The two course I've been taking are Silkscreen Printing and Painting for Illustrators. The former has been making a good deal of progress over the latter, next week we're going to learn how to do photo emulsion. Unfortunately, I haven't scanned in any of the work I've done yet so those are being saved for a later posting (most likely by Monday or Wednesday, so not to keep you waiting of course!) Painting hasn't turned out any terrible interesting artwork yet, but I've been planning to do outside painting since I got out of school to improve my painting skills.
Since I got out of school, I've had a few interesting non-art related adventures including visiting my girlfriend up in New Hampshire and discovered that I liked canoeing and one psuedo-art related adventure in New York City last weekend when I went to the MoCCA Comic Festival which I'm going to briefly cover here.
MoCCA happened last weekend and has so far proven that I'm having a rather interesting summer vacation. The purpose of MoCCA is that appears as a simple comic convention. That's not to say that it isn't because it is, but it serves a higher purpose than being a place for people who love comics to get together.
Instead it serves as a fundraiser for the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art so that they can continue to have really nifty exhibits. I didn't get to see it personally, but they had an "Art of the Watchmen" exhibit to go along with the release of the film, for example. There were a LOT of people there too, ranging from professional artists and writers to independent artists and writers all of them selling their wares or promoting themselves in some way shape or form.
I went with an ulterior motive aside from supporting the Museum, I had wanted to go to the festival since last year mostly because I would be able to meet a lot of artists and writers I had a good deal of respect for. Also, I wanted to get some advice on the creative process on writing from some people that I respected.
And meet them and get advice I did! Within thirty minutes of getting into the convention, I ran into Brian Wood! The author of Local, DMZ, Demo, Fight for Tomorrow, Northlanders and other awesome comics. He signed the books I brought with me and he gave me some good advice about the writing and planning process. Within a few minutes after meeting Brian Wood, I ran into Rick Spears (author of Teenagers from Mars, Repo and The Pirates of Coney Island) and he signed the books I brought with me and gave me sound advice that I had never heard before! Then I met Becky Cloonan, one of my favorite artists of all time and she helped to give me some good advice as well. I also met Hope Larson, but I'm only familiar with her work more than anything else so I didn't ask her any questions about writing.
I also bought a lot of really nice swag from them too. I bought Brian Wood's limited edition artbook Public Domain 2, Rick Spear's Repo and he gave me a preview of his new book Die Pumpkin Die and I bought a print from Becky Cloonan and her self published graphic novel Minis, which collects her early comics from two-thousand to two-thousand and two.
I even picked up a few comics from indepedent artists including this rather funny book called "Things I've Seen At Shows" and "Harvest is When I Need You Most" which was published by artist I've met a few times that tributes the original Star Wars films.
Here are some pictures from the event:
Brian Wood
Becky Cloonan
Rick Spears
In regards to art, however. Not a whole lot has been going on since I haven't really sat down and really "made" something outside of class but I've been trying to draw a lot more frequently in my sketchbooks but I'm starting to grow rather bored with the subject matter I've been drawing, which is anything. I plan on fixing this soon, so at least I won't run out of things to show you all.
In other news, here's some more artwork! Three more pieces to be exact!
This last piece is a color study for an upcoming painting that I'm going to be working on. That's going to be posted next update, so get ready!
See you Monday!
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