-ness
On 2 January I listed my planned trajectories for 2013. How it’s going is I haven’t spent much more time playing with family and friends, but I’m making tiny bits of progress. I’m definitely being sillier. I’m drawing a lot more, even though I haven’t managed to get back to The Reverend and Amy.
In my drawing I’m concentrating, quite by accident, on giving my drawings -ness. What I mean is when I draw a cat, I don’t try to make it look like an actual cat, but I try to give the drawing ‘catness’. The drawing below doesn’t really look like a kakapo, but I think it does have ‘kakaponess’.
4 March 2013
tags: creativity,
illustration
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In olden times before phones were smart we called this a ‘blogroll’
A thing we old people like to do to amuse ourselves is to subscribe to ‘blogs’ via ‘feed readers’. Many of you youngsters won’t understand these things because you haven’t found the secret click combination to get outside of Facebook or else you aren’t sure what to do with writing that is longer than 140 characters. But some of you kids might want to experience the old-fashioned Internet. If that’s you, there is a small chance you may enjoy some of the things on the non-exhaustive list of what I like to read and look at.
Comics, illustration, design
- Doodlemum – these are way better than doodles
- Dresden Codak – cyborg sci-fi in a weird world
- False Positive – webcomic tales of the surreal, fantastic and macabre
- Happle Tea – a funny and insightful webcomic about mythology and other things
- Hark a Vagrant – Kate Beaton is excellently superly excellent
- Doodlemum
- Illustration Art – insightful commentary on the world of illustration
- Jill Lorraine Turpin has a great take on family life
- Marlo Meekins is much funnier and stranger than most people
- Nimona – when the sidekick has actual powers and doesn’t follow the supervillain rules
- Punching the Clock – surviving the daily fail of big box retail
- RUTH AND ANNABEL RUIN EVERYTHING – it’s in all caps for a reason
- Ryan Andrews – beautiful engrossing short story comics
- Sin Titulo – It’s going to take a while to read, and it will suck you in. Clear your afternoon schedule
- The Abominable Charles Christopher – he’s actually not abominable at all
- the johnson banks thought for the week is the blog of my favourite UK design studio
- Thrillbent’s Insufferable – What happens when you’re a crimefighter and your sidekick grows up to be an arrogant, ungrateful douchebag? What on Earth could draw the two of you back together again?
- Willow Wood Starfall – gorgeous comic in a nouveau style
- XKCD – a webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.
Lots of words in a row
- Doors of Perception – John Thackara’s blog about design, energy and the planet’s future
- Heresy Corner – questioning received wisdom on culture, politics and religion
- Kester Brewin – Peter Rollins’ mate writes about pirates, theology, education and stuff
- Michael Rosen – author and former children’s laureate blogs mostly about education, especially how Michael Gove is ruining everything
- Peter Rollins – pyrotheology
- What If? – the author of xkcd answers hypothetical questions with physics and funny
Good blogs I’m not reading right now because I’m taking a break from American Christianity and politics
- Greg Boyd – with all the shouty Calvinists about it’s nice to be reminded the bible has other salvation metaphors and visions of eternity
- Matthew Paul Turner – obvs
- John Michael Greer – Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society. Don’t let the ‘druid’ throw you. This guy is a genius
- Larry Shallenberger – author, pastor, writer of this blog that I really like even though he sometimes writes about sports
- Love is what you do – she’s actually living the gospel in real life
- Rachel Held Evans – obvs
- The Beautiful Due – I’m not a fan of poetry. I love this guy’s poetry
- Two Friars and a Fool – theology and culture with an emergy kind of vibe
What do you like to read and look at?
21 August 2012
tags: blogging,
church,
comics,
greg boyd,
illustration,
john michael greer,
peter rollins,
poems,
writing
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Maurice Sendak died today
I love what he says about illustrating:
An illustrator, in my own mind – and this is not a “truth” of any kind – is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes that he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that’s what you hold on to, and that’s what you add to the pictures – a whole other story that you believe in, that you think is there. When you hide another story in the story, that’s the story that I am telling the children.
It may not be a ‘truth’, but it is certainly applicable, not just to illustrators, but to any creative work that involves communicating what other people have said or created.
Watch the whole video:
Thank you, Mr Sendak
8 May 2012
tags: books,
children,
death,
illustration,
stories
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This idiot
This idiot also likes to point out how badly drawn his right hand is.
