| Dorothy Thompson |
[Apr. 27th, 2008|08:00 pm] |
View from my bus stop on the left and Dorothy Thompson on the right. Journalist, humanitarian, Nazi-baiter and the second wife of Sinclair Lewis, I've just finished reading Vincent Sheehan's 'Dorothy and Red' a beautifully written account of their troubled marriage. She was awesome, really. Sigh.
Thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) crazycrone for the tip of the hat.
On a side note, does anybody know of any good instructional books on half-tone washes? My efforts above are unsatisfactory. I remember a Walter T Foster book from my youth that talked half-tone washes but I've had no luck finding it again. Right now I'm trying to teach myself by copying black and white photographs. But there's got to be a better way, right? |
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| Take off, Landing, International Airport |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|09:14 pm] |
Hats off to American Airlines for getting me to New York to meet my mum off her plane from England on the day when most flights were cancelled! It was an excellent long weekend and it all started here:
The little girl in the right hand corner was very cute and I enjoyed listening to her mom read the story of 'Mister Garrulous' or whatever Mister Men book it indeed was. Unfortunately a bit of eraser got scanned over her nose. Little Miss Slapdash, that's me. |
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| Far from home |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|09:01 pm] |
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| Top Five for March! |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|02:34 pm] |
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I have things to scan (including my entry for the next Whores of Mensa drawing challenge) but over-exerted myself scanning pages from the next issue of 'Manhole', so here instead are the things Ted and I have been enjoying this month (not in any preferential order):
1. BBC 2's Time Trumpet!
2. Louis Malle's documentaries on DVD from the library. 'God's Country' especially great.
3. Reading Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document. Thanks Ellen!
4. Making and eating food from the Candle Cafe Cookbook.
5. Reading the new Injury#2, hot off the press! It rocks! |
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| Notes on Ozu |
[Feb. 29th, 2008|11:42 am] |
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- restricted colour palette
- no close ups
- limited use of camera angles
- 3/4 body shots or profile shots
- lingering 'set up' shots to indicate place, mood etc
- repetitive shots- places, objects such as the red kettle in 'Equinox Flower'
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| Happy 123rd Birthday, Sinclair Lewis |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|10:53 am] |
Sinclair Lewis has been my bus stop and lunchbreak companion all winter, so here's to him on this day, the 123rd anniversary of his birth in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.
I'm currently reading Mark Schorer's biography of him and I'm so enamoured. A friend, Edna Ferber, descibes him in his 20's:
" 'He was a gangling, red-headed popeyed fellow: shambling, untidy, uproariously funny. Together we would go gesticulating and jabbering along the New York streets, leaving a procession of startled faces as we went....he and I had built up two characters which we always assumed when we were together. (He) was Gus, the janitor of a mythical office building, and I was Tillie, the scrub woman. We talked in a bad German dialect..not very funny except to us:
"Tille, you vas earning goot money on new chob, ain't?"
"Ja, only for my knees, them new kind stone floors."
This would go on for hours. He was better at it than I- more outrageous. His linen was the grubbiest, he had no money. He would escort me to the door of one of the literary parties to which I had been bidden but nothing could induce him to come in.' "
(©Edna ferber, 1938, 1939 from "A Peculiar Treasure")
I don't know how widely read Lewis is these days. He won the Pulitzer (which he rejected) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (which he accepted) in his day but most of his books seem to molder in the library stacks, sadly.
I highly reccommend him. He's easy to read and very funny and insightful. His slanginess is quite dated but it's in that charming way, quite like how Salinger belongs firmly in the 50's, so does Sinclair belong to the 20's and 30's. Each book is vastly different- this is a writer who used to sell plots to Jack London! He had plently of good ideas to spare.
I really enjoyed Main Street, Babbit, Arrowsmith, Dodsworth. Elmer Gantry was fantastic. Anyone who's even thinking of voting for Huckabee should read it! Even his pulpier books like 'Mantrap' are a lot of fun. But my Sinclair Lewis pick for Election Year has to be It Can’t Happen Here.
Sinclair Lewis has really helped me adjust to life in these United States.
