Screw it. The man is wise, and this beautiful sentiment can not be said enough. Enjoy your evening and new year.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.

I hope you will make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself.

- Neil Gaiman

Everything in red and black is from the lecture. On the bottom right you’ll see some of my scribbling from a night out with some friends, where I jotted down notes both from the people I was with, overheard conversations and a bit of the music being played.

I’ve also included the video so you can get the full experience if you wish. And as always, feedback is welcome. Happy Halloween!

Just for fun, here is some of the tallied information on the third page:

Drinks consumed: 4

Pieces of pizza eaten: 1

Guy in corpse paint: 1

Guy wearing an orange Misfits shirt: 1

Native American headdresses spotted: 1

Hillbillies: 1

Interpretive dancers on stage: 1

Crowd surfers during fourth band: 9

I went down to the Occupy Chicago protest about two weeks ago to check it out and draw some of the people. I hadn’t gotten around to scanning the pages until tonight, but here’s what I was able to accomplish while standing on the street, brush in one hand, ink bottle in the other. By now there are many more people down there, so another expedition may be forthcoming. In case you’re curious about the whole Occupy Movement and Occupy Chicago specifically, you can find out more here.

Protesters + some overheard comments from passersby. Lots of Guy Fawkes masks & bandanas.

More protesters + some odd looks. Also drum circle, at least one drum was improvised from an empty water jug.

People, chants, and a survey of male facial hair & female hair styles found among the protesters.

Since it’s a bit small, here’s some of the text on the last page. I had a short conversation with the local newspaper hawker. It went something like this:

Protesters: “People over profits!”

Newspaper Guy: “Ha! Sometimes.”

He looks over at me when I laugh.

NG: “I’ve got my ritual. I sit down and listen to some music, so I’m peaceful, then nothing can get to me, you know?”

Turns to commuters hurrying past through the rain.

NG: “Chicago Sun Times! Got an umbrella for you right here!”

Download the pdf so you can print out some to hand out with candy this Hallowe’en. They print in black and white on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, and instructions on how to fold these mini books are here. If you’ve never made a book before, this is one of the simplest forms out there, perfect for children. Enjoy!

I can’t remember exactly where this idea came from. I was researching St. Agatha with the idea of making some sort of prayer card style poster, but then I started looking at the Strength card in Tarot. This somehow led me to Sekmet, the lion-headed Egyptian Goddess of war and healing, who led me to female lion tamers. I quite like the idea of cancer being a wild beast that leaves its mark on anyone who gets too close, but my favorite part is the look on the girl’s face as she wrestles it into submission.

I printed these at the amazing Spudnik Press, which is a cooperative print shop here in Chicago. They are wonderfully friendly and may be one way for me to feed my printing addiction. Although the yellow layer containing the lion’s fur begged to be a woodcut, I ended up screen printing both colors.

These will be for sale at that charity event I mentioned before. On October 22, the new-to-St.-Louis organization, Bright Pink, is holding a benefit at RGG Photography in St. Louis. You go, have a few drinks and get the chance to buy some really amazing art from some great local artists like: Amy Thompson, Cheree Berry, Blaine Deutsch and Sam Washburn, plus others. You can find out more here, and I’ll reveal the entire print after the event takes place.

Now for some in-process pics:

Sketch being finalized on lightbox

Making the separations. I do this digitally after scanning in my sketch.

Yellow screen, all loaded up with ink. It was printed on cream paper before the blue.

Print teaser

This is more of a quick check in and a first mention of another poster show I’ll be in coming up in October. It’s for Bright Pink, an organization that “provides education and support to young women who are at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer”. Check out their website, they’re good people. And they’ll be hosting their first St. Louis event on October 22 at RGG Photography (info & tickets here). You obviously should go. The official flyer is below, and more info to come, including in-progress shots of my poster.

This drawing has only a smidgen to do with the prompt, which this week was imperfect. It has far more to do with the song “Isis” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. You can listen to it here. So in a loose, no one is perfect, especially if they bury their lovers in the sea kind of way, this drawing is about being imperfect. Seems a bit of a low bar, really. And strangely, (if you do watch it) I finished the drawing before I watched the video, so the color is a coincidence. I turned down the saturation so that the drawing is a bit more legible, but originally it was pretty much the same. This is also why the girl is braiding (or unbraiding) her hair. Priestesses of Isis were rumored to be able to control the weather by combing or knotting their hair.

imperfect

On another note, I totally missed the two year anniversary of this blog. I have a good excuse, though. I am currently preparing to leave my lifelong hometown of St. Louis for Chicago. So things should be a little quiet here while I say goodbye to friends and family, pack up my stuff and get settled into a new place. More info on that to come as it occurs.

I have also put my shop on vacation during the move, but am still taking new clients for illustration, web and graphic design work. Please feel free to get in touch, and also to leave a comment on this week’s drawing.