Friday May 16, 2008 - 5:51 p.m. -- Sample And Hold (19 days remaining)
When I redesign this site, I'm thinking of calling the news section "urinal." What do you think? It goes back to an old joke. When I was a kid, there were two prominent newspapers in my county. These were named The Lorain Journal and The Chronicle-Telegram. Only we always called them The Lorain Urinal and The Comical Telegram. That's still very funny to me. In fact, I'm actually laughing to myself as I type this. It makes me think of how my brother-in-law has disparaging nicknames for all of the banks in our area. Bank One is Bank None. National City Bank is National Shitty Bank. And so it goes. Seriously, that is some funny shit. Anyway, I'm tired of calling this the "news" section because there's almost never any news. It's just stupid random thoughts. More like a diary or a journal. Hence "urinal." I like it. Did you ever wonder about the kind of person that works in the factory that makes urinal cakes? You know, those strange little pink or blue things that hang around down in the depths of the urinal doing...something. Who knows what.
Anyway, continuing on with the analysis of my past drawings, we come to the fourth piece I created, Giant.
Not sure how much time passed between A Power Of The Air and Giant but it was probably a few weeks to a month. By this point I had gotten a little burned out on the whole mythology-building thing and felt it was kind of restrictive. I decided to create something very deliberately not related to that whole thing, something very earthbound and terrestrial. I've always been fascinated with giants and fairytales, and I always thought that some of the grotesque monsters that Jack the Giant Killer took on were amazing, like the two and three headed giants he fought. Those dimly remembered fairytales were part of the inspiration for this piece, and the Garden of Eden was the other. I was thinking about the angel Uriel, whose task it was to stand guard with a flaming sword at the entrance to the Garden and prevent Adam & Even, who had been cast out, from returning. That whole idea of Chthonian myths, racial memory (that somehow all human beings have within them repressed memories from our prehistoric and apelike ancestors) and all that "Giants in the Earth" stuff from the Bible really drove me with this one. Ultimately though, this piece ended up being a lot more pedestrian than I was comfortable with, and it remains one of my least favorite drawings. Friends seemed to like it a great deal, which constantly surprised me, and often remarked that it looked like something that would be in a really amazing children's picture book. I realize that was a compliment, but since it was so far away from what I intended, it always irked me.
Again, I repeated several things from prior drawings but tried out a few new techniques too. You can see the border, which I ended up using on nearly every drawing I ever made, but this time I departed from the three-part borders I had been superstitiously enforcing on every drawing. Since I had something more realistic and less cosmic in mind, I really wanted to ground this piece so I repeated the bricks-as-planetary bedrock from the first drawing Metatron...
I really pushed the shading of colors in this one, and the vibrant panels of the Giant's cloak are probably my favorite aspects of this drawing...
In order to make the Giant look less cosmic and a little more "real," I deliberately avoided using the complex circuitry I had used on the skin of the Archons, and instead opted for a much more abstract design element that I think I had mixed success with...
This was the first time I had attempted to include realistic objects, like the sword and the poleaxe that the Giant is holding, and honestly I am still so unhappy with how dull they turned out that I can't even bring myself to show a detail of them. The two heads of the Giant were a reference to those Jack the Giant Killer stories I mentioned above, and I still kind of like these heads even though they are a little plain. At least I created them myself and didn't look at any other artist's work when drawing them...
FInally, the thing I like the most about this drawing is the way I drew the trees. I am certain that I saw this exact same design somewhere else, almost certainly in a children's picture book, but I am also certain that numerous artists have used similar visual representations of trees so I don't feel bad. Although this made the feel of Giant a little more mundane than the abstract starscapes and symbolic planetoids of earlier drawings, I am still fond of these...
That's that. Like I said, one of my less favorite pieces. I no longer own this, having traded it (and one other drawing) to artist Tyler Stout for a giant stack of prints several years ago. He lives in the Seattle area, so I often wonder if these drawings have found a good home and are hanging on his walls or if they are getting moldy buried in some closet.
I do hope you enjoyed this look at my history and my creative process. I'll be doing one of these every day until June, so check back in.
Matt K.
Thursday May 15, 2008 - 5:59 p.m. -- Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat (20 days remaining)
Yesterday morning, Rudy told me that these updates read as if some huge and epic event was going to occur on my birthday and I became concerned. I don't want to mislead any of you gentle readers, so perhaps I should spell things out more clearly. I turn 39 in 20 days, on June 4th. For the remainder of May, I am going to use these daily news updates to re-examine my past drawings, deconstructing them and discussing some of the influences and intentions of each piece. My last update will be on Saturday May 31, at which point I will let this web site rest until the day after my birthday. On June 5th, I will take this version of the web site offline and post a completely new and totally redesigned version. Since I am decidedly lo-fi and have very little current interest in Flash animation, cascading style sheets, blogs, Javascript, and RSS Feeds, this "totally redesigned" version will in reality simply be an aesthetic change to the appearance along with some simple tweaks to the HTML code. Of course, I do plan on making the navigation baffling and confusing so that accessing whatever it is you hope to access becomes a frustrating and potentially aggravating occurrence, but that's the way I got to be.
Additionally, on my birthday, I am going to take whatever art and comics I have remaining and burn them all to ashes. The new version of Spudd64.com will relaunch mostly empty and naked, but will gradually fill with completely new drawings, comics, photographs and other stuff. A different aesthetic, certainly, but hopefully unmistakably me. Like I said, there probably won't be more than 2 or 3 new images on that June 5th launch, but I'll continue to update the news daily and will be working diligently on much much more photography and art. And the best thing is that since photographs are less expensive to produce in quantity than drawings, and my interests are moving toward a completely different approach to art, I'll actually be giving a lot of you readers different things that I make. So don't fret about anything, okay?
Now, continuing on with the analysis of my past drawings, we come to the third piece I created, A Power Of The Air.
I think that quite a bit of time passed between the creation of The Archon Of Time and the drawing of this piece. It was definitely a span of weeks, and might have even been a month or two. For one thing, I had gotten over my mononucleosis and returned to work, so that took up a majority of my time and energy. It was also high summer so what little free time I had was spent outside, traveling, or doing things. Additionally, I can recall beginning one or two other drawings in between The Archon Of Time and this one, most notably something intended to be The Queen Of The Galaxy or some such nonsense, but abandoning them as being ultimately unsatisfactory and poorly executed.
By the time I got around to A Power Of The Air several things had changed and several things had really solidified in terms of my themes and methods. I remember spending a lot of time thinking about spaceships and airplanes. One of my favorite stages in one of Nintendo's early Megaman games was an aerial level where the hero (Megaman) spends a lot of time far far above the clouds running around on this gigantic sun splashed floating metallic structure covered over with metal plates, rivets, colossal fan-blades and turbine engines and, of course, enemy robots. Those early Nintendo games really, strangely and almost subconsciously, informed a lot of my visual aesthetic, especially back then, so this piece is almost a direct outgrowth of that. In my continually developing personal mythology, I had already depicted the Supreme Being as a demiurge who had created the universe (Metatron) and the first of the great powers (The Archon Of Time), a being so powerful he had imposed upon the universe a rational and quantitative system of boundaries and measurements. The next step were the generically named "Powers Of The Air." Since they were all intended to be identical, very much like machines, this image stood for all of them. I imagined these beings as a kind of intergalactic police force...no, that's not really accurate. They were more like park rangers of the universe. On each planet that Metatron had created and seeded, a squadron of Powers Of The Air would be stationed to patrol the upper reaches of the atmosphere and prevent any spacefaring explorers from touching down on the surface. I think this probably came from one of my favorite movies, "2010," where, at the end, the monoliths transform the planet Jupiter into a new star and the former moons into a new solar system. The moon Europa is actually home to sentient beings in the earliest stages of evolutionary development. The movie ends with the monoliths broadcasting the message "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE." I think that the idea of an almost unimaginable cosmic power building a new universe with the raw materials of planets and stars and protecting each of these planets with a fearsome force of constantly patrolling ever vigilant pseudo-mechanical beings that looked very much like traditional winged angels was what I was really hoping to achieve with this one.
