Sketchbook: Waning of the Year

Getting through the hyper smog of the holidays with an ailing rapidograph. (third piece down gives evidence of the death sputters) A new one sits snuggled in its case, at the ready. I've got a concept design illustration to do for work, a small group of blockprints to cut for a business and a minicomic about a petulant, chainsmoking french girl sitting on my desk to finish in the first moments of the new year. Sets a nice tone...

Sketchbook: Her and Him

Sketchbook entries. Early December. Prismacolor markers and Rapidograph pen...

Sketchbook: Nomember Decmember

Sketchbook selection from late November and early December...

note the evidence of my fifth (sixth?) rapidograph getting ready to give up the ghost.

A New Minicomic Has Begun!

Dave Grilli has written a new story we are converting into a minicomic! Hopefully this one will move at a better clip than Neonlove did. Using an illustrator who loves comics but isn't a big fan of squares and insists on reinventing the wheel and testing the mashy-ness of linear time doesn't do much for efficiency, but might come up with some novel ideas for 2D visual storytelling (we should be so lucky)

Here are some of the beginnings:

Mapping out the flow of the pages

Sketching page layout, with a little help...

Starting with midtones, {note: the neo-futurists pencil for extra inspirado}

Sketchbook: November

November has tied me to an old dead tree
get word to April to rescue me

-Tom Waits

sketchbook entries from November 

And Plus Like

In a continued obsession with an idea for a fictional boutique for airheads, (a recurring motif in my drawings) and out of a continued angst over the general hideousness of the vast, boring expanse of my bag, last night, I painted a bag on my bag. That is all.

Sketchbook: October

Sketchbook entries from the month of October.

All Fall Down Blog Piece

on Bony Lil's Creation + Distraction

John Towsen of All Fall Down: The Craft + Art of Physical Comedy fame did a write up of the live screening we did of silent short film duet Bony Lil's Creation + Distraction in September as part of the Amuse Bouche Clown Festival in Brooklyn NY.

We put together a new live musical score with Clifton Hyde and Stefan Zeniuk, and Director Michael Pope and Animator and star Zea Barker provided the sound effects with a tiny table with too too many things on it.

All live action, and much of the animation, was shot on super 8 film and edited digitally. The animation is a self-taught method that Zea came up with through trial and error and trying endlessly to get this endless business of hand-crafted animation to go a bit quicker.

lookee here:

Bony Lil's Distraction from Zea on Vimeo.


{intermission}


Bony Lil's Creation from Zea on Vimeo.

Muse to Barnaby Whitfield

The relentlessly talented Barnaby Whitfield has made an enormous piece featuring the googly face-parts of YoursTruly.

This Is A Foreground
2011
Pastel On Paper
60 by 40 inches

This is not the first piece Barnaby has used my mug for... maybe the ...sixth?? and certainly the largest. Pour through the top three rows of his incredible gallery of work and you'll find five others.



This one is on its way to Copenhagen for unveiling and possibly getting boughten.

PLUS, he's got prints of this one:

get yer grubby paws on it here.

Sketchbook: Autumn's Extenuation

I Vermont NY

A BENEFIT FOR VERMONT STORM RELIEF
BY VERMONTERS LIVING IN NYC
photo by Maverick Inman

"I Vermont NY" was born out of the heartache from the damage from Tropical Storm Irene on Vermont, the homestate of New York City residents and Blue Man Group co-workers Zea Barker and Isaac Littlejohn Eddy

Zea called Amanda Palmer, Isaac called the Brooklyn Bowl, Blue Man Group and Cabot Creamery donated funds to cover overhead and the work began to create a beautiful night to raise funds for Vermont.


Ed Koren, of VT and the New Yorker fame, designed a beautiful poster for the night {above}

Deep Mountain Maple set up a farmers market style stand inside the club. The silent auction quickly filled with donated items: Burton donated three snowboards and gear, Darkcloud hand-screened unique t-shirts and original art, Jennifer Kahn donated "Repairing Vermont" pendents, many artists donated prints and Vermont's Center for Cartoon Studies brought a box of comics, books and original art.

