From the Archives: Graveyard Study

This is a study I did for another piece I was working on.  Sadly the full piece was never finished.  There may still be hope for that one yet, so I won't give anymore details as I want it to be a bit of a surprise if I do pull it off.  Regardless though, I am a bit enamored of this quiet aged graveyard scene.

A brief and tiny hurrah - this is a new record for me:  This post makes 30 posts this year.  This is the greatest number of posts I've done in any given year since I started my blog.  I know it's not much, but I'm looking at it as the beginning of something good.  :-)  My goal is to post a minimum of two posts every week, more if I can manage it.  Time will tell.  I know this is a mediocre achievement, but this is the first year I've taken my blog and truly pushed it.  Thanks for reading so far.  I hope this has all been entertaining.

{Pen & Ink, Sharpie}

From the Archives: The Ocean

Sequential art is so often based in practical reality, the moment to moment action.  I guess it's my fine art background that makes me want to bring something more into that equation...or maybe just a yearning to explore the possibilities of the medium.  

How do you get that medium to explore the emotional ambiguities of poetry?  The sequence becomes almost anti-story in that view, favoring the emotional to the moment focused on action alone.  Much of current comic book storytelling is point to point plot driven... Mike Mignola being an exception to that...P. Craig Russell another.  

Emotions rarely give regard to barriers or limits or even time.  The emotional moment is a collection of triggers and often time is not even a consideration.  The emotional space allows for the entrance of the lyrical, the dreadful, the exquisite.  It takes several steps outside the day to day to give room to the emerging feeling. 

This piece is in the same vein with some of my other strips where I've combined poetry and imagery.  Another more finishied attempt at turning poetry into sequential art is here.  I drew this mostly with a ball point pen and added darker areas with a sharpie. 

{Ballpoint pen and Sharpie!}