Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged alyssa berg, anya davidson, art trip, Benjamin Marra, dov torbin, georgia o'keeffe, maggie umber, marinaomi, noah van sciver, Rokudenashiko, sally ingraham, the shirley jackson project, zeitraumexit

Sally Ingraham

Posted on May 19, 2016May 20, 2016

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Adam Griffiths – Rowhouse Residency Report

Comics WorkbookFebruary 23, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesAdam Griffiths is a comics artist from Takoma Park, MD. He joined us in Pittsburgh for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency January 29th-February 4th 2017. Here are his thoughts about visiting the city and his Rowhouse Residency experience. ————————————————————————————————————— The focus for my residency was completion – this is to say, I had a project I was interested in finishing during my week in Pittsburgh, and Frank seemed to help me make this theme more concrete. My projects for the week were: Allow the Rowhouse Residency hosts to see and provide feedback on the graphic novel that I have been writing for three years. Finish drawing a mini-comic that I’d begun last summer. Work on character, setting, and script concepts for a new secret project. Follow my usual comics schedule, which includes time set aside for exercise, freestyle drawing, and a weekly illustration in an unfamiliar environment. Did I accomplish all of these tasks? Let’s start. SATURDAY I arrived in Pittsburgh around 1 AM on Saturday night. I came early because I wanted to poke around Pittsburgh. My Rowhouse Residency wasn’t supposed to begin until Monday, so I had found an AirBnB that was a 10-minute walk from downtown Pittsburgh, and stayed there for two nights. Since I’d never been to Pittsburgh before, I wanted to see as much as I could but also stay focused on art. The ToonSeum was at the top of my list, followed by the Andy Warhol Museum, and then my usual wandering, which is when I take photographs and sketch. It’s a bit like a fugue state when I do this; I don’t always schedule that, but I consider it to be work, and when it begins I sort of just know, and become less reserved about taking snapshots of whatever interests me, or stopping to sit somewhere and draw. For breakfast I walked east on Forbes Ave, up Wylie Ave to Grandma B’s, a sort of diner greasy spoon. A lot of interesting buildings along this route; I stopped to watch a group of very young-looking investors talking to a man in front of the deserted New Granada Theater, which was under some type of development. I also stopped in front of the shuttered Crawford Grill, once a center of black social life in the Hill District. I didn’t really know what to order at Grandma B’s, but the staff was really nice and wanted to know where I was from. I got some great snaps on the way up the hill. After breakfast I walked back down the hill to The ToonSeum, only a 45 minute walk. The main exhibit area was partially set up for a Will Eisner show – still I saw some really lovely works, including another Eisner comic titled Harry Karry, which was about spies. I introduced myself to John F. Kelly, Director of The ToonSeum, who was in a meeting with his landlord. While I waited for his meeting to end, I happened upon a bunch of old cartooning instruction books, and I went through all of them. There was actually quite a bit of good (albeit dated) advice on how to structure your career as a cartoonist; I worked in the fine art gallery world for about ten years as an administrator. Every five or so years a helpful book is published about creating your own career as a fine artist. With the cartoonist version of such a book, there seemed to be much more structure and visualization of the career path, which, being that cartoonists’ careers were largely appended to the newspaper and media world at first, made plenty of sense. I was able to speak with John F. Kelly briefly. I asked if there was an archive in the basement and if I could come back and have a look at it. He said there was sort of an archive, but sure. I scheduled a Tuesday visit, but ended up not returning later because I was so busy drawing. After that, I walked over to the Andy Warhol Museum. I wasn’t ready for SO MANY floors of Andy Warhol. I enjoyed the screen prints, but I wasn’t so impressed with his early drawings. I have a very “Italo Calvino writerly approach” to visual artists’ early work – which is to say, Invisible Cities (written by Calvino) was an incredible feat of early work – short stories that are concise, that point towards future works of the creative person in question (I also pretty much lump artists, writers, musicians and performers all together). One of the wall plaques stated that Warhol had a peculiar skill for “increasing his income,” which I found strange. I went into the video lounge and watched ALL of the television commercials that Warhol ever produced. I wanted to do this because I have seen quite a few of Warhol’s films, own a few of them, and I admire the aggressive boringness of Warhol’s Dracula. The commercials, however, were artless. Should I have been surprised? Evening was coming, and I’d read that the Strip District was an interesting place to go on a Saturday night. I started walking in that direction and came upon EIDE’S, a 3-floor comics emporium. The long-box comics selection there was one of the best I’d ever seen; by the time I went to another floor, I was already plotting out how to convince the owners to let me set up a home somewhere in the store. Not gonna try that, but when I checked out in the basement, the clerk gave me a ‘bonified nerd’ discount! Then, the clerk on the main floor was also kind enough to direct me to a decent place to have dinner. I walked back to my AirBnB that night, chock-full of comics-luv. SUNDAY Sunday morning I decided to meet up with Sally Ingraham from Comics Workbook. I walked up Forbes Avenue to Wylie Avenue again in order to get to the Polish Hill neighborhood. This ended up being a much longer walk than I’d anticipated; I had a suitcase full of clothes, art supplies, and books. I had breakfast and made a few sketches at Lili’s Cafe, a coffee shop located below Copacetic Comics in Polish Hill. I haven’t been around punky vegan kids for a while, but one young lady was drawing and I gave her my card. Once I finished eating, I went upstairs. Copacetic Comics was a gem of an establishment. I looked around the store, got more comics and discussed the new George Herriman biography by Michael Tisserand with the owner, Bill Boichel. After this, Sally Ingraham took me on a driving tour of Pittsburgh. We saw the sprawling Allegheny Cemetery and took in some views. It was a relief to finally get to the Rowhouse and put down my suitcase. I was ready to begin working. I started by setting out all of the books I’d brought with me, plus the new ones recently acquired. Then I wrote out my schedule for the week by hand and posted it next to my drawing seat in the kitchen. I spent the rest of the night finishing thumbnails for the mini-comic. MONDAY & TUESDAY The first two days I worked in an isolated fever, completing my weekly illustration, a jumbo post-it note sketch, lots of small drawings, and several pages of the mini-comic. While I hadn’t explicitly stated that I wished to be left alone, I knew I wouldn’t hone in on the work with tons of distractions. I TURNED OFF MY PHONE during the daytime. I had gone to the grocery store on Sunday evening, which was conveniently right across the street so no excuses to go anywhere. WEDNESDAY Toiled in isolation this day as well. At this point, I felt very concentrated on completing the work, and was very satisfied with the quality of the drawings. Part of focusing on completion has nothing to do with how fast you’re working – it’s more like being a kind of live television actor with floor marks that you need to hit during scenes. If you miss the mark, or a line, you play through anyway, and plot to sneak in the part you meant to express later. I would work on a page for as long as I could – if I hit a dead end, I’d go to the mini-library I’d set up on the floor in the front room and look through comics until I was ready to start working again. The privacy of the Rowhouse made that feasible – I just kind of tore all over the place unrelentingly, joyfully. Over dinner at Frank’s house, which was next door, I spoke with Frank about his current work, which was set up across from the dinner table. Frank read what I had completed of my mini-comic. I only had about three more pages to go at that point. Also, I left my graphic novel with Frank overnight. While looking it over, he insisted that I should go ahead and print what I had done already. This was a step I needed to make – get comfortable with – so we discussed how I’d go about getting my mini-comic printed first. I have completely drawn my graphic novel at least 5 times, and have worked the script over entirely, maybe about 9 times. Working in my edits and really being rather fussy. I am very pleased with the version I’m working on – momentum-wise I’m very good at getting myself to work, but I’m very critical of what I do! It was useful to change my frame of mind from the creative work to the production work – just the type of shock I needed. In fact, in one of my old art world jobs, I’d been responsible for printing a gargantuan full color 400-page artist catalog of fine art works for two years in a row. So, while I was familiar with most of the printing terminology, I’d never ever had to apply any of that thinking to my own work. Having to consider printing the comic renewed my enthusiasm for sharing the work. I’ve got 150 pages drawn and need to get it out there! THURSDAY Finished drawing the mini-comic on this day. 40 pages. I drew 35 of them during the residency. For the rest of the day, I worked on various sketches, including some development work for a new comics project. I invited Sally and Frank over to the Rowhouse for dinner Friday night. For dinner, I cooked herbed chicken, mashed potatoes and salad. We talked about the residency and my further involvement in Pittsburgh. FRIDAY My last day. Continued developing my new comics project. Took a late afternoon drive with Frank through Braddock, and the rest of the Steel Valley. Frank is a Pittsburgh native who has lived in other parts of the country, but is now settled here running Comics Workbook. He told me about his family’s history in Pittsburgh, and then we stopped at Jerry’s Records, where I got LPs by Gene Loves Jezebel and China Crisis. I’m hoping to return for PIX, Pittsburgh’s Indy comic con, in April. After returning home on Saturday, I’ve since put myself in conversation with four printers about the mini-comic. In keeping with the speed at which I’m now working, I’ve averaged coloring pages at about 2-5 a day. So I’m more than sure I’ll have my first mini-comic printed by then! ————————————————————————————————————— Check out more work by Adam Griffiths on his website, follow him on Instagram, and look for his new mini-comic this spring! For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

