Metafiction

Hello! I'm finished with my essay now! Until I figure out how to show it to you all, please enjoy these goofy illustrations I made for it, which are more or less Stranger Than Fiction fan art. Ha ha ha ha. XD

Oh yeah, the new Fall album is released tomorrow! I honestly don't know why I even care because the last one was so terrible, but I'm getting up early tomorrow just to go into town and buy it! Just like I did when Control was released on DVD. Good times.

When E Numbers Attack!

This is a piece for my final unit "Functions Of Illustration." For this unit we have to choose a topical news item and create three pieces of art based around it: one to "comment," one to "inform," and one that's "decorative." I won't try to explain these areas because it would just be boring as hell. ;p

I've chosen food additives harming children (causing ADHD, etc) as my topic. So, this is the "comment" portion. Uh. I think. It seems that I basically just like drawing fire. FIRE!!!! If you don't know what E numbers are (I didn't before coming here), they're various food colouring additives used in the UK which have chemical numbers prefixed with "E." Most of these chemicals have already been banned elsewhere. They've been talking about banning them in the UK for ages now, and still haven't. Case in point: I went online to find more articles and found some dating back to 2002, 2004...saying EXACTLY THE SAME THING as the articles I'd gathered from THIS YEAR. @_@ Yeesh!

My essay is almost finished and is shaping up to be quite good, even if it does sort of lack focus and jams too many ideas into one essay. I might even post it on here, because it usually helps to have some written content on a blog, doesn't it? ;p

Arrrgh

Seth going ARRRGH...um...I don't know why. I drew it last night, watching TV (WHOA!) and he was going to be playing guitar and then it...turned into this. I'm trying to work on drawing better clothing folds. For months I've also been trying to work on drawing people sitting and/or somehow contorted or curled up, like this. Because I've always had trouble with that. Both of these things will take some time. :s

Blue Smarties

I actually spent some time on this...imagine that! :o

Page 59

I keep forgetting that I still have a few of these left to post; god knows when I'll have the time to draw more... So here's page 59. Look at that! It's suddenly gone all coloury! I figured that would be the best way to indicate a flashback (or maybe the black background does the job well enough, I don't know). Now I recall a segment in Squee where Jhonen Vasquez wrote "Because this is a flashback, this panel is even more black and white than the others in this book." Ho, ho.

I am writing an essay about post-modernism which is due on the 29th and I have chosen the topic of "metafiction" - that is, fiction about fiction. I'm in WAY over my head and I don't think I can write this satisfactorily... :( which is too bad because it was a great idea. My best ideas always fail the hardest.

Oh yeah, almost forgot - violence warning. Again. :p

Functions Of Illustration Part 1

Two pictures from Monday's class (I actually had a CLASS?!). Can you guess why they are so bizarre and more entertaining than my usual drawings? That's right - Paul was with me that day. Around 75% of this material was his ideas.

Anyway, we were each given a newspaper article that we had to illustrate. The one I got was obviously a joke, so I illustrated it that way - the part that WAS my idea was the judge wearing fishnets in Tim Curry's pose from the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie poster - uh, so, I guess that's not original either, but never mind. I hated the drawing and almost didn't finish it. I'm glad I eventually did add the other stuff around it. The businessman's expression is hilarious and it looks exactly the way it did in my head. (Paul says he looks like he's turning into a bird.)

The other drawing is a photocopy of a 5-minute doodle pasted onto black construction paper. I love the fact that the photocopier toner added all those scratchy lines which aren't on the original, and I want to incorporate that into another picture someday, as a sort of "found art" texture.

On The Bus part 2

As usual, you have Paul to blame for the somewhat disturbing bottom comic. The top one is all mine though. ;p

Comics & Simpsons

Billy & Martin as Simpsons characters (well, not really - it's obvious I didn't spend much time on it, nor did I use any reference, but I only drew it for the inside cover of Sketchbook Vol. 9) and another installment of "On The Bus" at last! Hooray! It's my rant about music videos that you've already read, this time in comic form. ;p

Page 58

I think this is where we left off. Violence as usual, which sadly continues up until page 64, which is the current one I've had on the go for ages. I was all set to work on that some more last night, until I remembered that the reference sketches I'd made were in my sketchbook, which I'd just handed in. However, the process of "handing in" things consists of writing your signature on a sheet and leaving all your stuff out on the table right there in the classroom (where anyone could waltz in and steal it...but the school is kind of out in the middle of nowhere, so never mind). Bearing that in mind, when I go in again on Thursday I could probably sneak my sketchbook out, go to the library to photocopy the necessary page, and put it back. So, there really is something to be said for this weird system. XD

Anyway, I'm concerned about my laptop because it's probably on its last legs. It was shutting itself off randomly, which Paul & I thought was due to overheating (from dust clogging the fans & other mechanisms). But then I remembered that both times it blew up, so to speak, it had been connected to my stereo. So perhaps it's just the auxiliary cable that's fried, not my laptop. I could be wrong about this, but it indeed seems to be the case. I only need it to work for 8 more weeks! Argh! :O