JanerBlog

Art Supply WIN

When I teach workshops, I always warn my attendees to not get overly attached to specific art supplies, to just use what's at hand. Getting hung up on not having your special pencil only causes one more block between you and producing actual work.

In this, however, I am a bit of a hypocrite, because I'm really picky about some of my art supplies. Some things I don't care about all that much, like which fine line pens I use, but there are several other art supplies that I insist on using, after years and years of trial and error. These things I order by the boxload, so that if a manufacturer stops making the item I love, I'll have time to find a suitable replacement before I run out of supplies.

Which brings us to today's find: A large supply of the out-of-manufacture Staedtler Integrity 9505, which I found by the literal dozens on ebay. Free shipping means I bought 16 of them. Man, I love that pencil. Beautiful grip, nice weight, perfect eraser, no lead wobble. I am a happy camper.

So, readers. What're your must-have art supplies? Writing supplies? Coding supplies?

Guess What I Have

Seriously, the whole package is so gorgeous, from the hand-stamped wax-sealed stacks pass to the bookplates to the Spinoza patch to the adorable Luther sketch (Dylan, how is your hand still capable of gripping a pen so soon after your release party?!) to the gorgeous original watercolor of Ariana which is so getting framed and going up on my studio wall next to the last page of Speed's Finder:Talisman. I am thrilled. Best hundred bucks I've spent in a long time.

Congratulations, Dylan, for giving flight to your fancy, and in such stellar style. May there be many more.

I've got the Blues!

Carol Burrell's got SPQR Blues going again! YAAAAY! Seriously, if you haven't already been reading this wonderful webcomic, go do so now. You've got a little time to catch up before the new strips start.

Right now, if you head on over to her website, you can see the pinup I did for her last spring. it was a whole lot of fun to do, and it let me do all sorts of fun research into Herculaneum and the surrounding area.

Here it is, just for extra coverage:

Here're the locations I used for the triptych's backgrounds:

• Mus: House of the Genius in Herculaneum


• Felix: House of Mars and Venus in Pompeii


• Spendusa, with her and Felix's daughter: Woman with a shield Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale

Uniques Tales #4!

Paul and I are featured in the newest issue of The Uniques Tales by fellow Michigan self-publishers Adam Withers and Comfort Love. Go check them out! My pinup is of The Ambassador, and is colored by Frank Rapoza, who did a really great job.

Thanks to Adam and Comfort for this wonderful opportunity to play in their sandbox. I had a lot of fun doing research and sketches for The Ambassador, and I think she's a heck of a character -- what if Wonder Woman were a progressive Iranian Muslimah, and spent the majority of her time working for diplomacy rather than punching people in the face? Now that's my kind of superhero!

Yay!

Finished a neat little thing I can tell you about soon. Feels good to have finished something, however small.

Pam commands, so mote it be.

Pam Noles commands that you listen to this BBC Radio play about The Fisk Jubilee Singers, which means you should, because Pam is awesome.

The first time she ever pointed me at this story, the first thing I could think of was what a great comic it'd make. Now, whoooo do we know who already has an encyclopedic knowledge of the story, a mighty love for comics, and is known to be a good (and published!) writer in her own right? *whistles innocently, stares pointedly in the direction of LA*

SO YOU WANT TO START A WEBCOMIC

Check out this very nice post from jeph jacques, So You Want to Start a Webcomic. Even though my webcomic's still on haitus (and nothing new to report yet, sorry gang) this is the exact same advice I'd give. Go read.

New Pinup!

Over the last couple of months, I've been doing some pinups for folks. I don't want to share them all quite yet because I want the giftees to have the right of first post. Ironically, the last one gifted is the first one to make it out on the intertubes, so I finally get to post it!

Guy Davis is hard at work on the third graphic novel of his creator-owned series The Marquis, so I made him a pinup to celebrate.

(click to embiggen)

I can hardly wait to see what fresh new horrors crawl out of his wonderfully twisted brain. If you're not familiar with Guy's personal work, you may know him from his long run on Mike Mignola's BPRD from Dark Horse. A whole bunch of other folks are doing really gorgeous Marquis pinups, and Guy's collecting them on a special blog. Go have a look!

My Husband is the Awesomest

So Paul is a darn good designer, and recently, he's had a couple of really major coups. Some of them are still in the pipe, but here are a couple I can tell you about.

