January 14, 2012
You can apply all this to comics by the way…

“The comedian Simon Munnery, who invented top-selling computer games for the ZX81 whilst still a teenager, was reviewed, favourably, by the Guardian recently as ‘the closest stand-up comedy gets to art’, and has pointed out himself that this suggests that however good stand-up gets, it can never really be art. There is an impassable canyon between the two. Munnery has since decided that rather than it being good comedy, he now wants his work to be categorized as ‘shit art’.

Stewart Lee - How I Escaped My Certain Fate

I really like Stewart’s book for its frank honesty about the industry he works in and the frustration of trying to succeed with someone else pulling the leavers and pressing the buttons. There’s a bit where after he quits stand-up and is planning his return that he realises that he doesn’t want to play to Johnny Nobody who won’t appreciate his work, that he’s tired of half filling venues that are too big for him to play and would rather have a succession of sold out shows at small theaters or unions or pubs and start building a name for himself again, start building his audience and for the first time make money.

It’s nothing new, especially in comics, this idea of creating something good to a devoted audience and start building from there, but it’s an idea that I need reminding of sometimes. Don’t try and please those who aren’t interested in your work, start pleasing and rewarding those who do.

9:19am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZVnbXyEk_sMN
(Notes: 35)
  
Filed under: process stewart lee shit art 
October 16, 2011
Anthology Fear

Sol Pop panel

Image from my contribution to Solipsistic Pop #4

This post is probably going to make the most sense to the artists out there, but does anyone experience soul crushing fear when drawing their comic for an anthology? I do. God, always. Pretty much every time I get invited to submit work for an anthology it leaves me confused, grumpy, and self aware of all my faults.

Why? Well, with anthologies your strip is only as good as the one it follows or precedes. That’s a terrifying and perhaps an unfair prospect, especially when more often than not the work is so varied within anthologies. Your work is being judged against other people’s, literally from page to page. It’s unsettling to think that work that is good, funny and enjoyable in its own context can be torn down and dismissed because someone “liked the other dude’s work better” or “that person draws better houses” or whatever.

(I know that’s a little unfair; you read an anthology because you like the subject or the people behind it, not because you enjoy ripping into people’s work in some Simon Cowell-esque judgemental nightmare - but that’s how it feels to me as a creator.)

(oh god, you know I’ve just worked it out, I’m terrified that this guy…

…is reading everything I do.)

I bring this up as the past few days I’ve been working on my entry for the fourth issue of Solipsistic Pop, a brilliant comic anthology that I’ve appeared in twice already and still for the life of me can’t spell the title correctly on the first go. The line up is stupid good and full of young bright eyed talented types, it’s the sort of line up that makes you want to do your best work, y’know. You don’t want to be “the shit one” in a line up like that. So, naturally this week I’ve had a bit of a crisis of faith with my artistic abilities, second guessing my contribution to the anthology and having such a bad time drawing it I started over…twice. It’s only a one page strip, I’m sure if it was two pages I would have had a complete breakdown. I know deep down that this a good thing; that this fear is actually a desire to do good work and produce a strong strip and I am pleased with my comic, I just have no idea how it’ll fit within the context of the anthology. But I have faith in Editor Humbers that he wouldn’t let my strip get past the gate if it wasn’t good enough.

9:26am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZVnbXyAkU9En
(Notes: 74)
  
Filed under: theory comics anthologies process 
April 26, 2011
Facial lines

I’ve been thinking a lot about my face at the moment, well, my cartoon face at least. You see, I’ve been working on and off on a print collection of my autobiographical webcomic Ellerbisms (which you guys know about, right?) and at the moment I’ve been drawing some new strips that take place some 4 years ago, so it’s been a little weird to go back to how I used to draw vs how I draw myself now. Which, okay isn’t that drastic, mainly the hair I guess.

So, whilst checking my Google Reader feed on the train to work the other morning I came across this little ditty from Storming The Tower, it’s a round up of a meme where Jess Fink, Kate Beaton and Carly Monardo posted year by year examples of how they’ve drawn themselves, so that kinda got me thinking how I used to draw myself back when I first started off. And then I got a bit grumpy because it hadn’t changed that much.

So, I decided to do this here blog starting back in 2003 to the most recent drawing I’ve done of myself this year. First up, for reference here’s a recent-ish picture of me complete with cat because everyone loves a cat photo on the internet!

2003

2003

I just got back into drawing “cartoony” after years fooling myself that I could try and draw like Graham Rounthwaite and so I was hella influenced by Jim Mahfood, so yeah these drawings are all over the place, with an emphasis on style over technical ability, but looking at that top image, face wise, that’s not too far from the truth…

2004

2004

…but I think 2004 is probably where I drew myself most accurately. It’s that little piggy nose I have which I’ve ironed out of drawing over the years as I’ve streamlined my style down to a bare minimum. But look, cheek bones, floppy unstyled hair, that’s spot on. These are mostly from my comic Egocentricty which I flipped through the other day and, man, if there ever was a true start to Ellerbisms it’s that.

2005

2005

And from then onwards I seemed to ignore what my face was about and go for this totally alien version with girl like hair. Vanity probably played a part in this, hiding parts I’m not comfortable with and making the “Marc” in the comics a little cuter, a little more attractive, especially in “Where Banished Eyes Haven’t Been”.

2006

2006

Ahh the emo phase.

“Phase”?!

2007

2007

These are mostly from early Ellerbisms, but the bottom left panel is from a Polar Opposites strip and that little piggy nose emerges for a whole one panel and then disappears again. Also look, little bits of stubble! I hardly ever draw the fact that I am a) terrible at shaving and b) have some bad spot problems, I guess the vanity’s kicking in again. Is this just a different way of “air brushing”?

2008

2008

Not sure what’s going on in that top panel from my first Hourly Comic Day strip, I remember thinking “this will make me draw faster” but why the heck it looks so different to how I drew myself at the time (bottom panel) is beyond me. Doooofus.

2009

2009

Aaah there’s that face we’re all sick of.

2010

This is style I’ve been trying to get down for years. Clean, cartoony and streamlined. I’m really pleased with how I draw at the moment, which is a rarity for me and I’ve still got a lot to learn but it’s not so bad looking at it.

2011

This is part of a panel from the prologue to the Ellerbisms collection (which has a working title of “Paraphrased Antidotes”) but the story takes place in 2007, so there’s that fluffy hair again and a little rounder face, but all in all not much has changed. I do worry that that in itself is a problem, that to develop as an artist your year to year drawings must be drastically different but maybe with Ellerbisms I got that particular set of characters down over a course of three years and then little changed because I was happy with how they looked? However doing this blog post has made realise that if anything I got my look down some 7/8 years ago and I’m questioning “why didn’t I keep that going?”.

It’d be interesting to see other people’s approach to this, if anything to make me feel lousier as an artist ;)

11:21am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZVnbXy4dFYho
(Notes: 13)
  
Filed under: autobio ellerbisms process critic