Comic Strip in Cut Out and Keep Magazine

The new issue of Snippets features a small comic strip about Spring cleaning by yours truly! Be very careful: it has a hint of cute in it.

Comic Book In the Works

For whatever it's worth, I've just started laying out the structure to a new comic I'm making. I've developed tons of ideas in the past, but none of them have seen a publisher because I never finish. This time I've decided to adopt Doug TenNapel's working method and I feel really great about it. 

I took out three note cards and labeled them "Beginning", "Middle" and "End". I wrote 1-3 sentences summarizing what happens in each part of the story, then turned each card over and made a numbered list from 1-3. Under items 1-3 I listed the beginning, middle and end of each section of the story, giving me a really solid framework to build my story on and it's a relief to have such a simple, straight-forward format (it sure beats all my plot notes in my sketchbook, in-between drawings and notes for other things!).  

Next I'm going to pull out more note cards and plug in more details in each section. Anyway, I thought I'd share my success story so far with using Doug's approach.

Flipbook From When I Was 14

Want a good laugh? Check out this flipbook I made when I was 14!

Old Drawings, Part II

Here are some typical sketchbook drawings from 2003.

Old Drawings

So I was cleaning my room for the first time in about 7 months and I found this box full of my old stories and poems and drawings. I felt ridiculous looking at it---the pictures and poems brought back a lot of memories, and reminded me that I've always been a nerd.

The picture on top is a drawing I made when I was 15, of the superhero Spawn and the Violator, for a schoolwide contest. I don't think I ever turned it in. I forgot how into superheroes I used to be.

The bottom pictures are my sorry attempts to imitate Jeff Smith's Bone characters, Superboy, and then a few things I made up. They were all drawn with a pen (I didn't believe in using pencils!) and on a loose sheet of printer paper. I have stacks and stacks and boxes and boxes of old drawings. Seeing them all is making me really think about whether or not I'm making drawings that matter right now.

Anyway, I wonder what my pictures will look like in another 10 years.

Sidewalk Chums

Sidewalks get lonely too, so I made some sidewalk chums.

If you would like your very own sidewalk chums, send me an email and I'll come by and make some just for you (---so long as you don't live too far away!). 

Q. Where do I send my email?

A. To jess.smiley@gmail.com

Learning to Ink, Part III

Ugh. I think I'm getting worse at drawing with ink. I drew people and parts of people at Alex Bigney's reading from his Talking to Tesla (more on that later), then went home and drew some more, but the magic never seemed to happen. 

Well, that's not entirely true---I loved the process, loved figuring out how to interpret hair and soft edges, etc., but I was pretty bummed by not being able to make anything that was even okay. 

It was just one night, and who knows what'll happen with tonight's drawings. It's nice trying to draw things I've drawn my whole life, but in a new way. It's a good challenge and a different kind of fun.

Nap Time

(Click to make the picture turn big)

Okay. I'm getting better at keeping a journal, comic-style. 

Pretty soon, when the time is just right, I'll start posting daily comics. Before that happens, I'll need to get a good scanner that will work with my laptop. Right now I'm thinking about getting an Epson Artisan 700. That way I could also make prints of my work. 

Hm. 

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear 'em.

Square Magazine/Post #200

The Wedding Issue of Square Magazine just came out, along with an article on being a single twenty-something guy in Utah. I was asked to make a picture that went along with the article, and out of all the juicy imagery it conjured, I liked picturing a single guy as a walking horror movie best. 

Here is our single guy, with green skin, one too many eyes (and one oozing yuck!), scales, claws, and webbed-hands. All those poor girls are running away, racing toward the Stress Less article. 

*Secret: the girl wearing a scarf is my wife. But don't tell anyone!

E-Stamps

Lea Redmond runs a beautiful little shop called Leafcutter Designs. It's a great place to find pencil scrolls, recipe dice, puzzle cards, the World's Smallest Postal Service (my favorite!), and electronic stamps. 

"Isn't it sad that emails don't have postage stamps? Well here's something to brighten up an email with a bit of color and whimsy. Lick and stick one of these e-stamps onto an email by saving it to your computer and attaching it to the email."

Head on over to Leafcutter Designs to get some fresh stamps for your e-mails! You can even send Lea some of your own stamps for her to add to the site! Hooray!

Ink Drawings, A Dream, Photography

Here are a few new pages from my sketchbook. What's different about the drawings? There are heads! Entire heads! Oh man---I took a deep breath and tried some faces.

I was still nervous enough that I worked out a pencil drawing first, then picked up my favorite lines in ink and corrected the drawing as I moved the brush. 

