went out with packages.
We promise to bring you rad drawing news here on meathaus.com, just not necessarily in a timely fashion…
Pictured above are the contributions by Jillian Tamaki, Josh Cochran and Chris Silas Neal.
Katie Rice occasionally blogs about the struggles she has when a drawing rut sets in and drags on for days at a time. She also blogs about the fun she has when she can break out, let it all go and draw in an unrestrained manner, reclaiming the joy of doodling. One of the issues that professional artists of any kind can face is this potential to be worn down by the daily pressures and limitations of their current project, or to be worn down by the internal pressures of the need to constantly improve, study and adhere to lofty aesthetic theories.
Visitors to Katie’s blog however would be hard pressed to pick out the difference between Katie’s fun-time doodles and pieces done even in her deepest drawing doldrums without the benefit of her accompanying text that explains the context of the drawing sessions. Katie is a pro after all, digging in the cartoon mines daily, producing 100% Hollywood animation quality no matter what the drawing mood, so all of her work is of the highest-grade cartoon stuff. These high standards that she sets for herself are the mark of the professional artist —and the very thing that can potentially drag a fun-doodler down.
Katie’s descriptions of her personal struggles to be the best cartoonist possible are a good illustration of what every artist goes through who has the same dedication to their work.
So what to do when you’re in a drawing rut and doodling isn’t as fun as it should be?
Besides simply ingesting a lot of hard intoxicants as many cartoonists do, a better solution is to acknowledge the drawing block when it arrives and then discover through trial and error what tools and settings personally allow you to crush it out of existence with your best mindless-doofus-doodles.
Challenging the drawing block directly is necessary. Changing your drawing instruments from pencils to cheap pens or brushes can make a difference. For some such as Katie, doodling on Post-its is a great relief from work pressure. I have known cartoonists who resisted sketchbooks at all costs because they represented their own set of pressures: a permanently bound record of what could potentially be your best, weirdest work, or your most spectacular failures. I would suggest that being fearless is how you must approach your drawing session that will truly break you free, so sitting down with a bound sketchbook and some markers or ink could be the very thing to do it.
Finally, check out these awesome Katie doodles above, some of what she calls her “wonky” work. Not surprisingly, she also calls it some of her favorite.
Katie’s doodles along with 34 other artist’s sketchbooks are on display in the new GO FOR THE GOLD! 3 anthology sketchbook. Preview it here and buy it here along with the last issue GO FOR THE GOLD! 2 which included a ton more drawings from cartoonist big-shots and Meathaus regulars alike.
