LookingLand

apparently there has been yet more brouhaha at lj (i post from dreamwidth.org in case you didn't realize it). while i have not yet decided to return to any kind of regular blogging, i may quit cross-posting. if you have a dreamwidth account, look me up. otherwise, i think, at long last, this is truly goodbye lj. i'm glad i didn't buy a permanent account when i was tempted. haven't really bothered seeking people out on dreamwidth or plugging into any communities, etc. like i said, i don't know how often i may post or if this too will all just go away.

but enough of the doom and gloom. hope everyone is having a productive sunday. i know i have lots of writing to do.

and on that note, behold: the state of my desk (it's been a long time, hasn't it?).  the "clean space" below is more generally occupied by my tea kettle, so the desk is still pretty cluttered, but it's a good working space. i find i paint better these days using a clipboard and watching movies, so i moved all the art stuff over to the side where the computer sits (at the other desk). the writing area i am trying to keep pretty simple: i have my outline for reference, my notebooks to write in, and an assortment of pens and whatnots. my research books are banned from the desktop except on a need-to-read basis. i find as my hands grow more cripply with arthritis the writing slope is a big help in keeping me from pinching my wrist, which is what i tend to do when i write flat.

Day 01 – The best book you’ve read in the last year: right now it's a battle between Emile Zola's The Sin of Father Mouret and Don Robertson's By Antietam Creek. It's been a good year, so this is a tough call. I love both books for different reasons.

Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times: Coming through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje jumps to mind first. this book changed the way i approach writing and i often return to it just to dip my toes in that inspiration.

Day 03 – Your favourite series: not much of a series readers. the Montmorency books by Eleanor Updale are perhaps my favorite? 

Day 04 – Your favourite book of your favourite series: Montmorency on the Rocks (which is Book 2). not sure how a book about a drug-addict thief and dead babies made it to through the editors of children's books, but i am sure glad it did.

Day 05 – A book that makes you happy: The Romance of Rosy Ridge by MacKinley Kantor. i think i smiled through the whole thing.

Day 06 – A book that makes you sad: The Judas Field by Howard Bahr. i applaud his tough choices, but this one made me very sad with regard to what happens to the characters.

Day 07 – Most underrated book: probably everything i have already named would qualify. i would add S. Weir Mitchell's Far in the Forest, which, though a bit overwritten, is just a great story.

Day 08 – Most overrated book: anything by J.K. Rowling.

Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving: Coming through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. it was given to me by a friend and i thought: gack, what do i care about some jazz trumpeter from the 20s? despite being totally out of my element, the book blew me away. also, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. refused to read it in high school. couldn't stop reading it in college.

Day 10 – Your favourite classic book: depending on my mood it's either Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, or Ulysses by James Joyce.

Day 11 – A book you hated: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. no commentary. i could run a long list here, but it's kind of a drag of a question. would rather focus on the good stuff!

Day 12 – A book you used to love but don’t anymore: this is a more interesting question. i loved loved loved The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub when i first read it. in the last decade i tried going back to it and couldn't get past chapter one. weird.

Day 13 – Your favourite writer: can't really say i have one. maybe Alan Moore, but that's a strange choice. i do love, without exception, everything by Stephen Crane, so maybe he qualifies.

Day 14 – Your favourite book of your favourite writer: from Alan Moore it's From Hell. From Stephen Crane it's The Red Badge of Courage.

Day 15 – Favourite male character: Javert and/or Valjean from Les Miserables are the first, most obvious choices. i would add Roland Deschain from Stephen King's Dark Tower series of the more recent things that i have read. he is absolutely priceless.

Day 16 – Favourite female character: probably Eponine from Les Miserables. women characters are tough for me. maybe Jo March from Alcott's Little Women? how sad is that? i can't even think of any.

Day 17 – Favourite quote from your favourite book: geh? too brain dead to even produce such a thing.

Day 18 – A book that disappointed you: most anything by Neal Gaimen has disappointed me, some of Sandman being the exception. The Silent by Jack Dann was hugely disappointing (and has the infamy of being the reason i almost never buy new books at full price). also, Geraldine Brook's March gave me cause to quibble. i will also throw in Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides, which is an amazing book save for the final page. i gave it as a gift once and cut out the offending matter, but once read, you can't unread things, alas.