07/21/2016

HarrisonJuly 21, 2016NewsDaily News with Harrison returns with drones, thoughts about war, dark animation, and ends with a question. ————————————————————————————————— Ride or Die “Jasper. We’re picking up a lot of drone noise. I think there’s a watch coming.” Sam Alden‘s Test of Loyalty at Hazlitt. Here ————————————————————————————————— Shadow and Form Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s Dark Day is a conflation of everything I want from contemporary animation; moody, inventive, stark, humorous, surreal, frightening, and impeccably illustrated. Pts. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. ————————————————————————————————— Before ” “NOddIN” is a collective launched by filmmakers and artists in the wake of the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake and related Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. With the cooperation of a large number of Japanese animation artists, we spearheaded this self-production with the aim to animate the words of the book round-robin style, and our collaborative project was begun. After over a year of production including the conception period, we completed our short film.” – The NOddIN team, October 2, 2015 More about the film project here. More about the collective NOddIN here. ————————————————————————————————— Visions of Heroes Friend of Comics Workbook Chris Visions has a collection of fun drawing videos shot by Richmond photographer/videographer Tyler Q. Tucker on his site. Here. ————————————————————————————————— Why? Share this page: [...]

04/03/2018

Aaron CockleApril 2, 2018NewsAaron here today with Keren Katz; Mounira Al Solh; Yvan Alagbé; DRT; SOIMOCCA; Generative Adversarial Networks ————————————————————————————————— Keren Katz on The Academic Hour The 213th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, Kellen Auditorium (Room N101, off the lobby), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. 66 Fifth Avenue. Free and open to the public. Keren will talk about the process of using dance, performance, props and costumes to generate the events that have inspired this book as well as her upcoming projects. She will demonstrate the techniques and references used to compose her pages and will also display a collection of contemporary Israeli Graphic Novels for viewing. Keren Katz is a Tel Aviv based illustrator, comics artist and the non fictitious half of The Katz Sisters Duo. She graduated Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, and received an MFA from The School of Visual Arts in NYC. She has contributed stories to anthologies published by Retrofit/Big Planet Comics, Locust Moon Comics, Smoke Signal, The Brooklyn Rail, Ink Brick Rough House Comics and more, as well as self publishing mini-comics all year round. She practices performative, interactive and collaborative storytelling marathons in odd locations, and is part of The Humdrum Comics Collective and Pathos Mathos Company. Her Ignatz nominated debut graphic novel is titled The Academic Hour (Secret Acres, 2017). https://www.instagram.com/thekatzsisters/ ————————————————————————————————— Mounira Al Solh: I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous At Art Institute Chicago through April 29, 2018. While the drawings map geographies of departure, arrival, and nonarrival through storytelling, the embroideries serve as testaments to more collective histories. Weaving together the accounts that connect and divide families, friends, and other relations across the spaces and temporalities of migration, these portraits made on fabric culminate in the Sperveri, a so-called bed-tent that memorializes recent events in the Middle East and Europe within a larger history of Islamic culture. ————————————————————————————————— Shea Hennum at AV Club on Yvan Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes And Other Imaginary Creatures: The story is told elliptically, with Alagbé shifting perspective, setting, and time period without warning or explicit notation. Dialogue and exposition are collapsed into one rhetorical space, and all the text is set off from the images. The effect is a distancing, and the eye is able to focus on and fall in love with Alagbé’s images, rich black smears of ink converging and diverging from one another in passionate plays of sex, sorrow, and salvation. But while there are no white figures in the story, there are allusions to white characters, demonstrating the inescapable gravitational well that is whiteness. “Dyaa” serves as the most aesthetically pure distillation of Alagbé’s ethos, because he makes literal what was merely figurative in “Yellow Negroes”: the idea that blackness is constituted by whiteness and vice versa—infinitely complicating the questions he introduced in that first vignette, “Love.” ————————————————————————————————— Was it your intent for this book to have an air of mystery around it? RJ Casey Interviews D.R.T. The terms dodecahedrons and oblongs are used prominently in this comic and your backgrounds, even your endpapers, feature three-dimensional shapes. What is your interest in geometry? I find geometric shapes aesthetically pleasing. Also, the mathematical meaning that is inherent to geometry is equally as pleasing to me. Math is responsible for the way our universe works, from quantum mechanics to something as simple as 2+2=4. It is a universal truth that if you have two things, and add them to two other things, you will have four things. Why is that so? And why does math work so well in our universe? In the universe that Qoberious takes place in, math has the same roll and these geometric shapes symbolize that. Every time I write a scene with the Keepers, I spend days researching different mathematical concepts and when I’m all done, I think this isn’t funny, and why am I trying to prove? I end up cutting it out. ————————————————————————————————— Society of Illustrators Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art Arts Festival The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting workshops, lectures and film screenings, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education. The 2018 MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 7-8th, 2018 at Metropolitan West in New York City with programming mere steps away at Ink48 (653 11th Ave). Here are a couple panels of note: 3:30 pm / HELVETICA ROOM The International Scene: Max de Radiguès and Anna Haifisch Every comics culture — no matter how vast only presents and perceives a fragmentary view of global comics culture, a rich field of diverse human expression that is interconnected in some ways, and disconnected in others. International festivals and publishers can be sites for global exchange, and individual artists who travel and work outside of their home countries help develop ties between comics cultures. Max de Radiguès’s graphic novel about his time at the Center for Cartoon Studies was part of the Official Selection at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême in 2012, and his second English-language translation is forthcoming from Conundrum Press. He is additionally the co-publisher of the Belgian publishing house Employ du moi. Anna Haifisch is internationally known for her comics series, The Artist, and has published widely in many languages. Her book Von Spatz was recently published by Drawn and Quarterly. They will discuss their work and the international comics scene with Bill Kartalopoulos. 2:00 pm / HELVETICA ROOM Somatic Comics: Drawing the Body Comics frequently render the body — in ways both realistic and abstract — and are typically indeces of the body, made by the hands of artists who labor at desks and tablets. Kriota Willberg’s work covers all aspects of this spectrum: her new book Draw Stronger offers medically-grounded self-care instruction for cartoonists engaged in the repetitive labor of comics-making, and her larger body of work includes drawing and needlework based on anatomical and other medical imagery. She will be joined in a discussion about comics, health, and images of the body by Kate Lacour (Vivisectionary) and Lauren Weinstein (Normel Person, “Carriers”), whose work has engaged and expressed ideas about anatomy and pathology in diverse and fascinating ways. Moderated by Marsha Hurst (Columbia University, Narrative Medicine). ————————————————————————————————— “The way that it paints faces makes me uncomfortable. It always paints them as like, purple and yellow globs — that isn’t in the training set so I’m actually still not sure why it does that” AI researcher Robbie Barrat decided to see what would happen when he fed a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) thousands of nude portraits from a dataset and then trained it to create its own bizarre artworks. Generative adversarial networks are defined as a class of artificial intelligence algorithms used in unsupervised machine learning, which uses two different neural networks, one called the “generator” and one the “discriminator.” “The generator tries to come up with paintings that fool the discriminator, and the discriminator tries to learn how to tell the difference between real paintings from the dataset and fake paintings the generator feeds it,” Barrat told me. “They both get better and better at their jobs over time, so the longer the GAN is trained, the more realistic the outputs will be.” Some additional GAN info can be found here. To understand GANs, you should know how generative algorithms work, and for that, contrasting them with discriminative algorithms is instructive. Discriminative algorithms try to classify input data; that is, given the features of a data instance, they predict a label or category to which that data belongs. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-3-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/13/2018

