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Hey Guys! I've been in such a jumble of activity recently that I haven't had too much time to draw! Or, strike that, I've been spending all my time doing work for other people, ie, the mural I'm working on at a local bar (pictures forthcoming), but here are a few little things.
Here is a gouache-y commission thing I did for a lady who wanted cute goat men? Haha. Hairy nipples. All the furries have hairy nipples.
And here's an illustration for a BULLY fanzine I'm making with a friend who works at Rockstar. There is a serious lack of pinups of handsome dudes, if you ask this lady. Sure, most nerds are dudes, and a lot of dudes like drawing pictures of cute ladies. It's in their nature, like it's in mine to draw muscly ....high schoolers? Huhhhh... gonna have to think that one through again...
REGARDLESS, best atmosphere of any adventure game ever, the end.
Yeah, uhh, I'll admit it. I like Full Metal Alchemist.
There, I said it.
HEY GUYS! Lets talk a little bit about...
NOT SIMPLE by Natsume Ono.
True to it's name, be that referring to the relationships of the story, or to the involved people themselves, Not Simple is a lot to take in. I've read things before that were definitely more complicated. Longer, more difficult plotlines, more complex drawings to look at, etc... but for some reason this graphic novel struck me as one of the best and most perfect examples of the saying, 'less is more'. In this case more. A LOT more.
Ian, a seemingly homeless hitchhiker, spends his life traveling the world attempting to track down his missing sister, who may or may not also be his real mother. He befriends a gay novelist who is amazed by his life story and begins to chronicle it. Split into two halves, the first part is told from Ian's perspective as he rehashes old memories. The second is lived through the lens of his novelist friend, Jim.
The story itself is excessively depressing, and left me feeling both contemplative and disquieted. Not because reading it was unpalatable... It was merely a sad story with a sad ending, made obvious to the readers within the first ten pages. Much like Grave of the Fireflies, the reader already knows the main character dies from the very beginning, and it is a slow, painful ride from an opportunistic beginning to the dirty, ruthless end. With incest, child prostitution, alcoholism, divorce, homelessness, and disease all weighing down the migrant main character, Ian, our hearts break a little every time we see his childlike optimism worn down. I got the impression, also, that Ian may have suffered from some sort of mental disorder, keeping him simpleminded and sweet even as he grew older, in the face of especially horrible adversity. This might be an offshoot of his DNA, or it may not be. A sudden change in his mood at the end of the book however makes it confusing, suggesting just extreme mental duress more than anything else. Regardless, your heart goes with him %100 of the way, to the very bitter, and strangely ambiguous end.
The linework, which is stark and simple, is barren enough to simply reveal the facts. Anatomy is guesstimated, backgrounds are drawn as more of a suggestion than a fleshed out world. And the faces are both traditional manga with their simple, overly-huge eyes, and yet nothing like that at all. (strangely, Ono draws stuff that looks like this the rest of the time. whattttt?) More than anything, the art feels hungry to me, as if asking the reader to fill in the missing space with their imagination. Much of the book is in the minutia, between looks and quiet pauses. Ian's eyes are two vacant, scribbly circles, that seem to get wider and hungrier as you go, in stark comparison to everybody else's lidded, suspicious stares.
The way Ono approaches family relationships, sex, and the infinite number of cruel daily human interactions is bold and straightforward. She doesn't pull any punches, making me feel sometimes like I'm intruding on someone's really personal business, as opposed to the feeling of falling into another world that I like so much about reading comics. It was definitely a strange, absorbing experience, sort of like watching a nature documentary where you're rooting for the dying gazelle, that ends up getting eaten by the alligators in the end anyway. But it was an experience that I found profoundly interesting, and that, after I've let the story process a little, I will return to for a second and third read. Despite the stark drawing style, I feel like there are still some things I missed, and I expect to pick up on the minutia even more the next time around.
you can read the first chapter online here. Though it took me a little bit of time to warm into the story, I really suggest this for people who like indie manga and have a taste for sad stories. It's one of the best character studies I've read all year.
IF you happen to find yourself in Richmond Virginia on March 4th, and if you happen to love the shit out of your bicycle, then come on down and hang out with me and my homies in ROTA for their second annual really fun RACE TO PURGATORY, with sweet prizes!
DATE CHANGE: MARCH 14!!
mark your calendars!
I wanna do more experiments with gradients. I hardly ever finish something off in black and white or greyscale anymore... a habit I'm going to have to learn to break if I'm trying to get cheap and DIY about publishing any of my comics.
I think it's official that I have now spent 1/2 of my total money pool on comic books instead of paying off my student loans. ah ha... ha ha ha... hahaha... hahahahaHAHAHA ! oh no.
recent reading both old and new:
Last Call by Vasallis Lolos
completely nuts. This guy's inking drives me crazy, I must have read this little buddy a dozen times and I still can't stop looking at it! It makes my eyeballs feel soooooo goooooodddd. Lolos is maybe my favorite illustrator right now.
Notes for a War Story by Gippi
I love love love love love Gippi's scribbly linework. His sensitive watercolor over top gives it an effortless, and yet somehow carefully premeditated, thoughtful feel. Plus his stories are so sad and good, in weird slice-of-life ways, even when the book itself is about something as major as what war does to people.
Unloveable by Esther Pearl Watson
more bathroom reading, really, but every girl (and sometimes guy) has felt like Tammy at least once. I feel like we were friends in another life.
