Howdy! It’s been a few weeks since the last update, but with good reason. My Comps, as of one week ago today, has been turned in and not failed by the Studio Art professors! Cause for celebration, I would say. And what better way to do it than by posting the pages from the most recent, and most extravagant Carleton Comics Journal (cover designed by Kailyn Kent)? Let’s get on with it, then:

• Page 1 (Table of Contents)
• Page 2 (Interlude, p. 1)
• Page 3 (Interlude, p. 2)
• Page 4 (Interlude, p. 3)
• Page 5 (Interlude, p. 4)
• Page 6 (Interlude, p. 5)
• Page 7 (Human Waste)
• Page 8 (Swingin’ Sid)
• Page 9 (Hyperman #2, p. 6)
  
• Page 10 (Hyperman #2, p. 7)
• Page 11 (Hyperman #2, p. 8 )
• Page 12 (Hyperman #2, p. 9)
• Page 13 (Hyperman #2, p. 10)
• Page 14 (A Hole)
• Page 15 (Austin Hall)
  
• Page 16 (Without Definite Direction)
  
• Page 17 (Potential)
  
• Page 18 (Rocket, p. 1)
  
• The Back Cover

The issue, due to financial constraints, was unfortunately printed in black-and-white:

Financial constraints that will be solved come Winter Term, hopefully. In the meantime, our motto remains “Small donations are appreciated.” Until then, enjoy what joys late November and the month of December have to bring. One of those joys includes the Scott Collection’s resuming updating! See you on Friday.

It’s the Friday of an odd-numbered week in the Carleton trimester calendar, and you know what that means… another spanking issue of the Carleton Comics Journal! This week’s issue, while shorter than the previous, is no lacking in comic goodness: it features the work of freshman Jon Kittaka, who came out of nowhere and kicked us in the metaphorical testicles with his Hyperman comic, the first five pages of which appear in this issue, to be concluded in two weeks. Also featured is senior Austin Hall, whose comic raises a lot of interesting questions. Example: can you live with your uncertainty? That’s just one of them! I also put two comics in there, in addition to an ad seeking submissions. Next issue will be the last of Fall Term, and we hope to feature every artist who has been published already, in addition to a handful of new ones. But I’ve gone on for too long already. Here’s the cover, followed by links to each page:

• Page 1 (The Contents of This Issue)
• Page 2 (Hyperman #2, p. 1)
• Page 3 (Hyperman #2, p. 2)
  
• Page 4 (Hyperman #2, p. 3)
  
• Page 5 (Hyperman #2, p. 4)
  
• Page 6 (Hyperman #2, p. 5)
  
• Page 7 (Ad for Submissions)
  
• Page 8 (Returning) (rotated for ease of viewing)
  
• Page 9 (The Funky, Sexy Beginnings of “Swingin’” Sid O’Malley)
  
• Page 10 (Without Definite Direction)
  
• The Back Cover

To give you an idea of the scale, and the outrageousness of this cover, here’s a special image:

And, like Patrick says, “See ya in two weeks!”

This issue is even bigger than the last! It features not only Jacob, Kailyn, and I, but also Andreas Stoehr and Narula Bilik. Cover (designed by Jacob) below, followed by links to the pages.

• Page 1 (Itemized List of Contents):
• Page 2 (Morgan Freeman / Crossing the Border) (see here and here)
• Page 3 (6 AM [Excerpt], Pt. 1)
• Page 4 (6 AM [Excerpt], Pt. 2)
• Page 5 (Poison People [Excerpt], Pt. 1)
• Page 6 (Poison People [Excerpt], Pt. 2)
• Page 7 (Poison People [Excerpt], Pt. 3)
• Page 8 (Tale of Beasts)
• Page 9 (Life’s Rich Parade)
  
• Page 10 (Hugo and Grandmama) (see here)
• Page 11 (Mecha-Monkey: A Love Story, Pt. 1)
  
• Page 12 (Mecha-Monkey: A Love Story, Pt. 2)
  
• Page 13 (Mecha-Monkey: A Love Story, Pt. 3)
  
• Page 14 (Mecha-Monkey: A Love Story, Pt. 4)
• The Back Cover

300 issues for this printing. It’s Family Weekend at Carleton, and we’re going to make sure everyone’s uncle and grandmama hears about CCJ. If you’re interested in a hard copy, email me to make arrangements. And, in the interest of tradition, here’s me with an issue at 1:45 AM, Friday, October 16th:

Expect issue 3 to arrive the day before Halloween. Will it be spooky? It just might be.

