Pushed myself too hard over the past couple days, so today I have one of those debilitating migraines to contend with. Finished and delivered PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE though. I keep getting tagged in videos from Jesi, so today's playlist is Italian Cafe Jazz to assist with all them fomo feels.
Finished Cesar Aira's THE SEAMSTRESS AND THE WIND which completely lost me midway through. Luckily, it was a short and quick read. Considering a return to Camus with THE PLAGUE which already awaits in my tbr pile.
Inbox 100, RSS 266. Terrible.
Need to get through those and get some TSG pages in, granted if I can overcome this migraine.
#journal #work
Still racing against the clock to finish PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE, so only logging on very briefly today. A few key updates:
Two days until Oltremari opens in the Italian city of Jesi. Not sure I fully realized that the Accademia di Comics, Creativita ed Arti Visive was involved.
The Hudood exhibition at the SOAS Gallery in London (where I have some work showing) is open for only 4 more days before all the work returns to the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.
Dana Omar's STUCK is now 82% funded! Only 4 days left before her campaign ends.
This coming Saturday: I shall be hawking a few of my wares in person at this Palestine-solidarity event in Houston.
#journal #work
Eggs, pancakes, and granola for breakfast. Big day ahead, must complete PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE today, something that might ideally require a week needs getting done in less than 24 hours. Phone on airplane mode, killing the internet connection, relying on record player for music. Drowning out the world, nothing exists aside from the project at hand.
#journal #work
Announcement for Italy exhibition has been posted on social media, where lots of never-before-seen comix process stuff will be on show. Opens first in the city of Jesi, but then will travel on to Pordenone in November where I'll also be in attendance if everything goes to plan.
PROJECT POSSE added to immediate docket. In addition to PROJECT BLOSSOM and PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE, that makes three projects along with THE SOLAR GRID I need to work on this month.
A friend of mine was luring me with an event in Mexico City in October, but I really want to wrap TSG up first, given how much I know travel can be disruptive to my process.
And it looks like I may have to skip Zine Fest Houston this year because of daddy duty, and I really don't have a babysitter I can trust with my child yet for such an extensive number of hours.
#journal #work
Coffee after 4:00pm for me is usually a bad idea, guaranteed to keep me up until well after midnight. So I was surprised to find myself crashing immediately after a 7:00pm Americano, only to reemerge among the living at 1:00am. Circadian rhythm officially fucked.
Phase 1 of PROJECT BLOSSOM complete. Now I can put it aside before entering phase 2 later next week. PROJECT TWENTY-FIVE I must dedicate Monday to, do the whole thing start-to-finish in a single day. Hoping to have 3 full days assigned entirely to TSG next week, need to pencil in a minimum of 6 pages, but more if I can manage. This weekend is for my boy.
The second half of the Penguin edition of Borges' FICTIONS seems to be dedicated to more straightforward short fiction, but much of it still flies over my head regardless. Close to 70% into this strainful little book that I had no idea would be so difficult. Late night gyoza to help me power through.
On a completely different note, love this collection of Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund.
#journal #work #reads #radar
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
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
I'm doing something a little different with the final chapter of THE SOLAR GRID in that I'm adopting something of an assembly line approach to working it, despite my being the only person actually working on it (This is potentially somewhat ironic given the Luddite segments featured in the previous two).
I've basically divided the chapter into three chunks of 12 pages, tackling one chunk at a time. I've done all the panel layouts for the first chunk, now onto filling them with actual characters and scenes, first in pencils, then in inks.
What this means is that each chunk, or pile rather, gets three passes before moving on to the next: first pass for laying out panels (based entirely on the thumbnails), second pass for doing the actual drawings in pencil, third pass for inking everything up. Dividing the work up this way makes it seem more manageable somehow, less daunting.
I quite like looking at the pages at this stage, with just the empty panels laid out. Pages stripped to the musicality of their compositions.
#work #comix #tsg #ResistDystopia
Final TSG thumbs clock in at 36 pages and there ain't no other way about it. There are four pages worth that maybe aren't wholly relevant to the plot, but they provide good narrative flow, add much richness to the story, and induce it with “real-world info”, or non-fiction if you like, which I think is part and parcel of the function of any good work of fiction. Cutting those 4 pages would reduce my workload by maybe 12 days, a gain that is not at all worth all the richness that would be lost.
36 pages means I've got a rough estimate of about 108 days of work ahead of me before bringing THE SOLAR GRID to a close. Some pages I might be able to dash off quicker than I anticipate, others employ techniques I have yet to fully utilize for comix and as such are a bit more difficult to accurately assign production time, but 3 days per page seems to me like a reasonable enough average.
Will take the long weekend to get my ducks in order; meal prep, organize tools, and ready the workspace. It's the meal prepping though that'll take up the bulk of the next few days. I find that I work best when I don't have to think about food or anything else aside from the work at hand. Especially essential when you're in it for the long haul.
#tsg #work #comix
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