Some sample comics pages of mine

I am supposed to write a little something and upload a blog post every Thursday not because someone told me too but because I in my haste obliged myself to do so. But the shop was busy and I couldn't sit down to compose anything so instead, I've decided to share some pages from various short comic strips, a tiny sampler of strips I've done with actual stories in them!

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AFIR AFOR AFIN AFON

I draw on the computer with a mouse. My arm is killing me. 

I should get a tablet and all that but you and I both know how 'should' works. It'll be a while, although it already has been a while. It wouldn't be so bad if the desk was the right height but it isn't so I'm all out of place. I also draw at a desk and sometimes I don't sit in the right chair. I also don't draw for 6 hours on end but I do go on jags where I am drawing every day for an hour or two a day.

One of my preferred methods of digital drawing is actually collage. I use an existing scanned image, made by me and uploaded or found on the net, which I then manipulate. I usually do it like so; turn image into high contrast black and white, select a random bit, copy and paste, overlap, crop, continue, finish, use finished image as initial image, start again. 

The image below was sourced from a digital illustration of a bird that I drew to satisfy some desire to prove (to myself and others) that I could draw a bird. I drew the bird. It was ok. I cut it up and made this thing.

I like it because I like asemic nonsense, metal iconography, industrial culture aesthetics, minimal forms.

Studio View w Bunnies

Where the bunnies multiply - My studio inside Monastiraki

Recent Bunny Paintings 2017

Here are a bunch of recent bunny paintings. 

They all date from this year. I had a rather large acrylic painting on panel outburst come unbidden in deep Montreal January. It was a good way to get through the mid winter and magically I was able to sell some online which countered the rather poor performance of my retail space which is routine come the freeze.

I have been making my peace with these little bastards. I have left far behind me some of my high art pretensions and embraced the fact that I enjoy these things and it's ok to make them. I used to have no problems at all in this area but sometime several years ago I started thinking way too much about things like the art world. Even while I knew perfectly well the non hierarchical glory of things like mini comics, zines and mail-art.

In any case, the bunnies are here and they are multiplying. I tried rebranding them as demons a few years ago but they've bounced back as bunnies. Sure they could be mice or bears or owls or bats too. they are made of joy and nightmare. Some are gleefully happy, others brood. They aren't psychotic or malicious though.

I make sure that the facial expression is one I can honestly sanction before declaring it done.

Some below may not be finished, most are. 

I'm sure there are other things I wanted to write concerning these things but i think that may be it for now.

Thanks for reading this far and thanks for taking a look at the critters below.

You are welcome to contact me via my brick and mortar shop, Monastiraki (drop in or email) to inquire about availability, sizes and prices.

EmojiBunnies : heartsick and revolting art for the weary citizen

I spent the day yesterday painting acrylic bunny creatures on either found pieces of wood scraps or right over other bunny paintings on panel. I paint over a bunny if I find that it's facial expression is somehow lacking.
In any case I feel I had a productive day. I usually post crappy photos of my painting on FB to show my friends and maybe get someone interested in buying art.
I've made peace with painting bunnies.

What I haven't made peace with is the bullshit violence that occurs all around the world.
Yesterday there were a few attacks in London. I was home when I settled into the angst of responding to this bullshit in my own way.

The kid was sleeping and my dear one was out for the night having supper and cocktails with friends. I was home alone and still felt the creative fires burning. I turned to my handheld device and a cheapo drawing app to express myself vis a vis terror attacks, environmental degradation and all around heartsickness at the handful of prickish billionaire industrialists and their buds that make up the global scene of warmongers, slave traders and culture killers.

Here are those digital responses, pop art masterpieces composed of the appropriately relevant emojis, bombs, trucks, shit, fire, planet earths, soccer balls, disco balls, etc.
Some of my finest work ever if I do say so myself:

The Time Flies

Always thought that would be a great name for a garage band, The Time Flies. Kinda SF, kinda horror, kinda mind bending. In any case, it does and this year it did. My to-do list hung over from February lies faded and incomplete taped to my desktop. It's November now and I don't know what happened. I had some serious plans. Our late winter illnesses spread out and engulfed the spring and then summer said a brief hello while zipping by on it's bike and well, here we are.

So I'm simply checking in to say I did, to send another 'there, ok?' into The Universe, a symbol of my waddling intentions.

I remain confounded about my role as shop keeper / gallerist. I need a serious leave of absence away from the public, I take things way too personally and, to boot, I require full time assistance here. I need a crack team of devoted interns to hoist up my flagging morale and to help me get my papers in order. papers like scraps and drawings and photos. My official papers, taxes and the like, are not the problem this time.

I think the problem lies in the fact that the heart of my collection is the art that I myself have made coupled with the papers and objects I consider sacred. These collections are in disarray. They are stacked here and there and I've lost control of them. Before i had a shop my special collections remained tight and tidy, i knew where everything was and I'd go through the boxes and organize.

Those boxes are now equivalent to several cubic meters of material and I feel at sea. With that, a tiny muffled cry into the wilderness, heard slightly over my stubborn reminders to myself to be grateful, I send my hopes and my desires.

Rocknroll.

Wr/Dr

Twice a week, very Tuesday and Thursday, I drop the tyke off at daycare and head for the third floor corner seat of the McGill library to pore over the Blue Book, which is my business strategy and enhanced lifestyle notebook, and to pound out an average of ten pages of minimalist comics, today I did twelve.