A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Taking in both Tezuka and Tatsumi to figure out who is the real grandfather of japanese comics. My experiences thus far with Tatsumi have been thought provoking and mortally depressing. I'm learning all about gekiga, cool!
Red Blinds the Foolish by Est Em
a weird and rare BL novel that tells a couple of really provocative, well written, and realistic stories. Especially poignant is one short about a grown man whose lover, a shoemaker, discovers an old cherished family memory, and makes his sean connery-lookin ass boyfriend a pair of beautiful red high heels.
MW by Osamu Tezuka
Scary, disturbing, and on/off hilarious. Tezuka's childlike style throws me off a lot of the time, making it weirder and worse when something really especially sick happens. But I think that might be what I like so much about his stuff. It's going to take me a lifetime to collect his complete body of work. I think I also like that.
New House plants from the Lowes for my drawing table! That honking cactus-lookin palm was only 10 $$$! Say whaaaaattttttt? Thanks damaged plant cart. Brian and I are planting an herb garden in our kitchen window too, look out springtime!
Expect better photos next time, as these are courtesy of my laptop photobooth. Macs are better than PCs, the end.
I realized today that I hardly ever draw pictures of myself that aren't giant wads of dough with legs. Hahaha! I totally did myself some favors here! But this was a pretty fun 30 minute experiment. I look like some kind of crazy squishy somnambulist.
Here's the full poster version of my entry for Velocity Comic's AFRODISIAC book release contest! And guess who won? Yeah, that's right, go ahead. THIS girl. uh-huh. 
The event itself was small because of terrible snowy weather, but good. Actually, I always tend to enjoy things more when they are on the small side, due to my inability to always be able to navigate around awkwardly loitering nerds. I hate awkward loitering, and find myself doing a lot of it whenever at a signing of any kind. So it really doesn't help the situation when there's ten other dudes doing the same thing, except way taller and/or fatter and weirder. Not that I can't appreciate my own kind, but I sort of wish more lady nerds had come out. Street Angel was an important project for me as a lady, especially a lady who has had her fair share of destitute living situations. But whatever, their loss. Sorry nerd ladies.
So Jim Rugg was obviously there, celebrating and signing copies of AFRO, as well as talking up Street Angel. It seemed strange to me how many people were there that hadn't even heard of Rugg's work. What? Why trudge through waist high street-sludgy snow in the rainy dark just on a whim? Though maybe those were just the people I was lurking on while attempting not to awkwardly loiter. A difficult task, when Velocity is all chockablock full of comic books instead of floorspace, and every other dude there was like some hugely tall yet softspoken geek over the age of 26.
In retrospect, there were a lot of questions for Jim that I had that I ended up completely blanking on, when it was my turn to stutter stupidly for six or seven minutes about how I loved Street Angel so so much and especially issue 4 and especially when this thing or that thing happened etc etc. But hindsight's 20-20, they say, and I'm left wondering only if the one photo I saw someone take with me in it will turn out with me looking glazed and pink in the face, with dribbles of sweat or spit somehow irreversibly dripping down the side of my fat face. I feel like I'm 14 years old, kind of.
EDIT: that picture. AWKWARD LOITERING EVERYWHERE
Rick Spears was also there, who is a little younger and who I've met before, so it was both a relief and a lot of fun to talk to him about his projects. He's a pretty nice guy! I had a good time, I think! And winning the contest was a nice thing. Jim apparently liked my print enough to ask to keep it, so I'm stoked! I'm happy he likes it! I actually can't really comprehend it, but I can appreciate.
Hello Velocity comics, hello hello! Tomorrow I return for my winnings. Thanks Pat! yessssss... yessssss
For my friend Harris's CD release! His shit hits the shelf Feburary 26th, check him out!
http://www.myspace.com/hornandtusk
I like making CD designs... somehow the organizational structure makes me feel zen.
ch-ch-check it out! My part in the Spera online comic anthology can finally get posted because part II is now officially live! See some sweet writing by Josh Tierney, and a host of other cool artists in the complete story at spera-comic.com
it really is a cool project, a lot of really stupidly excellent people are involved. Look at it!
spera-comic.com
spera-comic.com
spera-comic.com
!!!
In light of my comic book store's release party for Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's book AFRODISIAC, I decided to enter the event's illustration contest. Here is a small snippet of my entry, the whole of which I will post after it goes up at the event. I really love love love Street Angel, and I love my squeaky new copy of AFRODISIAC, but I think what I love the most is that they both feed into the history of the same fictional city. cool!
Read more about the event:
http://www.adhousebooks.com/
http://www.velocitycomics.com/
richmond, WUT WUT
Hi guys! Check out my Etsy shop to buy your very own PRINTS of mine! Cool! Message me about sizes and preferred shipping methods, if you have preferences!
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7709031
Also, I got written up for the RVA magazine blog, which you can read about here:
http://rvamag.com/articles/full/5269/julia-scott-likes-drawing-lot#comment-913
A typography project that deviates from my usual style a lot. I decided at the end of this project, that this composition was a cherubim from Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wind in the Door. Inter dimensional multi-eyed/winged telepathic space angel baby, anybody? Anybody, anybody?
except, you know, just the letter "R" a lot.
For a contest at Velocity Comics. Winner takes home 100 bones in store credit!
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