Dueling Models

I had a fabulous time last Wednesday at Dare to Draw at the Society of Illustrators. They featured two athletic models choreographed into battle poses.

I really enjoyed the snarling faces the guy made throughout but, even more, I was grateful for the way the woman could rarely suppress her smile. It reinforced the feeling that the mock violence was all in fun.

I don't know these people and can't presume to speak for them, but to me it felt indicative of sexual difference. The man seemed able to invest his imagination fully in the drama while the woman couldn't shake her sense of the silliness of it all. This kind of imagery is for boys, and the girls just play along.

There was one beheading pose that I found particularly hard to deal with until I was able to connect it in memory to that episode of Sherlock where Irene Adler is about to be beheaded but her executioner reveals himself to be Sherlock in disguise.



In this decades long epidemic of murderously suicidal young men committing huge atrocities all over the world, please please please keep it unreal.

Student Spotlight: Bryan Douglas

Here are some class projects  my Figure Drawing for Graphic Novelists course created by one of my star students-- one of my A plusses-- Bryan Douglas.

Among other figure-cartooning skills building challenges, Bryan was asked to create action poses from Fleischer Studios model sheets (in this case, Popeye), compose a comic page from a live model, and complete original comic pages of his own characters. As you see, he responded to the assignments with wit and imagination:

images (c) Bryan Douglas 2013

It's always a thrill meeting and working with such talented young artists. Classes are enrolling right now and starting soon. Come join us!

Comic Artists, Publishers, Poets, and others...

Attempting to catch up on sketches of various public speakers...

Here are cartoonists at various venues:

Tom Hart @ SVA

Leela Corman @ Word

Rick Parker @ MoCCA Fest

Gahan Wilson @MoCCA

A couple of panels from the 2012 Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival:

The Narrative Collage: Tim Hensley, Charles Burns, Tom Spurgeon, Anouk Ricard.

Emerging International Comics Networks: Carmela Chergui, Tommi Musturi, Dunja Jankovic, Ines Estrada.

I show up regularly to the New York Comics and Picture Story Symposium, but sketch only rarely:

Jason Little

Matthew Thurber

Leah Wishnia

Keren Katz

Arlen Schumer

Mark Delboy

Jack Feldstein

Steven Kroninger

Kurt Hoss

Mark Lerer

Victoria Roberts

Seymour Chwast

From the Barney Rosset Memorial at Cooper Union, 5/9/12:

Haskell Wexler

David Amram

Fred Jordan

Peter Rosset

A reading at Poet's House in July, 2011:

Albert Mobilio

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Evie Shockley

Jena Osman

Myla Goldberg performing I forget where (sketching in the dark):

 I think that's it for now. Anyone interested in my sketches of anonymous people from cafes, subways, life drawings, etc, please follow this other blog.

Classes, students, and a call for entries

This Tuesday, January 15th, SVA is hosting their Information Session for the Cartooning & Illustration department. Come talk to me about my courses, Cartooning Basics and Figure Drawing for Graphic Novelists. 6:30-8:30 pm, 209 East 23rd Street, room 311, 3rd floor.

Image (c) Rocio Duque 2012

One of my star Figure Drawing students, Rocio Duque, has posted her dramatic and intense class project on her blog. Look for more great comics from Rocio in the near future.

Image (c) Dane LaChiusa 2012

Another top student, Dane LaChiusa, is putting together an anthology of comics about fatherhood. If you're a dad or would like to make a comic about your dad, let him know. Here's the book so far.

See you Tuesday?

Sketches from "Comic New York," a symposium at Columbia University

Let's see if I can catch up on posting my symposium sketches.

Last March, I managed to attend most of Comic New York and managed to sketch most of the participants. I never managed to sit too close and hence may not have managed to achieve many likenesses. Still and all, here's what I did:

 Political New York  Moderator: David Hadju, Denis Kitchen, Sabrina Jones, John Carey


Alternative New York  Moderator: Gene Kannenberg jr, Bill Griffith, R Sikoryak, Charles Brownstein, Julia Wertz


Keynote: a conversation with Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson  Introduced by Eric Wakin





Periodical New York  Moderator: Eddy Portnoy, Irwin Hasen, Emily Flake, Ben Katchor, Lauren Weinstein



 New York as Breeding Ground  Moderator: Danny Fingeroth, Al Jaffee, Miss Lasko-Gross, Tracy White, Dean Haspiel
 
Comic New York and the Academy  Moderator: Jeremy Dauber (Columbia University), Jonathan W. Gray (CUNY/John Jay), Paul Levitz (Columbia University), N.C. Christopher Couch (University of Massachusetts/Amherst & the  School of Visual Arts)

 

Some lovely ladies in the audience:

 

Some artifacts in the room: