Pizzicato

Thoughtful?

"A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door."
--Friedensreich Hundertwasser

I’m usually a classical architecture guy, but I’v got to fess up to loving the Hundertwasser House in Vienna.

On a more personal note, a friend of mine, Jason Arkles, was recently featured in an NPR interview. It’s the story of the unexpected way he ended up as a sculptor at the Cecil Studios after starting out as a puppeteer. You can listen online here.

Neat.

Personal Best

Graphic Novel Update:

I'm working on the final round of story edits for Zita the Spacegirl: The Long Way Home. It was very helpful to sit down with my editor in NY and go over the whole book with an eye to making the story as strong as possible. In the process of these edits I managed to draw what I think is my favorite panel in the whole book. Here it is:

Maxing Out

More fan art this week!  I was recently asked to contribute to the website Terrible Yellow Eyes, a collection of works inspired by Where the Wild Things Are.  Now this was something I couldn’t turn down because not only is Sendak a huge influence in my own work, but I can recite Where the Wild Things Are by heart!

Terrible Yellow Eyes a great collection of images and a fun collection of artists.  Go ahead and take a look around. It’s worth it.

MoCCA: I Love New York!

 Every once in a while you are surprised and enchanted by something that you never thought you would enjoy, and you love it all the more because it’s an unexpected love.  That’s what happened when I stepped off the Bolt Bus into the fantastic madness that is New York City.

I am Peter Venkman, raising my arms to the sky and shouting  “I love this town!” 

As for MoCCA, it was great.  Long time internet friends became real life, we’re-eating-hambrgers-together friends.  I met a lot of fellow First Second authors and artists.  And, of course, I brought home a modest stack of great comics!  Those include:

Jellaby Shorts by Kean Soo

Take Out minicomics by Raina Telgemeier

Never Learn Anything from History by Kate Beaton

Korgi, book 2, by Christian Slade (a highly recommended silent comic)

Mail Order Ninja by Joshua Elder and Erich Owen

Special thanks to First Second’s Gina Gagliano for being SO HELPFUL.

MoCCA Anyone?

So, short notice here:  I will be at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York this weekend!  It’s a long, long time since I’ve been to New York, so I am very excited for this adventure.  Plus it’s probably the last event of this type for some time where I won’t be tied down to a table, hawking my wares.  Expect a full report with pictures!

In preparation I have put together a little book of my art and illustrations through Lulu.  It turned out pretty well, so I’ve posted a link on the sidebar so that anyone who is interested can order a copy.  But be warned, probably 70% of the pictures have appeared on this blog at one time or another.  Take a gander:

Lot’s of good art coming up!  Including a piece that I really want to post today but won’t be able to post until next week.  But I guess you can click here for a hint...

UPDATE: I just received a couple copies of the portfolio book above and it looks terrible!  I am removing the book until I can take the time to properly prepare the files.

Link Mania

A few weeks ago I played through the original Legend of Zelda (online) with the kids.  We wandered the forest, gathered heart containers, traversed dungeons, collected the scattered pieces of the triforce, defeated Gannon and saved the princess. 

Obviously the next phase is fan art:

 

Of course there's a lot of Legend of Zelda material online.  You can play the theme music, orchestrated by none other than John Williams, here.  

BONUS PICTURE: here's a little star-girl from another project I'm working on:

She turned out pretty okay, you know?

Catching Kids

"Never a day without a line."  This is the first of a page of quotations in the Cecil Studios Handbook and the best possible advice for any prospective artist.  It's attributed to Apelles, a 4th century Greek painter (thanks Wikipedia!) and it's always stuck with me as I've strived to improve my work.

Now I certainly draw nearly every day.  But lately, as I've been focusing on comics, my life drawing and sketching has fallen by the wayside a bit.  To help make amends, I've gotten myself a 6" x 8" Strathmore drawing pad and begun filling it with sketches of the models I have close at hand.  They are small and they don't hold still for long, so it's catch as catch can.

Strathmore Drawing Medium is still my favorite sketchbook paper.

Unplanned Hiatus

Oops.

I kind of just stopped posting there for a couple weeks.  I can't come up with a reasonable explanation as to why, beyond a general uptick on the busy-o-meter.  I'm going ot make up for it by posting THIS LIZARD who enjoys "permanent houseguest" status at Hatke Headquarters:

And if that's not enough, here's a picture of Wall E.  I love this guy.

