redfedhead

 Lord is it hot.

But safe inside the air conditioned homes of loving parent's I can say, it's good to be back in the South. For a short time anyway. 

Visiting centered around North Carolina's Heroes Con- the first con I've ever tabled at! (*disregarding this years MoCCA failure when I bought a table but then came with nothing to sell) It was hard. It was fun. And then it was over. Three days of pleading looks from myself and table mates Amelia Onerato, Ben Juers, Jesse Mead, Jacob Montgomery, Lena Chandhok and Paul Swartz have left me weary but I am so glad that in that time I could get some things out into the world. 

Met a lot of great people too- almost went the whole con without realizing I was tabling across from the guys of FLUKE who put on a con in Athens, Ga! Got some pretty things from individuals and from the big guys, like Nobrow, via Ad House. And man, is Charolette ever a pretty modern city. I can safely say I've never been inside a more ornate looking skull in the middle of a park. 

Thanks to anyone reading this blog who picked up some of my stuff there! I don't know when I'll be back to Heroes due to the international plans mentioned in the last post, but I'm sure we will meet again, I'll always be in and out of the South.


For now it's back to the North East for a small part in the Brooklyn Comic Book Theater Festival as an artist in one of the shows called Drawn Out Storytelling. The baby of  friends Nisse Greenburg and afore mentioned Paul Swartz, the show combines live storytelling with live or prepared comics made to add another layer to the stories.

I'll be doing two live drawings, one with Lena Chandhok and another with Pat Barrett. It should be a really interesting experiment, anyone in the area should come out to the Brick Theater! I'm in the first two show's this month, on the 18th and the 24th, but there are two more on the 26th and 29th. After that, plans are this show could become a regular fixture on the Brooklyn storytelling scene (my god, doesn't that phrase sound unbelievably hip?) so look out for it!

In the midst of this and moving and interning I'll be working on developing some ideas for new works, I should have some stuff to show soon.

Until then dear readers. 

And then, it was done.


Finally finished my last project for CCS this past week, a 24 page silent comic about a surly faun. If yer not rolling your eyes at that description then maybe you are interested in pickin one up from me? It's a full color book, bound in cardstock, so it'll run ya three bucks, but here's a little bit from it.






For any of my friends who might be wanting it i'll be back in Atlanta briefly at the very stick-end of May and would love to drop some off.

And for anyone else these are available to be shipped for 5 dollars total and will be sitting pretty next month on a table at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina.


Hopefully this wont be the last book I print here at CCS, I might crank out another before I leave in two months, but even if it is my last one for now, hopefully sometime in the future I can come back. I've loved my time at CCS and although it pains me to leave I think I'm doing whats right for me, as I travel to Australia to pursue my undergrad degree and a special man. And If your a friend who is just finding this amazing plan of mine out now as you read my blog- well, there it is! I am leaving towards the end of this year, not sure on dates yet, I haven't been very public about it up till now- ask me if yer interested in the details.

The next few months should have errant posts as I do what I am now calling Bailey's Farewell America tour, which has me spending significant amounts of time in New York, Missouri, North Carolina, and of course, Georgia. Looking forward to some happy reunions and some sad goodbyes on the way. And maybe a kitty kat jamboree song or too. You know what I mean, you people who know what I mean.
 

Here's the first page to my next little comic, subject to changes still, gotta add dat text and shading, but this is a good idea of the overall style of it.




Using my schools cintiq, it's a nice feeling, pretty intuitive. I always get self-concious about drawing in photoshop, like it's somehow cheating the medium? Anyone else? But this project just seemed to call for it. Hoping to complete a 'nother small piece in addition to this between now and graduation.

Also: MOCCAAAAA

 Today is the last day of the Center for Cartoon Studies' appreciation week, so I thought I'd get my feelings out there.



Make no mistake, I love CCS.


It is THE place for anyone who wants to make comics for themselves, I highly recommend it. I don't think of it as an "art" school, craft is in there, and mine has improved since coming, but it is primarily about storytelling with the comic medium, the part I know that I struggle with the most with. And in my opinion, what the Art schools (with a capital A) don't focus enough on.



I was scared coming here for sure. I was a little Georgia peach, traveling all the way to the tip top of the coast, and a lot of risks were taken. I took out a lease on apartment i'd never seen, with a roommate i'd never met, in a town i'd only briefly visited, where I knew no one, and was coming to this graduate program with no undergraduate degree.

But, for no reason at all, the universe handed this one to me.

I've had a great time. I've met fantastic artists- those visiting, those that make up the faculty, and those who I can crazily call my peers. And from those, I've met some really good friends. (lookin at you, regular team)
 

So if your interested I recommend you read this. Still interested? Then you should come up for a portfolio day or a summer workshop (I did the latter) or just romanticly throw yourself to the whimsy of the universe and just plain come, sight unseen. I think CCS's web presence does a really good job at truthfully showing you what CCS is like, unlike most universities (see: disingenuous photo of multi racial group of friends laughing around campus that is on the front page of every school ever's site)

I wasn't surprised by the school when I arrived here, by the time I did I had scoured the blogs of students, the flickr photos, and the website enough that it almost felt familiar. 

And where else could I meet Joe Sacco, Richard Thompson and this guy (totally took that photo) all in a month?

It shore is a magical place.
 

So I'm agonizing over the story of my mini thesis, I've decided to abandon my longer idea, at least temporarily, to do a smaller piece involving these terrible, terrible people.




my hope is that I can have this smaller book done before MOCCA (april 9th and 10th), my first real con. But as with everything, I haven't a clue what I'm doing, so we'll see. 




But there is other news to take precedence for the moment! Tomorrow I get to help escort one of my heroes, James Kochalka, around Vermont as he is coroneted as the state's first Cartoonist Laurette. Again proving I go to the greatest school out there. 

 

I think I can distill my essence into those three letters. 

 

I guess I should formally give a bit about myself-

I'm roundin' up my first year at the Center for Cartoon Studies
in a small town in Vermont.

It's a great graduate program for all you cartoonist ilk. I sort of loop-de-looed the system though, coming here without prior college. But I've always solved those maze puzzles on the back of cereal boxes from finish to start and that's worked out well for me so far. We'll see how it goes.

So most of the content of the blog is going to be output from assignments from the program.

Like sketches from my last Kid's book assignment:
 

I wasn't thrilled with the way my actual pages for the kid's book turned out, but I loved doing the watercolor sketches for it. I get really caught up in the character design aspects of any story- how could you not? And I've been kind of going for a more scraggly pen drawing style lately, ala Richard Thompson, one of the last good syndicated strip artists. (And coming to my school in a couple weeks, because I just couldn't get luckier).


And now I once again find myself in doodle da da land for my mini thesis project. Not sure what direction I'm taking on this one but i'm so into these characters.

My favorite possibility right now- a redneck squirrel raised knock off of Tarzan

and of course, contemplative monsters.


Thass All.

 

 


Hoo-rah

I finally got me a brand new blog here at da' livejournal. Lets you and me see how this goes.  

Updating weeklyish.