Moved House

Well, after 917 posts on this site, and four years, I'm moving to a new blog. Same thing, just a different system.

Please update your bookmarks, as they say, to http://utopiamoment.ca, and let the party continue!

Lights and Darks

Not totally confident about placing the dark areas. It's a little easier for me to use the wash, but that's less easy to reproduce. Maybe doing different textures of ink, rather than my usual scribbles and crosshatching.

One last step to set up the other blog, but it's tricky. I think when that's done, I'm just going to hang a sign on this one to say, go to the new site. And come back here for the four years of archives when they're wanted. That's until I can migrate the archives to the new blog, which is supposed to be possible. But I haven't figured it out, yet.

'Copter Trouble

Meeting at the bar again, on a Friday night, to collaborate with a friend. Rick Gagnon was still away with family, but Marr was there. As I was writing last week, it's different from working with Rick. Marr suggests a situation or describes a scene, and I start to draw it. Then he adds to that. Sometimes I finish it off.

That's how these crazy helicopter pictures came to be. The one below is my sketch of a helicopter as a guide for the first pic, then Marr and I added figures and background.



The two sketches below are in Marr's sketchbook (hence snapped with my camera). They're drawn by him, and I added some light touches of wash, plus a couple of background figures in one.



Until next week!

Symphonie Fantastique

Listening to that, this morning, by Hector Berlioz. It has a nice musical guillotining scene in it. Below, I drew last night, while listening to a story on the radio about a man whose grandma was in the jungle with Che and Castro during the fight for the Cuban revolution.



Still haven't sorted out the blogs, so I guess this will be a duplicate post.

Battle of the Blogs

Made these drawings tonight, but to read all about them, and to find out more about my complicated state of mind concerning my two blogs, you're going to have to go over to the other blog, and visit the posting there. [link]


That's okay, unless now I invest too much in the temporary blog, and it doesn't become the permanent one. I'm sure it will all work out.

More New Year's

Trying to draw these figures with traditional underdrawing, and starting with 'lines of action' and all the things drawing manuals tell you to do. The girl looks nice, while the guy looks like the usual type of person I draw. Put in the Carrie-like background to set them off. That's a lot of little lines!

Happy New Year!

Here's to another year of oddness.

Temporary Blog, or New Blog for the New Year?

Lots of silliness, not being able to publish in the blog over the holidays. It got me to set up another blog http://ouchblog.ca/wordpress (now taken down!) on Wordpress, and now I'm getting it figured out (I think: it's not as easy as they say, at least to someone who has never heard of an SQL database before.)

Yeah: fun, and easy to understand that stuff is not, especially to such a non-linear 'creative' type such as myself. Even though my Dad was a programmer, and I used to go to his office after school and play on his PDP 11, I never was much good at typing in those numbers to make banners and such, even though I tried hard. My current adventures with CSS are an equivalent to that. I'm forcing myself to learn it, even though for others it would go much faster. But they couldn't write a Goat comic story! )

So, I'm going to keep doing things over there, twiddle with the template, add links, etc. and then migrate the archives for this blog over there. I've also got to associate it with the utopiamoment.ca address, which I think I'll be able to do (but all of this won't be as easy as it is made out to be, for a number of baroque and recondite reasons). I'll keep this blog up, but under the bizarre http://mruttan.ca/mruttan.ca/blog/blog.html address the machine gave me, because those ftp path things are hard to figure out(at least for me!).

I know it's a lot easier to keep all the files with blogger, and use their automatic system, even if it does conk out once in a while, but I like the control.

Anyone understand any of the above? If not, don't worry, it's not important. Except for you finding the new blog, and enjoying all that sketchy goodness the six of you people out there who visit regularly have come to love.

Cowboys, Parking

Above is a cowboy, parking, and below is Miss Precious Perfect and her friend.

All Washed Up

Here are Marr's two drawings from the other day, all washed up. It does help the blood stand out, doesn't it?

I like the pleasant and happy expression on the psycho killer. He's doing what he loves!

Same Place, Different Collaborator

Had my usual Friday night meet at the Cock N' Bull Bar. One difference though: Every other night I've been drawing with my friend Richard Gagnon. Well, this evening, Rick was visiting his family off in Saguenay, Quebec, so I was with his and my friend Marr, who had met with us during the last two Fridays. Marr enjoyed the process of collaboration, and the flexing of drawing muscles, so he and I kept the weekly tradition going.

Where Rick is a finisher, Marr is a storyteller, with an amusingly morbid imagination. He saw the insulin needles of one of our friends at the bar, and came up with the scene of the guy injecting himself, above. I continued it across the centrefold to add a horrified, but fascinated, girlfriend. Also, I got to do a lot of the finishing, this time.

Below, it's Marr doing the inks, also choosing the subject. I had drawn a woman's face on the page (of a brand new sketchbook, by the way!), and Marr put her into this scene. I had the idea of adding the other arm, belonging to Harry, I suppose.



The last drawing is by Marr alone. This character is wearing my sweater and scarf. Not my smile, however. Since these were both done in my book, I've taken them home, and might add some lights and darks later. At the moment, they're as the original artist left them.



I'm looking forward to Rick coming back, of course, but working with another imagination is a fun new experience. In every collaboration, you never know what's going to end up on the page.