"I love America" he confessed, but I don't like it." |
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| Gwendoline Riley? |
[Jan. 13th, 2008|03:26 pm] |
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| Happy New Year! |
[Jan. 8th, 2008|11:59 am] |
I'm very excited that it's 2008! I'm hoping that it will be even better than 2007, which was a great year for the May-Mardou camp. I'm looking forward to more of the same: art projects, domestic bliss, spending time with good friends and seeing my family again on these shores. Also, I'm looking forward to the Bush administration ending and I'm trusting my new American neighbours and countrypeople, to elect someone groovy and trustworthy in their place. You can do it America! I believe in you!
Anyway, to kick of the New Year, Luby and his art-crew put together the second Famous Fiction Art show. If you're in St Louis it's still running at the mad Art Gallery, Soulard. I suggest you go.
Otherwise, here's my two entries for now.
Hippypants and Peacebear from 'Eightball', a comic by Daniel Clowes:
Pasty and Edina from the TV show Absolutely Fabulous:
I'll upload more pictures from the show at a later date. |
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| Joyce Carol Oates |
[Dec. 6th, 2007|09:15 am] |
The sublimely talented Joyce Carol Oates was in St Louis on Monday, to give a talk at Washington University, so I hot-footed it down there with my pal Drew to hear her speak. She was really great though criminally cut short (by the Man). My notes are on the left ofthe page. |
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| Media Week (part two) |
[Nov. 23rd, 2007|02:15 pm] |
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Myself, Ted and my friends Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch are amongst others featured in the current St Louis paper, the River Front Times. Read it here! |
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| media week! |
[Nov. 21st, 2007|09:02 am] |
Sorry, the second half of this article is not available in Large print.
Apparently! |
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| scanner is brek |
[Nov. 16th, 2007|05:00 pm] |
I can't scan new images this week as our Scanner went thunk and decided that black is the new black.
So I'm cross-posting last months entry for whoresofmensa's drawing challenge, my drawing of Julia Kristeva.
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| Places Rural |
[Oct. 31st, 2007|08:57 am] |
happened 10/27/2007, drawn 10/28/2007 |
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| SPX 2007 |
[Oct. 16th, 2007|09:21 pm] |
(Kevin H, Jeffrey Brown and Anders Nilsen enjoying SPX)
( Read more ) |
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| SPX 2007 |
[Oct. 10th, 2007|01:04 pm] |
I'll be at SPX this weekend, helping out at the Buenaventura table. I'll have some issues of 'Whores of Mensa#3' and newish my mini-comic'Washing Machine' for sale. Hope to see you there!
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| Marguerite Duras |
[Oct. 9th, 2007|08:45 am] |
Marguerite Duras, novelist and screenwriter for the Alain Resnais film, 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', maybe the most perfect film I've seen. I'm currently reading 'The Ravishing of Lol Stein'. The translation is a little tricky but Duras blows my mind. |
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| Sketchbook Covers |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|06:47 pm] |
On my recent trip to England I found all my old, pocket sized sketchbooks and bought them back to the Staes with me. The contents of those sketchbooks are a load of old rubbish for the most part, I'm still kind of fond of those covers I made. Here's a few of them:
(August-November 2004)
The 'postbag' snippet was from a photocopy of a magazine from the 60's. The letter read "I like mini-skirts but I'm a brunette and I find the hair on my legs rather spoils the effect. Do you recommend shaving them?"
(May-October 2003)
(May -August 2004)
Wait? Could that be...Peter Slade on the back cover? Giving a presentation in Sao Paulo in 1978? Let's hope so.
(November 2004-January 2005) |
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| What the Lady Needs this Autumn |
[Oct. 1st, 2007|02:37 pm] |
Thanks to the largesse of Ted May, you can now buy my comics online. Just scroll down a bit. Actually, add some of Ted's comics to the cart whilst you're at it, why don't you? I want to go to Paris and every little helps.
Actually that shopping cart is for US customers only as it costs about $10 to send a $2 comic book overseas now.
UK customers should go here I guess. |
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| Sketches from back home |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|04:20 pm] |
Ted and I spent two weeks in England. First up, a week in Manchester, my home town to see my family, friends, culture (chips and curry sauuce, art shows, alcohol).
Next stop, Devon (cream teas, sun, sand surf, that sort of thing).
Well anyway, we had sun. And fun. |
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| It's a Crackin' Little Country |
[Sep. 23rd, 2007|04:17 pm] |
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