Well, it’s been a few weeks since it was due, so it’s about time to begin putting my Comps up here. For those not in the know: in the Studio Art department of Carleton, Comps is a final project, usually worked on in the fall or winter, that students complete for a faculty review at the end of the term. Then, students may continue to work on it (or something entirely different) for the spring’s Senior Show (scroll down for links to past shows). My finished work consists of three painted maps and six ink-and-watercolor comics pages. Here’s a view of the complete installation, which was in the main gallery in Boliou until yesterday:

And another view, with gallery space for reference:

Finally, here’s links to close-ups of the maps:

• Great Lakes Region
• Lower Lake Michigan
• Milwaukee (near General Mitchell International Airport)

A word on materials and such: the acrylic paintings were done on masonite panels from a previous project, the Figural Map of the Continental United States. I’m pretty sure I used the bottom three panels for these maps. The panels within the maps were drawn with sharpie on mylar, a semi-translucent paper, and were then nailed to the maps, floating about a quarter inch off the surface of the maps. Here’s a side view for reference:

That’s about it for the maps. I’ll post close-ups of the comics in the days to come.

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.

It’s about time for a new Lenny Dee-shirt! You can find the old, inferior one here. The new, improved one is below:

Here’s the front:

Aaaand the back (an inspirational quote):

New shirts are always exciting! Sorry for the late post but not the exclamation points! Catch you next week!

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”:

I spent most of today on this one. It’s a double True Story, since I didn’t update last Friday. It asks the big questions, and I’ll let it speak for itself from here on in:

Two weeks ago today, I took the train from Toronto to New York City. We waited for quite a while at the border crossing (near Niagara Falls), where US Customs Agents boarded the train to check the customs declarations and whatnot of all the passengers. My agent, Subrayn (name changed to protect the innocent) spent about 30 seconds on me, a US citizen, but considerably longer on the guy sitting in front of me. He (the passenger) seemed a little unclear on how long he was staying in the US, and what he would be doing for said amount of time.

God bless America!

And here’s another drawing I did on my trip. Although I drew this on the flight from Minneapolis to Charlotte (en route to Toronto), it was inspired by a man I saw in New Zealand (either at Christchurch or Auckland’s airport), whom I dubbed an “artificially wide man.” I believe you’ll see why.

Until next time, kids and (anthropomorphic, computer-using) kittens!

Oh boy. That’s right, these suave, urbane musicians are all single, will make you tingle, and of course they’re ready to mingle. They’re the Funky, Sexy Jazzmen, the sole (or perhaps, soul) survivors of a dying way of life: the jazz (click each image for a larger, jazzier version).

The three featured here are but a small portion of the underground collective known as the Funky, Sexy Jazzmen. Rumors of their musical and sexual prowess have spread from Portland to Pittsburgh, and then right on to the other Portland.

Why, you might even have an FSJ in your very own neighborhood, under your nose! By day, they pose as ordinary men: dog catchers, small appliance repairmen, high school custodians, but by night, they transform before your very eyes into Funky, Sexy Jazzmen.

I’ve managed to capture the likenesses of just three FSJ’s here, but there could be countless others out there in the world… going about their daily lives with an untold, secretive secret: that they are the Funky, Sexy Jazzmen, bound by their honor to uphold a dying way of life. The Jazz.

Also, check out the slightly updated, slightly less pixelated, slightly bluer version of Protagonist: Fish!

Oh hey guys. Remember how I was going to Toronto, and New York, and other places also kind of? That happened. I’ll be back in Northfield this evening, and will tell you things about my trip eventually, but today I drew a little something something that is an indicator of great things to come. Unless you’re David Lefkowitz, my girlfriend Lisa, or one of a few other privileged souls, chances are you don’t know much about my novelle graphique (comix book). Well, forget everything you (don’t even) know! Forget coming-of-age stories set in Milwaukee in the early 2000’s, and forget a convoluted 10-chapter structure in which each chapter focuses on a specific relationship in the narrator’s life, with each relationship paralleling another in unique ways*. Just forget it!

This fall, my NEW and IMPROVED graphic novel will be about a bunch of wacky denizens of a mini-golf course: the pond fish!!! Don’t believe me? JUST CHECK IT OUT:

The overall story will focus on how a bunch of these fish fight back against the unruly teenagers who threaten their very existence in the mini-golf pool/pond/whatever. It is basically Finding Nemo but way, way, way better. I’m thinking Eddie Murphy for the voice of “Fish” (in the inevitable film realization of this masterpiece). So yeah! Fish all the way.

*And now you actually have an idea of what my graphic novel will be about.

Sorry, this isn’t a new true story (though I’ve got a few ideas in the works). Rather, this is just another random drawing I did the other day.

Anyway, it’s a turtle with a baseball stadium on its back. Sharpie again (“Ultra-Fine” and “Fine”) this time around. Not sure where the idea came from, or just where in the hell this turtle thinks he’s going.

In other news, I’ll be flying to Toronto on Sunday for two weeks of Canadian and East Coast (New York, Cape Cod) vacationing. I’ll try to keep updating. Expect a couple of true stories out of this trip!

I’m working on a new series. A comic series, kind of. When something interesting happens to me lately, I’ll draw a few pictures and write a few words about it. They are all true stories. So I call this series A True Story About. The title of each individual work (see this post’s title) is the subject that immediately follows the “About.” Go ahead, click each image for a larger version.

Still don’t know what happened to that dog.

This one also has an animal in the title, so I decided to change things up a little for the third.