Isaac's animated piece about Liberty Hill Farm in Vermont posted on time.com leading up to the benefit:


The coup de grace came when Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary agreed to come do a few songs with Amanda Palmer in support of the cause.
photo @Vnend

The night was a great success and nearly $10,000 has been distributed to two VT funds: Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and Vermont Farm Disaster Relief Fund

Huge thanks go out to the performers who donated their time, the artists who donated auction items, the companies who donated their goods, the wonderful people at the Brooklyn Bowl, the scores of Blue Man Group NY employees who came out to make this night run smoothly and the hundreds of folks who came out to celebrate with us.

PRESS:
Photos from CMJ.com
The Herald of Randolph VT
Seven Days article

The Blue Men had a duet with Amanda Palmer covering a rawkus version of the Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go.


Vermont sustained nearly 1 billion dollars in damage from the storm. Winter is on its way and damaged roads need to be able to carry home heating fuel trucks and snowplows, home repairs need to be completed, extremely far-reaching debris needs to be cleaned up. You can help by donating to the above funds, lending a hand daily details for how at VTResponse and by making plans to visit the beautiful state this fall and winter as gorgeous foliage becomes incredible skiing and boarding.

benefit site
twitter

Sketchbook Project: Book Online

You might recall I submitted a sketchbook to The Sketchbook Project 2011 which then joined the other nearly 10,000 sketchbooks on an eight city national tour during the spring and summer.

Two pieces of awesome news: one is that the sketchbooks have returned and are living at the Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg where they can be checked out and perused. Secondly, for those outside of NYC, my entire sketchbook has been scanned and uploaded to my profile to be viewed online in entirety! GO SEE! {can't seem to get image to link to site so use "GO SEE" or this: http://www.arthousecoop.com/library/701 }

Bony Lil's Creation + Distraction Screening

BONY LIL's CREATION + DISTRACTION
short film duet
silent comedy * hand-crafted animation * live music + sound fx

Amuse Bouche 2011
ComedyShorts - Clowns on Film
The Brick Theater - williamsburg brooklyn
September 16th - 10pm
tickets



Bony Lil rides again! This will be only the second time these films have screened in New York (the first being in the fall of 2008 at Joe's Pub) This time, they are joined by other great clown films of Jeff Seal and Morro and Jasp as well as an animation/live performance from the multi-talented Isaac Littlejohn Eddy. With each new screening of these films co-creators Zea Barker and Michael Pope look for new folks to collaborate with and create new music for these silent pieces. Clifton Hyde has stepped to the task and will be sure to bring the funk as this is not his first rodeo in the genre. All sound effects are done live as well by Barker and Pope and their bag of tricks.

This is a special night in the month long clown festival Amuse Bouche taking place at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg Brooklyn (Lorimer Metropolitan L/G) THis night in particular will be hosted by the fabulous Audrey Crabtree and John Towsen!

There are a bunch of great live shows happening all month. Check'm out!

Sketchbook : early august

Stop the Gene Wilder Remakes! - PREORDER

LONG LIVE THE ORIGINAL CINEMATIC WORKS OF GENE WILDER!
Ladies and Gentlemen! Order your Stop the Gene Wilder Remakes T-Shirts now!

There is currently a pre-order for Ts that end August 29th and ships September 2nd @ wireandtwine.com.

The wonderful folks that handprint the shirts over at wireandtwine are functioning on a pre-order basis now (just like the first two guerilla runs of the shirt I did myself!). They've let me rally a new batch so get your orders in.

*as mentioned by The Nerdist to Patton Oswalt!
*as pimped by yewknee.com
*as ranted by me in spring of 2008

*as sported by happy sexy creatures

I love all you guys, by the way