Finally Back to Figure Drawing
Hey blogsciples. I finally have enough discretionary income to start going figure drawing at Hipbone Studio again. This morning I went with Katy Ellis O’Brien; she gave me some of her big brown pieces of paper to draw on.
They’re useful, because then you can draw highlights and not just shadows. Human skin is shiny, and to look convincing, part of it has to be lighter than the overall tone of the paper.
The model was very, very good, as usual. Great dynamic poses. I also assure you that she had a pretty face and did not, in fact, look like Kevin Kline.
Stay tuned to this blog! Lots of fun stuff coming up next week.
Read MoreTheo’s Tattoos: Bismillah
On his inner left bicep, Theo has a tattoo of the “Bismillah” or “Basmala,” which is a word for the phrase “bismi-llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm,” which in Arabic means “In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.” Any actual readers of Arabic, please forgive my unintelligible squiggles. Their accuracy ranges from “Trying and Failing” to “Not Even Really Trying.”
The Bismillah is found at the beginning of (almost) every sura of the Q’uran, as well in the preambles to a lot of Islamic constitutions, and in many other places. In a much less flattering context, this was the way Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad began his speech when he spoke at my alma matter, Columbia University. So clearly, it’s a pretty versatile phrase.
As with Judaism, tattoos are actually forbidden in Islam, though I’ve had a little trouble discerning exactly why – most explanations, however, feature the argument that tattooing alters God’s perfect design of the human body. Sometimes I imagine that Theo would get a tattoo not at the height of his experimentation with a particular faith, but at the end of it, as a sort of fare-well commemoration.
I’ll be at the Portland Zine Symposium this Weekend
Just a personal update: this weekend I will be tabling at the Portland Zine Symposium in PSU’s Peter W. Scott Main Gym. If you are in Portland, OR (and honestly, why aren’t you?), stop by and pick up one of the three zines I will have for sale at $1 each:
Wakey-Wakey is a short anthology of various comics and illustrations I’ve done, most of them while I was interning at Periscope Studio, and some of it previously published in Stumptown Underground. There is nothing in this zine you haven’t already seen on this blog.
The Savage Nobles Preview Zine includes pages 26 through 51 of the comic you are reading right now. (That’s right, if you buy it this weekend you’ll be able to see page 51 a full two days before it hits this site!) This is mainly intended to serve as a “gateway drug” for the website. At 5.5×8.5″, it’s a little smaller than I’d like to publish it eventually, but it still looks durned good in print if I d.s.s.m.
Flight of the Flightless is the 24-Hour Comic I drew in (one day of) April of this year. It’s based on a true story as comically reimagined by me and my ex-roommate Turhan Sarwar about evacuating the penguins from the New Orleans Aquarium after Hurricane Katrina. (yes, a comedy about Hurricane Katrina – it’s about time!) It’s got cute animals, madcap action, and has a super-happy ending with a wedding and a rainbow; it will one day make me a millionaire and relaunch Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s career.
See y’all at the Symposium!
Read MoreByrdSeed
Hey internet stalkers – sorry I have been so delinquent in posting. August has proven to be a crazy month, singing for the William Byrd Festival and prepping for the Portland Zine Symposium. The only time I’ve had to draw is between rehearsals! (see below)
White Sands Missile Range
Lest you think this immense desert “missile range,” located a short car-chase outside Las Cruces, NM is a convenient fictional concoction of mine, let me assure you that not only is it real, it is the largest military installation in the country (3,200 square miles!), as well as the site of planet Earth’s first ever nuclear explosion. I’ve driven through it myself!
(The sign reads “You Are Now Leaving White Sands Missile Range; Drive Carefully.” I think it’s a very odd statement.)
By an amazing coincidence, the previous occupant of the room in which I am now living is a native of Las Cruces, Mark Smith. He and two of my other housemates went to college in Santa Fe. Mark tells me that, because Las Cruces is a dull town with very little to do (unfortunately, “Molotov Latte” is not a real place), the primary recreation for young troublemakers is to drive out into the desert to listen to music and drink beer. The home-grown Las Crucians apparently know the unlabeled back-country roads well enough to navigate them in the dark.
I hasten to add:
OUR PROTAGONISTS DO NOT!