First, a while back, Thomas Dolby had an open contest on his blog to design the tee-shirt logo for a one-shot concert he was giving in London. Paul won, and you can see the logo being used in the concert here and here and here.

And secondly, Paul's a regular visitor to Warren Ellis' Whitechapel Message Board, where each week, Warren posts a new "Remake/Remodel" challenge, where artists and designers take a crack at re-imagining old, forgotten (and usually public-domain) characters. Paul usually does at least one design a week if not more, and his submissions are usually really well received. Fast forward to this week, when Warren gave the following challenge:

You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for a comic called SUPERMAN. It is issue 1 of this book.

You have been told that Superman is a man who dresses predominantly in a shade of blue, and wears a red S symbol. You know nothing else about the character.

The cover must include a logo and the text THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE DARING EXPLOITS OF THE ONE AND ONLY SUPERMAN.

And that's it.

It's up to you what kind of company you're at. What kind of comics you make. How you translate that description of Superman. What era you're in. Who you are, even. Go nuts with it.

You have one week. Go.

The story's received quite a bit of press in the last couple of days, and guess whose image is getting shown far and wide?

Yup. He is my husband. He is full of awesome.

Smile!

Raina Telgemeier has a brand-new graphic novel out this week, called Smile!

Raina and her husband Dave Roman are such wonderfully awesome people, and Paul and I owe them both for our Avatar: The Last Airbender obsession. Further proof of their awesomeness is found in this awesome trailer they made for the book:

Go! Buy! You will not be disappointed.

New look, new url

A few years ago, a domain name speculator bought the FieryStudios.com sitename and -- if I recall correctly -- tried to get me to buy it from them for an inflated price. I waited them out, and a couple weeks back it became available again, so I snapped it up for the next ten years. Take that, jerks.

To celebrate, I finally took some time to spruce up the old thing, and good heavens, what an embarrassment. Tables, bad code, quirks-mode-inducing DTD declarations, and some code snippets that I swear go back as far as 1998. Yes, I've had a website for going on twelve years. You kids get off of my lawn.

Anyway, it's up now, and should be reasonably bug-free. Shout if you see anything wonky.

New Year, New Decade.

... and my only resolution for this year is to make some comics.

Raven sketches

Here, have some lovely ravens. Nothing like scavenger birds to make the season festive.

These are all fast brush-pen drawings from photos taken at Denali National Park in 2006. Only the last four birds had any pencils underneath them; the others were just exercises that turned out nicely. Enjoy! You may be seeing more of their cousins, soon.

Link dump

I read all three of these articles within about a 12-hour span. They all kind of tie in to the same theme, so I'm grouping them together:

"Fuck Them": Times Critic On Hollywood, Women, & Why Romantic Comedies Suck (h/t to Rich Watson for this one)

Why James Chartrand Wears Women's Underpants

Marvel's Girl Comics Announced -- The lineup sounds great, and I'll most likely be picking up the series to support all my friends and acquaintances in the book... but dang, I'm with Johanna on this one:

I dream of a day when a comic created only by women doesn't get tagged with a stupid title like Marvel's Girl Comics. In fact, I dream of a time when it's not even special enough to remark upon, instead of being some kind of attention-getting stunt that ends up resembling a plea for charity. "Please pay attention to us -- look! we're letting the women do superheroes!" But we're not there yet, still.

Also, I saw two good articles describing hipster racism today, in regards to crafters. Anyone who's stood within earshot of me knows that I'm all in favor of both DIY projects and art-for-art's-sake -- but these articles serve as a reminder that art (including your art's "branding" and your own self-presentation) doesn't exist in a societal vacuum. In addition to being responsible to our "artistic vision" or "muse" or whatever hackneyed metaphor we use to describe our inspiration, artists have to consider how our art affects those who receive it, no matter how cute or clever we think we're being. (And yes, I'm feeling especially pricked by this article, because I used to think stuff like this was cute and funny, until I started looking at it with a more critical eye. So now it is my duty to spread The Gospel of Pants.)

Signal Boost: Project POORCRAFT

Hey, everybody: my buddy C. Spike Trotman is starting up a brand-new project and needs your help! It's called Project: POORCRAFT and it's going to be a guide to living frugally in urban and suburban areas, told in comics format. But don't take my word for it; head on over to Kickstarter and hear Spike tell you about it herself.

Tell it, Joey

Joey Manley, ladies and gentlemen.