Day 19 – Favourite book turned into a movie: incidentally turned into a movie or does the movie have to be good too? oddly, the one that leaps to mind is Bambi by Felix Salten. also Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. just because i think these are good adaptations.

Day 20 – Favourite romance book: not a genre i read, but The Romance of Rosy Ridge by MacKinley Kantor would count, i suppose. also, i would include Silk by Alessandro Barrico.

Day 21 – Favourite book from your childhood: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. also Bambi by Felix Salten.

Day 22 – Favourite book you own: i own most of my favorite books, so assuming the question is asking about the artifact rather than the text itself, i would have to choose non-fiction items: Lincoln and Episodes of War by William E. Doster, and John Wilkes Booth Himself by Richard Gutman. also i would throw in Photographic Atlas of Civil War Injuries by Bradley Bengston & Julian Kutz. there are others. i am choosing these because they are rare (and pricey) birds.

Day 23 – A book you’ve wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t: i "save" books on purpose when i know an author only has limited work available. included on my save self are books by S. Weir Mitchell, Don Robertson, and Howard Bahr. one day it will rain and i will have wondrous things to read!

Day 24 – A book that you wish more people would’ve read: i wish more people would read the authors i have mentioned throughout this list. but if i had to pick one, i wish more people would read Don Robertson. he is a lost gem (and he doesn't just write about the civil war). of the living authors, i wish more people would read Eleanor Updale. she is totally underrated.

Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most: most everyone in Les Miserables (except Marius and Cosette because they are silly ~ sorta like this question). 

Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something: Saint Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. also his letters.

Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending: not sure it was a surprise, really, but wow it did me in anyway: Prayer for the Dying by Stuart O'Nan. also Jerzy Kozinski's The Painted Bird. hooo boy.

Day 28 – Favourite title: Coming through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. i loved this title so much i named my second novel From Slaughter's Mountain.

Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked: maybe a lot of what i read would fall under this. maybe most obviously some of the classics like Moby Dick by Herman Melville? 

Day 30 – Your favourite book of all time: i used to be able to say Les Miserables without reservation, but it really depends on my mood. right now i keep Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen by my bedside along with Silk by Alessandro Barrico, Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King, and Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. does that make them my favorite? i actually haven't read The Red Badge of Courage in over a year, but i think it might be close to no. 1. that's pretty good for a book i hated quite passionately in high school.

: D

i went ahead and spent some money and got a handful of markers to give 'em a go. i have mixed feelings of joy and trepidation.

things i like:

1. consistency of color.
2. no streaks/ease of blending.
3. no buckling on the paper.
4. it gives my work polish that i just can't seem to get with paint because of my tentativeness.

things that concern me:

1. Learning to use them. they color pretty no matter what you do with them, which is great, but i don't want to get too sloppy. also, while i like the brush nibs very much, somehow i can't control them as well as an actual brush with paint. i keep wandering out of the lines.
2. cost (?). i bought more colors than I probably really need, though ~ over time i will figure out a palette.
3. colors! zooks, i'm bad at choosing colors. i chose out of the "sepia" family, figuring i'd trust it to be, well, sepia (as i know it), but it's awfully bright. it's not that big of a deal because i can adjust the saturation on the computer (as i did above), but i'd like to figure out a truer color match eventually.

this is all so bizarre. i could color for (technically) free if i just did it on the computer, where i have bajillions of colors at my disposal and can erase my mistakes. but...

it's all about the artifact.

if i don't have something i can hold in my hand, i don't love it.

at any rate, i colored four pages this morning before noon ~ fastest coloring job ever. that alone is worth a lot. now i can spend the rest of the weekend working on totally new stuff! yay!

hope everyone is having a great weekend!

: D

p.s. the panel above is from a page you won't see until october 12th, i think. please note the dreaded corn field!

had trouble sitting still this weekend. painted couple of pages (really need to do more, though), scanned some stuff, rearranged a few of my books (they may start cannibalizing each other at any moment due to overcrowding), and came up with at least twenty ideas for cool things to do or make that aren't exactly on my schedule, like adapt the über-ridiculous overblown, gratuitous, slightly nauseating poem The Praesidicide for the stage.