This summer, I realized that although several campus publications feature comics as diversions, there’s nothing produced specifically to showcase comics. This is where I come in. Jacob Canfield, a sophomore, and I got together in the early days of this school year to discuss the possibility of such a thing. With limited resources, time, and energy, we put out a twelve-page premiere issue. Also featured are students Kailyn Kent and Jia-Li Tan. You might remember some of my work from a previous post, but rest assured that I have some material in this issue that has not previously been blogged about. Here is the cover, followed by links to each of the pages:

• Page 1 (The Editors:)
• Page 2 (Bill Jenkins, The Truth)
• Pages 3 and 4 (The Meaning of Numbers) (see above)
• Page 5 (The Fall of the Truth / One Wish)
• Page 6 (The Adventures of a Boy Who Is Easily Pleased)
• Page 7 (Poison People [Excerpt], Pt. 1)
• Page 8 (Poison People [Excerpt], Pt. 2)
• Page 9 (The Wound-Up Bird Chronicles)
• Page 10 (Gerald Winkler, Pt. 1) (the novelization of this)
• The Back Cover

Well, it’s getting pretty late, cats and kittens. Jacob and I (and Nathan and Kailyn, thank you very much) just spent the better part of two hours printing and folding an astounding 100 copies of this issue. Not bad for a first run? I hope so. They hit the mean streets of Carleton tomorrow, and time will only tell what the reviews are like. We hope to put out an issue every two weeks, so expect big things… from the Carleton Comics Journal.

And, as proof that this is “for real”:

As hinted at yesterday, today’s post is a genuine advertisement for artist David Lefkowitz’s solo show, Other Positioning Systems. The show will open at the Rochester Art Center on Friday, September 11. This summer I’ve been helping David prepare for the show, and from a first-hand, totally non-biased (not true) stance, I can tell you that it’s going to be an incredible show (true). Feel free to peruse the RAC’s page for the show, or find more details at the event’s Facebook page. While the opening is from 5:30 to 8:30 PM on Friday, the exhibit will remain up at the RAC until January 10, so there is ample time for you to get down to Rochester to view David’s art. Here’s a preview of what you may find:

And I leave you with an excerpt, no, an imperative from the Rochester Art Center’s description of the show: “Put away your GPS and let yourself get lost in a mazelike smorgasbord of visual and spatial curiosities.”

Hope to see you there!

I gave my sketchbook to a few of my other group members to keep them entertained one night. What I got back was, to say the least, shocking, controversial, and perhaps one of the most important pieces of contemporary art of which I’ve ever been a part. If you’re curious about who exactly these “other group members” are, you can find most of them (and some other pictures, better than the ones you’ll find here) on Paul’s website:

• Paul’s website

And now, to get to the drawings that may change the world, read on, deeper into the belly of the beast.

I labeled on the drawings who did what, so be sure to consult Paul’s site for portraits of the artist in question.

It seems like this work has a lot to say about the personalities of each artist. Paul created on the left an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere, reflecting his desire to experience more than this world can offer. I recommend hallucinogens. Hannah Robinson then encased his space with a number of outlines. What I believe this means is that she’s a protector, a motherly figure, perhaps, who looks after those close to her, and is always willing to sacrifice her self if it benefits others. She also drew a kinda cool tree. Jon drew in strong, brutal swaths of color that unapologetically draw attention to themselves, even covering up Hannah Goodwin’s work in the process. Jon is an “alpha male,” who comes out on top no matter the situation. Hannah Goodwin also drew a significant part of this next picture:

Hannah’s drawing is pretty cool. This one Jon did not dominate.

Here’s Naomi’s drawing:I believe the tree and leaves were Naomi originals. I definitely made the red thing at the bottom that sort of resembles a nipple. I think I was trying to show something about watercolor technique? Either that or I was drawing a nipple. Anything is possible.

I guess the point of this post is that everyone else in my Vienna group should probably drop their current majors and become Studio Art majors.

I arrived back home in Wauwatosa two nights ago, via Chicago and Frankfurt again (but not in that order, thankfully). While in Vienna, I was able to do a lot of drawing and watercolors in my little sketchbook, which graciously just fit in the pocket of my winter coat, like a large spoonful of mashed potatoes into an open mouth, buttery and warm. My drawings on this trip were for the most part divided into three categories: architectural, sketches of my fellow students, and studies from existing artwork in museums or public.

Architectural:

• The entrance rotunda to the Kunsthistorisches (Historical Art) Museum (Museum). One of my roommates, Paul, took 360 deg. pictures of the space, and will be uploading them to his website soon. I’ll provide a link when that happens. Here is my sketch of the rotunda:It’s in Micron .03mm pen and pretty clearly unfinished, but gives some sense of the scale of the interior. It’s so large that it was hard to fit that much into my sketchbook and keep a consistent perspective.

• Otto Wagner’s Stadtbahn (Subway) Entrance Pavilion. Wagner was a prominent Viennese architect in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This building is a pretty good example of Viennese Secession-style architecture, an artistic movement around the turn of the century that was one of the first (in Vienna, anyway) to break away from strong historicism. Here is my sketch:Also in pen, I think .03mm again. The people in the lower left were four of my group members, and should serve to give you a sense of the size of the building.

• Columnar sculpture at the Schloss Belvedere (Belvedere Palace). These are pretty Classical (Roman) figures that functionally act as supports for the building, something that’s reflected in the poses of the figures, struggling to hold up the weight of the structure (and, one would assume, the immense wealth of the Belvedere family). Here’s my sketch:As you can see, dude’s holding it up pretty well.

• In Café Central. As I recall, I had a melange (similar to a cappuccino) and a piece of cake. Wikipedia also tells me that Melange is the “name of the fictional drug central to the Dune series of science fiction novels.” This drawing serves as a pretty good segue into the section of people, since you can see Jon and Paul here.Here also begin a bunch of watercolors, which is what my sketchbook was designed for.

People:

• The first day everyone arrived, a few of us went to Coffee Shop Company (the Viennese Starbucks, basically) to email our safe arrivals to our loved ones overseas. I took the opportunity to do some drawing. Here are Jon, Naomi, and Hannah Goodwin (l-r) on laptops:

• This was a pretty quick sketch, but is helpful in that it shows everyone in our group (except for me). We were sitting, exhausted after a tour of the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts). Noelia is crossed out because she got up and left while I was in the middle of the drawing. I felt a little bad about it afterwards.

• Sketches at dinner one night: these include Kai (our instructor), Jon, Hannah Robinson, and Paul. If I were to grade myself on the representativity of each, it would be as follows: B, C, C+, A- (l-r).

• A quick sketch at the Kärntner/American Bar. Drinks here were ungodly expensive, so I found something else to occupy my time: drawing other people.In all, that’s about everyone in our group, some in more exquisitely rendered detail than others. I was also fortunate to collect some of their artwork in my sketchbook, so I’ll post that another time.

Studies:

• These seem to be what I focused most of my time and energy on. This first one was from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I didn’t catch the name or sculptor, but it’s right at the head of the stairs after the entrance, displayed very prominently. In it, some dude with a club is choking and beating a half-horse half-man to death. Pretty badass.

• Portrait of Arthur Roessler by Egon Schiele (1910). Schiele was one of the later members of the Viennese Secession and Jugendstil, and in my opinion has the most distinctive and compelling painting style. The fact that he died when he was only 28, the same year he was replaced Gustav Klimt as Vienna’s leading artist, probably only served to further his popularity/scandalousness. In the sketch below, the quotation reads: “Egon Schiele was arrested and jailed for three days in St. Pölten for the distribution of immoral drawings.”