The Blue Book is where I've been detailing plans and thoughts for my business, Monastiraki, and my art and career in general. In blue ballpoint pen, I write down schedules, attainable goals, ambitions. All in a fairly clear and organized way, cross referencing entries and everything. I do this to warm up. I get into it. Sometimes I find some book on branding and read a page or two to bring the experience up a notch. This is new for me. My notebooks of yore have been havens for scribbles, stoner notes and doodles, all words hardly revisited let alone legible.

When that's done, I crack out a couple of mechanical pencils and my clipboard full of fresh 8.5 x 11 white sheets and start drawing minimal little heads, six per page, each with a few words, telling a simple story. I started this comic project last year and mostly spun my wheels, creating a frustrating stream of consciousness comic about the false starts of the creative process, all in real time.

Since the new year, since I've turned the corner, as they say, the comics are considerably less about humming and hawing and more about the thoughts and experiences I've been having rediscovering my path as a magician who is intent on authoring his life proactively. It's been liberating to say the least. I draw simple lines and write simple words in a way that feels like journaling and comic making. I thought today that if I were to make a zine of this stuff, which I will (for TCAF 2016), I may write as part of my bio on the back cover that the author has shown he can draw elsewhere, this is about something else.

I've often derided what I call 'Head-Coffee-Head' comics, comics that simply show the characters head in some panels, and a coffee cup or other mundane feature in other panels. Well folks, I've come a long way and I'm done for the time being busting my back on ornate guitar solos. I've searched for a way to write and draw quick stream of consciousness work and I've found it. It's one floating head and a few words in an open panel six times per page. I've got a nice stack of the stuff now and I like where it's going. Some of the pages, even when they are part of a sequence, seem to stand up on their own, like a serial, so I'm thinking hard of uploading them as a webcomic. I'll also make a series of 12 or so page zines, each with a simple cover design that repeats, kinda like King Cat.

I'm truly excited about all this stuff, Wr for writing and Dr for drawing, whether it's journal and notebook focus or simple comics. Stay tuned. I'm going to share this stuff.

Making Faces

I can scribble at a frenetic pace. I launch into asemics and soon enough see faces. That place between calligraphy and cartooning becomes evident.

There is a certain collection of gestures I trace when drawing with a pencil or a ball point. Those tools allow a certain grind not feasible with felt tip markers or brush. The line coils out tightly into vertical drops and spins back up, jags along the page, spirals out, repeats. It happens over and over again. The above drawing is more an illustration of me trying to break up the gestures into discrete parts, otherwise I get a long 'run-on sentence' wobbling all over the paper.

Profiles and three quarter views of faces emerge, ugly rockers peeping out behind hairy helmets. These faces come easy, a scribbly dowsing, some lines suggest that nose, others that squint. There is a direct lineage between these faces and what used to be the alien bean motif I was obsessing over years ago, a voluptuous mango replete with fleshy folds. These are the raw cousins of those beasts, the brutish toss offs vs the anal line work of clean hard psych.

These guys are immediate and brooding. They satisfy me and prod me towards pure cartooning. They become finished if I have the patience. They become people, at least the masks that people carry.

Colour Me All Of Us ! My new colouring book

I recently completed a colouring book. It's 20 pages long with an introductory poem about how fun and easy it is to colour things. Now I'm well aware of the craze but must say that this is not an adult colouring book. I mean adults can colour it of course but I made it with the thought of entertaining kids. Sure, there are odd jokes in it that maybe only big people would notice but it's meant for kids. the lines are thick and chunky an the drawings are mostly of bunny creatures being the silly cartoon characters that they are.

I drew the whole thing on photoshop, using a large brush or eraser and switching back and forth between black and white, zooming in to clean up lines, changing brush size to taper lines. The process is a little like whittling. I'd draw a thick black line and then use an equally thick white line to carve the first line down a bit making it wonky and uneven. It's a fun process, easy to do, with minor head aches.

After each drawing was done I'd plunk in my little name logo I designed for the project and then print out the page, I brought a stack of paper to the copy shop and had the whole thing printed on smooth white cardstock and then had it spiral bound, the intro page printed in hot pink. A first edition of 200.

I've been selling these things for 20 bucks, offering a decent set of 12 markers as part of the package.

The whole thing has been pleasant, well received by my friends and family and has provided for me a necessary respite away from the pressure I have recently given myself to produce my next graphic novel, which is so far nowhere to be seen. Getting back to simple and fun cartooning has been a breath of fresh air. sometimes i get so serious minded about my art practise that nothing gets done.

This got done. If you want one message and paypal me at yesmonastiraki @ gmail.com and ask for shipping details. Thanks.

Maybe my favourite one. I like to think of this one as vintage European kids art.

Ice Cream Angel Tramp

Modern Puzzle face finger pointing that-a-way

Bold and brash critter hollering !!!!

Another Noisy Booklet

Lately, when I find myself at the copyshop running some graphic errand, I either fish into the recycling bins for fodder or hopelessly remix whatever images I am carrying and whip off an edition of ten of some weird little noise book. Here is one, dated the 18th of January, 2006. I end up mailing these things out to whoever I happen to be artistically enamoured with at the moment. This one seems to be composed of two drawings, overlapped and remixed, that I drew for Warren Hill's zine "2$ (Comes With Mix Tape)"

Poseidon Council

In 2002 Sam Shalabi and I
laughed our heads off making a very serious prog record,
An Sphinx Awoken. Our band ? Poseidon Council.
This is the record sleeve I made at the time for our grand opus.
We released maybe ten copies into the world.
Now this underground classic is available from notype as downloadable files.
They gave it a snazzy new cover.
Have a listen...but know that Merlin, too, is listening!