Cat Scanning

Yesterday was a bit of a trial. I didn't have family to do a Christmas thing with, so instead I learned about SQL databases (the first time I've heard of such things) and WordPress in an attempt to rescue this blog. Should have known things would be set to rights before long, but it was frustrating watching the wheels spin, and nothing being posted. Check the temporary sister blog I set up on a web address which is going to expire at the end of January: http://ouchblog.ca/wordpress

So, I drew a lot. Above is a comic strip which started with that first panel, the man staring at the cat on the scanner: a drawing that hang around my sketchbook for months.

Then Nora the cat decided to sit on my scanner, and would not get off, so I scanned her.

I'm happy she didn't consider it a high-tech litter box.

There's a whole website devoted to people who put their cats on scanners. So, it's not that unique an image. But I like how she looked down at the last moment, so the scan captured her nose, even though it seems separated from the rest of her. Cubist cat.

That inspired me as to what to do for the rest of the comic.

Last, a disturbingly (now I see it -- it wasn't obvious before) hairless gorilla, done in gouache.

Drinking

I don't know. I was worried about this one while drawing it. The barrel wasn't round, I didn't know where the blacks were going to go. Nothing was planned out. But I sort of just went with it, and ended up enjoying myself.

Cheez, Louise! I was mucking around with this blog a lot, because for a couple of days (actually only one) it wasn't working. Now it is. But now I've successfully (I think) set up a blog on WordPress, after a lot of screwing around with PhP, and then finding out my server has the program set up automatically (but an earlier version, so we'll see how that works!). Still, it would be nice to have things slightly more spiff, design-wise, and all under my control.

Finishing off a sketchbook.

With the end of a year coming up, it's appropriate that I've filled up one of my sketchbooks. It's a little hardcover one, about seven inches square.

More movie people above, trying to be Sean Connery and Michelle Feiffer from Russia House. Below, kind of a Matrix guy, and an anonymous comic book character. Bottom, just an office woman yelling in the margins. That's all!

Encore

Forgot about this one, but after Rick reminded me in a comment on the last post, found it on the back side of a page. It's Gene Hackman and friend from The Conversation drawn by me, and inked last Friday by Rick Gagnon. What's the point of drawing people while watching movies? Purely for the giggles.

Homework

The guys from yesterday's post, Marr and Rick, gave me a drawing to take home and ink. Marr did the central figure, Rick filled in the rest. I struggled with it, because some of the details were quickly sketched in, and I didn't have the artists around to explain it to me. I thought "that guy" was the person in behind. There was a roughly hemispheric shadow on the front guy's shirt, but that was it.

So I did one version, and after having scanned it, finally got what they were getting at. So I had to strengthen the shadow, darken the arm, and add the ear. I underlined the word "that." Still can't figure out why they're holding hands.

Then There Were Three

More hands to draw at the Cock N' Bull Bar. I'd have to label these "Gagnon and Marr Fridays," but that's too awkward. Still, our third friend's presence was welcome, and gave a new perspective to things. He'd brought his sketchbook, which, if you'll recall from last week's post, his wife gave him, but he hadn't taken out until he was in the presence of Gagnon and I. We've been doing some drawings in that. These weren't scanned, they're snapped with a compact camera.

Marr drew this, and Rick inked it. I added about four lines, at the end: around the arms.



This is a drawing by Marr of Wong, the pub's chef, inked by me.


Here, Rick is autofocussing, as he takes a picture of me taking a picture of him. He and Marr gave me a birthday gift that night, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. I don't really want to draw comics the Marvel Way, but it's a lot of fun, anyways.


Finally, two old guys, drawn by me, gone over slightly by Gagnon. I thought it was dark enough, but there's always room to do something.

Collected Goat

On my website, in my new Comics section, (please give a visit) I've just put online my comic strips about the Goat and Rabbit, two characters I drew in the 90s, and had adventures in what was essentially the Canadian literary world.

It was published for a year, 1990-1991, in a magazine called Books in Canada. That used to be a nice little book review magazine I remember from high school and college days, and then it got glossy, and I was published in it. Thanks to editor Paul Steuwe, who gave me my run. The mag doesn't exist any more, but before it died, it was bought by an outfit which made it kind of right wing. Then it was shut down, and all the articles on it were published online without the writers' permission.


Drawing everyone in it as an animal I thought that would help me in a satirical way, because you're not drawing Margaret Atwood, you're drawing a seal, and you can make points about racism, etc, using lions and sheep. I don't know if anyone got it, but I met a couple of fans. The strip was cancelled after a year and replaced by reruns of Drawn and Quarterly strips. Still, I'm pretty happy with it. I put out these strips as a zine, and am now putting them online, so you can all enjoy them. And, it spurs me on to make new stuff.

900th Post

For my 900th post, I give you a drawing of a guy looking at a clock, and being scared. That's it. Don't ask me to explain, because I don't understand it myself. I'm sure there's an exciting story behind it, about the passage of time, or maybe there's a monster hiding in the clock, but that's for you to figure out.

Maybe he's a blogger, shocked at how much time has passed. At least I still have more hair.

Bettie Page

This isn't such a great drawing of the late Bettie Page (top, darn it), but I like the shot of the cat commenting on it.



Below, hide your eyes, kids! Drawing nudity, from my art book The Figure in Motion. The trouble with this book is none of the photos in it are of postures ever adopted by real people. Bad girl superheroes, maybe, but that's not my speed.