Aesthetically, many of the elements from the previous two drawings are here, but this is the first piece where I began to use rulers very heavily which is instantly noticeable. Gone are the somewhat shaky lines and organic feel of the first two drawings, replaced instead by an almost cruelly exacting precision. This is first noticeable in the much-thickened border around the drawing...
This heavy use of straight edges and rulers is also very evident in the way I drew this being's hands and the circuitry mapping its skin...
I chose an open-handed posture because I felt that this piece was confrontational and threatening enough and I didn't want to heighten that any more with strange hand positions, weapons, or clenched fists. The shading of colors that I had started to employ in The Archon Of Time was used even more effectively in the border here...
In trying to make this being look even more biomechanical than even the previous two drawings, I started to employ a visual device that I had been doodling ever since I was a little child. If you've looked at a lot of my art or read any of my comics, this will look very familiar to you. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by the slightly cartoony look of riveted plates of metal. I gave this Archon two pairs of wings, and the second smaller pair was designed to look harshly metallic and completely mechanical, so I decided to included these rivets to really emphasize the heavy plated steel aspect...
I would go on to use this effect over and over and over, especially in my black and white work. I still like it.
One of the things that to this day I still like the most about this drawing is the way the body of the being looked. I had given Metatron what looked more or less like a long tunic, and the body of The Archon Of Time was a symbolic abstraction. For this drawing, I wanted the figure to look equally like a sentient being and a machine so the covering of the body synthesized elements of Metatron's multicolored cloak and the metallic plates of the wings...
I still like the way that looks. I think the combinations of the blues and the metallic golds just look fantastic. This looks like it would have taken me a very long time, but I can't recall really spending that many hours on the body so I'm not really sure. I know I did the edges with a ruler but I freehanded the rounded corners, so maybe that sped things along.
Finally, this drawing has the first completely original head I created, since the heads for the last two drawings were more or less swiped from Adolf Wolfli...
Looking back, I'm not too sure how effective it was. I like the goggles and think they emphasize the idea of flight very nicely. The colors work well for me too, as does the impartial but somewhat imposing set to the mouth. The corona around the head seems to clash a bit with the rest of the body, so I'm not crazy about it. I dislike the lines at the top of the head the most because for some reason they remind me very much of corn rowed or braided hair, and that's not at all what I wanted. I remember thinking the head looked a little bare and bulbous without any detail above the goggles, but in retrospect these lines weren't the best choice. I also regret the way that the larger wings look almost like some kind of artistic riff on the American flag...
I know it's a bit of a stretch, but that's often what I think when I look at this. Taken with the aerial and mechanical nature of this being, it could almost be seen as some sort of weird advertisement for the U.S. Air Force which kind of horrifies me a bit. My final regret is the flaming rocket engine at the very bottom...
I absolutely love the overall design of the being, with the 4 wings, the 2 arms, and the single engine underneath, but I despise the bright orange and yellow flames. They pop too much and actually distract the eye from the other finer, cooler-toned details of the rest of the piece. I don't know what I was thinking here, but I guess this is pretty good evidence that I am a completely self-taught artist with no real grounding in theory or art education. Ah well, you live and you learn.
This is also one of the tiny handful of colored pencil drawings that I still own. I've never sold it or given it to anyone, although I'm not sure if I had some kind of attachment to it or if no one ever really liked it much.
I do hope you enjoyed this look at my history and my creative process. I'll be doing one of these every day until June, so check back in.
Matt K.
Wednesday May 14, 2008 - 5:41 p.m. -- A Little Green Rosetta (21 days remaining)
That's right friends, only 3 more weeks (exactly) until my 39th birthday on June 4th. Still plenty of time to shop! I kid, I kid! And don't forget, only 12 days until the Crusty Old Pullboy With The Heart Of Gold's birthday (I think he'll be 48?) and 13 days until Johnny Ampersand's birthday (I think he'll be 33 or 34? I can never remember!) Alright, enough of that.
Continuing on with the analysis of my past drawings, we come to the second piece I created, The Archon Of Time.
Only a few days passed between the completion of the prior drawing and this one. I believe I actually began this piece while I was still home from work dealing with my bout of mononucleosis. After finishing that first drawing, I was elated. It had been a long time since I really felt on fire creatively, and something about that first drawing filled me with a sense of euphoria. Even though it took me a few days to begin The Archon Of Time, I had spent some time thinking about this new personal mythology that I was building. I wanted a name for these beings, and at first I toyed with calling them "The Engines Of God" to highlight their divine cosmic nature as well as their pseudo-mechanical origins. I was concerned over what some might perceive as a Christian element though, and when a quick call to a local bookstore revealed that the name "The Engines Of God" was actually the title of a science fiction novel, I abandoned the idea. Ultimately, I settled on simply calling them Archons and although only a few of the images I created had this word in their titles, they were all conceived of as Archons in this pantheon.
After creating the image of Metatron, the demiurge and the primary creator of this universe I was illustrating, I started thinking about other ways to define and delineate things. Somehow, the idea of time came to mind immediately. I think perhaps some of this came from Stephen R. Donaldson's series of fantasy novels The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant because a big part of those books is the concept of something called The Arch Of Time. This concept refers to the idea that the universe was created by a Supreme Being, but in order for that universe to remain whole it must be free from any subsequent direct influence by that Supreme Being. The Arch Of Time is the boundary between that Supreme Being and the universe, and if the Supreme Being were to attempt to have any direct influence on the universe, The Arch Of Time would be breached and broken and the universe would be destroyed.
My own concepts weren't nearly that developed though, so for me, The Archon Of Time represented a kind of Apollonian being, the first to take this raw and nascent universe that Metatron had created and begin bringing order to it. This was first done through the establishment of time rather than boundaries of space and distance since without time there could be no beginning, middle, end, now, or then. And that's pretty much that.
I was probably a bit too literal in representing The Archon Of Time as a large clock-shaped being with 12 Roman numerals around its periphery, clock-like hands radiating from its center, and six arms and six legs...
...but I didn't care too much then and I don't care too much now. My art has always been primitive, and I think some of that is reflected in the almost naive simplicity of these concepts. In retrospect, I probably should have used grays, blacks, and silvers instead of greens and blues for this image, but overall I still adore this drawing.
Many of the stylistic elements that were present in my drawing of Metatron are also apparent here such as the use of tripartite border to enclose the entire image (although this was one of the most complex and variable border designs I would ever attempt)...
...the continued use of unusual hand signals to show arcane or magical power...
...and the circuitry on the skin of these Archons, easily discerned here on the being's 3 right legs...
With this piece, I also began incorporating a hot thick line of color around each Archon, a way of sort of making the being stand out from the background and radiate a kind of heavenly glow. You can see a little bit of this around Metatron's hands and feet in yesterday's piece, but this is the first time I consciously incorporated this element and used it to completely surround and enclose the Archon. A lot of people miss this, but when I show them they're always intrigued. You can see it here as a bright band of lime green surrounding the figure...
