“Project Handjob” was unleashed today, the actual name of which I can now reveal to be: IT TAKES A VILLAGE. An installation of sorts meant to activate the exterior of the Moody Center while its insides remain shuttered for the summer (what with a very contagious virus still roaming among us that everyone seems to have forgotten about!).

Just a teaser image for now, until official photography is taken next week.

Houston's restaurants and bars may have opened their doors to crowds of patrons, unmasked and ungloved, but the people operating in non-profit art organizations aren't rushing to chase the money with complete disregard for human life. So no big art opening for this thing. The wife, myself, and a dear of mine did however enjoy an intimate (yet socially distant) get together with the Moody's curator Frauke Josenhans, and her immediate family in a laid back picnic setting on the front lawn right outside the piece, and that was very lovely.

Probably the only bit of socializing with humans other than the wife since... since April.

Goddamn.

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Redrawing a few panels that need redrawing. I hate backtracking, but certain things are just gonna haunt you too much. I think I'm pretty good at letting go and moving on most of the time. You have to pick and choose your “battles”, and it's like that everyday, regardless of what the task at hand is.

Generally speaking, when it comes to comix, I'm a big believer in the overall page being far more important than each individual panel, because it is the overall page that is “the piece” really. It's okay for there to be a panel on that page that won't blow the viewers' eyeballs out of their skulls, just so long as it doesn't ruin the overall page for you. And it can take looking at a thing more than once to know if it's worth redoing.

Too much time lost today figuring out some technical video/sound stuff. Have it down now, so might get to shooting some video content already. Maybe next week.

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Guess I'm on an 80's kick these days.

The above is for one of the [many!] Martian advertisements that appear in THE SOLAR GRID #5, which I'm having a ton of fun messing around with.

Packed up this week's worth of orders and got a decent amount of drawing done.

Bedside reading these days is GIVE ME LIBERTY by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, which I haven't read in... maybe 12 years now?

I was in Rotterdam at the time, for my first ever artist's residency, and one of the guys staying there was a member of the art collective that founded (squatted) the place back in like the 60's/70's. He'd seen some of my drawings, and we'd gotten to talk about comicbooks. He later came up to me with a battered copy of his GIVE ME LIBERTY, telling me it was his favorite comic of all time. I was surprised I'd never even heard of it (given the heavy weight names responsible for its creation). He lent it to me for a few days, and I distinctly remember coming out of the other end of that reading experience a changed man.

Come to think of it... I don't think I've ever seen this book brought up in comix-conversations at all. Oddly underrated in a way.

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The last in a series of commissions for a while, this one is Molly Millions from William Gibson's NEUROMANCER.

80's style lettering for the SFX totally intentional. As “futuristic” as Neuromancer may be, it is still the future of the 80's it imagines, which makes 80's era “avant garde” totally unavoidable for me. Which also explain's Molly's hair style.

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This video is a tribute to Shady Habash who died in prison 16 days ago. Words are comprised of Shady's last letter from jail, spoken by Ramy Essam (subtitles available) who also composed music for it, mixed and mastered by Johan Carlberg, and video art by myself.

Rest in power, Shady.

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I've had the idea for this bizarre color palette for my Mars sequences for several years now. Having finally got here, having finally applied my ideas, I'm now starting to have second thoughts.

Definitely hiring a colorist if I ever need colors on another book. And letterer too.

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After giving up on trying to figure out how to get my Surface Pen to work again, figured I'd conceive of a troubleshoot-proof method to get some digital coloring done.

Blocking out color fields on separate sheets of paper with the aid of a lightpad. All in black markers, a kind of manual color separation essentially. I scan those in and apply the appropriate color to them in Photoshop. This works for me because I tend to go for a “graphic designy” approach to colors with very limited palettes.

It's a couple steps slower than working directly on screen, but better than having to troubleshoot a bunch of tech nonsense for hours on end and still not get anywhere.

In other news, found me some of that Moebius/Superstudio-lookin' gridded wallpaper, and maaaaaaay be tempted to scoop it up when/if I cease to be terribly poor.

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Came across this photo of Moebius (no photo credit, sorry) at work in his studio in the 80's and I'm getting hard Superstudio vibes from those gridded walls of his.

Superstudio was an Italian architecture collective founded in the 60's, with the vast majority of their projects—largely conceptual in nature—abiding by a strict black & white grid. Been a fan of Superstudio since I picked up the above pictured book some 20 years ago.

Those gridded walls though. Moebius' knack for precision makes perfect sense now.

Today is productive, even with the persistent migraine which may have been triggered by last night's spell of insomnia. Seems to be a recurring thing now, hitting once or twice every few weeks.

I'd finished yesterday's workload early, but found myself spending the night drawing up plans for my eventual boutique publishing operation, which I have a pretty solid grasp of now. THE SOLAR GRID figures into it, as does much of the writing, design, and e-commerce efforts I've been involved in over the past couple of years, all of which—in a rather unplanned way—has served as training for this thing.

The time is a'comin'.

#Journal #Work

It's been a minute since I journaled, huh?

Did what might've been two weeks worth of work in just three days and there was little time for anything else. Draining too, emotionally. It was a tribute video for Shady Habash who died in an Egyptian prison last week. Accompanying the video is a track by Ramy Essam, voicing Shady's last letter from prison, an unmistakable call for help. You can't do this sort of thing justice unless you pour yourself into it. A little late to do anything for Shady now, but his letter can a big flashing signal for everyone else wrongfully imprisoned.

Will post the video when it goes up.

Finally got a good night's sleep last night and feeling fully revived this morning. Packed this week's modest to-go mail and set it out for our lovely postal worker.

Now to work on a commission for my friend Corey J. White. This one is also part-character-design, for the protagonist of his cyberpunk heist novel REPO VIRTUAL. Looking forward to getting cracking on this one.

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One of my favorite panel configurations is the partially open panel, which I think I picked up from Walt Simonson? Who Warren Ellis turned me onto a few years back. Simonson has grown to become possibly my favorite comix “drawer” since. I'm not sure I know of anyone in comix who has Simonson's command of illustration chops, storytelling techniques, and design acumen.

Almost done inking this Japan segment, which also happens to be the closing scene in THE SOLAR GRID's ch. 5!

I may need to hand-letter this last bit. Need some manga-inspired dialogue balloons which I won't be able to draw directly into my computer because my Surface pen has just gone bust (of course things are beginning to fail me just as I need them). Which will also slow down my coloring for the Mars scenes too. Still hoping to have it finished by May 15 though 🤞.

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