Sally IngrahamApril 12, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with Nancy and her new artist, Olivia Jaimes, plus many more “Inking Women”! ————————————————————————————————— The Washington Post reported earlier this week that for the first time in 85 years, the comic strip Nancy will be drawn by a woman! Olivia Jaimes takes on the legacy, and the future of the strip. ” “Nancy has been my favorite sassy grouch for a long time,” Jaimes says in a syndicate statement. “I’m excited to be sassy and grouchy through her voice instead of just mine, and I can complain to the whole world about things that bother me instead of just my friends and family.” “ Read the rest of the Washington Post story HERE. In a new story from yesterday, the Washington Post digs in deeper, covering the origins and history of Nancy, why Roz Chast loves it, and what Olivia Jaimes brings to this new iteration of it – along with a look at her first strip, which was published Monday. The internet continues to be “mums the word” on who Olivia Jaimes really is (the name is a psyeudonym) and what the webcomics that so impressed her new syndicate were… Heidi MacDonald and Mike Peterson have both theorized that her webcomic may have been a bit too “naughty” to sit in company with Nancy. We shall see where all this leads. ————————————————————————————————— Here’s a very worthy addition to the comic historian’s bookshelf. As much as I’ve been attempting to thoroughly familiarize myself with female cartoonists working in America, the tradition of women working in comics in the UK is just as lengthy and rich – and here’s the proof. In fact, editors Nicola Streeten and Cath Tate state that women have been making comics in England since 1760…! Britain’s first true comic character, Ally Slopper, was created by a woman named Marie Duval. I have bumped into info about Marie Duval before, and wrote about her HERE, but this was a new one to me: “In 1920, Mary Tourtel created Rupert Bear for the Daily Express, and nearly a hundred years later her character is still going strong.“ Mary Tourtel wrote and drew Rupert stories for 15 years, before her eyesight began to fail and Punch cartoonist Alfred Bestall took it over. There’s a bit more about Mary Tourtel HERE. There is more info on The Inking Women HERE on the publisher’s website, as well as in this article. This is definitely a book I need to track down in person, however – I’ll get on that ASAP! Incidentally, The Inking Women editor Nicola Streeten is one of the founders of Laydeez Do Comics, a woman led comics forum in the UK (with branches increasingly worldwide) . Read about the project HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Chris Anthony Diaz shares a terrific photo journal of MoCCA 2018 for Comics Workbook – check it out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Weekend Snacks Leela Corman has a new comic up on Tablet Magazine about a visit to Buchenwald which left her feeling defiantly alive – read it HERE. Hillary Brown looks at Penelope Bagieu’s Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World – for Paste Magazine. Jessica Campbell takes on the tricky topic of “when your friend becomes a famous artist” – for Hyperallergic. Do you hate Cathy (the comic strip by Cathy Guisewite)? If so, you are far from alone, but Juliet Kahn wants you to question why you hate it/her and asks you to consider why Cathy is perhaps one of the more important comic strips of last few decades. HERE on The Comics Journal. While you’re on the Journal, check out Alejandra Gutiérrez‘s A Cartoonist’s Diary which has been going live this week and will be wrapping up today. Hazlitt has an interview with Anna Haifisch about her new comic Von Spatz and other weirdness – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-13-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/15/2016

Aaron CockleMarch 15, 2016NewsComics in China Cartoonist and critic R. Orion Martin did a brief overview of Chinese webcomics on the TCJ blog a while ago. From his post: ‘Although there are many working cartoonists, publishing is tightly controlled and few are able to reach a wide audience through bookstores. As a result, many cartoonists publish their comics on social media sites such as Douban. Douban began in 2005 as a review and recommendation site, and is something like a mix between Facebook, IMDb, and Tumblr.’ Artwork above by Scarlet-Faced Dog and Bu Er Miao, respectively. ————————————————————————————————— MoCCA 2016 Programming Schedule The Society of Illustrators MoCCA Arts Festival is April 2-3, 2016. As with previous years, there is a robust programming schedule. Of specific interest to readers of this newsblog would be the lead-off talk with Phoebe Gloeckner and Ariel Schrag, as well as the ‘Venn Diagram: Art/Comics’ discussion with Bill Kartalopoulos, Austin English, Aidan Koch, and Blaise Larmee. But really, there’s something for everyone this year. The above 2016 MoCCA Arts Festival image is by Noelle Stevenson. ————————————————————————————————— Laura Poitras + Vigée Le Brun 2 exhibits by 2 artists with very different relationships to institutional power are currently on view in NYC. Laura Poitras: ASTRO NOISE is at the Whitney Museum through May 1, and Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 15. ————————————————————————————————— Pedagogical Sketchbook Based on Paul Klee’s extensive lectures on visual form at the Bauhaus Staatliche Art School. Originally handwritten – as a pile of working notes he used in his lectures – it was eventually edited by Walter Gropius, designed by László Moholy-Nagy and published in 1925 as a Bauhaus student manual (Bauhausbucher No.2, as the second in the series of the fourteen Bauhaus books) under the original title: Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch. It was translated into English by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (in 1953), who also wrote an introduction for it. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Journalism and The COJO List This is a newly-launched and expansive clearing house for all things comics journalism and nonfiction comics-related, run by Josh Kramer and Em DeMarco. Above image by Susie Cagle. Share this page: [...]

