New Illustration for The Common Review...

Here's an illustration and initial sketch I did for The Common Review for an article on a man teaching Shakespeare's "King Lear" at 8am.

"Asthma" by John Hankiewicz

My pal, John Hankiewicz, has a new collection published by Sparkplug Comicbooks and I gotta say, this is his most ballsy approach to that thing we call "comics". John plays off of the formal aspects of the medium, the use of titles/labels, time and setting, and even distorts the figure more so than he has ever before, giving abstract and fragmented emotional responses. Can you tell I'm digging this new book? Can you tell I'm telling you to buy the sucker? Do it here or at a comic shop in the not-to-distant future. Here's some more info from the Sparkplug site:

Asthma is a collection of recent comics by John Hankiewicz. From story to story, even page to page, the book mixes a startling range of graphic and narrative styles to form a dreamlike whole.

"Amateur Comics" creates a wordless lyric of body, chairs, and space. "Martha Gregory" delves into the rhyming psyches of a young woman and an old man. "Jazz" charts a single day through the lens of the unconscious. Also included are the visually abstract "The Kimball House," the autobiographical "Westmont Is Next," the elliptically humorous "Dance" (printed in black and red), and several other ineffable pieces.

At once perplexing and moving, disturbing and playful, Asthma explores the formal and emotional reaches of the comics medium.

Sacha Mardou's Playing Cards...

Sacha Mardou has several playing cards she's taken around to cartoonists and drawers of all sorts and had them doodle out some pretty cool stuff on 'em. I forgot that I did one of these and I came across her Live Journal page and found it. She has several other cards too, as well as (of course) her own very cool artwork.

Above (click for larger version) is: First Row: Jessica (Paperrad), Ben (Paperrad), Onsmith; Second Row: Zack Soto, Andy Roberts, Jason Robards; Third Row: Dan Zettwoch, Dylan Williams, Karen Schneider.

A sample of Sacha Mardou's work:

Four Self-Portraits...

These are four self-portraits that I did for a class, in the styles of Renaissance, Baroque, Post-Impressionism, and Cubism. The first was Renaissance and I decided to show myself doodling and so I kept the theme going in the remaining ones. Eh, whattya gonna do? It's friggin art school...