Well, that was fun....

Kind of like holding a racuous party. I wasn't doing much today, so checked in a lot, and watched the hits go up. That won't happen very often, but at least it let people look at the site, and decide if they want to look at strange sketches. I'm glad people enjoyed it. Here's a drawing I did tonight:

More Expozine

Video of Expozine from Sirkowski, which features three, count 'em, three, dogs.



And another one here, from a blog called Spectraverse:



Some people weren't too crazy about me taking photos of artwork, so in general, I concentrated on faces in my own pictures.

Update: Hey, I got featured on T. Spurgeon's The Comics Reporter!

Expozine, 2006

What a day. Went to Expozine, the zine and comics fair today (actually yesterday) in Montreal, and I was determined to be a paparazzo. Had my little digital camera with me, and a full 512 meg of RAM (plus a spare battery), and I was going to make one of those cool photo sets which I had enjoyed when they were of some far-off convention or event I couldn't attend. Next best thing to being there! Hope you enjoy it. Please click on Louis Rastelli below to get started on the set.



Unfortunately, while I told myself I would record everybody's name in my notebook to match up with the pictures, that wasn't to be (need an assistant, like one of those hip fashion photogs.). So my next job will be to send e-mails to all the people I collected material and addresses from, and hope they write in with corrections I can add to the photo descriptions. One never knows, if flickr lasts for a while, it might be an historical document.

I'm a very nervous photographer, and many of the pictures are a little blurry because of the low light, or my unsteady hand. Still, they give an impression of the event. Below are some sketches I painted while relaxing from all the meeting of people and taking of pictures. That's more congenial to me, but it would have been worse trying to draw watercolour sketches of everyone at their tables instead.

Lots of bigger publishers there, such as Drawn and Quarterly and Mechanique Generale, but I was attracted to the smaller creators. I'm grateful to them for letting me take snaps.







Well, now I'll send out all those e-mails! There's a pile of books that nearly covers the floor in front of me as I type.

Utopia "Statement of Purpose"

Getting all serious here, and long-winded.

Wrote the next few paragrahs in the comments column to Rachel's "Babayaga" blog. I think it says much of why I'm doing all this drawing, and blogging it. Trying to avoid too many "I" statements, because as David Fennario vividly states, art can get too self-involved, and you can disappear up your own navel, or nearby orifice. Still, there's art that's outward-directed, and art that's inward. Both valid at times.

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I think art is a way of saving yourself from lots of grief. I’ve been blessed with a little bit of talent. Drawing and writing’s pulled me out of deep holes. Still working out my relation to it. My Mom was an MFA with depression and anxiety disorders, which I’ve inherited to a lesser degree. I think the art helped her cope. But when she started to sell, it became another drag, and she ended up doing work to order, almost mass-producing. The healing aspect was gone.

A blog is great because they give you different notions of artists’ processes. What they are thinking day to day. It can be a soap box, a teaching aid, or a reflection.

I’m lucky now to have something - the TV writing - that’s paying the bills, and letting me explore without the usual pressures. Still working on different aspects of my life which are wanting. Mostly becoming more socialised, less shy and passive, opening up to people, putting energy out there, cleaning up crap inside.

Lots of different ways of doing this. When I get time, and become more organised, I want to do workshops on watercolour applied to cartooning for some local arts centre, or maybe just something about keeping a sketchbook, and exercising your chops. I’m a little terrified of finished work, or doing something that’s not to a deadline (driving it from within, without external pressures, not because of other people’s approval. Doing it just because it’s valid.)

I think giving yourself license to fail is important. They’re not all going to be beautiful pictures, but doing them helps you grow. Even though the results are often clunky, or not what I meant, I’m pleased at all the little improvements, which never stop happening, no matter how old I get.

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One of my mom's paintings, on my wall. It's a lake in Montana, which she loved, and was painted some time in the mid 1970s:

Old Guy Selling Pens

This isn't really what this guy looked like. He was selling pens. I'd been told it's bad manners to actually take a pen after giving him money, but of course that's nonsense. He insisted I take one. It's a green pen, and I used it to draw this.

Back to Sketches

Okay, enough photos, and cat stuff. I was trying to draw Samuel L. Jackson and this German woman in "Die Hard With a Vengeance."

Girl Cat

Do girl cats have harbls? Not even sure what a harbl is, but I've been overdosing on those cat pictures flooding the internet these days (except for that third one down: What jerks!). Very cool markings. They're like Rorschach blots -- you can see anything there.

Archives are back

Got my archives back. Very happy about it. Did it by following my usual web programming method of trying a lot of things in desperation until something works. This usually leads to messy results, and I have no idea what I just did. But, actually seeing old stuff is great.

In celebration, here's a picture of the cat lyin' on da furnace, heatin' his harbl.

Gift Book

This is a handmade (or rather, hand-altered) gift book, which a friend, who stayed here for a while left behind. I think it's from the 1970s, so hope she doesn't mind my posting scans of it.

That actually might be quite an intrusive act, but what the heck. The rest of the book is on flickr, which you can see if you click on the image. Unfortunately, flickr insisted on uploading the images out of order, even after I carefully numbered them, but you can follow the numbers.

I'm blurring out the guy's face below. What we did for love...

Beer Guy

It's a guy and his beer! Beer is very important to him. And also, the point he's trying to make. This is about football.

Space Flyer

A sexy space pilot landed on a hostile planet (though one with happy little clouds and trees). She looks a little dozy, and I wouldn't want to be standing in front of her, especially if I were some sort of hostile alien or robot. Been watching a lot of "Battlestar Galactica" lately, and last night the remake of "Assault on Precinct 13."

Girl Singer

Actually, this and the one below are women, but there you go.

Wall Girl

She sort of reminds me of the squirrel, below.

I still haven't fixed the paths to the archives at right. The archives still exist, but the paths are all funny. Very annoyed at Blogger, but suppose this is a learning experience.

McGill Ustration

This week's topic for the "Ask an Expert" column in the McGill Reporter is "why do squirrels have those bushy tails?" Trying to be cute here.

Robert Allen

I dislike putting up all these obituaries, but Robert Allen has died. I haven't quite been part of the Montreal English Language Literary scene, nor did I go to Concordia, but he was a very friendly guy, and a positive force. I enjoyed chatting with him over drinks at the Stanley Pub, and even visiting his office, when I was trying to get some piece or another into Matrix Magazine (I got a cartoon).

Somewhere, these new artists are popping up, and will be influences, and be published, and written about. Nothing so easy to keep track of as deaths. But the idea is to keep reading the work, and make connections, have experiences, and the picture will come into focus.

Samurai

Here's a Samurai, drawn out of my head, with the advantages and disadvantages of doing that. Working in colour, and keeping the values right, and doing interesting or accurate colors that aren't just off the palette, is tough, and I'm working on it. It's really possible to do a lot of preparatory work for a drawing like this: thumbnails and colour studies, and research, of course, but I'm pretty lazy. If it were a real commission, I might give it a try.

I hope people are finding this blog again, after the last address was trashed, and I couldn't even enter a note that this was moving. I have it under the utopiamoment.ca address, but it's only being forwarded inside a "frame," and I don't know if the search engines can find it. I might set up something more permanent, as soon as I learn Wordpress, or one of those other blog software systems. (Don't hold your breath. There's still my home web page that desperately needs updating, and real work is coming on the horizon).

Phone Doodles

Drawn with a blobby roller pen while talking on the phone.

Hat Boy

Drawing from a random photo brought up on an image search. I still don't know if the blog is back in hand. But here's another post.