05/20/2016

Posted on May 19, 2016May 20, 2016 by Sally Ingraham

Today, on scene reporting from Alyssa Berg, an amazing comics show in Germany, comics with Georgia O’Keeffe, tips from Benjamin Marra and Noah Van Sciver, and a few other things we’re excited about.

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Alyssa Berg provides this snapshot of a recent evening spent with Rokudenashiko, MariNaomi, and Anne Ishii (pictured above, left to right) –

“On Wednesday evening (May 18th, 2016), the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in NYC presented a conversation between MariNaomi (Turning Japanese, 2dcloud, 2016), Rokudenashiko (What Is Obscenity? The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy, Koyama Press, 2016) and Anne Ishii (moderator of the conversation, translator and co editor of Rokudenashiko’s new book).

MariNaomi did a reading from Turning Japanese accompanied by projected images from the book. The first part focused on her experience in an illegal hostess bar in San Jose. The second part presented was a quieter section of the story based on a visit to the temple of the Goddess of Mercy in Japan. (Check out that excerpt HERE.)

MariNaomi also discussed curating the Cartoonists of Color Database and the Queer Cartoonists Database and her fear that “diversity is a fad right now.”

Rokudenashiko presented a wide variety of manko (pussy) artworks that appear in her new book What Is Obscenity? The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy and discussed details of her arrest for breaking Japanese obscenity laws for posting online, open-source blueprints of her pussy. She also talked about being an easy target for police because she is an unrepresented, female, freelance artist but “people in a position of weakness need to show resistance.” Rokudenashiko presented this video piece and if you have 4 minutes 34 seconds to spare, I recommend having a look.” – Alyssa Berg

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The German show …and Other Stories opens today in the Zeitraumexit gallery in Mannheim! The show explores current American self-publishing trends and will feature a collection of booklets, original drawings, mini comics, zines, and other printed materials by American artists Alyssa Berg, Julia Gfrörer, Aidan Koch, Laila Milevski and Maggie Umber. What a lineup!

Maggie Umber and Raighne Hogan (of 2dcloud) will be presenting two free workshops at the gallery on June 11th and 13th – find details on how to attend HERE.

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Check out a new feature on Comics Workbook: ART TRIP – a continuing series that offers reflections on art and comics, and the adventures that transform those who seek it out.

First up, my own (Sally here!) recent run-in with Georgia O’Keeffe.

“…I’m looking at her stuff and seeing comics, yes. That’s where my brain lives constantly, these days. The index card is a panel for a comic. The Palo Duro Canyon drawings aren’t a series – they’re a sequence. Her paintings without lines prove how lively comics can look without being pinned down by traditional inks.“

Read the rest of the adventure HERE!

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Benjamin Marra added his “10 Rules for Drawing” to the collection curated by Dov Torbin this week. Some highlights for me are:

2. Emotional accuracy is more important than emulating reality. Realism is overrated and reality is an illusion anyway. Just make a good drawing.

4. Don’t create walls. You’ll only run into them later. Avoid Puritanism of materials, tools, techniques, methods, and approaches. Don’t be a perfectionist.

9. You gotta know the rules before you can break the rules.

10. There are no rules.

Check out the whole list here, and read more “10 Rules for Drawing” by the likes of Alex Toth or Michael DeForge, among others…!

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While we’re on the topic of “tips for being a good artist” here’s a Comics Workbook TV interview with Noah Van Sciver that I really appreciated. The idea of “world-building” through sketchbooking is great.

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Two things I’m excited about that will be releasing into the world soon –

Anya Davidson is working on a new zine (above), due to be released at CAKE this year (tentatively titled Gloom Planet)…!

The Shirley Jackson Project (edited by Rob Kirby and being released by Ninth Art Press) is in it’s final production stages. Here’s the rad cover art by Michael Fahy:

Can’t wait for this beast to roar!

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That’s my story for this week, folks. I’m currently on the road between Santa Fe, NM, and Pittsburgh, PA, (coming home to the Comics Workbook world headquarters!) so pardon a light offering today. The whole team will be back next week with all the best in comics news for you. Thanks for hanging out with us! – Sally

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Sally Ingraham

Posted on May 19, 2016May 20, 2016

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06/01/2016

Juan FernándezJune 1, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with Tim Hensley in THE DIAZ ARCHIVE;Gran bola de helado by Conxita Herrero; 2nd Lady’s Comics Encontro in Brazil; Pablo Guerra por Ángel Castaño Gusmán; New Work from Power Paola; Spain’s first graphic novel, Tito y Tif. On the site: New in the DIAZ ARCHIVE: http://comicsworkbook.com/the-hensley-interview/ http://comicsworkbook.com/tim-hensley-draws-l-b-jeff-jeffries-from-rear-window/ ————————————————————————————————— Off the site: Gran bola de helado (Conxita Herrero) Gerardo V. reviews Conxita Herrero‘s exciting new work published by Apa-Apa in Barcelona, Gran Bola De Helado over at Entrecomics.com. Gerardo Vilches: …Conxita builds a minimalist style of naked lines, perfect for representing a world that feels vibrantly present , reflecting the concerns and way of life of Millenials today. An almost perfect synthesis between the hermetically tight and intimate, which crystallizes in small stories that depart from the literary density of the graphic novel tradition to conquer a far more unexplored terrain : the purely graphic . (..) In stripping down her their stories, Herrero sharpens them, and they reach us in more effective ways: some of the hit you in ways that only a drawing can. At times, it is reminiscent of the works of Yuichi Yokoyama and shares Yokoyama’s ability to show the world around us from a perspective that deforms and makes it fascinating. (Translated by Juan Fernandez) ————————————————————————————————— Mark your Calendar: 2nd Lady’s Comics Encontro, 29-31 July in Belo Horizonte Following the great success of first Encontro in October 2014 (an event that happened through crowdfunding, the first in Latin America on women and comics), the Lady’s Comics collective in Brazil is organizing a three day free festival with more than 30 guests, 5 workshops and display of the work by the Chicks on Comics collective. The theme of this second gathering will be The First Voyage. The programming of this entire encontro is aimed at women’s empowerment and serves as a reflection of women’s massive participation in all the creative processes in the ninth art. Conhece aquele branco que dá na hora de criar e não sabe o que fazer? Aquela dúvida sobre como participar de uma feira ou publicar em uma editora? E tirar o tal ISBN? Como montar e apresentar um portifólio? E para os educadores, como podemos usar os quadrinhos na escola? Cada caminho, com diferentes visões, desde o independente até mainstream, serão apresentados pelas artistas, produtoras de eventos, editoras e profissionais da área. Tudo isso visando o empoderamento feminino e a reflexão sobre a participação das mulheres em todos os processos criativos das HQs. Here’s the video they put together when organizing the first Encontro so you can see what they’re about. Check out their YouTube and their website channel to feast your eyes on their tireless work. ————————————————————————————————— Entrevista de Pablo Guerra por Ángel Castaño Gusmán Nice interview over at Revista Arcadia with Pablo Guerra, one of the co-organizers of the Colombian comics festival, Entreviñetas, about his comics writing process and the state of Colombian comics making. Ángel Castaño Guzmaán: In your role of editor and critic of comics, what are the obsessions that run across the work of comics makers nationally? What is the state of the Colombian graphic novel? Pablo Guerra: The national production of comics continues to respond, generally, to small niches of readers. In that sense, its not easy to find recurring themes further than preoccupations with how to survive and grow in a cultural milieu that, although more open than in previous decades, continues to treat comics as foreign matter. The Colombian graphic novel is a young phenomenon a still all the participants in the chain (creators, readers, editors, book sellers, journalists) are in the process of learning and experimentation. I hope that the path we still have to take continues to provide us with interesting works and authors that feel more and more comfortable with the form and that they begin to communicate among themselves. On top of that, it is important that, until now, the domestic production of comics continue to be the progonist in our discussions of the cultural panorama of our country. One of the greatest set backs in previous decades has been that international comics were very popular while those made in Colombia were practically all glossed over. (translated by Juan Fernandez) ————————————————————————————————— New Work from Power Paola Todo va a estar bien (Editorial Catalonia) This collects the autobiographic work that Power Paola began releasing online in 2013. Read a chapter for a real taste of Paola’s work: El Viaje. It is available for purchase via Editorial Catalonia in Santiago, Chile. Virus Tropical (2dcloud) This was just debuted at TCAF and will soon be available for purchase via 2dcloud’s website. Here’s a micro review by Kim of goodcomicsbykim.tumblr.com to whet your appetite. my short review on Virus Tropical by @powerpaola @2dcloud. i want more of her works!! #comics pic.twitter.com/qqlO1U37Qt — kim (@therealkim__) May 19, 2016 ————————————————————————————————— Spain’s first graphic novel, Tito y Tif to be Republished Published in 1915, Tito and Tif by Joaquín Xaudaró, the first Spanish comic book is now being republished by Ediciones Taulas. The story of a pharmacist and his dog, in the thralls of a surreal adventure, Tito and Tif originally appeared serialized in 4 page installments in Spanish newspapers. While it’s true that there were many “comic books” in Spain before because the publishing of Tito and Tif, all were nothing more than collections of short stories. There were no comics that picked up a single long story and followed it through from beginning, to middle and end. That’s where this book comes in. In the end, this book is 108 pages of cartooning, that all serve to tell one story. This volume is thus the first graphic novel published in Spain . And that was more than 100 years ago. RTVE.es has a wonderfully in depth look at this collection worth your time that explores the historical context of Xaudaró’s work and the elements that set Tito y Tif apart from comics of its time. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima 😉 -Juan Share this page: [...]