5 May 2012
tags: illustration,
silly
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Totally Famous
A while back Jim LePage and his friend Troy DeShano invited me to take part in the Old & New project illustrating a bunch of bits of the bible. I said, yes. (Obvs.) My piece was posted on 18 April. Hooray! They have also posted an email interview with me where I kind of explain it.
Here are a couple detail shots:
19 April 2012
tags: design,
illustration,
ot,
photography
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You monster!
Ciaran Duffy:
Peter Rollins:
Whenever we encounter a person as “other” (i.e. as having beliefs and engaging in practices that are foreign to us) we can often experience them as monstrous. In other words, their beliefs and practices appear unfounded and can repel us, confuse us and even frighten us (sometimes for good reason). However there is what Slavoj Žižek calls the authentic multicultural experience. This is where, instead of looking at the other, we experience ourselves being looked at. Here we have the earth-shattering experience of glimpsing ourselves through the eyes of the other and encountering our own practices and beliefs as monstrous. (Keep reading; it’s good all the way through!)
21 March 2012
tags: illustration,
peter rollins,
quotes
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Olde and Neue
A couple of artsy/designy guys, Jim ‘Look at the extra capital letter in my last name’ LePage and Troy ‘I’ve got one too’ DeShano, decided that it is time to bring back art inspired by the bible – they’re right, of course – so they created the Old and New Project. They very kindly asked me to be a contributor. I’m no Michaelangelo, but I drew a picture on my wall anyway. You will be able to see it sometime in the next few weeks. Don’t wait for my scribblings; the site is live now.
14 March 2012
tags: design,
illustration,
nt,
ot
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I made a Christmas gift for the kids in my class at church: a book of advice
17 December 2011
tags: books,
design,
illustration,
love,
non-violence,
questions
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Still too secret
One of my other web presences is Secret Comics Club which features a weekly comic by me. This week’s comic is below. If you like it, you might like to check out the others.
13 December 2011
tags: illustration,
silly
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The secret Secret's not so secret anymore
For the last six months, I have been drawing a weekly comic called Secret Comics Club for a small group of subscribers. From today it is available for everyone with no sign up or password reuired. A taste? Here’s one from a few weeks ago:
Marco knew the nickname was inevitable, and didn’t resent it. His true sadness lay in the fact that he became a wholesale paper buyer instead of the hypnotist ninja he dreamt of as a child.
Quick! Click this link. There are 26 more to enjoy.
15 November 2011
tags: illustration
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I drew this for Laura Anne who is hosting a great blog series on community
A good thing to do is go to her blog and read it.
7 September 2011
tags: church,
community,
illustration
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You are as pretty as you can get inside the shell, so you might as well come out and do some stuff
Comic by Hugh D. Crawford.
I have not learned a lot of things about success, but one of the things I have learned is: just start. Stop planning, dreaming and waiting on whatever and do one thing today to start making it real. Do one more thing tomorrow. Repeat.
It’s true your idea is not good enough yet. You will find out the ways in which it is not good enough as you go. Your idea will become good enough as you go. You may find that you end up with a completely different idea than when you started, but it will be the right idea. And it will be made real.
Here is the parable of the pottery class:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
(Source: everywhere on the Internet)
14 August 2011
tags: creativity,
failure,
illustration,
stories
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This attitude
A thing I think is that the world needs is people like this, people who don’t need imaginary optimism in order to care, people who will love no matter the outcome simply because they are full of love.
The comic is by the amazing Sam Brown of Exploding Dog. I’m loving his crazy monster comics right now.
23 May 2011
tags: death,
illustration,
love
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Dear readers of this blog,
May I present SECRET COMICS CLUB!
9 May 2011
tags: illustration,
silly
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This is now:
9 May 2011
tags: illustration,
silly
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Jeff's opinionated graphic
When your culture is saturated, sated and there is no more space to make something new, you can:
a. Remix the status quo
b. Work to destroy the culture
c. Step outside and start something new.
A will probably make you very popular for a while.
B is going to happen anyway.
C takes more courage than most of us have, and you might fail. But what if it doesn’t fail?
18 March 2011
tags: change,
illustration
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We all get Flock
I’m pretty sure that everyone who is going to buy my book Flock just because I’m a pretty swell guy has done so already. So in a completely crass attempt grab more of the unsuspecting public’s spare change I am serialising Flock. on my Tumblr blog. Starting next week, I will post one story each week for 36 weeks. Today you get the preface. You can follow all the serial action here: http://jqgill.tumblr.com/tagged/flock
18 March 2011
tags: books,
illustration
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