a visual list to keep me from forgetting
GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST
“Maybe I’m even extremely biased but, on my honor, there is something to this place! And this something can be sensed by a person with mettle who agrees that life is sad, monotonous — this is all very true — but still, nevertheless and despite everything it is exceedingly, exceedingly interesting.”
—Isaac Babel, “Odessa,” quoted in Joann Sfar’s Klezmer
Woke up this morning and finished “A Christmas Carol” at the kitchen table. Yesterday, I doodled my own ghosts of Christmas past on the living room floor with the help of Meg’s set of markers. As Scrooge says,
“I know nothing! I’m quite a baby….I will live in the past, the present, and the future!”
MORE MAPPING
Here’s another map I did with the ol’ sumi-e brush for an essay I’m working on. The piece of paper was really huge, so I had to take a photo with the digital camera. I had all this random junk floating around my head for the essay, but I couldn’t figure out how to put it in linear, narrative form. I started out thinking this would be another radial map (I started with the black box in the bottom-middle), but it ended up with a horizontal flow (what you see is only the top half of the sheet). This was a happy accident, and in the process of drawing the map, I realized the narrative that was hiding amongst all the random junk.
The quote by McCloud in the top, lefthand corner is from chapter 6 of UNDERSTANDING COMICS, “Show and Tell.” Notice the creative writing professor repeating the mantra of workshop: “Show, don’t tell!”
(I should note that even though I often take shots at creative writing workshops, my own workshop professor was wonderful: I took all my workshops at Miami from him, and he is still a good friend of mine. He’ll even be at the wedding!)
HEY! THE XMAS CURTAIN CALLS
“My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight.”
—Italo Calvino, Six Memos For The New Millenium
Drew these two pages while listening to a solo KCRW gig by My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. Jim James’ voice + silo reverb = heaven. A beautiful equation.
BIRDSEED (ONLINE COMIC)
The work continues. I’m sitting here listening to my 30+ episodes of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio. Life is good. Last night I dreamt about a Civil War veteran with a pet tiger. Meg dreamt we had hinges behind our ears, and after we got married, we went back to the hotel, pulled off our faces, and there were two little aliens sitting behind controls in our heads. I said, “That’s a terrible dream.” Meg said, “No, because we were both relieved that we could tell each other the truth!” An anxiety dream, sure, but a sweet one, I thought.
While working on an online portfolio, I decided to put a flash edition of “Birdseed” online.
So what else? I’m reading Eddie Campbell’s Alec: How To Be An Artist (good review here), after reading his Fate Of The Artist. Both of them are really good. The man behind the From Hell visuals, Campbell’s one of the greats. Here’s a good short interview with him.
Ok, boy. Quit stalling. Get drawing.
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