The Fall Semester Begins

I love the autumn. Above are some pictures I took outside of work with my camera phone today.

Since I was a kid I've loved the fall, and I guess it's in large part to Halloween. But it is also because of the weather. The crisp cool days sit just right with my body somehow, as if it's the natural state it desires to be in. I always loved the smell of the air when the season was starting to turn. It seemed to be so clean and clear, and it seems like I smell it less as I get older. Is this not noticing it as much? My allergies? Or is the scent tied to an emotion I've moved past psychologically? At any rate, good things seemed to happen to me during the fall, and the colorful trees and the sensation of crunching leaves underfoot on grass leaves me feeling happy in a way that's melancholy at the same time. I guess cause it's not the bright sunny kind of weather one associates with good moods. Also, the fall doesn't seem to last nearly as long as it did when I was young. When I'd rake up big piles of leaves to jump into. Now it seems it's over in a blink, just a colorful glimpse between summer and winter.

In other news. I just received a great review over at sequart.com for the whole Burning Building series. Thanks to Rob! He really seemed to GET the whole series, and especially the last issue, which I was concerned about, as it's a little tricky, formally speaking. So please go and read the review and check out the other great articles!

Also I wanted to announce a new first for me! A signing!

Yes, I somehow was lucky enough to be invited to sign along with Elliott Serrano and Art Baltazar at Dreamland comics in Schaumburg Illinois on November 8th between 1-3.

At least that's what I've been told as of now.

This will be my first signing at a store, and it should be a good time. I'll update here as the information becomes more solid (although I have no reason to think this isn't solid).

I've just recently picked up this book by Ivan Brunetti.

It came along with a copy of Comic Art magazine. It's been out for a while and I didn't have the dough at the time to pick it up so I'm glad I came across it again. This book is basically a breakdown of the classes that Ivan Brunetti teaches here in town. I've always wanted to take a class with him, as he's such an influence on my style, and a tremendous cartoonist, but he didn't begin teaching art classes till years after I left college.

Well Ivan breaks down his teachings into courses, and I plan to follow each one as if I were in one of his classes, along with all the appropriate drawing. I think here, I'll also do special blog postings dedicated to each course and show my results. I'm really excited about this and really look forward to trying a different method of developing comics. Stay tuned!

Full Color Black Out!

So I'm pretty bummed I couldn't make it to SPX this year, which took place over the weekend, especially since I've heard it was a good year, with lots of good product and sales to be had. Maybe I'll be able to swing the full convention circuit next year.
Anyway, the fine folks at Top Shelf have put up the third Issue of Burning Building #3 in FULL COLOR! Please go here to check it out. Also a while back The Chicago Tribune did a video piece of the Diane Tanios Gallery show and I've just found it posted recently. Plus since the completion of the series, I thought it appropriate to take some "book porn" shots of the completed building in all of it's glory. Hey, you can build your own!

On a sadder note, my Chicago White Sox finally blew it the other night. They had a long, extremely frustrating season, with a second half that pissed me off more than rush hour traffic in the rain. But alas they managed to put together some very exciting well pitched games at the end, to make the season feel successful. I was at the critical "Black Out" game, however, and that was as thrilling a baseball experience I've had, and since I'm broke, its the closest I'll come to the playoff environment.

Here's another passage from Moby Dick that I liked quite a bit.

"Death seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this, but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all receptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them -"Come hither, brokenhearted; here is another life without guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life oblivious than death. Come hither! put thy gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry thee!""