• Self Portrait with Raised Bare Shoulder (Schiele, 1912). This dude again. Even more so than others, Schiele loved painting himself. There are dozens, if not hundreds of self portraits he did, but this was my favorite from the Leopold Museum.

• Lissy im Café (Karl Hubboch, 1931). I hadn’t heard of Hubboch before, but Lissy caught my eyes in a way that no woman before had. By which I mean a very creepy, predatory sort of way. The funniest part of this one is that a couple of days later, in the American Bar, we saw a woman that strongly resembled Lissy, but with black hair. Fortunately she was sitting much closer to Jon than to myself.

Well, those are the drawings that I was happiest with. There are, of course, more, and a slew of photos that I may or may not get around to posting. I’d love to return to Vienna someday, sketchbook in hand.

In other news, on Saturday the 20th I’m leaving for New Zealand to go hiking with my girlfriend and her family. I’ll be there until early January, when I return directly to Minnesota. Hopefully, as with Vienna, I’ll have a lot of drawings to put up once I make my way to Northfield.

The second project (that is, before the final project) of my painting class was to create a reproduction of a painting from between the Renaissance and the mid-19th century. I chose Anthony van Dyck’s Amaryllis and Mirtillo (1631), a painting based on Giovanni Battista Guarini’s 1590 poem Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd). The scene depicts lots of people kissing, and is pretty sexy (and luckily for me, the assignment was not to do a lot of research based on the work. I picked for my detail reproduction the two kissing figures just left of center in the painting. Here’s my painting:

This piece is in oil also, although I started out the term working mainly in watercolor. I’m not totally happy with how it turned out, but it was a good experience for exploring oil as a medium and trying to draw on Van Dyck and the Flemish Baroque style of realism and paint application. I’ll put up some of the work from the first project of the class soon.

As outlined in the last post, for the last few weeks I’ve been working on a large (5′6″ x 8′6″) map of the continental United States, fitting figures into each state’s outline. It’s finished! Complete with pictures! Those you can find below. The states are off-white acrylic (which I think worked much better against a masonite background than white gesso would have), and the figures are oil. I didn’t use any models for this project, as many of the poses are awkward, uncomfortable, and just a little too sexy.

For more map-related artwork, or for fun, check out:

• Strange Maps — Updated pretty regularly, this site collects maps, real and fictional, and provides tons of research and background information for each post. This post in particular is related to my project, and I think I was probably unconsciously inspired by the artist, Frank Chimero, who did a series of prints in which the shapes of states become objects (I think Illinois and California are particularly fun).
• Radical Cartography — Run by cartographer and illustrator Bill Rankin, this site is slightly more geared toward the academics (he’s done some cool geographic and historical infographics for Wikipedia), but there’s also a lot of creative work. I’m especially a fan of The Errant Isle of Manhattan, which places Manhattan in various places around the U.S.

And here’s my finished map, hopefully the first of many (check out below for details):

• Pacific Northwest
• Upper Midwest
• Great Plains
• New England
• Mid-Atlantic
• The South
• Gulf Coast
• West Coast

I did some brief research for my painting and drawing class recently on Canadian artist Marcel Dzama, one of the founders of the Royal Art Lodge. My art professor David Lefkowitz tipped me on to him, as his illustrative style was similar to what I was exploring at the time. Dzama works mainly in ink and watercolors, and produces hundreds of small drawings at a time for exhibitions. A lot of his pieces have a very limited color palette, and I found that Dzama often uses root beer as a base for his browns (I tried coffee once, which had a wonderful texture, but I didn’t think the color was that special). In 2005, Dzama illustrated the cover for the Beck album Guero:

Large, disembodied heads and bats (seen on the “sticker”) are recurrent in much of Dzama’s work. More can be found at the Richard Heller Gallery and David Zwirner, the latter of which shows some sculpture, a new area for Dzama.