Thursday, April 29, 2010

Page 6

Page 6 from my book project. I would love for you all to come over to the blog and click on follow. Might help me when it comes time for a publisher. Thanks. Mostyn
mostyncomics.blogspot.com

Andrew Remington Bailey - Inaugural Post





Hello everyone! This is my first post for EATEN BY DUCKS, I was just recently invited by Sean Äaberg. All of the images above are screen-prints, or drawings made to be screen-printed for a series I was doing in my previous semester at an art school in Canada called the Ontario College of Art and Design. I am going to be taking a bunch of summer zine/comic classes there so hopefully I'll be posting quite a bit throughout the next few months. Let me know what you think of my work, any critiques would be incredibly welcomed as I will be doing my thesis year this coming fall. Thanks!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

My Penanggalan Obsession


 Ever since seeing it in the D & D Fiend Folio, I've been a bit obsessed with the Penanggalan, a female vampire from Malaysian folklore. A good part of Agony a Go-Go was dedicated to the Penanggalan, and was, I think, one of the primary reasons people found my site, back in 1997. I noticed that my images or writings on the Penanggalan appeared on several mythology and folklore websites, including some academic sites, at the time. Not sure if I was providing a helpful service, since I had greatly embellished on the mythology.
   There's just something so odd and demented about the Penanggalan. There was a similar monster in European folklore which consisted of a wizard, whose head and entrails separated from his body and floated around performing unsound deeds. The Penanggalan's purpose is pretty straight forward: it eats babies and small children. 

   It's preferred method of attack was to come up through the floorboards. I'm not sure if the original folktale involved her forcing her way up through the floor as we see here- perhaps she had some more discreet method that Southeast Asian architecture allowed- but I liked the idea of this disgusting thing blossoming out of the floor.
   Apparently, you could protect your home from the Penanggalan by having the Jeruju thistle growing around it's perimeter. The Penanggalan would become ensnared in its barbs and be trapped until morning, where she would be vulnerable to attack. The Penanggalan uses her long hair and innards as tentacles.

   Anyway, I have a whole bunch of drawings of Penanggalans, some of which I've posted to my Flickr page. The last thing I'll post here, before being rude and going on too long, is a sampling of just how demented my little obsession was: two pages of notes from a sketchbook, back in 1993:



Sunday, April 25, 2010

NEw Pages

Hey everyone, come to this link, read first 5 pages of my book project. I hope you enjoy and would love for you to click on follow this blog button. Thanks
http://mostyncomics.blogspot.com/p/this-side-up.html

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Failed drawings explanation

Hi, I usually dont like to show unfinished or failed drawings, because when I finish or re-use ideas from failed drawings, the impact will be lessened because you have already seen the ideas in some form. But since it has taken me so long to make a substantial post of my own art, I figured I would just do this and break my rule for once.

This is really bitter failure too, because I was doing these for an exhibition coming shortly, the first professional thing I've ever had and I've kind of blown it. I feel really guilty about it since the curator is very nice and enthusiastic about my work, and although I have been taking it seriously, I havent got fully into my head how good an oppurtunity this is to take advantage of. I still have time to do a picture, but it sadly wont be the big fantastic thing I would've wanted to show.

I had heard several times that really terrible artists block comes around my age (23) but I had assumed the tough time had come early for me when I was 14. The problems are exactly the same as they were back then and there is no great mystery to the solution to get past this rough patch, I just really really have to love what I'm going to draw. But the required amount of love for the drawings has to increase as you get older. It is most frustrating because there are lots of ideas of mine I love, but I dont know what to do with them to make them lovable enough to draw with the energy to finish it.
This block is really a blessing because it forces you to climb much higher, pretty much forces you to become a better artist, give up or become a hack.

The difficulties started in November when I started doing an idea I really adore with 3 black robed figures standing on an odd platform and hanging off it at different sides. I tried it about 3 times and it kept feeling too familiar and boring, I'm still puzzled what to do with the idea.

Then when I moved back to the lovely village of Eaglesham in December I started drawing this flying worm guy tied up in a straightjacket thing. I tried it 4 times and I currently have no idea what to do with it.

Then in January I tried to draw a warm friendly topless milf 5 times and I think I know what to do with the idea now.

Then I started with this idea of a hundred headed man with two or three bodies being held in place in the sky by 4 diagonal castles. I adored the idea. I ended up trying this about 10 times, 5 of the attempts are here. I didnt throw them out because I needed to keep them to re-use the ideas properly. Each time I was so damn sure that it was going to work. The major problem with this idea was trying to convey the size of the hundred headed giant without using some visual device I've seen too often, like a little man in the forefront of the image and something in the distance to compare sizes.

The problem with this one is that I started bringing in too much architecture to compare sizes and I got carried away with the baroque designs and it completely taken the right feel out of it. I really want to re-use some of the designs for a comic sequence someday. These was supposed to be further tied up hundred-heads in the distance and beneath them was the ground many miles down.

