Sketch Fridays #27 – Shaman’s Destiny

Jun10
by on 10 June 2016
Sketch Fridays #27 - Shaman's Destiny

Sketch Fridays #27 – Shaman’s Destiny

Sacramento has a vivacious comic creator and pop art scene. Over the years that I’ve been a part of this community (having moved to Sacramento in 2008), I’ve met an incredible amount of talented creators, usually through one of the many events that are held locally, everything from Second Saturdays to Sac Con to Crocker Con.

Last year, I debuted Long John Volume 1 on Free Comic Book Day. I was able to debut the book at the FCBD festivities held at my favorite local comic shop, Empire’s Comics Vault, surrounded by the wares of my colleagues with their comics and art. I was seated next to Kyrun Silva, who writes and draws the superhero comic, Shaman’s Destiny. Kyrun carries a life-long passion for comic books, but does so with the enthusiasm of someone who just discovered them without a hint of cynicism. He is in love with the medium and such sentiments are infectious when you spend even a little bit of time with him (much less sharing bad jokes together for something like eight hours straight). That FCBD was filled with a lot of laughs (and some pretty good sales, to boot). Just spending that day joking around and lobbing art challenges at each other (I can predict a Geck Force Sketch Friday in the future somewhere) formed a strong sense of comic book camaraderie that led me to picking up the first two issues of his series and enjoying how well they captured his passion and vision.

With the release of the fifth issue in his Shaman’s Destiny series, Empire’s Comics Vault is hosting a release party this Saturday. This type of event is something I hope to see more of in the future, if only as a way to celebrate the vibrancy of local creatives. Perhaps, with such bolstering, we’ll see even more Sacramento area creators burst through to the next level (we already have an impressive, but small, roster with names like Sam Keith and Ron Lim leading the charge) and make the world know how much the area has to offer.

I bring this up not only because it’s nice to celebrate the accomplishments of a friend, but also because Kyrun was nice enough to include a drawing I did of the main character of his series, Malik, as back matter in the new issue, which is always fun to see and was a pleasant surprise. As is clear in my signature on the above drawing, this week’s Sketch Friday is a bit of a cheat, but it was a drawing I had not yet shared on the site and it allowed me to spend more time drawing and inking new Long John pages this week. Art is such a zero-sum game with time.

So, if you’re in the Sacramento area, I highly encourage you to stop by Empire’s Comics Vault on Saturday (starting at 3pm) and check out Kyrun’s work as well as the work of the rest of his studio, Big Tree Comics, and help support local creatives.

BigTree

 

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Sketch Fridays #26 – X-Men: Apocalypse

Jun03
by on 3 June 2016
Sketch Fridays #26 - X-Men: Apocalypse. Click to enlarge.

Sketch Fridays #26 – X-Men: Apocalypse. Click to enlarge.

Below is a transcribed and revised version of ideas originally presented in D. Bethel’s podcast, A Podcast [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes, from the episode titled, “Shortcast 13 – So Arch, So Blue.” Listen to that episode for more about the X-Men, Apocalypse (the character depicted above), and thoughts about the X-Men movie franchise (but no comments about the new movie).

As the new X-Men film was released to theaters, I embroiled myself in nostalgia for the franchise. I’ve gone back into the archives and read through old stories which were new to me as well as those with which I was already familiar. But what I’m most intrigued by, looking at the X-Men through my adult and career-focused eyes, is the fact the X-Men are not a government team nor a private conglomerate of do-gooders; the fact that they are a product of an educational institution, a superhero team with a pro-intellectual underpinning that stands in bright contrast when compared against the rest of the Marvel universe, allows for such strong and pertinent questions to be prodded and partially answered by the stories in the comics and movies.

Captain America, in contrast, is indeed created by science, but done so for the sake of war. Hulk is the literal inversion of logos-based reasoning. Thor is pure space opera and Iron Man is capitalistic masturbation.