Pulling a brush across a page and slowly turning it is such a great action to be a part of! I closely watched the tiniest hairs on my brush tap the page and then stiffen up again. I absolutely love repeating the fragile creases around eyelids, and around corners of mouths, and in subtle folds of skin. Last night I even dreamed I was drawing these same pictures, and I was still paying close attention to those little creases and folds in skin.

A lot of these eyes look very photographic to me. Do you see it? I'm pretty sure that, even if I were making these drawings from life (which is also on my TO DO list), they would look pretty similar to these (which have been drawn from photos), because most of the images I've ever seen have either been photos or heavily influenced by photography. 

There is so much to be had from cave drawings and I'm always picking up a new book or looking for new pictures of them. For one thing, cave drawings have such a different visual language. Even the syle (for lack of a better word...I'll have to figure out what that word is, though, sometime) used by cave painters has such a life to it. 

These eyes I've drawn look photographic---like they're snapshots of someone who knows they're being photographed. It's funny how, in some ways, the camera doesn't really capture life after all. Think of a photo of a pitcher throwing a baseball and a blurred crowd in the background, standing anxiously. There is no time where we'd see a baseball frozen in the air like in the photograph, yet most people talk about realism as an integral part of photography.

That's not supposed to be a knock against photography---just a thought. A nice hike up the canyon Saturday led me to attempt drawing the rocks and water in the Provo River. I hope to do it again soon, even if it means coming back with sorry attempts.

"And It's Only Getting Better, Baby"

My friend Gheybin makes incredible pictures and I think your day would be a whole lot better if you went to http://www.gheybinny.com/ 

What?! Who made that rad picture?! Oh, that was my friend Gheybin. Gheybin made it.

But what about this one? It looks a little different, but is still way rad. Yep. Gheybin made that, too.

Who would put this in a blog titled "Yee-Haw! Sha-Zam!"? Gheybin would. I'm telling you: this girl makes the sun rise.

For a good time, click http://www.gheybinny.com

Learning to Ink, Part I

On my list of goals to accomplish for 2009 is "Learn how to ink with a brush". Well, really, it's just to start toying around with a brush and learning how I draw with one. I'm really timid about the whole thing (which is partly why it's one of my goals), but I finally started spending some time making careful lines with my brush, and falling in love with the wet depths of black ink. 

These photos show a few pages in my sketchbook. I've been focusing on eyes, which is kind of strange, now that I think of it. I've been making well thought-out dots for eyes at best in my other drawings, but using a brush pulls out a different focus for me---allows me to see things differently, and see different things differently. 

I like drawing eyes, because of how recognizable they are---if I mess up drawing an eye, everybody knows it. The delicate lashes and masses of eyebrow hairs are a lot of fun to draw, and I'm figuring out new ways to portray the effects of light and shadow. Leaving breaks in dark areas for light to peek in, and noodling with narrow creases around the eye and lids are so much fun to draw. Now I'm scared about drawing full faces and figures, but its the next step.

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Did I mention you can buy some of my paper cut-outs here?

If I Was a Girl, Part IV

If I was a girl I would totally wear this outfit.

Oh! And don't forget to buy your very own paper cut-out here.

Limerick

Jess grew a ponytail

it become his most prized detail

but when children walked by

he could hear them all cry

"That guy looks like he's a female!"

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

-jess smart smiley

Don't forget to buy a paper cut-out or two of mine from the Shiny Squirrel!

Paper Cut-Outs for Sale

Do I have some news for you! The Shiny Squirrel (known for its great selection of original work and prints by artists) has added four of my man-made pictures to its shop. That means you can buy some of my original paper cut-outs and show all your friends how rad you are and how you have such incredibly good taste in pictures!

Click here to see them.

WARNING: NEW CUT-OUTS ON THE WAY!

The Parade!

Joel Priddy runs his very own Parade of pictures, where parents can download and print hi-resolution black and white images for their little ones. It's a great way to share pictures that people can use at home!

Here is my contribution (you can click the pic to make them grow!).

Avalanche

I've started making videos of myself playing songs---partly to remind myself of how they go, and partly 

to share with my friends. Every now and then I'll play a little concert locally, and it's always such a fun 

experience. I wonder what will become of all this music...

Logo

This is a logo I made for a cleaning products company in New Jersey. The company was really easy to work with---friendly and straight-forward (and they liked my idea!)---and it made for really enjoyable work. 

They Went Swimming

I LOVED making this picture! More and more I want to make pictures like this on a big surface. Get a big canvas and cover it with houses of paint and paper creatures and crayon walkways...I have trouble justifying such a big purchase, though.

This is another picture I'd love to see as a print.

Light Bugs

The world of details and newness and picture-making is really calling out to me right now.  This picture took me a good forty minutes to make, while my little boy jumped on the couch and my wife did her homework. I used tracing paper, lined paper, pieces of mail, pencils, markers, a bandaid, a quick drawing Mikelle made the other day, and a ghost I cut out and lost last September (it became our friend's beard!).

