String Books

For those of you passing through Braidwood over the next couple of weekends.

Like a Machine

A little while ago I did some illustrations for a video clip for my mate Karuna. The opening sequence with the tunnel and space ship are mine.

Space Invaders Zine Fair

October 29th, Friday night saw the opening to the Space Invaders exhibition opening at the National Gallery of Australia Canberra, the following day saw the zine fair in the new NGA wing: the Gandel Hall. Space Invaders is an exhibition on contemporary street art with some attention being paid to zines. I'm not sure how the story went but Sticky organised the zine fair whilst outside a mural was street arted on a fake wall.

Never having been to a zine fair I was not sure what to expect. I knew James Andre was going but I think it was his first time too so there was no one whose brains I could pick. I arrived on time (10am for 11 start) and set up next to James and his partner Matilde. As I looked around the room I noticed a couple of familiar faces one being Bernie Slater who was a couple of years under me at art school, the other being Marcelo Baez, who I met at Sydnova. 

Not all the tables were filled but a lot of people shared tables, there was no table allocation. Some tables were frothing over the brim but these were zine shops not individuals hawking their personal wares.

The day started off rather slow without a sale for the first half hour but from then on there was a steady trickle past my table and I ended making a decent amount of money. That was pretty much the sum up of the day really: a steady trickle with money being made. The tables were free so everything anyone made was lovely, lovely profit. Well at least for me it was as I live near Canberra.

Here's the  cover to Monster Addict.

This and James' other books can be bought here or here.

Melbourne Armageddon

Last weekend saw the Melbourne leg of the Armageddon "culture expo" which I attended sharing again a table with the illustrious Trevor Wood. Armageddon has been gaining in popularity and while I don't know if this has anything to do with Melbourne or if it's the expo, it didn't have the crowds Sydney Supanova enjoyed. There were some pretty big names there such as Michael Biehn and John Dimaggio but having guests from Survivor seemed a bit weak.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend with roughly the same amount of money earnt on my part but it was made differently. It was a very slow start and after an hour with no sales I was ready to throw in the towel and give up in despair. Slowly but surely the punters started to take an interest and I started to move comics. By the end of the Saturday I'd sold 8 copies of The Dicks Anthology (which wasn't so good compared to Supanova where I sold 13) and shifted another 4 on the Sunday (comparable to the 5 I  sold on Sunday at Supanova). These numbers though pale in comparisson to Paul Bedord selling 50 copies of The List and Jan Scherpenhuizen selling 80 copies of The Twilight Age. I am not a salesman. I might argue that it's not the right crowd but wonders the staggering amounts Paul and Jan would sell if it was the right crowd.

I made up for the loss of comic sales in Melbourne with a few more commissions. Batman, The Phantom, Red Sonja, TV Sherlock and a few of my own designs. Sadly I didn't have a camera and so didn't get any photos of the pictures I'd done. Bobby.N though (who wasn't holding a table) did manage to get a couple of snaps so I've pinched them from his blog.

I didn't do much purchasing this time. Brendan Halyday had promised me a swap but was so caught up doing zombified pictures of paying customers that I missed out. I did grab a little comic by Andrew Fulton and picked up The Time Being part 2 from Trev. Trev is definitely onto a winner here with his new story arc. He and Jen breach are producing a 200 plus page comic and as it's a web comic, updated weekly, Trev virtually has a new part to sell at every convention.

To sum up, if I want to make money at these things I'm going to have to try a different tactic. In the end though as this sort of thing isn't where I want to be making my money, it's just nice to hang with friends, look and laugh at half naked cosplayers and meet people who are genuinely into your comic.

Black Boox Has Dicks

Black Boox has just uploaded the Dicks Anthology for sale! So for those of you who can't get to Comic Kingdom, Minotaur or Impact click the link above to get yourselves some Dicks heaven.

The Left Hand Book

I'll Explain the title of this post later.

9 years ago I had an exhibition, which was part of the residency I was offered after leaving art school, of prints I had done through the year. There were large multy state woodcuts, some crappy self portrait etchings and these (plus 2 others which I dont have a photo).

I was very plaesed with them and wished I'd done more. Ever since I've been thinking back to these etchings and wondering if I might do something like them again. Now the tittle is explained: I was recently asked if I would like to be in an exhibition by a Julian Davies (author and co owner of Finlay Press who published Roof Tops by Mandy Ord) at his new exhibiton space called The Left Hand. Julian had actually bought one of the above print at my exhibition. So after accepting his offer it got me thinking: Maybe I could continue on with the ideas I'd left all those years ago.

The brief was to make a book (of sorts) so I decided to do some more bone drawings (not etchings this time as I don't have the time nor the access to a workshop) but this time mix them up with various arthropods. Not having much time I've kept them simple. Also I've used watered down ink to give them a softer feel and the possiblity of building up various tones. The Moebius influence was not intensional but he being in my thoughts this past while I suppose it was unaviodable.

Here is the drawing process too. I have a whole bunch of bones and arthropods to look at, I make a rough sketch and then go for it.

Monster Addict

  

James Andre asked me to do some covers for a novel he had written called Monster Addict. He wanted a group shot of "vampires, rapists, etc". Vampires, no problem. But how do you draw a rapist? Anyway it wasn't really an issue, I just drew a bunch of monsterish creatures and chucked in a couple people.

For the back cover image I mixed a monkey with a lion and gave it some protruding fangs coz protruding fangs are cool.

Monster Addict should be out soon. Check out James' blog for updates.