Sally here, eating Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast and offering up a few comics and thoughts on creation for your Friday morning.
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Gabe Fowler has announced that the new issue of Smoke Signal will be guest edited by Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman and will be a special all-woman issue (the print version at least, although anyone can submit to the website) titled RESIST. It will debut in Washington DC on Inauguration Day in a full-color edition of 30,000 copies. You can submit comics and art HERE. Deadline to submit is ASAP and definitely by Dec. 10th if you want your work in the print version. Learn more about the project HERE.
There are almost hourly comics going up on the website that Gabe created for this project – check them out HERE.
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Lauren Weinstein on The Village Voice this week:
I essentially spent my Thanksgiving in the last two panels of Lauren’s comic, although I left my can of cranberry sauce at home so I could snack on it later!
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Yes, I spent part of my Thanksgiving trolling around under bridges in Pittsburgh, and the rest of the day watching Buster Keaton’s The General several times in a row while drawing.
I have been thinking about strip comics and designing gags a lot recently, and have been reading and copying Peanuts and Krazy Kat. It is useful to think about the way visual gags work in movies as well, and even though filmmakers have had 100 years to work on it, no one has surpassed Keaton. Here’s a look at his greatness by the fantastic Tony Zhou of the YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting:
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Here on the site yesterday we published some thoughts by Tyler Landry and Sam Ombiri about work in progress – they were riffing on the actual work of Cameron Weston Nicholson. I have a lot of respect for these folks, all of whom have been part of the Comics Workbook family for awhile, and this piece was a treat. I especially liked this bit from Sam:
“Sketches/process work is the most honest/real documentation. It doesn’t always show up in apparent ways in all works but sometimes it shows up in the final work, which usually rocks. I like to be reminded when I’m looking at a drawing that it’s a drawing made by a person who isn’t always graceful.“
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We have added an Events page to the website – check it out HERE!
Comics Workbook will be heading to Genghis Con this weekend. Come hang out! Details HERE.
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Comics Workbook has announced the Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – course starts Dec. 29th 2016!
8 week course – 500 bux – 10 spots available – apply by Dec. 13th 2016 and get $100 off course fee!
More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail.
Santoro School Application guidelines:
-3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards
-3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards
-3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards
-draw in a contour line style – Think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink
-just send small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls
-specific url links to any comics work you have done.
Send applications to: santoroschoolATgmail
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I missed out on one of my usual days at Copacetic Comics this week due to the holiday, so I don’t have much in the way of new comics to report on. Back with that next week. Meanwhile, the last few times I’ve worked at the shop I’ve listened to a CD that contains the complete symphonic works of Beethoven, which someone must have burned for Bill Boichel, the owner of our local comics heaven. I’ve therefore had Beethoven on the brain and I find his music to be very well suited to the chilly, grey turn that November took very decidedly a week ago. I’ll leave you with his 7th Symphony, and maybe the sun will come back out next week. 🙂
Cheers – Sally