This week’s Feral Pizza goes out to my old friend Mike Stevens!
Working on illustrations and commissions. Fun times!
When my dear pals Vicki Nerino and Britt Wilson were here visiting last month we were all interviewed by Brendan Ninness for his awesome illustration blog, Accordion Face. Check it out! But be warned, some of the images he used with the interview are definitely not for kids or safe for work.
And hey, in case you were in a coma the last few weeks and just woke up: I’m doing weekly comics over here!
A new Feral Pizza comic for you!
I may or may not continue posting the comics on this blog. I haven’t decided quite yet. I did manage to get an rss feed set up for the Feral Pizza website. We’ll see what happens I guess!
In other news, I’m going to have some stuff in a big benefit/art show/rock show/costume party here in Syracuse soon. If you’re in the area, swing by Spark Contemporary Art Space on the 30th. The gallery opens at 1:00 pm and bands start playing at 7:00 pm. More info can be found here!
Yesterday I very quietly launched a little project. An experiment! Ladies and gentleman, I present to you FERAL PIZZA.
I’m going to take a stab at doing weekly cartoons or short comics. I’ve been thinking about doing something like this for a while. Earlier this year I made that Feral Pizza mini comic for TCAF and I felt pretty good about it. So I’m going to stick with that title and try to build on the sort of stuff I was doing in that mini. I’m going to give it a shot! If I’m still having fun with it after a while, maybe I’ll start doing it more than once a week. We’ll see how it goes!
The archives include everything that was in the original Feral Pizza mini comic as well as a few older strips. The older strips are basically a small “best of” collection from when I was doing daily comics back in the dark ages (like five years ago).
I don’t currently have an RSS feed set up for the Feral Pizza site because I’ve no idea how to do such a thing. But I’m going to be cross-posting the strip here on this blog each week for now, so you can add this to your reader if you’d like. This blog is also mirrored on my livejournal and on my tumblr, so you know, whatever works for you!
UPDATE: I set up an RSS feed! Check out the little buttons down at the bottom of the Feral Pizza page! Hopefully they work!
Enjoy! And please spread the word!
Lots of drawing happening in my drawing room right now. Working on commissions (I know, I’m taking forever to get them all done) and a new illustration for Picture Book Report, which you’ll get to see in a week.
I had the pleasure of hosting two of my favorite people on this planet this past week: Vicki Nerino and Britt Wilson. They came down from Toronto and stayed at my place here in Syracuse. The three of us went and goofed off in New York City for a bit too. We spent a lot of our time here in Syracuse doodling!
While in New York City, we hung out with the amazing Scott C, doodled below. It’s impossible not to have fun while in Scott’s company.
We also spent a lot of time with Nathan Stapley. That dude is the best. We spent a day at the Natural History Museum with him.
Of course, we had dinosaurs and cavemen on our minds for the rest of the week…
Vicki and Britt returned to Canada late last night. It’s been such a fun week, I’m feeling sort of dazed right now. Very serious case of fun withdrawal. I’ve got lots of drawing to do though! And cleaning!
Using a series of very complicated scientific formulas, I’ve determined the three mini comic giveaway winners!
Congratulations! You’ve won! Please shoot me an email with your name and mailing address.
The rest of you: Better luck next time! Thanks to everyone that participated! Try not to take this too hard! I’d hate to see you moping around like this guy…
I made an epic post over on Picture Book Report this morning! I had two months worth of material to share, having missed my April posting date because of computer problems. It’s okay now though! I bought myself a new computer and holy smokes, it is wonderful. However! I’m now very, very poor. I mean I was pretty poor before, but the amount of money in my bank account is now frighteningly low. So before we continue on to the fun stuff in this post, I present you with a humble plea!
If you’re an art director, editor, publisher, or person who has the ability to hire illustrators: Consider hiring me to draw something for your project or publication? I’d really, really appreciate it!