I don't even consider myself a webcomicker. I'm a graphic novelist who publishes her betaware on the web.

Or used to. And hopes to do so again soon.

Well, here's a first.

Yes, you read that right. Heinrich Uhrmacher, a fictitious watchmaker who fictitiously died in 1685, just got un-fictitious junk mail from Google. Google's never written me before. Should I be jealous?

SPX 09 Con Report

Home from SPX and soooo tired... but if I don't do the con report tonight, I'll never get to it, so here goes:

Had an absolutely fantastic time, as always. SPX has always been my hands-down favorite show, and this year was no exception. I got the chance to hang out with old friends and new, sell a metric butt-ton of steampunk jewelry (and even a few books, too!) and talk shop with a bunch of creators. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't vote in this year's Ignatz awards because I hadn't read enough of the participants (bad artist!), so I'm hoping to do better next year. This was also one of the best shows I can remember for sheer quality of available books -- I was blown away by the offerings, of both traditionally-published graphic novels and gorgeous, innovative, risk-taking minicomics, and I bought more stuff this year than I can ever remember buying before.

There was one other fun thing that happened -- Paul and I marked our 5th anniversary on Saturday. What better way to celebrate than by selling comics and surrounding ourselves with fans and friends alike? Thanks to everyone who stopped by to wish us well.

I didn't take a lot of photos, but here're a baker's dozen to look through. The captions will have to suffice for the remainder of my con report, as I am mighty tired.

Asian American Comic Con

This weekend is the Asian American Comic Con, at the Museum of Chinese in America, brought to you by Secret Identities, the first-ever graphic novel anthology of Asian American superhero stories (check out a sneak peek of the book here). It's also going to kick off the first-ever Kiyama Award, named after Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, the author of The Four Immigrants Manga.

If you're in NYC this weekend, go check it out!

Shoutout for Steve Leiber and Sara Ryan

Steve Leiber has some incredibly good news lately... he and Jeff Parker's long-awaited spelunking comic (yep, a comic about cave exploration and rescue) is here:

It's soliciting in Diamond's July PREVIEWS to ship in September, so head on down to your LCS and pre-order yours today!

His other good news involves a movie based on a graphic novel he illustrated a while back called Whiteout. After several delays, it looks like it may be nearing theatrical release. The book is wonderful -- can't speak for the movie yet because the movie execs yanked the trailer before I could watch it. But you're going to need to read the book before you see the movie, right? right?

See, there's a reason why I'm telling you to buy Steve's books. It's because in addition to his really good news, he also had some stupendous bad news today:

My wife and I were just burgled. They stole our laptops, so we have no computers at home anymore, and we've got several days ahead of us of running around dealing with police, insurance, checking to make sure backups work, etc. This means that all the time at home I'd planned to spend doing promotion is gone, as are the machines I'd planned to it with.

Lots of folks have asked "what can I do to help?" The answer, if you have a comics audience, is blog or tweet something about the book. Send them to the site, or this specific post, or just tell them that Parker and I have a new Image book coming out. Your RTs and message board notes can make a big difference.

This sucks extra bad because Steve and his wife Sara Ryan are two of the nicest, kindest people you could ask to know. Sara's also a writer and has some really wonderful books out. So you should go and buy her books, too.

Hope your luck turns back to all-good soon, Steve and Sara!

Comicsqueeeeeee!

It's new comic book day! Or rather, it's new comic book day, a day late, for Paul and I because we were both sick as dogs yesterday and have spent all but about ten hours out of the last seventy-two sound asleep, getting over the con-crud.

But! Today brings two squee-worthy events!

First, the pinup I did for Dave Petersen a few years back is featured in this month's issue of Mouse Guard! I'm doubly excited, because this is actually the second time the pinup's been featured in the comic, though you may not have seen it the first time, because it was being all stealthy and stuff. Thanks so much, Dave! I'm really flattered.

Second, Jeremy Bastian's long-overdue Cursed Pirate Girl is finally here! This is another one of those comics about which I just cannot shut up (oh, those poor souls who remember my Long Tail Kitty fixation), but with good reason -- it's brilliant, and gorgeous, and weird, and wonderful. After having finally read the first issue, it turns out that my blatherings are understated, if anything. Seriously, guys. Go get this book right now. Jeremy's illustrations are so tight and bizarre and fun and old-school. Judging by the first issue, the story looks like it's going to stand up to the art, too.

So yes! Much squee from me.