It is hard to believe that this chapter may very well be the last time I draw her for a very long time if not forever.
My plan for the day turned out to be a little too ambitious after all, but TSG pages are coming along smoothly.
Today's background listening included:
Bret Easton Ellis interviews Paul Schrader — Really great. I particularly love the few Pauline Kael anecdotes Schrader shares. Kael is grossly overrated in my opinion, and I say this having enjoyed a number of her books. She did good to bring actual critical criticism to the field, but neither her taste nor how she expressed it really jive with me.
TRACKMARKS by Hamed Sinno — Sinno, who is one of the most talented and creative people I know, was on a train in London when it got held up because a man on the tracks in what was apparently a suicide attempt. Folks on the train started to get irritated, and that irritation soon ballooned into rage, directed squarely at the distressed man who messed up their schedules. Hamed was wise enough to record this vocalized rage and weave it into a powerful song together with lyrics drawn entirely from advertising slogans seen on the London Underground. 👌
#journal #work #comix #tsg #resistdystopia #radar
The good air blowing through Houston is apparently the result of a tropical storm brewing right off the coast, for which we are being informed to brace ourselves. Third one this year. The city of Houston really ought to consider replacing all its roads and freeways with canals and moats, Netherlands style. The soil doesn't take too well to asphalt anyway, every new paving cracking and morphing within a couple years' time. Americans will criticize communism for its top-down authoritarian inflexibility, but then will insist on constructing all their cities with motorway-first logic irrespective of geography or topography. One-size-fits-all logic but through “free enterprise”. 🎉
Finished Calvino's WINTER'S NIGHT last night and moving onto Jorge Luis Borges' FICTIONS this morning before charging into the jampacked workday ahead.
Two pages worth of TSG pencils on the docket, along with some sketches for PROJECT BLOSSOM, and some thinking about PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE. I'll have to remember to break for exercise at some point, and perhaps take my bike out for a grocery run. A little too ambitious maybe, but things are oddly less daunting when you get that good pre-storm breeze.
#journal
A cool sea-like breeze blew through the city all day today, finally [hopefully] announcing a genuine end to that Texan summer. Day started on a good enough note, was finally able to take my bike out after many months of its sitting idly in my living room. Kiddo started soccer practice again, which is always fun to watch. Spent the remainder of the day tidying up and reading. Then I started meal prepping for the week, and things took a bad turn.
Decided to try my hand at a creamy eggplant curry, with ground beef and potatoes. Things were going well until I realized the coconut cream I added was REALLY EXTRA SWEET! Like CONDENSED MILK SWEET!
I should've just tossed the thing out then and there, but I was foolish enough to carry on anyway, thinking I could fix it. Couple hours of simmering later, the dish was just completely inedible. Put in through a strainer, one scoop at a time, till all the sauce was separated, and still no use.
Now I have a big terrible mess in the kitchen to contend with after four hours of cooking and no food whatsoever to show for it. Fml, I'll deal with it tomorrow.
#journal
Artwork to go with my review of Bob Dylan's CHRONICLES, VOL. 1. A poster edition of the artwork is available from Garage.Ganzeer. I'm afraid I'll be keeping the original.
Issue #212 of my newsletter, RESTRICTED FREQUENCY, went out last night. The Art of Subversion is the title. Here's the web version.
#journal #work
Finished drafting and scheduling newsletter just in time for my hot date (it's nice to attempt to go about Friday nights like other humans every once in a while). This is edition 212 and it is about the art of subversion.
Sign up for free here to receive it.
#journal
“There's a boundary line: on one side are those who make books, on the other are those who read them, so I take care always to remain on my side of the line. Otherwise, the unsullied pleasure of reading ends, or at least is transformed into something else, which is not what I want. This boundary line is tentative, it tends to get erased: the world of those who deal with books professionally is more and more crowded and tends to become one with the world of readers. Of course, readers are also growing more numerous, but it would seem that those who use books to produce other books are increasing more than those who just like to read books and nothing else.”
Not gonna lie, sometimes my mind drifts off to a world where overnight I obliterate all trace of my online presence and pick up and move someplace I can slip into anonymity. Mexico perhaps, someplace I know no one and no one knows me, and where I don't even know the language. Set aside any semblance of professional pursuit from my creative endeavors and instead get a job waiting tables or tending to a bar or working at a bookshop, a day-to-day affair that requires no longview, all while speed-learning Spanish and spending my free time doing nothing but reading and sketching till the end of my days.
The excerpt at the very top is from Italo Calvino's IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELLER, which may just be the most post-modern book I've ever laid hands on. It's about an apparently misprinted book, whereby every other chapter seems to belong to a completely different book. In that regard, it can be quite challenging to get into, but in so doing it held up a mirror to me and reminded me of a thing I did in THE SOLAR GRID, in which I relegated the half of each chapter to what may seem like a completely new story, until much later you discover that it is all in fact one story. Which made me realize how challenging I must've made it for readers too.
Sticking with Calvino pays off though, because by around the 75-page mark, you're hooked, and the brilliance of Calvino's ploy begins to dawn on you like eureka.
#reads #journal
We're not always looking for ideas, sometimes ideas are looking for us. Sometimes they violently break through the windows of your mind when you least expect it and sweep through you with unstoppable gusto. Attempting to resist can be futile. No use trying to shutter them windows when the winds of inspiration are too strong.
The thought of revamping my logo wasn't something that ever crossed my mind. I've had the same one for over a dozen years and it seemed to serve me well, but last night for reasons completely unbeknownst to me a new mark made itself known in my mind's eye and I immediately scrawled it into my current vomitbook.
Aside from the obvious eye, the logo is also comprised of 3 letterforms (as was the previous one), G, J and the Arabic letter ج. The G being the first letter in Ganzeer of course, as the ج is in جنزير (Ganzeer in Arabic). The thing about the letter ج though is that it is only pronounced a hard G in Egypt and pronounced J in literally every other Arabic dialect. Which means جنزير will often be pronounced Janzeer when I'm in touch with other Arabic speakers, so the logo is able to represent all possible phonetics in one single symbol. It's as complex as it is simple.
The eye may be a cliche, but fact of the matter is everything I do—be it art, design, or writing—stems from one unshakable trait: observation. Keen, unwavering observation. Without which I doubt I'd ever have anything worthwhile to say. In any medium, really.
I've always been a fan of the kind of symbols you can't help but want to scrawl on your desk when you're a kid. The pentagram is an obvious one, the swastika before we know what it means or where it came from, the eye of Horus, Fido Dido's head, and so on. I think this new logo has something of that quality, more so than the previous one for sure.
I may tinker with proportions and style sometime down the line, but for now I'll try it on raw, see how well it fits.
#journal #work
Made it past the 20-page mark on latest TSG thumbs and still plenty of story to tell. It is evident that capping this chapter at 20 is impossible if I want to do it any justice, and do it justice I must. Will try to see if I can close it at 30.
Mind turned to mush, I find this stage of comix-making to be the most mentally-draining. It isn't the most labor-intensive, but it requires the most figuring out.
Sent off a lot of hi-res scans to the folks overseeing the Italy exhibition which includes much never-before seen process stuff. Pretty sure it wasn't what they expected, pretty sure they think I'm demented.
#journal #work #comix #tsg
A fellow artist and dear friend from Lebanon who gifted me this beautiful little art-print a couple years back had part of their home destroyed in one of the recent Israeli airstrikes. Reconstruction will be costly. If anyone reading this might like to pitch in, shoot me a message at shout@ganzeer.com and I'll share my friend's paypal info privately. For understandable reasons, they'd rather not make it public.
#journal
