A Self Portrait,
just so's you know.
On reflection, I take way too long to get my sorry butt in gear and add postings to this site. I have a bad case of procrastination and I think it may be getting worse.
I just finished reading a very annoying book, The Glass Castle, written as an expose, of her own humble beginnings, by Jeannette Walls. My wife, despite it's depiction of how badly some children are raised, found it fairly riveting but
I found it to be an inditement of people who won't make the hard choices and where that leads to.
There is one anecdote, about a moment in a classroom, in college, when a teacher challenges her about, "what would YOU know about depravation and hardship..." and Jeannette complete wimps out. That was the moment to break out, for me and put the teacher in her place, while at the same time freeing Jeannette from the tyranny of her own fabricated past.
Oh, well.
I also 'scanned over' a book about the British cartoonist, illustrator and stage designer, Osbert Lancaster.
Entitled 'Cartoons & Coronets', it was a reasonably, in depth look at the man and his work. I had no idea how talented, in an all around fashion, he had been and it made for some interesting reading but it bogged down in a few places; hence the scanning!
One other work, that I had always overlooked, perhaps because of it's, somewhat, amateur cover, was James Van Hise's
How To Draw Art For Comic Books.
It is quite the volume, although to be fair, to some of the criticism aimed at it, since it was published in 1989, it deals a whole lot more with the cerebral process than with the manual labour of drawing a page. I found it insightful and full of useful 'gems' of information.
The comic book world hasn't turned out anything much, of interest to me, in the last few weeks. It isn't unusual for there to be a lull, at some point in the year but this is starting to feel more like a slump, than a lull!
I am looking forward, to the concluding issue of Terry Moore's Rachel Rising. This is his third series, Strangers in Paradise, Echo and now Rachel, and while I have enjoyed his work over the years, I don't know if I will follow him again, should he start a new book.
It's not him, it's me. I have steadily lost interest in the storylines, not just in the pages of the comic books but in movies and TV too. It must be my age, I guess, but there are too many plots about people making bad decisions, or no decisions and then bellyaching about the life they end up with!
It's not the bad decisions, per se, it is the whining about a lack of divine intervention, or other intervention, to make the situation better.
Here's a secret truth,
IF YOU DON"T LIKE THE LIFE YOU ARE LIVING,
then CHANGE it!
Ah, but there is the problem, in order to effect a change, decisions have to be made and that is where a whole lot of people fail the test, because they will not make a decision and live with the consequences.
Anyone can do anything, as long as they are willing to face the consequences of their actions.
None of our lives are perfect but for the most part, hopefully, we can all live with the imperfections.
If the imperfections include, being beaten by a ranging drunk wife or husband, on a regular basis, then it is time to make a decision; unless you enjoy that sort of thing!
Anyhow, that is my rant for today.
In closing, I would like to 'raise my hat', to the guy who runs the Blog, Saved From The Paper Drive,
for posting decent sized scans of the first 56 issues of the old British weekly comic book,
Countdown.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Go here:
http://savedfromthepaperdrive.blogspot.ca
Here's some art.
Dudley Fisher from 1939
A Frank Miller Layout Page from Daredevil #185
Page 15
Art Tutorial on Drawing Eyes by Deviant Art's Artofpan
Sergio Pablos Handout Doppler Pose
John M Burns, one of Britain's graphic art treasures,
from the pages of the first issue of a weekly
comic book from 1971, called Countdown.
