Urban Outfitters carries these blank vinyl toys called Munky. I'd seen them in Denver back around Christmas but I had enough swag to sneak back across the border that I passed up the chance to get one, also I hadn't come anywhere near to the art high I'm on now; the idea of drawing on anything but a piece of paper didn't hold much attraction. But when I saw them again last week on a trek up Grandville, I couldn't pass it up. A week of deliberation later, I decided to turn my first Munky into Spider Jerusalem. There's a few smudges and bad lines on him, but overall I'm really happy with it for my first go (which was the first time I've done anything in three dimensions in literally years). Note that the spider on his head is meant to be a bigger, badder version of his classic one. I just couldn't let that huge canvas go to waste. I'm already planning my next one.
So I've just finished a sketchbook. Funny thing is that after years and years of filling them with drawings I usually look back on in embarrassment (they also tend to be about a third of their original weight by the end due to me tearing pages out), I've only just now seriously realized that within a year I won't remember what segment of my life this particular one oversaw, no matter how memorable I think it might be right now. Part of why that's especially significant at the moment is that the majority of the most memorable and best drawings done on those pages were taken out either to trace and complete outside the book or were offered up to my muse Katrina as small gifts.
Thus I'm writing this as some kind of combined eulogy/time capsule to commemorate what happened within and without the pages of this particular sketchbook.
I originally bought this sketchbook back in March on a lazy day hanging out with Dylan and Claudia at The House coffee shop in Kensington along with a couple pencils and a new eraser, but I went back a few minutes later ready to take a fresh dive into my art, hoping that a nearly obscene investment of money into it would make it my first real successful attempt at starting a regular and lasting commitment to my development as an artist towards some kind of career. For reasons that wouldn't become apparent until much later, I was right. On my second trip that day, I spent over three hundred dollars securing the biggest set of prisma markers available and complimenting them with a set of grayscale ones. I then proceeded to go back to the coffee shop and bang out a ludicrously successful Catwoman drawing for that period of my art without any kind of photo reference. It also ended a nine month long drought of posting to DeviantART.
The original idea was to bang out a string of marker drawings that would prove (to myself) my ability to hold down a table at a comic convention, which I essentially did.
From there is a fairly linear chart of my growing passion for tattoo art which of course largely coincided with my decision to finally join Suicide Girls, which inspired the boundary pushing Sex Ampersand Drugs, that became a central piece in the sketchbook and my progress because I took it as an opportunity to push myself into new territory in anatomy, attitude, and practically any design challenge I'd shied away from until that point.
By the time Inkubus had been drawn, the decision to become a tattoo artist had been made. A revised edition of it will likely grace the cover of my first book of flash, which I plan to complete and make available for sale within a month, as it was originally conceptualized as being the cover to my tattoo portfolio. Katrina says I ought to get it done when I reach my five year mark as a working tattoo artist, but if I do it'll be a heavily revised version. Within two weeks of completing the pencils for Inkubus, I had my first tattoo, which was also the day I met Katrina. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in sentient forces in the universe that like to alter the chain of causality for their own ends. Clearly something or someone other than Katrina and I wanted us to meet that day, as I think the events that unfolded after that show.
I've made a relatively big deal- tongue firmly in cheek- about there being this clear demarcation between before meeting Katrina and afterwards in my sketchbook, but it took on a bit of a slow burn, first really manifesting it in a relentlessly reconsidered and revised Catwoman drawing for her (which to this date is still not complete but will be inked and completed very soon). The experience of designing her tribal piece and watching it get done was extremely formative and actually saw the final revamping of the Catwoman pencils.
Beyond that, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could become a tattoo artist and succeed at it. Talking to the other artists at the shop and soliciting feedback and advice was a great experience for me that really made it possible to carry me through to the point I'm at now; the very cusp of the beginning of my real career in tattooing. From there I dove into tattoo art with a vengeance, producing the best art I've ever done and pushing me to experiment in new ways with mediums I hadn't touched in years. I'll likely be uploading and archiving several pages of sketches from in between the major pieces sometime soon.
This sketchbook is finally being retired at the end of my first week here in Vancouver, which I think is a blaze of glory.
Thus I'm writing this as some kind of combined eulogy/time capsule to commemorate what happened within and without the pages of this particular sketchbook.