Color was vital and essential to me when creating these images. Often, I would spend hours simply selecting each colored pencil, matching them against one another, eliminating some and then including others. In some cases, the genesis of a particular piece or Archon came entirely from the selection of colors and the emotional response I had to those colors. Neither Metatron - I Am He nor The Archon Of Time were inspired this way, but the next piece grew almost entirely from my feelings about the color blue. More on that tomorrow though.
Another element that I included erratically in these early drawings but later, regretfully, dropped entirely, was the practice of blending or shading certain colors together in pairs. You can see a bit of that here...
Since my drawings were so two-dimensional and flat, with no real depth at all, I was searching for any method I could master to add some sort of texture to these flat geometric shapes. For a while, I used this kind of shading very effectively, but for some reason as I came to depend more and more on rulers and compasses and the colors became brighter and more monolithically solid, this shading was forgotten about. Still, it's interesting to see that method here in its earliest form.
My one real regret about this piece is, again, how much I was influenced by the art of Adolf Wolfi. I was still very unsure of myself as an artist, and faces eluded me. With both Metatron - I Am He and The Archon Of Time I more or less swiped the faces from drawings by Wolfli. Later on I began to develop my own style and the faces became a lot more unique and, oddly, mechanical looking, but early on it was all Wolfli. You can see what I mean in this comparison below to the face I drew and the faces Wolfli drew...
I'm not proud of that, and it's difficult even now to look at those two images side by side, but honesty is more important. Thankfully, this was only a starting point and later on my own individual style developed. Finally, this is one of the very few original colored pencil drawings that I still own. I haven't ever given this one to anybody or sold it.
I do hope you enjoyed this look at my history and my creative process. I'll be doing one of these every day until June, so check back in.
Matt K.
Tuesday May 13, 2008 - 5:39 p.m. -- That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate (22 days remaining)
I am counting down to my birthday on June 4 when everything will change. At least everything about this site. Some things will change for me, but mostly things will stay pretty much the same. Which is fine because I'm more or less happy with myself and my life, so why tinker with greatness?
Since chapter 2 is 22 days from ending and since I've been spending so much time lately digging through my past comics, art, and photographs, I thought I would close this part of the story by tying up some loose ends and committing some facts to the permanent record. For the next 22 days, give or take a few weekend days when I won't be posting, I thought it would be interesting for me to share some of the stories and inspirations behind the color drawings on my site. I haven't made that kind of art in quite some time, especially not at the pace I started at during the late 90s. I don't think that art was a fluke, nor do I regret it. I think it's very representative of where I was at that time in my life and what kind of aesthetic I was developing. Of course, I was in my late 20s at the time and now I am in my late 30s so things have understandably evolved from there. I'm not exactly certain where things are headed, but I do like putting the past in order so that's what I'm going to do.
The first colored pencil drawing I ever created was the piece below, called Metatron - I Am He from 1998.
If you're suitably intrigued, you can read a lot of what led up to this piece in the October 2005 news page, particularly in the entries dated October 28, October 29, October 30, and October 31. I have a tendency to create divisions in my life, or chapters. I know that these divisions are arbitrary, and that while our lives may appear to have a sense of order they are far more like webs of interconnected events or mosaics of memories and experiences. Nonetheless, these chapters have served me well and in terms of my creative life, the photography of 1991 through around 2001 was Chapter One. The art and comics of 1998 through 2008, which intriguingly and messily enough overlapped with the earlier photography, was Chapter Two. This year's birthday will signal the beginning of Chapter Three which will once again concern itself primarily with photography but will also include comics and some art. But I digress. Back to the drawing Metatron - I Am He. As I have written elsewhere, I was obsessed with Gustav Davidson's book A Dictionary Of Angels: Including The Fallen Angels and was constantly poring through its lists, tables and descriptions. These groupings of Seven Seraphim or the 144 Angels of the Throne seemed like perfect starting points for drawings, and I was particularly smitten with the name "Metatron" since it sounded so decidedly modern and un-angelic. That "-tron" at the end just sounded like some kind of giant robot or something, and since I had been a rabid fan of the Shogun Warriors, Micronauts, and ROM as a child, this naturally appealed to me. The origins and precise nature of the angel Metatron are every bit as confusing and self-contradictory as any ancient myth, but some commonalities include the ideas that Metatron was a human being and a Hebrew patriarch who somehow ascended into heaven and was transformed by Yahweh into an angelic being of the highest power. Beyond that, it just depends on what texts you're reading.
I didn't have anything specific in mind when I started this drawing, but I knew I wanted to create my own personal mythology using Metatron as a starting point. I was a few years away from really attempting anything cohesive in terms of comics, so when I began this drawing I just imagined that this mythology would exist as a series of images, probably just in my sketchbooks or journals. I had actually been sick with mononucleosis around the time I began this drawing, so on doctor's orders I had to take at least a week off from work to stay home and rest. The weather was beautiful outside and I didn't feel as constantly exhausted and beaten down as I had been lead to believe I would, so I went a little stir crazy during those long hours at home alone with no companionship other than my books and daytime television.
In addition to the inspiration provided by Davidson's book, I have recently discovered outsider art, or art by the uneducated and untrained. As I've mentioned many times, this was a revelation to me since I myself had not had any artistic or photographic education or training beyond high school. My own perceived lack of artistic and creative ability as well as my unfamiliarity with most artistic media (such as acrylic, oil paint, watercolor, and so on) constantly frustrated my efforts and made the act of creating art ultimately unsatisfying. But after discovering the crude vibrancy and vitality of outsider art, the art of the insane, and the art of children, I felt especially liberated from those prior handicaps. I no longer felt like I had to have a BFA in painting or a firm grasp of human anatomy and oil painting to create art.
The densely detailed drawings of the institutionalized outsider artist Adolf Wolfli were an enormous inspiration and, unfortunately, something I imitated a bit too closely. Looking back, I'm a bit ashamed of some of that now, but I do believe that as time went by, I began to develop my own style and my own individual aesthetic. At least now I'm not a total hack. Anyway, here is an image of one of Wolfli's drawings. The similarities are easy to spot.
So that's an abbreviated version (from those prior October 2005 entries) of what was happening in my life when I created this drawing. So let's take a closer look at it and break some of it down to see what I intended. First, I wanted this drawing to feel vast and cosmic. The Celestials and the character Galactus, created by Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics, were definitely inspirations since those comics were very exciting to me as a child. I wanted this drawing to provoke in the viewer some of those same feelings I had experienced when I first read "The Mighty Thor" issue #300 (the conclusion of The Eternals storyline, featuring The Celestials) and some early "Fantastic Four" issues starring Galactus and his herald Terrax the Tamer. To give my drawing some of this feeling of hugeness, I decided to have Metatron standing on a planet. Only my Metatron was not a fearsome, angry, destructive being, but was instead a life-giving creator even though his actions would be so far beyond human understanding that they would appear impersonal and terrifying. Later in my constantly developing mythology, Metatron became more like a demiurge, a Gnostic term meaning "a supernatural being imagined as creating or fashioning the world in subordination to the Supreme Being, and sometimes regarded as the originator of evil." The demiurge was a being thought of as the prime creator and the highest power, even though the demiurge was itself a creation of the true higher power and deeply flawed, a false god. Even in those later iterations though, I never imagined Metatron as intentionally evil, only a misguided and imperfect creator of imperfect creations. I never really sorted it out in my head whether or not Metatron was even aware that he was a flawed being and himself a creation of the true Supreme Being, or if he really felt that he was the highest power. Looking back now, I can see how Metatron, in this personal mythology I was creating, was really me projecting myself into this inner world. As this new universe began with Metatron, it also began with me, the flawed and imperfect creator, simultaneously a creation himself.