Hylton's 6,000+ line epic poem (in the first-person voice of J.W. Booth himself) may have the dubious distinction of being the first piece of Lincoln Assassination fan fiction published (within the year of the deed ~ beating out Townsend's Katy of Catoctin by decades). if anyone knows of any literary effort on the subject published in that period, feel free to bring it to my attention ~ the more, the merrier, right?

in other Pursuance news (it's been a while since i've blogged about this temporarily dormant project), over the course of the summer i acquired yet more books on the subject for my ever-growing collection, including the prize find of a copy of George Porter's prison diary (The Surgeon in Charge). it's incredibly rare and i got it for an absolute steal ~ $15 on amazon. someone wasn't minding the store, i guess). i've only ever seen one other copy for sale and it sold for $75.

i also bought Geary's Murder of Abraham Lincoln at ComicCon. I would have got Geary to sign it (he signed my Jack the Ripper), but alas he was nowhere to be found this year.

finally, i found a cheap copy of Jampoleer's Last Lincoln Conspirator, which i still think is pretty dang solid book for being an overwritten subject.

i continue to keep my eyes peeled for a cheap copies of the various histories of the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry (alas no luck and they seem to be getting rarer, fetching about $40-$60 a piece), as well as Arno Press's published transcript (which i've only ever seen one volume for sale ~ for $100, though someone bought it). the copy of John Wilkes Booth, Himself that i have been eying for some time also jumped in price this past year, up $85 to a whopping $375 (geh! i'm crazy, but i'm not that crazy!), and no cheap copies of Kimmel's Mad Booths of Maryland nor Bates' Lincoln in the Telegraph Office have presented themselves (the going price on each is about $60 for a decent copy). if i weren't so dang picky about the editions, i might have already bought copies of some of these things, but, well, there you have it. all too rich for anyone's blood, frankly. i paid $70 for my first copy of Doster's Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil War (and much less for the second copy), but only because it's my favorite non-fiction book ever and i still intend to be buried with it.

and yes, occasionally i buy groceries, though i confess i haven't really bought many new clothes except the occasional pair of jeans and a shirt in years. i flinch at paying more than $10 for a blouse, but waft a $20 book of my desire under my nose and it's a bargain!

and i need another bookcase so bad, but if i spend money on a bookcase, how can i buy more books???

it's all a conundrum.



"In Memory of Abraham Lincoln:
The Reward of the Just"
D. T. Weist, 1865
from Lincoln at 200

the weather is finally deciding to turn (at long last and alleluia!). of course that means my brain is kicking into high gear over a dozen projects i want to get cracking on. among these projects, i had this idea that i would really love to adapt s. weir mitchell's Summer of St. Martin into a comic form. i have blogged about this story before, and while there's nothing particularly exciting about the basic plot, the story sticks with me because it's sweet and very autumny, and so just right for the season. it also appeals to me as a challenge because it's nothing but a conversation between two people who are sitting on a bench in a forest in which the leaves are falling all around them (it's all very romantic). it would certainly give me an opportunity to work on the nuances of character expressions, etc.

like i have the time.

filed away in my "big list of graphic adaptations" are a number of horrifically complex projects. In Pursuance of Said Conspiracy remains among them ~ along with this demented fantasy i have had since a long time ago in which i am determined to do a graphic novel adaptation of the Jesuit Relations ~ which i still think would be awesome and i have all manner of ideas for it, but oh my! what an undertaking that would be!

so yeah. i don't know where mitchell falls into this. it would be a short piece (24 pages would cover it, i think), so maybe more reasonable than those larger, more ambitious projects. but still, it's not as though i don't have a ton of work already on my plate.

oh sigh. if i had millions of dollars i would hire an army of artists.

guess i better go get a lottery ticket.

so this weekend i watched Jude, a film made in 1996 (yeah, i guess i'm a little behind on this one since i'd never heard of it), starring kate winslet and christopher eccleston. the film is based on a thomas hardy novel called Jude the Obscure, and like all of hardy's novels is a cheerful romp through late 19th century english social ills. so cheerful, in fact, that i can't imagine why anybody would want to make such a film; the story is downright treacle.

right.

any of you who know hardy's work know that hardy wasn't one for a happy ending, so don't expect one here. in fact, i think i only finished watching this because i ghoulishly wanted to see how they would play out the ending (not that i thought they would change it, but more that i was curious as to what they would show). it's a spoiler, but there's a murder suicide toward the end that even if i warn you about it here, it'll probably shock you if you decide to watch the film.

