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!

An Interview with Jeef

So Burning Building Comix #5 is finally printed and done! Anybody anxious to order it before I get a chance to put it on the website can drop me a line. I tell ya it feels pretty damn good to finally have it done. Finally all the stories can be completed to build a full building. But now what? Well, as you can imagine I've been thinking about that a lot. In fact I've been thinking about it for a long time, cause I like to have my ducks in a row. I think I'm going to plan a series of special blog posts to explore this idea. The inspiration for this idea goes back to the Gallery show I took part in for the Diane Tanios Gallery. On my Bio area in the Gallery, my wife pointed out to me that my name was actually spelled wrong! Funny enough, it wasn't Zwirek that was misspelled, but Jeff. Yeah, so it was transcribed as Jeef Zwirek. During the opening reception for the show, my friends and I were talking about it, and we decided that when I become a hugely famous comic artist and move to Europe I should publish under the simple moniker of Jeef.

SO, for years now I've always been absorbing stories about how people became successful in their lives. Whether I was looking for inspiration or just good ideas, any time I heard an interview where it got into how a person got started, and when they got their big break, my ears would perk up. Now comics people have these stories as well, but I've never been to satisfied with the details that they divulge.

In that spirit, I'm going to start a series of blog posts called "Becoming Jeef" or "The Road to Jeef" I haven't decided yet. The idea here is to document the process of taking my comic and hopefully getting it published, and then out into stores and all that that entails. Along the way I'm sure, I'll have words of advice for other people trying to do the same thing. (I know I'm not accomplished enough to give advice, but I like too, and really it's gonna be mind set type stuff anyway) Basically it will be the important points in making my career, till one day when I'm rich, pretentious, and living in France.

So look for those to start soon.

In other news, I recorded another interview with good guy, Elliott Serrano today. Elliot invited me to record with him on his video podcast over in Schamburg at Dreamland Comics. We recorded two segments and they're gonna be posted in two different places. The first will be on Comics Waiting Room, that should be up for Monday. The other went long and is gonna have to be broken up into segments for Elliott's other video podcast Comic Culture Warrior. I had a great time talking with Elliott, and we seemed to hit on all sorts of topics. I apologize for going on too long. I'm kind of a quiet guy until you get me started.

In addition to dying a little bit every day with each White Sox loss, I've been in the process of coloring Issue #4 of Burning Building for Top Shelf's Website.

I'm also almost done reading Moby Dick. Recently saw this beautifully done piece of Moby Dick done by Tom Neely, of "The Blot" fame. Had I the ducets, t'would be mine. Plus I thought, I'd share another segment from the book that I thought was quite well written. It's at the end of Chapter 58 and I won't bother for context.

"Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all of the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou can'st never return!"

"One Insular Tahiti" is a wonderful turn of phrase I might have to steal for a title some day.

Oh! I've finally sunk to joining a social network, so anybody else out there on facebook should go make me their friend, cause it seems that the point to that thing is to accumulate as many ancillary friendships as possible!