11/28/2017

Aaron CockleNovember 28, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Alyssa Berg; Art from Guantánamo Bay; Louise Bourgeois; David Hockney; SF&FB&ZF; Conor Stechschulte ————————————————————————————————— Handmade Riso Postcard Workshop with Alyssa Berg Join SVA RisoLab Fall 2017 Artist-in-Residence Alyssa Berg for a workshop exploring handmade layers for Risograph printing. After a brief introduction to the basics of Risograph printing and a group demo, workshop attendees will use a variety of materials including tracing paper, pens, pencils, and collage materials to create artwork for a set of two-color Riso printed postcards. No experience is necessary and materials will be provided. We will be making our layers by hand (no computers!). Participants are encouraged to bring four small grayscale/black and white drawings (4.25 x 5.5 inch) or any text/collage materials they might wish to work with to create a set of four postcards. Alyssa Berg is a painter, comic-artist, and craftsman originally from the Great Northwest and currently living in Brooklyn. After studying painting at Parsons Paris and Hunter College, she began to focus on making painted comics in 2012. In these comics, she investigates and experiments with an array of materials, including collage elements. Her work has appeared in Smoke Signal, INK BRICK, and on the Comics Workbook website where she won the 2015 Composition Competition. alyssaberg.com Sunday, December 3, 12-3pm: RSVP ————————————————————————————————— Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay Open through JANUARY 26, 2018; PRESIDENT’S GALLERY, JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, NYC Detainees at the United States military prison camp known as Guantánamo Bay have made art from the time they arrived. The exhibit will display some of these evocative works, made by men held without trial, some for nearly 15 years, who paint the sea again and again although they cannot reach it. One of the co-curators, Erin Thompson, has an NY Times op-ed piece about the artists and their work: But last week, the Miami Herald reported a change in military policy: The art of Mr. al-Alwi and the other remaining Guantánamo prisoners is now U.S. government property. The art will no longer leave prison confines and can now legally be destroyed. Attorneys for several prisoners were told the military intends to burn the art. Art censorship and destruction are tactics fit for terrorist regimes, not for the U.S. military. The art poses no security threat: It is screened by experts who study the material for secret messages before it leaves the camp, and no art by current prisoners can be sold. Guantánamo detainees deserve basic human rights as they await trial. Taking away ownership of their art is both incredibly petty and utterly cruel. ————————————————————————————————— David Salle on the Louise Bourgeois currently at MoMA You feel that Bourgeois wants to dig down to the basic fiber of form itself en route to creating an image; it’s what drawing can do, after all. A subset of the marks that she uses, especially those made with a brush and ink, have the length and start-and-stop quality of a stitch of thread or embroidery: graphic stitches, which are bundled together and become in turn the building blocks for many of her images. These include the skein or hank of hair or yarn, as well as nerve and muscle fibers, including flayed skin and tissue, which cluster, bale up, and twist, and can become in some works undulating curtains of hairlike walls, or take the form of river currents and ocean waves. The equivalency that Bourgeois draws between hair or yarn and muscle fibers or tissue is one of her principal inventions. Hair, women’s hair, is all over Bourgeois’s art. It is the perfect graphic element; like water, it can go anywhere and take virtually any shape. It can flow like a river, pass through keyholes, or twist around another form, strangling it. It can take the form of a flying carpet, or be made to cover, or smother, another surface. Or it can be parted to reveal what’s underneath. Hair is something to hide behind, or a memento left behind. The eroticism of hair was also a Surrealist staple, and Bourgeois makes good use of it. ————————————————————————————————— David Hockney Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Working in a wide range of media with equal measures of wit and intelligence, Hockney has examined, probed, and questioned how to capture the perceived world of movement, space, and time in two dimensions. The exhibition offers a grand overview of the artist’s achievements across all media, including painting, drawing, photography, and video. From his early experiments with modernist abstraction and mid-career experiments with illusion and realism, to his most recent, jewel-toned landscapes, Hockney has consistently explored the nature of perception and representation with both intellectual rigor and sheer delight in the act of looking. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— ‘On a basic, lifestyle level, moving here and attending school has allowed me to stop working a non-art-related day job (at least for now).’ Conor Stechschulte is interviewed at Just Indie Comics. Water, of course… It is a recurring element in your comics, and sometimes plays a major role. It may be the ritual river in The Amateurs, the rain from which the facts of Generous Bosom develop, the lake of impalpable but sharp tensions in Glancing, the sea where the games of Water Phase unfold, and Christmas in Prison’s narrative stream. If we consider water as a symbol, it is necessarily multifaceted, fluid, and seems to be related to desire, change, epiphany. It is the place where things happen, stories are told, secrets come to light. Why is water so important to you? Thank you for tracking this image so comprehensively throughout my work! You’ve done such a good job of outlining how I’ve used water that I’m not sure if I can add anything… Of the symbolic meanings you’ve listed I identify most with the idea of change. Water is a place where boundaries break down, things dissolve, definitions shift. With how clear and declarative one must be in telling a story, especially with comics (here’s a guy, now here he is again, see? He’s wearing the same shoes and hat, except now he’s dropped his umbrella, and here he is again but now he’s bending to pick it up), water provides a needed space for vagueness. It’s a place where the closure occurring between each panel might be suspended (or maybe it’s a way of depicting that no-space in between). You can draw a clean, clear black-outlined character for most of your book but if you reflect the same character in a bowl of water, their lines go all wavy. They can be different. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 11-28-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 11-28-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/07/2016