I think it’s a coincidence that these stories all involve animals, but I can’t be too sure yet. All of them are done in “Ultra-Fine” Sharpie (as elaborated here, my new medium of choice) in my sketchbooks. I did the first two in about a half hour each, but spent a little more time on the visual style of the third, which I’m going to try to focus on in the future. I hope to draw many more true stories in the coming weeks.

To make up for last week, today’s post will be a very special one: a whopping 5 pages of double spreads from the sketchbook I bought a few days ago. I’ve been filling it up at a pretty quick pace, working exclusively with freehand line drawings done in “Ultra-Fine” point black Sharpie (I put that in quotes because really it’s closer to a 0.8, maybe even 1.0 mm diameter point… hardly “ultra-fine” by Micron standards, but I’m reveling in it nonetheless). The sketches are all from Northfield, mostly outdoor urban scenes:

These first two were drawn on Saturday in Bridge Square in downtown Northfield.

This is the only indoor sketch so far, from Lisa’s apartment yesterday while we were watching 10 Things I Hate About You on TV. That’s Heath Ledger chatting it up with Julia Stiles on the screen.

I drew this earlier this morning from inside Goodbye Blue Monday Coffee House in Northfield. It’s a view of the building and trees across the street, and also a car.

I drew this just earlier this afternoon, in Bridge Square again. There’s a popcorn wagon that’s open often but not always. But it’s always a special treat when it’s open. I got a root beer from the stand once I had finished this drawing and talked with the woman on the left and man in the wagon (in the sketch, I mean) about Northfield and art.

How much fun is it to draw the random images you think of during the day? My answer: a whole heck of a lot of fun. After a quick Google search, I discovered that there is no image of a sunflower (or any other flower, for that matter) smoking a cigarette. Don’t read this as a picture that condemns or supports smoking, or sunflowers. Instead, enjoy it for its absurdity:

I drew it in Sharpie originally, then scanned it and did the colors in Photoshop. I’m also back to a strict MWF updating schedule here. Your thoughts (on the sunflower, on my blog, on life)?

The more and more you look at the title of this post, the less it looks like real words. That’s true for me, anyway. In any case, here’s a watercolor/pen drawing that I did recently:

Kudos to anyone who can identify the three faces shown here.

P.S. Kudos as in ‘congratulations,’ not the candy bar.

For three summers (‘05 – ‘07) I worked as an employee of the Milwaukee County Parks system. It meant a lot of time in the sun, by the wading pool or cutting grass, and a lot of farmer’s tan as a result. In 2006, I worked at Alcott Park in Greenfield, a southwest suburb of Milwaukee. Alcott has a lot of open field space, two untended softball diamonds, a pavilion building and wading pool. Every 4th of July there is a big County Parks celebration, where the parade ends, with events all day and fireworks at night. I spent most of my time there by the wading pool, however. Here are two drawings I did during my stint as a “wading pool supervisor”:

Both were done in some sort of marker/pen, and I believe both are on the back of wading pool daily operation forms. The first is a view across the pool, toward the park’s playground. You can see the fountain of the pool in the foreground. The second looks out of the pool entrance toward the fields of the park. A light pole and softball batting cage are featured prominently. Looking back on these, I’m reminded of how an artist doesn’t need expensive materials to create works. At the time, creating art wasn’t figuring in my future career plans, but I’m also reminded of the choices I made and how they logically fit within my path as an artist.

On another note, here’s a terrific video of my friend TJ, who visited me at work one time: TJ in the wading pool.

This year for Carleton’s Politics and Culture magazine, The Lens, I did a series of drawings of the departing seniors, as opposed to photographs in the past. I used a similar contour style as I did some months ago for Morgan Freeman and the many other Scott Donaldsons. I think here I downgraded from Micron pen (specifically made for drawing) to a regular ol’ Uniball. I’m just as pleased with the results, though, and with a few exceptions I think the drawings are fairly representational of all the students. Here is a collection of the 12 drawings of the seniors (I originally drew them on four separate sheets of paper):

I’m very fond of representating the face with few lines. Don’t think it’s the last time you’ll see me do that.

My my my. Without too much to say, I would like to apologize for not updating in the last month. It’s been a busy time. Here’s a drawing from a weekend I spent in Chicago two and a half weeks ago. You may recognize the sculpture as Cloud Gate (affectionately, “The Bean”). It’s an unfinished drawing, which will be a recurring theme in the next few posts.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? My resolution to update Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays regularly fell through (for a time)… but I’m back. I realized that the most important thing to keep driving me to update and put new content on my blog is, unsurprisingly, forcing myself to create new work, no matter how busy I am or how uninspired my ideas feel. So I thought I’d begin by just doing a couple of drawings, and putting one or two up each time I update. Today’s is a sketch I did yesterday evening in the library of my friends Jun and Rafa. The text is “It keeps me afloat,” a lyric from a song from the new Gomez album A New Tide (it’s very good!), which I was listening to while drawing. Here’s the drawing:

It’s in pencil. I haven’t done anything in pencil in a while! On Wednesday, I will have another drawing. That’s a Scottguarantee.

For my Life Drawing final project, I did three large watercolor portraits in a series with accompanying text. I asked some of my friends to send me photos of themselves portraying an emotion. I received about a dozen, and had a tough time narrowing it down.

In the end, I decided on one very excited face and two more subtle expressions. I included text that provides three very distinct ways in which people deal with being alone. The pictures, to me, reflect each of these personalities/emotional characters.

Canadian cities were a last-minute decision, but I liked the way they tied the three images together, in addition to the theme of loneliness (the glasses are coincidental). The actual people in the drawings, to satiate your curiosity, are all members of Lenny Dee: Jared, Emogene, and Tim, respectively.

Also! The table show went amazingly last night, and I’ll be putting up pictures from that on Monday.