Austin Kleon – Page 523

WRITING THE FIBONACCI SONNET

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Get this writing exercise in a printable, mini-comic format: [PDF].

Many thanks to Gerry for pointing out the work of Dan Perjovschi — a Romanian cartoonist who draws on walls for his huge installations. He just had a show at MOMA that has website with all kinds of goodies, including videos of him creating. You can read Gerry’s interview with Dan and his wife, here.

I’ve been doing some research lately into visiting Romania — especially the town of Alba Julia in Transylvania, where my ancestors are from. (Here is a gorgeous Flickr set of Transylvania by a man named Daniel Wellman.)

Anyways, if anyone knows of some good books on Romanian art, history, travel, etc., I’m all ears.

WHEN ONE GOES POKING AROUND AN OLD HARD DRIVE

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Since I can’t come up with any real content around here, enjoy these Russian proverbs that I once used to decorate our house in college. (It was a dumpy firetrap that we dubbed “The Kremlin.”) The illustrator’s name is Aldren Watson. I don’t think I have the book anymore–it’s from the 1960’s and is long out of print.

[Read more…]

SILHOUETTES AND PROFILES

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

So I was listening to the “Hair” episode of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, and halfway through it went something like this:

Dylan: I ran into Matt Groening at the comic book store. He took time out from buying the new Superman to talk to me…

Matt Groening: The secret of designing cartoon characters — and I’m giving away this secret now to all of you out there — is: you make a character that you can tell who it is in silhouette. I learned this from watching Mickey Mouse as a kid. You can tell Mickey Mouse from a mile away…those two big ears. Same thing with Popeye, same thing with Batman. And so, if you look at the Simpsons, they’re all identifiable in silhouette. Bart with the picket fence hair, Marge with the beehive, and Homer with the two little hairs, and all the rest. So…I think about hair quite a lot.

Groening has said this in quite a few interviews. I made the graphic above to test it out. It reminds me of what Saul Steinberg said about profiles:

UM, IT LOOKS DIFFERENT AROUND HERE…

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Those of you who visit the actual website and don’t read this blog via RSS will notice that I’ve redesigned. I threw out the sidebar and went for a big ol’ wide single column. I’m hoping this stripped-down style will be better for posting comics and sketchbook pages.

Now if I could just get around to posting some. The trouble with working the web for a living is that the last thing you want to do when you get home is sit in front of a computer screen. I’d much rather sit in front of the TV screen. (And play Resident Evil on the Wii…)