I originally bought this sketchbook back in March on a lazy day hanging out with Dylan and Claudia at The House coffee shop in Kensington along with a couple pencils and a new eraser, but I went back a few minutes later ready to take a fresh dive into my art, hoping that a nearly obscene investment of money into it would make it my first real successful attempt at starting a regular and lasting commitment to my development as an artist towards some kind of career. For reasons that wouldn't become apparent until much later, I was right. On my second trip that day, I spent over three hundred dollars securing the biggest set of prisma markers available and complimenting them with a set of grayscale ones. I then proceeded to go back to the coffee shop and bang out a ludicrously successful Catwoman drawing for that period of my art without any kind of photo reference. It also ended a nine month long drought of posting to DeviantART.
The original idea was to bang out a string of marker drawings that would prove (to myself) my ability to hold down a table at a comic convention, which I essentially did.
From there is a fairly linear chart of my growing passion for tattoo art which of course largely coincided with my decision to finally join Suicide Girls, which inspired the boundary pushing Sex Ampersand Drugs, that became a central piece in the sketchbook and my progress because I took it as an opportunity to push myself into new territory in anatomy, attitude, and practically any design challenge I'd shied away from until that point.
By the time Inkubus had been drawn, the decision to become a tattoo artist had been made. A revised edition of it will likely grace the cover of my first book of flash, which I plan to complete and make available for sale within a month, as it was originally conceptualized as being the cover to my tattoo portfolio. Katrina says I ought to get it done when I reach my five year mark as a working tattoo artist, but if I do it'll be a heavily revised version. Within two weeks of completing the pencils for Inkubus, I had my first tattoo, which was also the day I met Katrina. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in sentient forces in the universe that like to alter the chain of causality for their own ends. Clearly something or someone other than Katrina and I wanted us to meet that day, as I think the events that unfolded after that show.
I've made a relatively big deal- tongue firmly in cheek- about there being this clear demarcation between before meeting Katrina and afterwards in my sketchbook, but it took on a bit of a slow burn, first really manifesting it in a relentlessly reconsidered and revised Catwoman drawing for her (which to this date is still not complete but will be inked and completed very soon). The experience of designing her tribal piece and watching it get done was extremely formative and actually saw the final revamping of the Catwoman pencils.
Beyond that, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could become a tattoo artist and succeed at it. Talking to the other artists at the shop and soliciting feedback and advice was a great experience for me that really made it possible to carry me through to the point I'm at now; the very cusp of the beginning of my real career in tattooing. From there I dove into tattoo art with a vengeance, producing the best art I've ever done and pushing me to experiment in new ways with mediums I hadn't touched in years. I'll likely be uploading and archiving several pages of sketches from in between the major pieces sometime soon.
This sketchbook is finally being retired at the end of my first week here in Vancouver, which I think is a blaze of glory.
I'm really late in posting this, but I finally got my lip piercing done on Friday after a week of delays and procrastination. George does predictably fabulous work and I couldn't be happier with it. The whole two mods in two weeks thing still seems pretty crazy to me, but thankfully my tattoo has just gotten past the peely stage so it's finally looking it's best.
Of course just as that happens, my piercing hits it's oozy gross stage. All I have to say is thank fuck for Bactine because without the anasthetic in it, I'd be going nuts.
I don't really consider the whole two mods two weeks thing to be any kind of showing of inhuman levels of manliness or anything that stupid, but I do have friends congratulating me and even looking up to me in a way for having the guts to go out and do it. It feels good, but a small tattoo on my wrist and a lip piercing should be a pat on the back at most, but the strong social stigmas still attached to both (which is fucking insane given that this is 2007) seem to dictate otherwise.
While Ellis was right this week talking about bodynauts in his Sunday Hangover column, it's still incredibly important for us more moderate body hackers to keep doing what we do and give back as much attitude as we get.
Of course just as that happens, my piercing hits it's oozy gross stage. All I have to say is thank fuck for Bactine because without the anasthetic in it, I'd be going nuts.
I don't really consider the whole two mods two weeks thing to be any kind of showing of inhuman levels of manliness or anything that stupid, but I do have friends congratulating me and even looking up to me in a way for having the guts to go out and do it. It feels good, but a small tattoo on my wrist and a lip piercing should be a pat on the back at most, but the strong social stigmas still attached to both (which is fucking insane given that this is 2007) seem to dictate otherwise.
While Ellis was right this week talking about bodynauts in his Sunday Hangover column, it's still incredibly important for us more moderate body hackers to keep doing what we do and give back as much attitude as we get.