Okay! Fun stuff! My Picture Book Report illustration for the month of April (up above) was a lot of fun to work on, though I definitely owe an enormous THANK YOU to my pal Vicki Nerino for her constant advice and input throughout the process. It wouldn’t have turned out as neat as it did without her help.
Something I don’t think I’ve mentioned anywhere is that I actually went down to New York in January to visit some friends. While I was down there I spent a day exploring the Met (where most of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is set). I took a few hundreds pictures with my phone, planning to use them for reference later. It was great! I knew I’d want to do an illustration dealing with the bed they sleep in at some point but I wasn’t sure which bed it was that was actually described in the story. So I just took pictures of every bed I could find in the museum.
More recently I found this little article that E. L. Konigsburg actually wrote for the museum. The article reveals that the bed she describes in the book isn’t actually on display anymore! So I ended up basing the drawing more off of my own mental image of what she describes in the book and a few additional photos I found online of beds from the same time period.
Here are a few in-progress shots!
Here’s what the finished line work looked like before I painted it…
The one part I really struggled with (and where Vicki really helped me) was in deciding what direction I wanted to go in with the colors. I made a bunch of really awful digital color roughs but after getting some input from Vicki I did one more, using only blue.
After that it was just a matter of sitting down and painting!
For the month of May I decided to try something a little different. I knew right from that start that at some point I wanted to do a bunch of little spot illustrations rather than one big one. I was a little bit short on time this month and the next big illustration I have planned depicts a crucial moment in the story. I didn’t want to give that scene a rush treatment so I decided to do those spot illustrations this month.
Newspapers and I have a long history together. My dad has been a newspaper reporter as long as I’ve been alive. I was first exposed to comics thanks to newspapers. I interned in a newspaper art department for two consecutive summers when I was in college. I’ve just got an intense love for this form of media that is now, sadly, really struggling to stay alive. Anyways, this little drawing might not look like it was the most exciting thing to draw, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The headlines, which are intentionally obscured by the size of the image, are a mix of well researched and accurate to the year the book was written (1967) and completely made up and silly. I borrowed names from some of my pals for the bylines. Ryan Pequin, Meg Hunt, Britt Wilson: you’ve all written articles for the front page of this fictional incarnation of The New York Times. I used my dad, Mike McAndrew, for one of the articles too.
Check out the other two spots over at Picture Book Report!
Before I end this epic blog post, I want to remind everyone that I’m giving away the last few copies of my FERAL PIZZA mini comic! You’ve got until the end of the day tomorrow (Friday) to put your name in for a chance at winning!
I should also mention that I am in fact still working on commissions that people ordered a while back. I’ve understandably had a few people email me, wondering when they’ll get their drawing in the mail. I fell way behind on them as I was busy preparing for MoCCA and SPX over the last few months but I’m going to try very hard to work my way through the pile now that convention insanity is over with for me until the fall.
Thanks for reading!
Hello! I haven’t posted here in a few weeks and for that I apologize. TCAF was amazing! Thanks to everyone that came by and bought something, traded, or just said hi! It was perhaps the most fun I’ve had at an event yet. And I am a guy that tends to have fun at events!
I’d also like to thank the kind folks of Drawn!, specifically John Martz, for saying some very nice things about my work. Hello to any new readers that may have wandered over here as a result!
I’ve had a few people send emails, asking if I’ll be making my new Feral Pizza mini comic available to purchase online. Unfortunately, I’m almost out of them! I came home from TCAF with only a few left. I probably won’t be re-printing it until later this year when I do my second round of conventions (SPX and, hopefully, Canzine).
Rather than selling these last few copies to the highest bidders, I’m going to give them away! I’ll be pulling three names out of a hat. All you’ve got to do to get your name in the hat is comment on this very blog post! If you’re following this blog via livejournal or a reader of some sort, be sure to comment here on the actual blog. A week from today (Friday, May 28) I will pick three names out of a hat and announce the winners. Be sure to check back and see if you’ve been picked! And PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!
Also, be sure to check in on Picture Book Report next Thursday! I’ll be sharing a bunch of neat stuff. Here’s a tiny peek…