HarrisonJuly 7, 2016NewsHarrison is here today previewing the 4th Annual Comics Workbook Competition, revisiting an old/new interview with a veteran artist, giving an update from Richmond, VA’s best artists, and finishing with something sharp. ————————————————————————————————— COMICS WORKBOOK COMPOSITION COMPETITION 2016 THE SANTORO CORRESPONDENCE COURSE and The Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency presents the COMICS WORKBOOK COMPOSITION COMPETITION 2016 ———————————————— 1st place – $500 cash prize to the winner 2nd place – $250 credit at Copacetic Comics 3rd place – $100 credit at Copacetic Comics plus four $50 honorable mention prizes from Big Planet Comics ———————————————— Create a 16 page signature comic book narrative to the specifications below ———————————————— DEADLINE: August 30 2016 at midnight (that’s 11:59 EST) ———————————————— Find all the details HERE! ————————————————————————————————— From the Vault: Arvell Malcolm Jones Interview CBR News: What about the challenges or difficulties you may have faced while getting into the comics biz? AJ: Well, Marvel and DC were interesting places in the early ’70s. Racism was there, but not the kind you would think. People were trying to be very open minded, but they only could draw on what they knew. I spent a lot of time getting to know people. It was hard at first because, in some cases, we had nothing in common but our love of the industry. Plus, the industry is very much like a little Hollywood: it’s about who you know, as well as how good you are. Many of the people I worked with I’d know for sometime through the convention route, or from zines, like Roy Thomas (when we had our zine, Roy was our source for news at Marvel) and Paul Levitz. Marvel and DC tried to be open to us but, in a way, they didn’t know quite how to relate to us. It helped that most of my friends from Detroit helped to open doors. We would take a 13 hour drive and spend the night with Al Milgrom and his roommate, hang at Rich’s, then go see John Romita at Marvel, get our butts spanked, and go back to Detroit to work on our samples again. – via Comic Book Resources Read the rest of the interview with veteran artist Arvell Malcolm Jones here. ————————————————————————————————— Richmond’s Finest Check out some of the new work from our friends from Richmond, VA, Cameron Weston Nicholson, Richie Pope, and Chris Visions. Support and share please. Cameron Weston Nicholson Cameron’s got a sale on his latest comic, Burgundy. IF you’ve been waiting to pick up some work from Cameron, now’s your chance before these comics are gone! Send him a message via instagram and he’ll hook you up. https://www.instagram.com/p/BHhqpeqg-jZ/ Richie Pope Along with having the illustration below in the New York Times, Richie has made available the second (and final) edition of Newdini in print. Get it now! http://richiepope.bigcartel.com/product/newdini Chris Visions You can now buy your copy of Chris Visions’ #LunchtimeLoosies VOL. 1 at http://chrisvisions.bigcartel.com – A color collection of beautiful observational drawings made with mixed media. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

06/29/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 29, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Simon Moreton’s “Plans We Made”; PBS looks at Comics In Transit; catching up with Ronald Wimberly; Indie publishers/inclusive comics; and more. ———————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: Plans We Made by Simon Moreton is a great book. It’s been a comic that excites everyone I show the book to. For some reason I found myself comparing it to New School by Dash Shaw, although in my mind these two books don’t complement each other at all. They’re very different books. New School feels like an Adventure Comic and Plans We Made feels like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes. The connection is that as the reader you are demanded by the book in both cases to project your attitude into the comic. Of course every comic does this, but New School and Plans We Made are books that are really asking you, very loudly, “Know what I mean?” It’s like this weird extreme where it’s not the most familiar territory, but in sacrificing familiarity, it ends up being the most familiar. I was thinking about how Dash Shaw said the intent of the dumb line is to add ambiguity to the story. Maybe I’m remembering it all wrong, but maybe the reader would project more into the story. I guess the first part of the idea is that it’s like the person making the drawing makes the drawing what it is. Like a cool guy is making marks like a cool guy would, and the dumb line tells you it could be anyone who drew this, and it’s maybe more a reflection of you, the reader, that determines the attitude it’s drawn with. I didn’t interact with New School this way too too much, I was just into the way the drawings looked, but the way New School was drawn was more for Dash himself than the reader. He’s introducing the dumb line so he doesn’t have to re-summon the same exact attitude every time he’s drawing, so he draws with what he quotes Mazzucchelli saying, “a line that doesn’t know what it’s saying.” The personal connections I made in New School were maybe more, because of specific circumstance and situations that ended up overlapping with Danny, or what Dash described as the feeling of what he felt when he went to Japan. Whereas for Plans We Made, I hadn’t had 97% of the specific experiences, but I could relate to it more. At times, I could say I had a similar feeling, but in both cases it seems that both cartoonists are removing this idea of what happened being a specific thing that only happened to them, and seem interested in the idea of it having happened to other people as well. Simon seems way, way more interested in pursuing this than Dash is. There’s this great sequence in Plans We Made, where Simon’s misery is being reenacted by his drunk friend, like it manifests in his drunk friend, and there’s isn’t a huge distinction made between the two characters, so the feeling transfers seamlessly in between the two of them. Dash feels like he doesn’t rush straight to his goal, he takes a long winding path and barely cares if he gets there, but spares no effort. He only cares for the spirit or the attitude that comes with trying to get “there”(that’s kind of my theory on Kramers 8‘s theme btw, like when Sammy Harkham’s describing the mysterious characteristics of the cartoonists that were picked for it). The way I was introduced to Plans We Made was that I should read it like those faceless characters are people you’ve known. It’s never a big deal that these characters are faceless – it feels needed for the drawings. It doesn’t have this unnatural feeling, like say how in Yokoyama’s books there are those characters who can’t, characters who don’t, exhibit any emotion on their faces besides their suspicious scowl. Simon, at least from what I gather, isn’t so concerned with making a huge statement on the comics form, something that’s against previously conceived thoughts of what comics are. New School is pushing a new way of looking at color or approaching color and line work, but there are also undertones in the story in New School. For example with Clockwork, or this fictional idea of an avant garde theme park movement of consciously challenging the form for the sake of challenging it, reveling in the supposed immaturity of it, and being unapologetically romantic regarding the direction it will take the form, whatever it may be. I’d even argue with the title of New School, keyword being “New” – it’s all about making a grand statement in the form. Not so much with Simon – he just contextualizes himself as lazy. One of my favorite pages is him saying in a similar tone to the rest of the book, “Wrote awful songs,” and a great drawing of him sitting with guitar (pictured above). – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Plans We Made from Uncivilized books – HERE. 6-29-2017 – by Sam Ombiri ———————————————————————————————— Sally here – Johnathon Dalton spoke to the PBS News Hour earlier this week about his part in the Comics In Transit project. Comics In Transit was started by the Cloudscape Comics collective, based out of Vancouver, Canada, and since 2015 it has been placing comics featuring refugees’ stories in bus transit stations. “In 2015, Canada began that country’s largest refugee resettlement program since the Vietnam War. Over the last year-and-a-half, 45,000 Syrian refugees have made Canada their home, more than double those admitted in the U.S.“ Johnathon’s comic is about Mohammed Alsaleh, who was imprisoned after documenting a protest and uploading pictures to the web. He was eventually released, but decided to leave Syria rather than risk being arrested again. The comic will appear in a bus shelter in Vancouver later this year. You can read more about the story HERE. ———————————————————————————————— The above video was made by Ronald Wimberly and Chase Conley for Nike. You can see a bunch of process pics and other related imagery on Ron’s Instagram – HERE. Also from the world of Ronald Wimberly comes the news that his comic Gratnin is back on the comics app Stela. “GRATNIN is short for Gratuitous Ninja. KGMR stands for Kyoku-gen Muron-Ryu, a style of ninjutsu practiced by the now pacifist Namba family who run a karate/yoga-studio/farm/food co-op out of Gowanus Brooklyn. The Namba take in three local delinquents and teach them ninjutsu. When the new chunin break clan rules to fight a couple of local trap boys they wind up making more problems then they solve. How to get the comic? Download the Stela Unlimited app here: -iOS: http://bit.ly/2eQc4om -Android: http://bit.ly/2f14Idm“ It can be hard to keep up with Ron – he rides the high and fast currents of the world, always moving and grooving – so for those of us on the slower planes, he provides the Wimberly Newsletter – sign up for it HERE! ———————————————————————————————— Huffpost reports that Indie comics publishers are doing a better job at being inclusive than mainstream ones. Not shocking. The piece features video comments from Roxane Gay, author of the Black Panther spin-off series World of Wakanda and Marvel’s first black female writer. Incidentally, both series’ have recently been canceled. While Marvel and DC are fighting it out with their sales numbers, indie comics publishers are having more success at supporting interesting work and creators. “ “Inclusivity is absolutely important and is achieved by actively seeking out and embracing voices that might otherwise not be heard if we didn’t provide them a platform,” Eric Reynolds, associate publisher of Fantagraphics, told HuffPost. Dafna Pleban, an editor at another alternative comic publisher, BOOM! Studios, echoed this sentiment. “I don’t think inclusivity can be achieved in one fell swoop.” she said. “I think it’s a process, and it’s something that we’re constantly working on to improve and grow. I think we can be better. Luckily, BOOM! Studios has been a place where they’ve encouraged us to reach out to creators that excite us and develop stories that inspire us, not just what we might think can sell now.” ” Read the rest of the Huffpost article HERE. A piece at Vox earlier this month cited the comic industry’s sales structure as the root of the problem – and the only solution at the moment to keeping diverse, inclusive comics on the shelves is to work with the system and pre-order them. “The comic book industry isn’t going to magically change its distribution system overnight, and in order to flourish within the system, comic books must be preordered. Since comic books are sold to retailers as final sale and are ordered three months in advance, walking into your local comic book shop and buying a book off the shelf does nothing to directly support the book in the eyes of the publisher or Diamond’s sales. The only real way around this is to preorder a book from your local shop in advance of its release, which alerts the shop owner that there’s interest in a title, and that they should stock it in on their shelves.“ Read the rest of the Vox article HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Todd Hignite Comic Art is the new official representative of art sales for Jaime Hernandez and a select few other contemporary comics artists, including Daniel Clowes and Julie Doucet. Todd Hignite plans to use the site not only to facilitate the art sales but to maintain a conversation about the artists and their ongoing work. Read more HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-29-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-29-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Rowhouse Residency Report: Andrew White

