a study in forgetting

 

i remember this being done as i was watching metropolis

do i actually remember drawing it?  no

 

 

forgotten sketches for a script i don't remember writing

(which i later found in my desk drawer)  pure vapourcomix

 

& just now, failed to recognize this sketch entirely...

because i'm so accustomed to the finished render

my husband, at least, remembers when i drew "bananass"

statuesque - w.i.p.

More rare paper.  This piece was based on a statue I encountered at the Lake Claire land trust, near Atlanta.  The owl in the buddha's hand was a small stuffed toy, and the statue was perhaps less, er, ripped, but I tried to stay true to the feeling the li'l guy gave me when I first saw it.  The land trust was a good place to work.  I wrote quite a bit of AZURE PANTRY and DENIZEN there.

I've considered doing some graytones or painting on this, but I'm too attached to the finished inks on this guy to risk botching it.  When I say attached, I mean, inking the owl brought me tears of joy.  Not an ordinary reaction for me, as anybody who knows me knows I generally loathe my work.  So this will be printed as it stands.  It's valuable, for reasons I can't quite articulate.

I'm pretty proud of the leafy debris surrounding the buddha.  I'm glad I kept the essence of the original pencils.  It was a very delicate job, and I probably agonized over line weight more than was necessary.  But it all felt necessary?  I dunno.  Maybe the traumatic brain injury I received after penciling this shook something loose in my soul.  It's one of the first finished inking jobs I pulled off after recovering full use of my right hand.

Post title notwithstanding, this isn't really a work in progress anymore.  But it isn't Done until I print the damned thing, is it?

What does dominating the industry even mean anymore?

The zeitgeist is a dumpster on fire rolling down a hill.  The motto round these parts is 'Mea cultcha, mea minima cultcha.'

Thank fuck I've never had any interest in making anything involving superheroes.  I quite enjoy reading books that involve them.  But they've never been the sin qua non of the form, for me.  I grew up on trash Warren horror mags & 70s Heavy Metal magazine.  So there's bound to be some adolescent Art Comix spurt on here, and for any of that, I apologize in advance.  Not everything is gonna be gold.

On that note, I finally found all the advance sketch materials for DENIZEN and AZURE PANTRY, today.  Only took a few weeks of frenzied shuffling of paper & repeated flickthrus of spiralbound sketchbooks containing more tattered edgepieces than actual pages.  Had just started to become dispirited by the effort when everything turned up.  And what was I searching for, anyway?  Three pages of scrawl resembling Paul Pope's used tissues.  I'm that good.

PROMISELAND continues apace, scriptwise.  The project seems to be writing itself the way DENIZEN wrote itself: steering with one hand & the other out the window, the crumbled remains of a roach between forefinger & thumb, relishing the current as my brain careens toward intellectual extinction.

Have I mentioned I finally kicked my sole standing addiction?  Now that I live in the land of legal weed it's been over a week since I smoked any, and my lungs are reminding me why I softpedaled kicking for years.  The coughing fits rival the crankover complaints of a junkyard chevy vega on cinderblocks and then I expectorate objects that look like Warren Ellis's orgasms.  You're welcome!

"Why are you typing shit like that?"  Fuck you, it's 5am.  That's why.

Today I'll take a swipe at inking an olllld banner illo I promised the Xtinction Agenda, like over two years ago.  Because because because because.  Nothing ever occurs as promptly as promised by this optimistic nihilist.  But you knew that already.  Didn't you?

Closing this thing out with the final image of my beloved husbando and his best friend & I, on the day we left Atlanta.  Ayy Tee Ell just endured a presidential abortion on speed doing a stopover, now they're gearing up to get whipped by galeforce storms.  Thank Xaphan we left that place.  They had two major water main breaks last week and every other day I read about some luckless soul being filled with bullets.  It's incredible how everyone I knew in that shitburg warned me that Chicago was the worst of all worlds, when Atlanta was held together by nothing but graft & desperation.

Goodbye, Atlanta.  I never knew you, but I knew you in my blood.  From one abuse survivor to another?  Try voting in some actual humans for a change.