  

Why is he holding a sign?!?

Finally, while we're on the subject of lovable wordless characters, Jellaby volume II by Kean Soo is available in stores now.  

I was able to help out in a very small way with the coloring on this book and reading the finished product was definitely a treat.  If you aren't familiar with Jellaby, a good place to start is with these short cartoons.  

I Love You Space Gypsy.

First of all I want to be clear that I did not make the picture posted below BUT OH I WISH I HAD.  

Bata?  Leader of the Good Space Gypsies?  I have finally found the perfect role model.  This picture came from a batch of “Slap Jak” cards that Anna magically found at some antique store when she was in high school.  

I don’t blame her for falling in love with him.

The Little Anarchist in Me

Hi internet! I’m still working on my big comic book. Or Graphic Novel (which is a comic book). Here’s a page to prove it:



The Nebula nominations came out recently and, having read Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, I decided to try one of the others on the list. The only one available at the library was Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (check the link, you download the text for free). The book is fully YA fiction but that being said I really enjoyed it. It’s a hacker counterculture version of 1984 set in very near future San Francisco. The bibliography alone is worth the library fines that I will probably rack up when I forget to return this.

If I categorized my books this one would go next to my old favorite Access All Areas by Nijalicious.

The other thing I thought I’d point to today is the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. I should be so skeptical about this. I mean, I can’t think of a single instance when translating a 32 page childrens book into a feature length movie has been anything short of spectacularly horrible. I saw ten minutes of The Cat in the Hat once. Anyway, this film looks artsy and cool (in a good way) and finally they are using big muppet costumes again! Oh you lovely big muppet costumes, where have you been all these years?

A Sketchblog!

That's what this is turning in to I tell you. I say to myself "I am going to post some useful information about swords" and what happens? Here I am slapping up another batch of sketches of kids. At least this time I broke out the watercolors a bit. The first one is from my favorite old picture of Zita from a couple winters ago. The second was a really quick and loose sketch using a frayed old brushpen, and the last is Angelica who was holding a cat when I started the picture.







I'm reading the Alvin Maker series, by Orson Scott Card. This week I'm on the second book, Red Prophet, which is all about a sort of alternate universe fantasy version of Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, William Henry Harrison, and the events that transpired within a few miles of the place where I grew up. The real, non-parallel-universe history of the battle of Tippecanoe was also the subject of my college Thesis. How did I not find these books 20 years ago when they were published?

Luck o' the Artist

For St. Patrick's Day I made a couple of Irish Coffees for Anna and I and, I have to say, I had no idea that drink was so amazingly tasty. Goodness gracious.

Here are some more recent bits from my tiny traveling sketchbook -little snippets scribbled speedily:





And why did I have Irish Coffe on the brain? Because of Science Fiction, of course. Hard SF, in fact. I've been reading a book by Larry Niven called Draco Tavern. It's a series of short stories about a bar that caters to all kinds of crazy aliens -think Mos Eisley Cantina but in Russia. The bar tender is always fixing exotic alien fare and mixing classic earth drinks for himself. Like Irish Coffee.

And if you like lighter sci-fi you might enjoy a short video called World Builder. A tasteful use of CGI. Link thanks to Charlie Parker.

No Time To Blog Dr. Jones.

Not much time for blogging lately! But I do have a few sketches from today’s coffee shop lunch (plus some geese). I had to be sneaky with the bearded guy -I’m pretty sure he didn’t know I was drawing him.







Unfortunately, the geese totally knew I was drawing them and they got all huffy about it and left.

And I have a new favorite in music: Coeur de Pirate. Take a listen to the lovely french tunes and tell me it doesn’t make you want to hop about the room.

Oh Look: Mousy Longtail

Just a little sketchbook Sketch:

Pulling Out of a Nose Dive

Some days you just never quite wake up. I usually try to charge into the week with gusto, but today I never quite escaped the soupy fog of just-woke-upedness. The day would have been a total wash if our old friend Billy Weber hadn’t shown up, unexpectedly, bearing a box of girl scout cookies.

He talked, I made loose sketches and that, as it turned out, was exactly what I needed.