Since Metatron was a demiurge and the creator of this universe, I showed him standing on what could be seen as the first planet, a cosmic Garden of Eden. The planet itself is represented in an abstract fashion by a hemisphere of bricks or bedrock, spotted with enormous blossoms, and wrapped in a verdant green layer of growing plants topped with a grassy bladed corona. Metatron himself is solidly planted on this surface, his bare feet making contact with the living bedrock of the first planet, as shown in this detail...
I was raised Catholic and attended St. Joseph's Church in Amherst, Ohio fairly regularly until high school. Our church must have been built some time in the 1960s because the architecture was very plain, blocky, clean and modern. The church looked more like an engineering building on some state college campus than a house of worship. Even more intriguing, this fearlessly modern aesthetic was carried into the altar design as well, and instead of having a very realistic depiction of Jesus, perhaps cast in porcelain and writhing in agony upon a gnarled wooden cross, our church had an enormous almost abstract metal sculpture of Jesus with his arms outstretched like the letter T. This piece of art was probably 20 feet tall and loomed over the altar like a terrifying robot. He looked for all the world like a futuristic space battleship and not at all like the crucified Son of God. I spent years and years in church just staring at that thing, my eyes wandering over it's straight lines, rounded corners, smooth metal texture and oddly paneled surfaces. Unfortunately I don't have any images of that sculpture, but the way Jesus' robes were fashioned was the inspiration for Metatron's gloriously paneled and multi-hued robe here...
I was trying to recreate that sense of the mechanical and the organic, making every piece of Metatron's cloak look like a jeweled metallic garment. Another concept I borrowed from both religious imagery and Marvel comics was the way Metatron's hands were depicted.
Marvel's Celestials were 3000 foot tall armored beings from outer space who were responsible for seeding life throughout the universe. They were never seen without their armor, and the true nature of just who and what the Celestials might really be remained a mystery. It was clear that they were something far more than simple extraterrestrials. Every inch of the Celestials' armor was covered with machinery, scrolling, details, patterns, and most importantly, circuitry and it was this detail I borrowed whenever I depicted the skin of Metatron or one of the other beings I created. This was to highlight the fact that these beings, these gods, were an unknowable yet perfect synthesis of living matter, machinery, and divine energy. I had also seen lots of Russian icons and Italian religious paintings showing Jesus and the angels making arcane symbols with their hands and fingers, so without really researching this or knowing what they meant, I designed Metatron's hands the same way. While it was a bit half-assed, I actually quite like the way it looks and think it adds to the serenity and power of this image.
For some reason which I have never been able to discern, I knew very early on that it was important for these beings that I was creating to have huge and powerful hands and feet but very small heads and faces. I think part of it was because I wanted to de-emphasize any possible hint of humanity in these beings and highlight their vastness, power, and distance. I was concerned about the possible anthropomorphization of these beings, so I kept the faces small, simple and looking very impassive and unknowable. In the Metatron drawing, I highlighted this by surrounding his head with a corona of brightly patterned rings that simultaneously suggested flames, a holy collar, and the petals of a flower. And right in the middle of this mandala was Metatron's face, with no discernible expression, yet still radiating peace and power.
To highlight the connection with the angels of Davidson's book, I thought it appropriate to give Metatron wings. I knew I didn't want to do something obvious, complete with feathers and the like, so I did my best to create wings that were almost abstracted shapes. I included some detailing to suggest feathers, but in the end, I still really like what I did with these. I like the way they extend heavily from his shoulders, balancing the conical shape of the body and the cloak.
One last detail. Due almost entirely to the way that Adolf Wolfli, who also spent his entire life illustrating a vast and complicated personal cycle of myths and stories, surrounded nearly all of his drawings with elaborate borders, I imitated this as well. At the time, it was extremely important for me that every border contain 3 layers. The two outer layers had to be identical, while the inner layer had to be different.
It is especially obvious in this particular border, but I did this entire drawing freehand, using no rulers or tools. As I continued to forge (that's how I came to think of the act of making these powerful mythic images - forging) later images, I started to use rulers bit by bit, and eventually I became almost completely dependent on them. That effectively killed the spirit of these drawings, and has been a barrier and an addiction that I have yet to defeat. I am hoping that Chapter Three helps me overcome this.
As I mentioned, I started this drawing while I was extremely ill. All in all, it took me 2 or 3 days of intense drawing. I used no rulers, no other tools, nothing other than a square piece of Bristol board I had cut myself and a stack of Berol Prismacolor colored pencils. While I was creating this piece, and the others that followed, I entered what can't be called anything other than a trance-like state. I suppose some would call that communing with one's true creativity. I don't know about that. But I did feel as if this Metatron was very very real (which, in retrospect, is not surprising since this really was a self-portrait and I am indeed real) and that he was speaking to me, commanding me to craft an image representing him. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's part of what I needed to do to heal the mental wounds I had inflicted upon myself with photography. I think I'll leave it at that because to dig too deeply would risk unearthing some things better left dead and buried.
I eventually framed this piece and made a gift of it to Rudy's best friend Andriana and her husband Pete, on the occasion of their move into a new home. Pete's brother is also an extremely talented artist, and Pete is a gifted carpenter, so they have a deep appreciation of art. As far as I know, Metatron continues to hang in a place of honor in their home.
I do hope you enjoyed this look at my history and my creative process. I'll be doing one of these every day until June, so check back in.
Interestingly, all this "looking back" at what I call Chapter Two is helping me see what a sharp contrast some of my past has been with what I hope Chapter Three will be like. Again, while I have no regrets and feel very fortunate to have walked the paths I've walked, I read back through what I wrote above and think that I was a fucking loon. Talk about living in a fantasy world and being lost in space! I look back at it and can definitely laugh in a good way. I was a bit of a nutcase then, but as I've mentioned, I think I was really messed up in the head for most of the early and mid 90s, especially due to the photography. I got too close to reality there and it burned me very badly, so I retreated into this fantasy land of my own making and pretty much just checked out. It helped me an awful lot, and gave me the time I needed to heal and get stronger, but I did miss reality and I'm looking forward to rejoining the world a bit more now. That doesn't mean I won't be drawing or making photographs and comics, and that doesn't mean that they'll all be boring self-involved autobiographical real world shit, but I do think things will be noticeably different in a good way.
I've become fascinated (maybe again?) with the idea of crude, naive art. Art Brut, I guess. The marks we make on paper. The idea that the only thing that separates throwing crayons at a piece of paper taped to the wall and calling it garbage versus throwing crayons at a piece of paper taped to the wall and calling it art is intentionality. I haven't thought this through completely yet, and I will spend years doing so, but ultimately I think a lot of it has to do with my own creative struggles, my own artistic shortcomings and lack of skills, and my own desire to create in spite of these. So lately I've been looking at a lot of art that would probably be termed, for lack of a better word, retarded. You know, bad. Crappy. A big part of the appeal is the spirit behind it. The refutation of elitist aesthetics. The embrace of the low. Intentionality has a part in this, but somehow art by a skilled artist that is intentionally bad, especially when this art is created in a deliberate attempt to be ironic, is absolutely nauseating and infuriating. But art that is intentionally bad, or perhaps I should say, intentionally rough and crude and lacking in polish, and is created by an artist skilled or otherwise without a trace of irony driving the process is enthralling.