With the X-Men, no matter the threat nor menace, the underlying quandary rests on who will return to educate the young students, the young mutants (as those with superpowers are called in the X-Men canon), not only in traditional curriculum but also how they will blend in and participate in the world at large. But even blending in is not essential. It’s more about creating a place for yourself in society, an ethos that people of any affinity or talent can leave with and say, with confidence, “I can make this world a better place by being a part of it.”

The X-Men, more than the Avengers or anything from the DC universe, are not above nor below the common public. They are the heroes from within, addressing purely American social problems without even needing the veneer of metaphor if it came down to it. The ultimate question that guides this team of superheroes, by the very nature of their superpowers, is not (like the Avengers) “how can we help those who cannot fend for themselves?” because, for the X-Men, they could save the world from cosmic-level existential threats and still come home to base persecution and hate with no governmental or institutional recourse for such behavior against them. Instead, the question that guides the X-Men is much more relatable: “how do we help those who will not help us?” It’s altruism at its finest because the ideology is about pushing against the current rather than being a symbol for it, which is what, many would argue, is not only the American but the human condition.

To me, the X-Men are the heroes of humanity, not for it. They’ve done their job not if they save the world, but if they’ve been considered equals among that which is considered normal and, with hope, adjusts the definition along the way.

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In the creation of this week’s Sketch Friday––the villain, Apocalypse, who is the titular threat in the new X-Men movie––I tested out Live Streaming technology as I inked the above drawing.

I streamed through YouTube and it worked fairly seamlessly. There were connectivity problems, but I think that was on my end as my city strained under the first major heat of the summer. The stream was archived on YouTube, so you can check them out there (and embedded below). Because of the connectivity issues, streaming was stopped for a bit and broken up into two pieces. They aren’t very exciting; there’s a bit of drawing but mostly periods of nothing as I check the screen trying to make sure everything was working well and just get a general comfort with the service. But they’re there for posterity, and if you want to see me draw Apocalypse in wavering bouts of quality, this is your one-stop shop.

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Sketch Fridays #25 – Faces

May27
by on 27 May 2016
Sketch Fridays #25 - Faces. Click to Enlarge

Sketch Fridays #25 – Faces. Click to Enlarge

When it comes to recognizing people, I’m a face guy. With my job, I have to learn between 100 – 130 new names every fifteen weeks and, as soon as that term ends, I have to dump them all and start over again. Aside from unscientifically cataloging trends in naming that I see pop up as the years pass, names don’t particularly have any staying power for me (aside from one student named Ya-Ya, which was wonderful). What do stick around are faces. Having been the instructor to over 500 students since I started standing in front of classrooms and talking, I have seen so many faces to the point that, when walking through campus, it feels like I recognize everybody but don’t have the confidence to say hello in fear of saying the wrong name.

Such tendencies are probably why, when I just sit and draw with no purpose or aim, I lean toward drawing faces. I like playing with faces, trying to create readable emotions and personalities, and it is a talent I feel I could always improve upon. I often get very frustrated while drawing, especially when I don’t have a particular purpose in mind––just sitting down to “sketch,” which I rarely do. True to form, Sketch Fridays even became excuses to draw more finished, focused pieces rather than simply being what the name dictates: sketching, doodling, free-form investigations.

But this week marked the end to not only a long semester but a long academic year that was full of very high highs and very low lows, running the gamut from vocational accomplishment to coping with the death of a student (two total, but only one was actually enrolled in a class I taught). Spring semester comprised of dealing with the fallout of fall. Also, during this academic year marked the end of a dental procedure that started in October of 2014, though the procedure was the coda of an injury I suffered when I was seven or eight years old. Bringing that to a close was a heavy catharsis. Also, personally, we employed a suicidal landscaper (who did very good work). As of today, he is alive and well.

When I submitted grades this week, the action felt like the locking away of all the trials and anxieties from the last year or so. I sat down Wednesday night to draw with nothing particularly in mind; instead, I was simply pleased to have nothing to do.

I drew faces. Happy faces, smug faces, scared faces, hard faces. It was my year staring back at me through one-way glass but cartoony and digestible, relegated to ink on the first page of a brand new sketchbook.

What a way to start.

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