Category: Journaling

My gray adventure continues. Do you know Ben Katchor‘s work?

I love the way the newly scrubbed and illuminated Washington Square Arch glows in the early evening light as the City falls dark.

Moby invited us over to his apartment and he and few members of his band serenaded us. It was so cool to be a few feet from such talent as it performed.
I love Banksy‘s humor and creativity. Check him out if you haven’t; I also recommend his new book. As he says,” Some people like me, some people hate me, some people don’t really care.“

One of the major issues with the books I like to make is that publishers hate to pay for 4-color printing. It creates a lot more complexity in the production process and drives up the cost of making the book. They then have to decide whether to absorb the cost and hope they sell enough copies to make a profit. Alternatively, they can make the cover price high enough to cover the cost but drive off a lot of readers who can’t afford $39.95 for a book. They can also force the author to cover a bigger than normal share of the cost by making his advance miniscule. It’s all economic, and as usual, it’s a drag for an artist.

One of the advantages of being a cretaive person, however, is that every obstacle is an opportunity. To that end, I have been thinking of other ways to make journals that can be reproduced without losing expression. The past few years of sharing my work on the web has allowed me to become quite adept at watercoloring and to combine pen-and-ink crosshatching with brushwork. In my portrait book, I have been using sumi ink quite regularly and for the next month or so, I ‘ll be posting images from my regular moleskine journal that I’m painting in shades of grey. I want to try to capture the energy and excitement of my watercolor box in pure tone and will be working with contrast and various sorts of brushes to capture what I am doing, seeing and feeling.

I am working in a variety of ways. I draw where and whenever the moment seizes me. Then if I have a sumi loaded waterbrush with me, I dip it into a little water cup to create various densities of tone. I mix on the palm of my hand or right on the page. I may also finish the page back at home, where I can use my big fat sable brush and official Japanese stone sumi mixing bowl.

Yesterday was several memorable things: freezing cold, Valentine’s Day and my sister, Miranda’s 40th birthday. Today promises to be significant too as Miranda is in the hospital in Brooklyn, well-dilated and about to pop out her first child. We don’t know its gender but are very excitedly hoping we’ll meet him/her/it later today. It’ll be nice to have a new family member.

Patti is housebound these days. Even her scooter can’t make it over the drifts of snow that are piled up at every corner. Our dogs have a love/hate relationship with the snow. They love to run around in the park, cavorting and sniffing. But the salt that the local janitors spread with such abandon stings their paws and hobbles them. I carry their little sweater-clad, sausage bodies to the park and dump them onto the lawn so they can frisk about. They come home full of energy, shedding their sweaters with a shake, and madly dashing around the house.

It was very nice to come back to the Arctic tundra formally known as New York City. My family survived my absence though my dogs did need a good bath yesterday.

As you may know, I am a big Ronald Searle fan and when I discovered he was still alive (and 87 years old), I got his address from my uncle and sent him a copy of Everyday Matters (if you check the last page of your copy, you’ll see I thank him in the acknowledgments) . I’ve had to wait for a while to hear his reaction but it was worth it when I got back from Vancouver and Patti handed me an envelope from France.

Inside was this postcard from Mr. Searle. His comments were very nice, reffering to Everyday Matters as a “a fascinating microcosm. The sort of intimate study that is invaluable to future sociologists!”
Frankly, he could have told me he’d loathed and I would have still been ecstatic to actually have my idol comment on my work. Now that I have received lovely notes from the trifecta of Searle, Crumb and Chris Ware, I can die a happy man.

If the day is bland, give it insane color.

We had a very succesful reading the other night. A few dozen folks showed up and I read from EDM and Creative License. It’s sort of odd that I have only done this one reading from my books; they adapt themselves to being read aloud much better than I’d imagined. Maybe I’ll get invited to do some more.

RIght now I am packing up to go to Vancouver, Canada for the week. I am shooting a couple of Crayola commercials there and am quite excited to visit a city I’ve heard is very nice.

Jack’s band, the Peeps, are playing tonight. They are doing an Allman Brothers song and AC/DC’s TNT. It’s the hardest rock they’ve done so far, reflecting their changing lineup. They have a new guitarist (who wants to rtname the band ‘King Kong’) and they have replaced their vocalist. Jack is very into a book called Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, presumably preparing for The Peeps’ inevitable World Tour.

I love these pages and looking at them again after a couple of months makes me wish for the soft light of autumn and consider getting back into full glorious color painting again.

I survived my insomnia and Joe his dose of poison.

This page is old, made back in late Fall, when I could not see my breath but could feel my fingertips. This scan does not capture how lovely my colors can be.