Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Some pages

I will be posting more sketchbook stuff sometime soon. In the meantime, this is a sample of something I’ve been working on.

I have been fighting desperately with the whole process of creating comics. There are certain things I like about these two pages, but I feel like I am pulling punches overall. It is clear that certain influences have managed to seep through, which in many ways can be O.K. But I am unsure if enough of me has managed to come across. I have a certain affinity with confident and distinct lines; something I always try to do when I draw, but I feel like the excessiveness of the textures and colors pull me away from my initial goal. I get way too distracted sometimes when I work… But I am fairly new to the medium so I guess this is all trial and error. Sigh… Things will get better right? Err...right?

On a happier note, Yvonne and I got to see Cirque du Soleil. We sat about 3 feet from the stage. It was truly amazing. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. We were both smiling from ear to ear. It definitely fits in the “thing to do before dying” list....

4 comments:

meow. said...

Hey! I went to Utrec(sp?) today to buy some supplies but they closed right as I got there. :(

I miss you :( Someone stole my phone.

Fossfor said...

i love this, it reminds me bit of dave mcKean's arkham asylum. i agree Photoshop is not ideal for painting and Painter drives me nuts( just my opinion) have you tried Art Rage? i recently bought it. it is such fun to use and is the only software i've tried that almost feels like real paint

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed with your site, very nice graphics!
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Jed Alexander said...

First: Thanks for the comments on my blog, and also, some really beautiful work all around on yours.

Just one comment here, and I hate it to be a negative one, because I love so much of what's on your site, but the splash on the second page, I don't feel, works so much. There's a lot of texture going on, and it all kind of competes and the scratchy mark making doesn't quite hold the thing together in a meaningful way. Not that you can't venture into less representational and more expressionistic territory every once in a while, but don't mistake texture for complexity. With something like this you almost want to go in the opposite direction and make it really really simple, rather than an explosion of texture like this--it's too photo shoppy.

On the other hand, you have all these fantastic drawings on the page previous, in some ways reminsicent of Marshall Arisman, but that's really a compliment. I dig some of your choices here: that sillouette with the soft edges, though the first panel has what I think are a few too many miscellaneous marks on the surface that aren't doing much, or don't seem quite deliberate enough, like that arrow. I'm a fan of expressive scratchy marks in the Cy Twombly tradition, but they've got to be purposeful.

OK that's enough of me dumping on your first attempt at a comic. To be honest, pretty much everything else on your blog has me seriously jealous. Wish I could draw and paint this good.

If you haven't guessed, this is my tried and true method of burying brutal criticism in compliments, but it usually doesn't go over very well, so I hope I don't sound like a dick. But the compliments I seriously meant. Impressive stuff.