Never miss a post! 
A New Me?
So we're now through eight days of 2008 and I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself. My resolutions have always been halfhearted and unfocused, but so far I'm doing very well at my two: 1) writing regularly and 2) exercising/losing weight. The latter wasn't even one I had thought all that much about, at least not much more than, "yeah, I need to work out more." But in talking to my mom on New Year's Day, she was starting a diet and proposed a weight loss contest, and I agreed. I'm much bigger than her and suspect it will be pretty easy to beat her, but that's not really the point. The point is just to lose my gut, get healthier, and hopefully look a bit more appealing. I think I've worked out four or five times so far. I could really feel it tonight--I can go longer on the elliptical, but I was tired much faster with weights. It's cool, though.
As for the writing, when I get off I'll finish the four panels I have left for today's page of comics script, and that will make nine, so with my goal of a page a day I'm actually slightly ahead of the game. I've found I really like writing longhand, in public places. That old-timey feel of scribbling in a notebook just seems to work for me, at least in the first draft phase.
Tonight I went to eat after the gym and a dad and his 11? year old son came in at 9:05. Why so late? It seems almost certain Dad is divorced. The kid was interesting, too--while Dad was ordering, he was in the booth sliding a salt shaker back and forth like it was a hockey on ice, and it fell to the floor three times in a couple minutes. They must be plastic. It was annoying, but maybe the kid has some problems. Besides, those interesting, human little distractions are valuable.
I also bought some art supplies. Many years ago, while married, I bought a little start-up set of acrylic paints, and then never used them even once. No wonder I'm divorced. So, with the kids in tow, I got a new set, a set of charcoal pencils and sticks for sketching, and pads for the sketching and the painting. I felt it presumptuous to buy art boards or canvas for the painting right away. Yesterday I looked at my new Sierra Club desk calendar and sketched (yes, I took my supplies to work--since I'm the second most productive underwriter at my company I've gotten a little ballsier, plus after such long, unhealthy hours leading up to 1/1 I felt like I needed to take more of my life back) a polar bear cub, and the beginnings of a very bent, gnarly oak tree, based on the calendar pictures. I'm not half bad, and the cool thing about charcoals on a heavy, grainy paper is all that extra texture automatically makes you a better artist. I'm not saying a good artist, but the line just has more gravity and character to it.
What else? I read Frederik Peeters' Blue Pills, which is a very good graphic memoir of his loving, ongoing relationship with a woman with HIV and an HIV-infected son. It's not depressing, nor is it too gooey. The art is obviously an influence on Craig Thompson, who provides a blurb, and nothing against Thompson, but one hopes that his future work approaches the maturity of Peeters'. I also read the new Acme Novelty Library, which is the first big chunk of Ware's ambitious Building story. Not sure if he will ever return to the young woman with the prosthetic leg who stars in this chapter; he seems to have pretty well told her story already, enough that this is definitely a graphic novel rather than a section of one, like the Rusty Brown installments. It's really great, too--just when you think, yes, another nice page of quiet desperation, you get a devastating scene like the one about the cat with the bloody paw and the woman's boyfriend joking about it. You'll know it if you read it. Ware also seems more controlled here, possibly due in part to much of this originally being published in The New Yorker, I imagine. There are fewer formal effects, with the ambition going into both the overall scope of story but also in the hard-to-pull-off idea of the sentient building. More importantly, though, the woman here is about the best-written female character I've ever read in graphic fiction/comics/etc.
As for the writing, when I get off I'll finish the four panels I have left for today's page of comics script, and that will make nine, so with my goal of a page a day I'm actually slightly ahead of the game. I've found I really like writing longhand, in public places. That old-timey feel of scribbling in a notebook just seems to work for me, at least in the first draft phase.
Tonight I went to eat after the gym and a dad and his 11? year old son came in at 9:05. Why so late? It seems almost certain Dad is divorced. The kid was interesting, too--while Dad was ordering, he was in the booth sliding a salt shaker back and forth like it was a hockey on ice, and it fell to the floor three times in a couple minutes. They must be plastic. It was annoying, but maybe the kid has some problems. Besides, those interesting, human little distractions are valuable.
I also bought some art supplies. Many years ago, while married, I bought a little start-up set of acrylic paints, and then never used them even once. No wonder I'm divorced. So, with the kids in tow, I got a new set, a set of charcoal pencils and sticks for sketching, and pads for the sketching and the painting. I felt it presumptuous to buy art boards or canvas for the painting right away. Yesterday I looked at my new Sierra Club desk calendar and sketched (yes, I took my supplies to work--since I'm the second most productive underwriter at my company I've gotten a little ballsier, plus after such long, unhealthy hours leading up to 1/1 I felt like I needed to take more of my life back) a polar bear cub, and the beginnings of a very bent, gnarly oak tree, based on the calendar pictures. I'm not half bad, and the cool thing about charcoals on a heavy, grainy paper is all that extra texture automatically makes you a better artist. I'm not saying a good artist, but the line just has more gravity and character to it.
What else? I read Frederik Peeters' Blue Pills, which is a very good graphic memoir of his loving, ongoing relationship with a woman with HIV and an HIV-infected son. It's not depressing, nor is it too gooey. The art is obviously an influence on Craig Thompson, who provides a blurb, and nothing against Thompson, but one hopes that his future work approaches the maturity of Peeters'. I also read the new Acme Novelty Library, which is the first big chunk of Ware's ambitious Building story. Not sure if he will ever return to the young woman with the prosthetic leg who stars in this chapter; he seems to have pretty well told her story already, enough that this is definitely a graphic novel rather than a section of one, like the Rusty Brown installments. It's really great, too--just when you think, yes, another nice page of quiet desperation, you get a devastating scene like the one about the cat with the bloody paw and the woman's boyfriend joking about it. You'll know it if you read it. Ware also seems more controlled here, possibly due in part to much of this originally being published in The New Yorker, I imagine. There are fewer formal effects, with the ambition going into both the overall scope of story but also in the hard-to-pull-off idea of the sentient building. More importantly, though, the woman here is about the best-written female character I've ever read in graphic fiction/comics/etc.
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 10:16 PM [Link to this post]
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home