It's been a hell of a day, that much I can say for sure. It should have just been a nice slow chill out day with Claudia and Dylan before they left for Montreal, but it turned out to be their last day in Calgary, and a hectic one at that. I hope they're at the bus terminal by now.
As we found out at the tea house while Dylan was on this very laptop finishing up transfering his files onto the other one (he sold me this laptop for cheap this afternoon), Greyhound is going on strike Thursday at midnight. They weren't even planning on leaving the city before then say nothing about tonight. So it was weird enough walking down to the bus depot from there to find out if and when they could get home before the strike started, until I realized that it's practically two years to the day that I walked Sharalyn down there and out of my life for the last time. It's funny how you can put something out of your head completely for ages and then it just comes floating back up vivid as the day it happened. I think I'm going to end up with an intense hatred of bus depots or something. Nothing good seems to come out of them for me.
Being down there again just emphasized how much time has passed in two years. I mean it's easy enough to just look at a calendar or whatever, but to really think about who I am today compared to who I was in the moments after that last kiss. It was before Binary Culture, before Starbucks, before San Diego. It sounds terrible, but that walk back from the depot to the train stop to get to work (after staying up all night with her) was the first moment in over a year where I had to just live for myself again. All that time it was just about us, about being together. There wasn't much that was more prescient to me than remembering what to put in her coffee on the way to her place after work or hoping that she'd time it to be just out of the shower when I got there until then.
Now it's all about me and what I want. I think I've tried to make up for that year and a bit that we were together by doing as much as I can; reading stacks of books, going through several sketchbooks, picking up hours at work, going for the promotion to shift, taking on the EIC role at BC.
Christ, I had hair two years ago. In another two months I will have been bald for an entire year. I feel scruffy if I go two days without shaving these days, I can't even really properly remember what it's like to not be taking a razor to my scalp every morning, and I only have a handful of friends that either knew me before I did it or can even remember what I looked like themselves.
I have no idea where I'll be in two years. The future is fluid. It sucks that I'll be dealing with whatever comes next without Dylan and Claudia around, but when I said my goodbyes, I was and still am confident that this time I can face whatever comes next and face it down on my own.
As we found out at the tea house while Dylan was on this very laptop finishing up transfering his files onto the other one (he sold me this laptop for cheap this afternoon), Greyhound is going on strike Thursday at midnight. They weren't even planning on leaving the city before then say nothing about tonight. So it was weird enough walking down to the bus depot from there to find out if and when they could get home before the strike started, until I realized that it's practically two years to the day that I walked Sharalyn down there and out of my life for the last time. It's funny how you can put something out of your head completely for ages and then it just comes floating back up vivid as the day it happened. I think I'm going to end up with an intense hatred of bus depots or something. Nothing good seems to come out of them for me.
Being down there again just emphasized how much time has passed in two years. I mean it's easy enough to just look at a calendar or whatever, but to really think about who I am today compared to who I was in the moments after that last kiss. It was before Binary Culture, before Starbucks, before San Diego. It sounds terrible, but that walk back from the depot to the train stop to get to work (after staying up all night with her) was the first moment in over a year where I had to just live for myself again. All that time it was just about us, about being together. There wasn't much that was more prescient to me than remembering what to put in her coffee on the way to her place after work or hoping that she'd time it to be just out of the shower when I got there until then.
Now it's all about me and what I want. I think I've tried to make up for that year and a bit that we were together by doing as much as I can; reading stacks of books, going through several sketchbooks, picking up hours at work, going for the promotion to shift, taking on the EIC role at BC.
Christ, I had hair two years ago. In another two months I will have been bald for an entire year. I feel scruffy if I go two days without shaving these days, I can't even really properly remember what it's like to not be taking a razor to my scalp every morning, and I only have a handful of friends that either knew me before I did it or can even remember what I looked like themselves.
I have no idea where I'll be in two years. The future is fluid. It sucks that I'll be dealing with whatever comes next without Dylan and Claudia around, but when I said my goodbyes, I was and still am confident that this time I can face whatever comes next and face it down on my own.
Hello SG, I'm Mark. I'm the ADD version of a rennaissance man; by day I make your coffee at Starbucks and by night I dabble in writing, illustration, and graphic design. I'm the Editor in Chief of an upstart geek news/review site called Binary Culture where I write about comics, politics, and video games.