Comics WorkbookAugust 28, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesAndrew White is a cartoonist based in Washington, D.C. He was one of Frank Santoro’s first students, served as an editor of the Comics Workbook Magazine, and has continued to be a cornerstone of the Comics Workbook community for years. He joined us in Pittsburgh for a Rowhouse Residency in July 2017. Here are his thoughts about visiting the city and his Rowhouse Residency experience. ———————————————————————————————— I visited Pittsburgh for just under two weeks in July. It was the first time in years my schedule allowed me to focus on comics full-time, and I was anthropologically curious to see if I was disciplined enough to work on comics for 8+ hours each day. I was also interested to get a sense of how the Residency is functioning and evolving just around a year after its creation. While I was there I worked on the following projects: All There Is – A set of critical essays and drawings on Kevin Huizenga’s Ganges: The River at Night The Life You Save May Be Your Own – An adaptation of a Flannery O’Connor short story by the same name. Drowned River – A long work completed before arriving in Pittsburgh, for which Frank offered comprehensive and incisive feedback. An untitled series of large format drawings. Maybe these will be incorporated into a comic eventually. I’m not sure. Two untitled stories, both still at early stages. I drew pages for one and took notes for the other. I think other reports do a good job of describing what it’s like to participate in the Residency. So instead I’ll indulge myself with a less linear list of thoughts that occurred to me while visiting Pittsburgh. Building Institutions – I took the second iteration of Frank’s comics correspondence course in the spring of 2012. I know Connor Willumsen also took the course at that time, but I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember who else was in the Class of 2012. Frank, you should publish a list of who has taken the class when! It would be interesting to see. Anyways, I mention the course because it was nice to see where Frank has landed as an educator, a community organizer, an institution-builder, and a creator almost exactly five years after I first got to know him and perhaps ten years after I started following his work. Having watched Frank move from occasional lectures and teaching positions, to his correspondence course, and now to the residency led me to think about the way institutions are built up and broken down in comics. It’s an interesting and regularly discussed topic, particularly when a publisher or store or school is shut down. Many publishers in comics exist largely through the willpower and dedication of a single person. This can be sad – Picturebox, Highwater, Buenaventura, and many others did not last beyond their founder’s involvement in the company. Of course, the flipside of this flimsy infrastructure is that barriers to entry are relatively low. Even if those publishers are gone, they had a real and significant impact. The books they printed still exist, even if they might be hard to find. Many of the artists they supported are still working. The same is true for schools – if CCS or SAW or Frank stopped teaching tomorrow, students would still retain the impact of their education. All this is just to say that while I certainly lament the occasional deaths of publisher or other institutions, I think we’re sometimes more eager to wring our hands about finances or distribution (important things!) than to celebrate the impact of these institutions and think about how that impact will carry forward after they’re gone. But it is also important to build something that might last beyond your personal involvement. I would say Frank has started to do this. People like Sally Ingraham and Juan Fernandez now have significant involvement in the Comics Workbook project, the Comics Workbook site offers a venue for many writers, and the yearly Comics Workbook composition contest continues to offer a platform to recognize new voices. What lessons do the evolution of Comics Workbook and the Residency offer? Build slowly, accumulate staying power over time, stay flexible so you can respond organically to a changing world. Frank can be impulsive in his decision-making sometimes, but this allows him to react organically and shift his plans if needed. He can change course based on feedback or on his own sense of what has become important. Another lesson: Don’t grow too quickly, and stay accessible. Frank’s correspondence course is still the same price it was in 2011. Obviously the course won’t be for everyone but I think Frank does a good job of being transparent about what he’s offering. So where exactly does the residency stand now? It’s been running for just over a year and has accepted nearly 20 residents. Some residents aren’t very familiar with Frank and his approach, so they essentially get to take his correspondence course in person as a significant part of their residency. Others come with projects in progress and are seeking feedback on these specific works. Frank aims to check in with residents for a few hours each day at least, but also makes clear that he needs to spend time on his own work. On that note, Frank has maintained his productivity as a cartoonist – I’d even say the past year has been especially productive – which helps residents see what the life of a working cartoonist is like. This also makes me happy as a fan of his work. Sally Ingraham manages the logistics of the residency (schedules, etc.) and also instructs residents at times, given her experience as an educator. Frank and Sally both say the residency is going well, though they’ll be taking several weeks off from hosting residents this fall as convention season begins. In terms of the wider Comics Workbook project, Frank plans to continue working with graduates of his course and other cartoonists to offer Comics Workbook workshops at conventions like SPX and CXC, as he did for the first time in 2016. Comics Workbook isn’t producing any regular publications at the moment (though copies of Comics Workbook Magazine and Zona are still available from Copacetic Comics). I don’t think it’s my place to speak for him in depth, but like many of us Frank is reassessing his plans and his priorities after the US election last November. One of his conclusions is to try consolidating his efforts, focusing on doing a few things well and maybe stepping back from others. These plans are still very much in progress, so I’m curious to see how things develop. I’m jumping around a bit, but I think it’s important that these detials exist in writing rather than just in people’s heads. I want some record of where the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency stood in summer 2017 to exist. That’s another downside of comics’ flimsy institutions – they can be difficult to document. I think about Gary Groth’s efforts to secure one comprehensive interview with important creators in their twilight years; an admirable project but one that should at this point be extended to younger generations and beyond cartoonists. Did anyone conduct a comprehensive, career-spanning interview with Dylan Williams or Alvin Buenaventura before their untimely deaths, for instance? I could be wrong but I don’t think I’ve seen one. Let’s try to get this stuff recorded before it becomes an urgent need. That’s an effort we can all contribute to. Format Fever – I came to Pittsburgh with a few comics recently completed. I was proud of this work but unsure when/if/how to have it published. Sometimes I don’t want to make the decision of