The problem with this one is that I started putting in an extreme emotional struggle in it that I really wasnt committed to. There was supposed to be very many of these hundred headed two bodied men being lifted up into the sky by these weird evil heads with ropes made of lots of arms. around the evil heads there was ornate black steel with little men inside. Below there was to be moons and an enromous gothic landscape at an odd scary angle.
The hundred-heads were supposed to be fighting against the evil heads and swinging the arm ropes around. The hundred-head at the front was supposed to be swinging the arm rope connected to the evil head into the forefront, the ornate metal surrounding the evil head would have little men falling out, showing the size comparison.
I felt this was too much like something out of a videogame or movie, something I'd like, but I didnt feel good about it looking so much like God of War. I wanted something that felt fresher.

Then suddenly I fell in love with the idea of multiple snake-like shapes of lots of conjoined horses coiling around in a big maze made of their bodies and the hundred-heads could ride them. In several attempts the size comparison would be done by this deformed thing holding out regular sized people in his hand. I ended up feeling that the deformed man taken too much focus and I also felt that him holding people out felt a little cliched too.

In this one there was supposed to be thousands of people swirling around the place, but it overwhelmed the horses in the focus. The people were close up but still very small, and tiny in the distance in huge clusters of people.


With this one I wanted to do a two picture sequence which would be an easier and better way to show the size comparison without using devices I find a little tiresome. You can see the two women on the hundred-head, and I got more detail into the heads. So I could just do the main image and have no other things competing for attention. Drawing it was fairly enjoyable at points, but it was mostly a joyless experience and I knew then this wasnt going to work.

It probably sounds petty and seems like I'm being too stupid and impatient to finish these, but believe me when I tell you that these drawings would be awful if I did finish them. When you start to realise something is wrong, your enthusiasm sinks dangerously low, then you know the quality of the drawing will go progressively downhill and will look very uneven in imagination/passion. It just gets IMPOSSIBLE to keep drawing it when you know those things. I really tried hard to stick with it each time.
Every time I started a new attempt I thought "I've got it this time!". I know the reasons they didnt work. I really did love the ideas and I will keep them for later drawings, but I think I just cant do too much repetition in a drawing, I need to keep it varied, I think this is one of my biggest weaknesses, but I end up using it as a strength. It annoys me I cant do large buildings with repeating sections, so I always have to change each section. This is the same with having to keep doing the same horses, it was unbearably boring to do.
When I return to that horses idea it will be a lot wilder and have loads of other stuff going on, and it will lose a certain power that the original idea had, but atleast I'll have the enthusiasm to finish it.

The other problem with doing these epic scale drawings is that I become too conscious that these could be impressive to other people. My motivation to finish these was very much to let other people see them, which is wrong for me. I need my ideas to be so fun for me to draw, that it is not overwhelmed by outside concerns. I always want to do these epic scale drawings, so I need to learn to keep other people out of my head.

All these drawings I've talked about since November I was really certain would be easy because I thought each one was so cool. But I realised sometimes you need so much more to make it work. Sometimes I need to think about why I even bother drawing at all, because it was so joyless so much of the last few months. I am completely set on the idea of it having to be really enjoyable, I dont want to do drawings that take 60 hours and not even enjoy it. I need to keep stopping myself from being a guy who draws out of habit to keep ticking ideas off the list and keep doing it for the joy. My entire life is built around my art, the way I experience everything is connected to the hope of expressing those things properly in drawing and painting. Since my life is built around it, actually doing the drawings is the only thing I can do to find any real lasting happiness. TRUE CRAVING to create an image is the most important thing to actually making good art.

I'm starting to think "Entertainment" is a better idea than "Art" for me. It's easy to be arty, but so fucking hard to be entertaining. Entertainment gets a bad name probably because it is associated with pleasing a broad audience, but forget about the aspect of who and how many people to entertain, think about how much it takes to entertain YOU. It is a toweringly enormous effort to be entertaining, just measure how much each thing you consumed recently entertained you. Blockbuster movies and saturday night TV are not entertainment because they never entertain. Very rarely do I see anything apart from music and nude girl photos that entertain me in a substantial way that makes me feel really great and happy. I've bought over 200 movies in the past year and only about 20 really made me feel amazing.

I know we were to move away from talking too much about our philosophies to art, but I think this post needed it.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Ray Murphy - Escape Through Time

These are two pages (numbers 1&5) from an older RM story which I retouched and "colored" in grayscales recently. It was reprinted in in the bi-monthly Dutch comix magazine PULPMAN to which I'm a steady contributor at the moment.



Thursday, April 22, 2010

Marcel's Intro


Hello to all.