To this end, in addition to excavating some of my earliest and roughest comic strips (printed in updates down below) I've been checking out everything I can find by the Japanese artists Yusaku Hanakuma and the legendary King Terry, originator of the "heta-uma" ("bad but good") aesthetic. But something funny happened. Some books that I had ordered finally arrived at our apartment. Rudy and I had to make a quick run to Target to buy soap or something, so we stopped home first to see if there was a package leaning against our door. There was so I ran out and got it then hopped back into the car to open it. Inside were 4 books. The first was the "children's" book Beach Paradise by King Terry...
Followed by the collection of deliberately bad drawings called Bad 'N Nice by King Terry (again)...
Followed by two "fighting manga" books by Yusaku Hanakuma called Sarusukui...
...and the appropriately named Leather also by Hanakuma...
Hanakuma's manga are "fighting manga" and they're pretty much just that. Fighting. Pointless and hilarious. Also, untranslated. But since SPX last fall, I've discovered that I actually much prefer reading non-English comics in an untranslated form. I like the way they make me feel, I like following the narrative through images, and I find that I get a lot more out of the experience when I don't know what the characters are saying. Here are some pages from Hanakuma's manga...
The point of this story is that as I was flipping through these in the car, Rudy looked at them and said "What is that stuff? It looks shitty." And I couldn't stop laughing. Because she was right. And it was just so perfect.
Matt K.
Monday May 12, 2008 - 5:38 p.m. -- Adjust suck.
Do you know what today is, boys and girls? Go ahead, take a guess. I'll wait.
Well?
Not yet? Okay, I'll tell you. Today, May 12, 2008 is the 3 year anniversary of this web site! How exciting, eh? I can't believe I started this thing 3 years ago. The time has gone by so quickly, it really has. This is such a time of transition for me too. There's this anniversary, but my 39th birthday is also coming up in just under 4 weeks. I'll be 39. It's my last year as someone "in his thirties." I've got a lot planned for this year. Hell yes.
So take some time today and spend some celebrating Spudd64.com 3 years on the internet. Go ahead, it'll do you good.
Now, since today is such a special day, I've got something wonderful planned. I was going to post these one at a time, but a day as auspicious as this demands a full-bore celebration. So here, for you and I, are the only 3 "Deez Nuts!" comic strips I ever made specifically starring that damp, sweating, Latino testicle T.H. and his family! I had planned to do about a million of "Deez Nuts!," all starring testicles, but I quickly discovered how difficult it was to be funny and interesting in just 3 panels day after day after day. I petered out after only 3 strips, but what could have been!
When I went hunting for these strips, my memory told me that they were pretty dreadful and woefully unfunny. But upon reading them, I discovered that they are actually a lot funnier than I thought. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I don't know. The middle strip is a little lame, but the first and third strips are pretty hilarious. Anyway, I'm wasting your time. Feast your eyes on my glorious comic strip "Deez Nuts!"
THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THIS STRIP: I like that T.H. is standing on the bar and slurping his beer through a straw. I like that the baldheaded dude is wearing a t-shirt with the number 64 on it. I like the conceit that somehow T.H. is just a working stiff like every other guy. I like how in the last panel T.H. is so exasperated by his friend's joke that his hat is just flying off the top of his head. I stole that from an old Fleischer "Popeye" cartoon.
THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THIS STRIP: This is the first appearance, anywhere, of T.H.'s son T.M. which stands for "Testiculo Muchacho" or, loosely, testicle boy. I like how I gave him the typical comic-strip-boy multi-paneled cap and a big shirt with his initials on it. This one also introduces T.H.'s wife who at the time would have also been T.M., for "Testicula Mujer" or testicle woman. This character underwent some changes over the years. At least in my mind she did. And that's about all I really like about this one, it's really kind of dumb. But any time you can make a joke like this is usually a good one, especially in polite conversation.
THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THIS STRIP: I think this one is my favorite because it is so retarded. I like how T.M. actually combed the pubic hair on his giant testicular head thinking that it somehow made him look handsome. I like how T.M. is apparently going out on a date in spite of the fact that in the last strip he appeared to be all of 9 years old. I like how realistically I drew the bathroom mirror and faucet. I like how his date appears to be a 25 year old woman with very pronounced breasts. And of course, I love the punchline. It still makes me laugh. Hard.
So what do you think? Should I do more "Deez Nuts!" comic strips or is it actually way lamer than I thought it was?
Matt K.
Friday May 9, 2008 - 5:53 p.m. -- No hope? See, that's what gives me guts!
So, 24 hours later and no interview questions, no interest in the art. Fuck yeah, I'm bummed out! I know that's self-centered, but so was the whole interview thing. I need to either learn more patience or more humility. Probably both. Maybe the art thing came across as some kind of spoiled juvenile tantrum. "Give me money or I'll burn it!!!" That kind of thing. God, I really hope not. So to prove it, I'm rescinding the art offer. I'm just going to burn all the art and that's that. I'm going to leave the comics up in my Etsy store until my birthday, and I'll burn whatever's left of those books after that.
Today I share with you the final 3 "Matt and Johnny" comic strips that I have. There were a few more than this, one by Rudy, one by Johnny, maybe one by someone else, but I only feel right sharing my own. Here we go...
Yeah, this one is a bit lame. It's based on the whole "Deez nuts" skit from the first Dr. Dre album, something which I was obsessed with when I was teaching high school English (really) and which sort of carried over into my job at Barnes & Noble. I think the trick is that you have to get someone to say "Who?" and then you yell back "Deez nuts!" So I could run into you down at K-Mart, see, and ask you "Hey, did you see whatshisname over in the small electronics section?" Then you would say "Who?" And I would yell "Deez nuts!" and run. Maybe it's funnier if it really happens. Anyway, I did this kind of thing a lot to Johnny. On the sales floor. With customers around. And somehow never got in trouble. Go figure.
There's a couple of funny parts to this one. First, based on Johnny's real name, his old friends from the Kentucky holler that spawned him used to call him "Latent (see, rhymes with his name?) homosexual" and stuff like that. Which somehow turned into this game (if you can truly call it that) called "Why Are You Gay?" where the object is to take any conversation regardless of topic and logically steer it toward the inevitable question "Why are you gay?" It was a riot. So that's the first part of the comic. The second funny part comes from the sweat flying off of Johnny's big bulbous head. That still make me laugh and I don't really know why. I guess the last funny thing is the perception that Johnny was a closeted gay and that I was somehow on to him, which made him pause and sweat. The sad truth is that even though he is a smolderingly sexy man, he is indeed straight as an arrow and happily married to a lady priest. Ah well, can't win 'em all.
The title is probably the funniest thing about this one. It's a return to the bitter depression and cynicism that dogged me during my tenure at Barnes & Noble. At the time it seemed like the best way to end this little run of strips (this was the last one) but looking back it seems needlessly cruel and hopeless. Except for the title. The title is fucking funny.
Alright, next time I'm gonna lay something extra special on you. A comic strip I made and drew which I thought sucked at the time, but which has actually aged quite well and is still funny. Those familiar with my work and my predilection for testicular humor and characters will recognize this charming little fellow, and those who are new to this web site are in for a treat. Next time, from way back in 2003, this comic strip...
God I love that logo. Notice how the letters in the word "Nuts" actually look as if they are made of some kind of fleshy testicular matter. I'm a genius.
Matt K.
Thursday May 8, 2008 - 6:11 p.m. -- The emperor walks with us, one of the damned
This is a lengthy update. But I think it's worth reading, especially if you want to know what's going on in my life right now.
It happened last night. I couldn't take it any more. Prepare yourself for something wonderful. I went from this on Tuesday evening...