whether something is good enough to publish; I’ve thought before that I’d just like someone to just tell me what to do with a comic once I’ve finished making it. This is of course unrealistic, and an easy way out besides. Frank has always been interested in formats, and talking about format with him led me to two insights. On one hand, there are no easy solutions to these questions. Each of Frank’s past comics has been presented in a different format, and he’s at a moment with his current project where he isn’t sure exactly what publishing approach will serve it best. Since each project is different, answering that question doesn’t get easier. On the other hand, there are solutions to be found. Some formats or publishing venues really do suit a project better than others, and in ways that might not be immediately self-evident. Thinking critically about this can yield results – I left the Residency with more concrete plans about how to publish and present my future work. Studying and Experimenting – As a cartoonist I’m often focused on Getting Things Done; I’m usually drawing for a project rather than drawing just to draw. This is useful, but it also leads to unnecessary frustration when I’m not productive. It also leads important activities like reading, planning, and experimenting with new approaches to feel less ‘valuable’ than they actually are. With so many more hours to fill than normal in Pittsburgh, I allowed myself time to read books and comics, copy images from comics or art books, and do some journaling to reflect on my progress. I do these things from time to time on my own, but they’re not a consistent part of my practice. It was nice to be reminded how valuable and pleasant these activities can be. I’ll try to do them more often going forward. Frank also led me through a few exercises that he’s developed in the time since I took his correspondence course. Part of what I appreciate about Frank’s perspective on comics is that he’s willing to stake out territory confidently. This is provocative in the best sense of the word. By this I mean that I don’t have to imitate Frank’s approach for him to be a helpful influence – doing the opposite of what he recommends, subverting his techniques, or ignoring his advice entirely all lead me to do different things and think about my work differently. Yearly Cycles – In my eagerness to get work done, I also sometimes jump from one project to the next without enough consideration. I don’t think I’m alone in this and I don’t think it’s always the wrong approach. But sometimes it is. Frank has talked in interviews about how the painter Francesco Clemente would sit around for days, smoking and doing nothing – but then produce huge amounts of work in sudden bursts of activity. I don’t smoke and I don’t necessarily have entire days to devote to the difficult work of thinking, but the general principle still applies. It was interesting to listen to Frank talk about past stages of his career, current projects, and future plans. He likes to reflect on what he has done before – especially, I’m sure, for the benefit of residents – and apply this perspective to upcoming decisions. In conversations along these lines, Frank encouraged me to make key choices about my work in three months or six months rather than today or tomorrow. We talked about planning projects in terms of yearly cycles. Frank argued that a year is the minimum amount of time needed to complete a longform work, in part due to the time needed to build momentum and uncover a fruitful approach. He talked about throwing out roughly a third of the pages completed for his current project, a ratio that happens to hold true for my most recent long comic as well. I also spent part of my residency working alongside Ian Densford, who takes another approach to planning very different from my own. Ian is working on a long project for which he has made several key decisions – format, length, approach, etc. – in advance. He’s doing careful research and I don’t believe he throws out many completed pages. None of this is uncommon, I think, and Ian seems to also have left himself space to make many decisions about individual pages and sequences over the course of his project. It’s just interesting to think about the different ways people construct their creative lives. Copacetic Comics, Longboxes, and Legacies – Bill Boichel of Copacetic Comics was the first retailer to buy my comics and has been among the greatest and most consistent supporters of my work. I’m far from the only person for whom this is true. Bill’s longevity also speaks to his abilities as a retailer; he has kept his doors open for more than double the length of other stores without ever sacrificing his support for great work. He has also made compelling abstract comics for decades. Plus Bill has an excellent critical eye; just the descriptions of my comics on his site are among the most insightful reviews I’ve ever received. This was my first time visiting Pittsburgh and therefore my first visiting Copacetic. If you’ve never been, it’s worth a visit. At first you’ll see just a careful selection of newer releases, but hidden treasures abound. In just a few hours, I found several Ignatz books I hadn’t seen in years; one of Raina Telgemeier’s original Smile minicomics (left with Sally Ingraham, given her interest in the underdocumented, undervalued history of female cartoonists); nearly all issues of Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte; a huge stack of Kramers Ergot 1; and much more that I’m forgetting. Perhaps most exciting for me, however, was discovering a copy of Kevin Huizenga’s Supermonster 11 (1999). I’ve been a fan of Huizenga’s for a while, and it seemed precipitous that I’d see an issue of Supermonster in person for the first time while writing about his work. A nice moment. This was also another reminder that Bill has been supporting good cartoonists for years and years (he says that, given its appearance in multiple formats, the Gloriana story in Supermonster/Or Else/a Gloriana hardcover is among Copacetic’s best selling comics). Plus it’s just fun to see a skilled cartoonist’s early works. However, this was also a resonant moment because I found Supermonster not long after pulling a copy of Black Pillars 2, one of my own earliest works, out of a nearby longbox. There was something very compelling about this for me – the idea that in Bill’s dusty longboxes, comics by you and me and Kevin Huizenga and someone who only made one comic ever are equally valued and equally likely to be discovered. Many of the Xeroxed minis in Bill’s catalogue are bagged and boarded, treated with just as much care as any other comic. It was rewarding to see the work treated with the respect it deserves. It was encouraging to imagine that someone might discover my comics at Copacetic almost 20 years in the future. It somehow made my goal of continuing to made good work in 20 years (and 30 years, and 40) more tangible. More achievable. That seems like a good note on which to conclude. I had a good time in Pittsburgh and I did my best to work hard. The Residency is an interesting project at an interesting stage in its development. I look forward to watching it grow. ———————————————————————————————— Check out Andrew White‘s work HERE. His most recent comic is N, available for preorder and debuting at SPX 2017. The anthology he edited with Madeleine Witt – Warmer – will also be available at SPX 2017. Be sure to check out Andrew’s writing on comics – some of his essays and reviews are listed HERE. Follow Andrew on Instagram. Share this page: [...]

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