A few words about myself: I have been drawing comics as long as I could write a little (age 7). As the typical art school drop-out, I started self-publishing in 1987, inspired by the DIY wave of the punk era (although I wasn't into punkrock musically). Contributed to numerous fanzines and the like. I am proud to be with the Le Dernier Cri family, with two silkscreened books, a poster and a Tarot card set. My style has changed a couple of times through the years. My current art is a lot lighter, inspired by medieval imagery. I did two graphic novels in this style, Sine Qua Non and Inferno (the latter is a playful adaptation of Dante Alighieri's masterpiece) which met with some success in Holland, France and Hungary. At the moment, I am working on a follow-up, based on the lives of saints. Please note that I am not religious nor a lapsed catholic with a grudge. History fascinates me and when dealing with the Middle Ages, religion comes with the territory.
I hope to share some neat off-beat artwork on this blog. This picture is from my latest LDC book, Bestiarium. Thank you.

The Neighborhood

The Neighborhood
Jug Wine Cafe, Burger Duck & the UFO Arcade are viewed from the roof-top Chill-Out spot where local Danglers are enjoying themselves.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Sunday, April 18, 2010

This is the first time I'm posting anything music-related on EBD - well actually it's the second time since I posted the video I made for the song "Martyr" before, but I had less reservations about that as the visuals kind of fit into the spirit of the blog.

"Jahiliyah is the sound of the breath of feral children and the ostentation parents strutting around brandishing their keris proudly shouting under their tempurung."



I still have some work to do on the album... The order of the songs are a bit scattershot as for now, and I still have a couple of songs to record include to unify the latter part. But for now it's a pretty good representation of a kind of sound I've spent the last two years trying to achieve. Another thing in the works for Anatomy is a short musical made out of animated and live-action clips based on evangelical public access shows. I've nearly always had some sort of visual in mind when recording... some of these songs even started off as musical accompaniment to animations I was working on, and they just grew organically from the process.

Finally, here are some other songs I've recorded in the same period. Enjoy:

Covers of Jandek songs:





Finally, Like Heat, a song I collaborated with Jujuice, and artist and musician from Brazil.


Saturday, April 17, 2010

hope you come and see.


Here's the new blog and will have comics posted more soon.
http://mostyncomics.blogspot.com/
51 pages story boarded now and 4 inked

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Decapitated Monster Head, blagh!!!!

Here's something I've been working on this week, it's going to be turned into a tattoo and put on a friend of mine.

GOOD vs. EVIL - Man vs. Metal-issue

my contribution for GOOD vs. EVIL's "Man vs. Metal"-issue coming out soon. it's a collaboration between me & my young friend oska wald hassler of CHUCK-A-MUCK. all the text is what arnold schwarzenegger says  as the the cyborg in the first "Terminator" from 1984.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Was Quetzalcoatl a Viking?

Was Quetzalcoatl a Viking?
"Many of the Mayan peoples have historically worshipped a god called Votan, and many of them even changed the name of the third day of their week to Votan in honor of that god. Their records indicate that they learned of the worship of Votan from a people who came to the region on the Gulf Coast between the Yucatan Peninsula and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the island that we now call Cuba, and had come from even further north. A core of them actually settled in the northeastern portion of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Furthermore, at least one Mayan temple has a mural (or at least had a mural — it's faded considerably since its discovery and is now invisible to the naked eye) dating back to around 1100 AD that depicts yellow-haired, light skinned men on longboats lined with decorated round shields and dragonhead prows fighting (and losing to) the Mayan population, which is depicted as dark-haired and -skinned. The appearance of the ships in this mural (I've seen facsimiles of it) is remarkably similar to the appearance of the Norman ships in the contemporary Bayeux Tapestry.

I definitely believe that Germanics reached what is now southern Mexico in fairly large numbers during the Viking Age, and I would not be surprised at all if worship of Quetzalcoatl began with contact between the American Indians and those Germanic visitors."
The Mind Masters

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Eugene Weekly Cover 4-8-2010

Eugene Weekly Cover 4-8-10
This was just printed today, the art director called me because it's a feature story on TRASH. I must be communicating my ideas clearly. I'm also compulsively drawing character heads...
Uzi Reptoid & Variants
I released a new series of collectible stickers...
STICKER PLEASE!!!
They are available in my newly unleashed sticker & card vending machine!
Goblinko Sticker Machine
Also, my new band "The Latrines" is growing into itself. We started off playing alot of covers of stuff by KISS, AC/DC, New York Dolls, T Rex, Sex Pistols (RIP Malcolm McLaren), Alice Cooper, the Damned, & have FOUND OUR SOUND & are writing original tunes including "Meth Mouth".

Junk Heap 3


















Monday, April 05, 2010

Wallpaper



I made some wallpaper. So just point and click and set this as your background.

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Preliminary working of a new page


May end up being colored. Not too keen on the top font. Click to enlarge and read.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Orson Welles, Chimes At Midnight

Chimes At Midnight
...Is the film Orson Welles considered his best work. It has only been released on DVD in Spain briefly, as the legal rights to it are in long fights and have been for a long time. Youtube is one of your few options.
I havent watched it yet, but I have saw some exciting misty/windy sequences of it. Enjoy!

World's Finest Comics #177

Here's a new cover that I did for the Covered! Blog that went up there yesterday morning! This time around I decided to do a more "classic" superhero cover. Lemme know what you guys think!

My Cover:

The Original: