Archive for May, 2009

Bookforum issue out today!

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Hi everyone,

cover00_popup

The fiction issue of Bookforum came out today and I am in there along with some great company…. Gabrielle Bell, Paul Hornshmeier, C. F., Tony Millionaire, Chris Ware and Dash Shaw.  I am honored.  The comic that’s in there is the one I wrote about a couple weeks ago, based on a Yeats poem.

You can read my comic online right here, on the same page with a writer named Terrence Holt who I think I might love.  I think I will put it into a minicomic and sell it at MOCCA too.

In other news, I am now 153 pounds.  Normally I’m about 135.  OH BABY!

french cover for The Goddess of War

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

gowfrenchcover_02

The black lines indicate the spine an French Flaps! Oooh la la!

Teaching two new classes for adults this Summer!

Friday, May 15th, 2009

If you need a little deadline action and feedback, this Summer I will be teaching a couple classes, one at SVA and one at Parsons.  I am also expecting a baby girl in September, so this will be my last teaching stint for a little while.

Here’s the info about the SVA class that I am team teaching with the great Tom Hart:

“Intended for artists who are currently working on their own material, this intensive course will begin with a review of thumbnails and story notes. We will help you in determining objectives, creative goals and choosing a project, as well as refining skills and fine-tuning your visual storytelling. You may work on new projects or sections of larger works such as graphic novels, serialized comics and webcomics. Guest lecturers will discuss their work practices, including time management, budgeting and publishing. The course will conclude with a group critique, and will focus on narrative structure, pacing and rhythm, choices in style and technique, and practical suggestions for working more efficiently. There are no course prerequisites; students are expected to have a working knowledge of the techniques, materials and language of comics. NOTE: This class meets for 3 sessions: Sat., June 13, July 18, and August 29.”

Here’s the Parsons info.  This class now has 12 sessions.

Cartooning  PCFA1041
A   12 session(s). Tues & Thurs, 6:00 PM-8:30 PM, beg. June 9.

“Limited to 16. Cartooning is an often overlooked art form. It combines drawing, graphic art, and writing to create completely unique narratives on any imaginable theme. In this course you study and create all forms of cartooning, from the single-panel gag to the graphic novel. You read work from Charles Addams to Osamu Tezuka to Robert Crumb to Chris Ware. Learn how to develop, pencil, design, and ink your stories. Use computer programs to lay out, color, and edit your work for printing. Students with ambitious longer projects receive technical assistance and guidance. No previous experience required. (2 credits)”

And here’s some websites and work of some of my old students:

Lydia Conklin:

lipthing

Also here’s Michael Paige Glover:

db-7

Comic for Bookforum…

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

yeatspreview

Hi everyone, here’s a coupla panels from a new comic I made.  Experimenting with a new watercolor technique.  It’s a two-page square comic coming out in the summer reading issue of Bookforum.  This one is based on a poem by William Butler Yeats that I originally found in The Rattlebag.  Tim told gave me The Rattlebag because it’s a pretty randomly organized poetry book, kinda like the b-sides of the world’s great poems.  It’s designed so that you pick it up, open it to a page,  and if you like the poem, cool, read more. That random walk-through-the park style of research is my favorite kind.

The Yeats poem is actually a part of a play called “The Dreaming of the Bones”.

I like the groovy-pagan wizardy world of Yeats.
I like that he was a senator too.  He always talks about curlews crying.

Here’s the poem:

At the grey round of the hill
Music of a lost kingdom
Runs, runs and is suddenly still
The winds out of Clare-Galway
Carry it: suddenly it is still.

I have heard in the night air
A wandering airy music:
And moidered in that snare
A man is lost of a sudden,
In that sweet wandering snare.

What finger first began
Music of a lost kingdom?
They dream that laughed in the sun.
Dry bones that dream are bitter,
They dream and darken our sun.

Those crazy fingers play
A wandering airy music;
Our luck has withered away,
And wheat in the wheat-ear withered,
And the wind blows it away.

My heart ran wild when it heard
The curlew cry before dawn
And the eddying of the cat-headed bird;
But now the night is gone.

I have heard it from far below
The strong March birds a-crow,
Stretch neck and clap the wing,
Red cocks, and crow.