...to this after getting home from work last night...
...to deciding on a mohawk after dinner...
...only to realize I would probably get fired for a mohawk which forced me to shave my head. After I did that, I realized that I looked like a mon-chi-chi or a hair-flower (meaning that there was an equal amount of hair all the way around the circumference of my entire head) so I tried to do something a little aristocratic with the facial hair...
Trying it with my glasses didn't help much, and I just ended up looking too sexy and sensual...
...so I headed back into the bathroom to shave again and leave just a mustache. After all, I live in Dayton Motherfucking Ohio, and if a man can't have a goddamn mustache here in the heart of the Midwest, where can a man be a man? I wanted to do two things here. First, look like a red-blooded American man. And two, look like I should be wearing a robe, owning a lot of scented massage oils, and having casual sex with dozens or hundreds of women with non-surgically enhanced breasts and enormous amounts of pubic hair. You know what I mean. The results didn't turn out so well though...
Even trying it my glasses didn't help much. I looked like an idiot.
So in the end I went back into the bathroom and shaved it all off. And all I have is a shaved head to show for it. No pictures of that yet, although I'm sure some will creep in soon.
I hope you enjoyed me completely ridiculing myself, doing my best to make you laugh and laugh at my own expense. Spudd64.com is the web site that just keeps on giving.
Ready? Okay. All kidding aside. The beard was bugging the fuck out of me. It itched. It felt weird. It kept tickling the corners of my mouth in unpleasant ways. And honestly, I didn't really like the way it looked. It made me look hulking, hairy, and homeless. And Jesus Christ there was so much gray hair in it! Far more than in the hair on my head. I wasn't entirely happy with that, although I don't have any issues with getting old. In the end, I'm glad I gave it a try, even if it only lasted 2 weeks. Now I can cross that off the list of things I want to do before I die.
Shaving my head was intentional as well. I'm aware that stocky guys with shaved heads (like me) can either look sloppy and lazy or pretty decent. A lot of it has to do with the clothes you wear and how you carry yourself. I don't ever want to look like that sloppy lazy guy, so I'll be buttering up the wardrobe a little bit and trying to look as good as possible. Ultimately I shaved my head for a lot of reasons, some of which I'm sure you'll laugh at but who cares? First, I kind of like the way it looks and feels. I've got a pretty good skull and an okay face, so why not? Plus, my hairline has been receding since 10th grade and the older I get the less hair I have, so when that happens, closely cropped hair is the best way to go. Second, it's a good physical reminder of the changes I'm experiencing internally as well as a corporeal compass to remind me to pay more attention to my Zen studies. I'm working hard on my brain and trying to really fine-tune my bullshit detector. I've spent a lot if the last decade following some pretty stupid and wasteful paths. My life had become cluttered with pop culture detritus and other general idiocy. As this crap built up ever higher and deeper I lost sight of the fact that something important was missing from my life. By that I mean Truth. It's difficult to describe right now really. I'll keep trying and hope for the best. Read on.
John Porcellino draws a comic / zine he calls King Cat Comix. Last year Drawn & Quarterly collected a huge chunk of these tiny, cheaply produced, black and white xeroxed publications and put them in a nicethick hardcover. I borrowed it from our library and reading through it has been fascinating. Porcellino's art is almost unbearably crude, poorly drawn, ugly, and sometimes hard to understand. Especially in his earliest efforts. But his drawing is also wonderfully free from pretense and artifice. Somewhere in the book he states that he wasn't really trying to do anything special with these zines, he was just drawing bits and pieces of his life. Things that happened to him that day. Dreams. Stories he thought up. I don't know, it sounds lame, but it was so fucking compelling. I think it's because there's a lot of truth to this stuff. And bizarre, brutal self-disclosure. In one of his comic strips, he shows how he hates his job as a dishwasher, comes home from work one day very tired, takes a shit, masturbates, and then goes to visit some friends. It's nothing earth-shattering or even new, but that kind of honesty interests me right now. I don't know if I've ever had the courage of even the desire to do something like that in a comic, on a web site, or in a photo. God, this sounds so stupid. Am I making any sense to any of you? I don't really know how else to put it. Let me try it this way.
I've been to the MoCCA alternative and independent comics festival in New York City twice now, and I'm going again this June. I have a great time when I'm there, but a lot of that has to do with the experience of traveling with my wife Rudy, seeing Manhattan, and visiting our good friends and hosts Stephanie and Kevin. Nonetheless, MoCCA is fun, and there are some interesting zines, comics, books, and pieces of art there. But they are fewer and farther between each time. I don't resent the trends, and they don't make me angry. But because of these trends and the cliques they seem to spawn, my interest wanes a little more each year. For example, a few years ago, the whole Fort Thunder aesthetic, exemplified by the work of Brian Chippendale, Mat Brinkman, Paper Rad, and others, really started to gain some visibility and, I guess, credibility. Pompous Brooklyn based publisher PictureBox Inc. pushed this along by putting out some really well designed and affordable hardcover collections of a lot of this art. And yes, at the time, it was pretty unique and original although whether or not it had any quality is open to debate. Like any movement, this spawned a host of imitators, many of whom seemed more concerned with making art that LOOKED like Brian Chippendale's or being labeled by whatever passes for the comic press as "the next Fort Thunder." The Closed Caption Comics Collective seems especially guilty of this, although there are many many others. Any way, what I'm trying to get at here, in blunt and common terms, is that I find a lot of this stuff to be very disingenuous. Very untruthful. I'll try not to make sweeping value judgments, but personally it doesn't do shit for me.
In a weird sort of way, neither do my own comics and drawings any more. The "truth" there was buried, so removed from reality by layers and layers of pretense. I don't regret those 4 issues of "Spudd 64" or the art books I made or any of the drawings. At that time in my life, that's where I was and that's who I was. But at some point I reached the end of that tether, looked back, and realized just how far away I had drifted from everyone, everything, and myself. It got lonely. People called me pretentious and they were probably right. All this happened at about the same time I started getting interested in photography again, and began laying the groundwork for my own darkroom. There's a connection there, I think. Photography can be just as fake and false and untruthful as any kind of art. But it can also be more truthful. I say more because every photograph is a fiction, but the degree varies.
Now that I am just about done with my darkroom, just about ready to pick up a camera again, and looking through some of my old and completely retarded comics, I am thinking about myself and truth in better, clearer ways. I could lay a bunch of goals and plans on you right now, but what good would that do? The future is what it is, or maybe will be what it will be. I'm sure I'll do a few things, and we'll all see what they are then.
So Jesus, that turned into a big and completely unintended rant. Interesting.
So chapter two is done. Chapter one of my creative life was my early photography. That took me to hell and ended in flames, but it was a big part of me. Chapter two of my creative life was "Spudd 64" and art and giant colorful robotic aliens doing weird things in some fantasy universe. That took me to heaven and will end in flames, but it's a big part of me. Now I'm 38 years old, almost 39, and chapter three is getting ready to start. It will probably involve me and a 35mm camera and a lot of black and white photos as well as some self-involved writing and zine making. But since I'm doing this for me, and maybe a few close friends, and not trying to make money or get published who cares? I don't know if or when I'll ever do issue #5 of "Spudd 64." No one knows. Besides, even if I said I was going to do it at such and such a time, I could die before then and that would make me a well-meaning liar.
Birthdays are important to me. I think it was Steve Black who said something about how he doesn't celebrate the New Year or make any resolutions because for him, his birthday is the best time to re-assess things. I agree. This year my birthday is especially important because I will turn 39. This is the last year in my 30s. That's not a bad thing. Life for me has gotten better and better each year, and each decade was better than the last. My 20s were better than my teens, and my 30s were better than my 20s. So I'm excited, but I know this is a time of transition. Perfect.