anyway, the performances here are excellent and the driving force behind an otherwise drab horrorshow of misery, disappointment, poverty, and despair. there's also some fairly graphic sex which is sorta necessary for the story and well done, so i won't fault it too much (though a more gratuitous birthing scene later on is something i totally could have lived without!). the palette is very drab. england looks english ~ which is to say very grey. in keeping with this temper, perhaps, the costumes are very understated. there's very little color here and for this being the height of the most opulent part of the victorian era, the dresses in particular seem rather plain. it's all good and well for kate as poor sue bridehead, but wealthy arabella wears very plain black (okay she's in morning, but it's arabella ~ does she really care?). i think the only dress with any splash is arabella's bar costume. so on the one hand a bit of a disappointment there, but on the other, nice to see some plain clothes and to get away from the glamorous set for a change from most period pieces.

a thoroughly depressing, well-made film. i can only guess the filmmaker was wanting to make a comment about the nature and definition of marriage. i almost wish that if this was (as i speculate) a soapbox against anti-gay-marriage laws, that the filmmaker would have went ahead, been more bold, and adapted the story making the two principles into two gay men or something. i dunno. hardy just straight up is pretty much a drag.

: o p

yesterday we concluded the second week of M-Th regular posting of Reconstruction. this morning I was doing a little cleanup, including making the scene notes a little more detailed, link-filled, and prettier. i think it's not readily apparent that each scene has a notes section because you have to click on the "read more" from the home page to view it. i might need to do something to make it more obvious?

likewise, it's hard to know how much to include in the notes. no spoilers for the story, of course, but how much historical droning is relevant? or how much production bibbling do you want to hear about. i guess no one is forced to read it, but i don't want to make it tedious either.

anyway! this week we started a new scene that will run through next week. these opening moments are sorta flash-in-the-pan. we're going to get into longer sequences very soon.

anyway, enjoy and i certainly welcome your input here, there, wherever, if you have suggestions, comments, etc.

happy friday all!

the above picture is about the size of a business card (tiny), and when reproduced, it will prolly be even smaller, and yet i put entirely too much time and detail into it (ridiculously so ~ the faces were excruciating).

i'm not exactly sorry that i did because it's an all right picture and i like detail (like the ribbing on Lester Dunne's socks), but if I've got to produce 2-3 pages a week, i can't really afford to spent three days painting only a handful of panels. granted, it's been hot and i've not been feeling like working, but that no excuse for spending what little work time i've had on a single panel!

so yeah. i feel like i need to be cautious of setting a dangerous precedent for expectations that i doubt i can meet consistently. and of course there's another part of me looking at this and thinking: oh wait, i forgot to add the embroidery to Morse's vest. doh!

launch is in three days. i have a ton of work to do still.

hope everyone out there is well!

: D

home sick today. this is unfortunate because i have a bazillion things to do and am hacking and sighing too much to do any of them. the house is a horrendous disaster and i desperately need to do laundry. the good news is that i managed to dress, put a hat on my greasy head, and wander out to the farmer's market up the street so that i could buy fresh veggies with which to make a cauldron of leek soup.



in case you didn't know it, leek soup is the 9th wonder of the world.

despite the mung, i am going to try to get a good pile of work done. july is at long last over and i can throw myself headlong into working on Reconstruction. i have the first twenty pages (more or less) completed, which is quite the buffer, but i don't want to let the line go slack because i'm going to be posting 4 days a week (monday through thursday) and that buffer is going to get eaten up quick!

yes, you read that right: i'm posting updates monday through thursday with extras on the weekends (perhaps). it's only a slightly brutal schedule, but i decided on it because if i force myself to draw every day i'm hoping i will let go of some of the inhibitions that have kept me from being faithful to this project over the years.

this also means you will be seeing some wildly inconsistent artwork and i am trying to be okay with that. this isn't "real" artwork, after all, right? it's just a storyboard. so i hope you will be forgiving at least. and know that things will even off once i get into a rhythm with it all.

meanwhile, i will share with you this teaser. some of you had seen the digital version of this image. this is the "redo" in watercolor.



i'm really looking forward to the August 16th launch date.

now i must eat my soup and try to shake off the pall of mung so that i can be productive this weekend. if i have to be sick and it means i get a three-day weekend, then i had better make the best of it. later, there will pomegranate ice cream. naturally.

happy friday all!

: D