I'd love to make more of these little scenes on a bigger surface.

The Topography of a Page

Something that's been on my mind for a good two or three years now is the idea of paper as a landscape. Just like the hills and valleys of a city, I wonder what the citizens and growths of a page are. I get kind of weird, I guess, about relishing in the dips and dry ravines of a crinkled piece of paper. Hovering my hand above the surface of a page, and feeling it's jagged peaks and shadowy creases is such an intimate experience---it teaches me things I couldn't learn anywhere else.

This picture was made by crumbling a textured gray paper, then slowly scratching curves into it's waxy surface with a salad fork, then cutting lines and shapes from both sides with an Xacto knife. A few accents in value were made with a white charcoal pencil. 

The actual mark-making didn't take long to make, but I've been learning how to make those marks and how to apply and combine them for about three years. I love making colorless impressions on a page that only show up when turned just so into the light, or when they become a bowl of shadows or a belly on the backside of the page. I love making both sides of the paper become the backside and the frontside---making them interact, and creating a dialogue between the two.

I'm always amazed how so many pictures can be more than the sum of their parts, a pictorial synergy of sorts. It shows that I love the process, but the actual making of a picture is just as appealing to me as the finished piece.

Cats

Here are some playful cats I made with charcoal pencils, graphite, crayon, colored pencils, and pens.

I think I've always liked the idea of cats more than the animals themselves, but I've been liking 'em more and more over the last year and a half. I've also started eating spinach.

If anyone wants to talk about "cute" in pictures, this post might be a good place for it. We'll get a good forum on Rob James' "Cute Face Theory" and my thoughts on the "Cute Factor". It'd be nice to get some comments from Andrew Christensen and Kelly Larsen, too. 

Huh.

How to Make a Desert Noises CD Cover

Wild Horses

Detail from "Wild Horses"

Before I put anything down on paper and pictures are still sorts of ideas in my head, I think they sometimes look like the picture above---a mess of details, specific shapes and colors, but no apparent object or message. 

It's always a tough decision for me to take that messy picture in my head in only one of two directions: I could stop there, and flesh out the beautiful shapes I see, and the layering of textures and colors, loving the process as I create, and how the marks make a picture all their own. It's a pretty new way of doing the same thing I've done all my life. 

I remember even back in third grade I'd draw some creature I made up. Something with a big, heavy body, then long arms and a goofy face. "What is it?" Someone would ask. "Just something I made up," I'd say. And that was usually the end of the conversation. "Can you draw a Panda Bear?" And I'd draw a happy-go-lucky Panda.

In junior high when the same thing would happen ("What is it?" "It's just that---I made it up."), and someone would ask "Can you draw me?" I'd either feel like I had to prove that I could draw (because, obviously, drawing things that were made up didn't really prove anything about my drawing skills) and I'd end up only getting a partial portrait done in class, or I'd draw them as a sort of cartoon, and then they'd be offended. "What'd I do?" I'd ask myself. I'd never ask the offended what was wrong, because everyone thought it was obvious, too. "I don't get it."

Of course I didn't entirely "make up" the creatures I drew. I thought I was just making them up, but I only knew to draw a feathery wing on a slithery back, because I'd seen a feathery wing and a slithery back before. Not together, of course, but I subconciously put big and small pieces of other things together to make something new. 

This picture is the same kind of thing. I've taken elements used in all sorts of artwork: faint lines, bold lines, pencil lines, pen lines, areas of textured paint, torn pieces of colored paper, imprints on the page, etc. These are techniques used by artists of "realism" to make a face, or a flower, a dog, or a bowl of fruit. This picture is a celebration of shapes, symbols, values, composition and exploration. I love sharing the process of an image, because so much of the process is usually hidden in a picture. For me, the process shows that the picture was made by a person. It shares a sense of time and movement. This picture seems more alive to me than others.

When I have this mess of imagery and excitement inside me, that wants to become a picture, I could choose to celebrate the parts, or I could develop it a different way and find other connections between the parts---what object do these pieces make together? And then I usually end up with a figurative picture, or a story of some sort.

I love that, even though the only recognizable figure in this picture is a pink horse, there is still a story and several figures in this picture. I can't escape 'em! 

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"Wild Horses" is the first in a series of images I'm going to be making prints from. I'm on the lookout for high quality print presses, that use archival inks and papers. I want to share a personal experience with everyone that wants to see it, or have their own copy.

"Wild Horses" was made on my front porch, in the wind, with my boy, using: charcoal pencils, gouache, crayons, tracing paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens, ink, glue, scrapbook paper, erasers and tape. It was made on 7x9" Fabriano artist paper, mounted on mat board.