So, by the time my birthday rolls around on June 4th, I need to accomplish several things. First, I want to get this interview done. See the top of this page. And email me some questions. Second, redesign this entire site from the top down, even in terms of content. These next few weeks will be the last time many of you will ever get to see a lot of this art, especially my drawings. So click-and-save now if you want a digital record. Third, and I guess last, for now, it's time to burn some things. That's the way I've always done it, and that's the way I'm going to do it again. I still own about 1/3 of the pieces in this web site's art section, all of the photos in the Holga and pinhole section of the site, and I have nearly all of my original comic art. I'll probably hang on to the photos, but on my birthday I'm going to burn all of the drawings and comics that are left. If any of you out there would like any of this, visit my Etsy store to see what's available. That's not everything though, so if you want something and don't see it at the store, send me and email and let me know what you want. I'd like to get some money for all of this stuff (because I'd like to do some traveling this summer and also use the money to buy film and darkroom chemicals), but you'd be amazed at the deals I'm willing to cut, especially to friends. Hell, even if you really want something but can't pay right away or need to pay in installments, that's cool with me. I'd even consider some trades although since I am decidedly non-materialistic and don't need a lot of stuff, I can only promise to be honest and carefully consider any offers. Mostly I'd dig music and maybe a piece of art from a friend, but I've got a lot on my walls so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. So yeah, 27 more days and whatever art is left or hasn't sold, including all my issues of "Spudd 64" will be gone, consigned to flames and ashes...
So to sum it all, below is how things're looking for me and the current state of art, mine and others. Pay special attention to the last one. Time to push the button, friends, the CDFs can't be delayed any longer...
Don't look for someone.
Don't seek success.
Take the first idea you get.
Delay Centrifugal Destruct Factors for as long as possible then push the button.
I'll feel weird if I don't close this with one of my old, poorly drawn, pretty retarded but nonetheless truthful and genuine comic strips from the "Extravamaganzas." Besides, this time of change and transition is incredibly exciting. This comic panel that Johnny Ampersand drew 6 or 7 years applies to how I feel right now, minus the soul-crushing misery but still including the porn...
And as promised, here is another comic strip featuring me and Johnny. I like this one. It's funny...
Matt K.
Wednesday May 7, 2008 - 5:42 p.m. -- Penalty Box
This update was originally written yesterday, and was supposed to appear then. Since I left my flash drive at work, I wasn't able to post it until tonight. I'll have at least 2 beard photos and some other good stuff for you tomorrow. Not really a "double update," but still something meaty and substantial. Now travel back in time to yesterday...
I don't rightly know how much longer I'm going to be able to deal with this beard. It's itchy and vexing and occasionally very uncomfortable even though it has now grown in long enough to be pretty soft. The most disconcerting aspect of the beard is feeling all this extra...stuff...on my face. The wind blows through it, it tickles the corners of my mouth...at night I swear I can almost feel the hairs reaching out and waving in the darkness. It's troubling. With all this extra stuff on my face, I feel like one of these all the time...
I might be shaving the whole thing off any day now, but for the time being, this is how things are looking...
Feh. Lately, I've been feeling very restless. A lot of this has to do with what happened in April, with me not feeling so hot, then learning I was going to have to have those awful tests, then freaking out and thinking about all the things I would regret not doing or trying if I ended up finding out that I was dying of some terrible disease. I've used the tired phrase "new lease on life" in previous entries, but it actually does ring kind of true here. As I was going through the nearly 3 years of news updates that I posted in the "news archives" columns to the left, I was struck by just how little drawing and comic-making I've done in the last year or two. These two pieces, the restlessness and the lack of comics, fit together somehow. I just don't know how yet. Some of it has to do with truth. Like, maybe there's not enough truth in that art. Or at least, enough truth for me to feel like it's worthwhile to pursue. And I find myself very drawn to crude and brutally honest comics like those of John Porcellino and art like that of King Terry and some Gary Panter, which is quite different from where I was when I started this all.
That kind of marination got me thinking, so I looked back at some of the very first comics I ever made with my good friend and Barnes & Noble co-worker Johnny Ampersand. This was well before I finally decided to start on "Spudd 64," back when we were just making comics to attach to the employee paychecks and stuff like that. After finishing that first collection of "Don't Quit Yer Day Job!" we got this great (at least it seemed so at the time) idea to do these quarterly comic anthologies we called "Extravamaganzas." Each would be named after whatever season it came out in, such as the "Spring Extravamaganza" and so on. There were no themes, and the emphasis was on art and comics that were direct, honest and free of pretense even if they were very crude. We had an absolute ball putting these together even though we petered out after only 3 collections.
So yesterday I was flipping through my copies of these 3 "Extravamaganzas" and looking at my first efforts and goddamn some of them were just fucking terrible. I was originally going to post them all in these news updates, but some of them are so bad and so embarrassing that I just can't bring myself to do it. Oddly enough, the art is pretty good, but the writing and the content are so sophomoric and histrionic. See, at the time, I was nearing the end of my nearly 6 year stint at Barnes & Noble and the pressures of working in retail management were just grinding my soul to a nubbin. Here's a comic panel of me drawn by Johnny Ampersand, from his comic "Meanwhile," that pretty well represents what things were like for me back then, as well as how beaten down, exhausted, and depressed I looked...
I didn't handle any of the stress or unhappiness very well though, and rather than use these early comics as an amusing, witty and entertaining way to cope, I instead used them to just vomit out my completely over-the-top misery. Ugh. It's embarrassing even talking about this. Needless to say, there are a few comics in these anthologies that will hopefully never see the light of day, at least not on this web site, but there are a few more that I really quite like. I think it's because aesthetically I am progressing more in this direction. Less polished. More direct. Cruder. More honest. Funnier. Less serious. More varied. More personal. I don't know where it will take me. Hell, does anyone ever really know where there art will take them?
I excavated a few of my favorite strips, scanned them in, and will be posting some of them while I work on new material. First, I'm going to start with something I came up with titled "Matt and Johnny." Only of course at the time we used Johnny's real name which, for privacy reasons, will never appear in any text or code on this web site. I drew a 3 panel comic strip with the same exact pose in each panel, then I xeroxed a bunch of copies. I gave a stack to Johnny and took a stack myself, and each one of us wrote out some dialogue for the strips. Then we lumped them all together, picked out our favorites, and ran them in the back of our very first "Extravamaganza." Below is the first of these strips, drawn and written by me. And in case you're wondering, I have no idea why I unintentionally drew myself to resemble Will Smith. Johnny did (and still does) have a big thick bulb of hair on his head, but as you can tell, I was still mercilessly ridiculing his physical appearance in every drawing I made of him. You'll also have to pardon the slight blurring in the image below. The originals are long gone, so I had to scan this straight from the "Extravamaganza." I'll include the text down below so you can read what it says.
The first panel reads Do you ever wake up in the morning, splash cold water on your face, look at your weathered reflection in the mirror, and ask yourself 'How can I go on?' You should be able to read the rest. In retrospect, this one isn't really that funny (unless you worked with us and were a part of constantly calling every co-worker an ass in a manner that bordered on the inappropriate and surely edged into the mentally unbalanced). However, it is a fairly accurate representation of my state of mind 6 years ago. I'm still fond of asking people this question. For a long time, I did this exact thing morning after morning. Things have thankfully improved significantly since then, due almost entirely to the presence of Rudy in my life.
Ah, here's another one that nicely sums up the kind of relationship Johnny and I shared when we worked together. I swear to God I was so abusive to this guy it's a miracle he's still my friend. What's even more incredible is that I was ostensibly his manager and boss, so I was supposed to be acting as such. Yet instead I would usually spend every day ridiculing his ridiculous haircut, asking him if he started wearing shoes before or after he left his old Kentucky home, and somehow working "my foot up your ass" into as many exchanges as possible. On the sales floor of Barnes & Noble. With customers around. Kee-ripes. Still, it's pretty fucking funny.
There really was a lot of solar imagery in my art and comics, especially back then. So I guess this is a pretty accurate "slice of life" comic strip.
Alright, more thinking and marinating and "classic" Matt Kish comics tomorrow.
Matt K.
Tuesday May 6, 2008 - 6:17 p.m. -- Goddammit
I had a good update all prepared but I left my flash drive at work so I can't post it until tomorrow evening. I'll tantalize you with the tease that this update contains comics I made over 6 years ago. It's rich! Anyway, come back tomorrow for the real thing.
Matt K.
Monday May 5, 2008 - 5:39 p.m. -- No beard for you
Man, yesterday I did a lot of stuff and ended up forgetting to take a photo of the steadily advancing beard. Sorry about that. I'll have one for you tomorrow. However, there is a frog update.
Loyal readers of this web site will remember that in December, good friends Stephanie and Kevin sent Rudy and I a pet froglet and a pet tadpole along with all the fixings we would need to take care of them short term. We always called them frogs, or froggies, or froglets, but apparently they are officially known as African clawed frogs. Since we didn't know their genders at the time, the tiny froglet was named Freddie in honor of Freddie Mercury of Queen, and the tadpole was named Ozzy in honor of Ozzy Osbourne. We figured that if they turned out to be female frogs, Freddie and Ozzy were gender-neutral and could still apply.
Well, it didn't take more than a month or two, and Freddie soon grew to a comparatively large size while Ozzy rapidly transitioned from a tadpole to a froglet to an almost equally large frog. The plastic habitats that had arrived with them in December of 2007 were quickly far too small for either one of them, so we moved them into a nice roomy 5.5 gallon aquarium and there they live to this day. In spite of the fact that Freddie is probably 7 months old and Ozzy is probably 6 months old, they are fat flabby well-fed frogs close to 3 inches long. Also, they have matured enough that we were able to identify them both as males due to the presence of dark nuptial pads on the insides of their forearms. They're also apparently gay because they engage in the mating process known as "clasping" with one another quite frequently.
Below is a photographic update of the frog's progress, showing them when they first arrived as well as how they're livin' right now. Enjoy.
First, here they are in the two plastic habitats that arrived with them. Just for reference, that green candle is about 6 or 7 inches tall. Ozzy, the tadpole, is almost impossible to see in the container to the left of the candle, while Freddie can be clearly seen in the container to the right. Look at how tiny he was! Seriously, he was maybe a half inch long or less.
Next, this is the tupperware container we have to scoop the frogs into when we clean out their aquarium. They don't much like being in there, but this image, complete with my hand for comparison, gives you a better idea of just how colossal these fat frogs have become in just 5 months.
Here's an overhead shot of them in their home. Even though they are just about the same size now it is easy to tell them apart. Freddie, on the right, is slightly brownish with very mottled coloring and patterns on his back. Ozzy, on the left, is a bit greener with smoother coloration and less patterning.
A similar shot, but from the front of their aquarium. It looked so cold and sterile without any rocks or sand so we got them a whole bag of those weird blue glass stones to decorate the bottom. Also, Rudy and I read that African clawed frogs can get very skittish and jumpy and tense if they don't have places to hide, so we bought them that nice big artificial rock you see on the right side. They actually LOVE that thing. They spend lots of time underneath it or hiding behind it and it seems to keep them nice and calm. Paradise!
Finally, a little comparison for you. On top is the photo from just above, showing how miniscule little Freddie was when he arrived. Below is that same plastic habitat next to their new aquarium home showing how enormous Freddie has become. And he eats like a pig too, double-fisting loads of bloodworm nuggets into his ravenous gullet.
Their growth seems to have slowed down a lot in the last month or two and they will probably top out at around 5 inches. We might have to get them a larger aquarium then, but that's at least a year or so away so we're not worried. I hope you enjoyed this froggy update. The beard and more art will return tomorrow.
Matt K.
Sunday May 4, 2008 - 11:58 a.m. -- Happy Birthday Stephanie!
Today is my very very good friend Stephanie's birthday! She lives in Manhattan so I won't get to wish her a proper Happy Birthday until next time we visit (probably in June) but for now I can at least post this silly picture of her and me and Rudy and her beau Kevin and wish her Happy Birthday this way. It's an older photo but it's the only one I have of her. Happy Birthday Stephanie, I will send you an email later today and I promise not to attach any silly electronic birthday cards.
That's Stephanie second from the left.
Next, as you have no doubt been awaiting, here is the next thrilling installment in the beard marathon. This photo is from yesterday and represents Day 9. It's starting to thicken up and fill in, but every day I am more and more unpleasantly surprised at how much gray there is in this beard. And I'm only 38, soon to be 39!
Last, yesterday was Free Comic Book Day and I spent the whole day working at the comic shop in Columbus. We were exceptionally busy and the day was really exhausting. There were face painters and some guy videotaping everything and another even more intense guy dressing up in a variety of superhero costumes, so the day was, to say the least, surreal. I took quite a few pictures and although they don't do a very good job of capturing just how odd the day was, you can at least see some of what we all endured in the name of Free Comics for one and all. Click here and another window will open up showing a bunch of photos from yesterday as well as witty and scintillating captions and commentary from me.
More tomorrow. See ya!
Matt K.
Saturday May 3, 2008 - 7:11 a.m. -- Free Comic Book Day
Here's another picture of the fresh new beard. This one is from yesterday, and represents Day 8 of the beard marathon. No time for anything else since I have to drive to Columbus and work at the comic book store all day today. It's Free Comic Book Day so if you're in Columbus stop in, say hello, and pick up some free comics! More updates tomorrow sometime.
Matt K.
Friday May 2, 2008 - 6:11 p.m. -- The Rust Monster and me
I don't know if anyone out there can help with this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. When I was very young, probably 6 or 7 or maybe even 8 years old (so this would be the mid 1970s), I remember my parents buying me a bag of plastic toy monsters from our local Drug Mart. I was absolutely fascinated with these little plastic monstrosities and I have very distinct memories of many of them. Several years later in middle school, I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't play frequently, nor did I play for long, but one of the things I remember liking the most about the game was the book The Monster Manual which was essentially an illustrated bestiary with statistics for all the creatures used in Dungeons & Dragons. What surprised me most the first time I flipped through The Monster Manual was that I recognized a few of the creatures as essentially identical to the plastic monsters I had played with as a younger child, especially the Rust Monster and the Bulette. At the time, I remember vaguely wondering if somehow I had ended up with a bag of Dungeons & Dragons toys and not been aware of what they were, but that's all.
Lately, for some reason, I've been wondering about these toys again so I started poking around online to see what I could learn. I was stunned to learn that Gary Gygax, the man who created Dungeons & Dragons, actually said this in an interview: When I picked up a bag of plastic monsters made in Hong Kong at the local dime store to add to the sand table array ... there was the figurine that looked rather like a lobster with a propeller on its tail ... nothing very fearsome came to mind ... Then inspiration struck me. It was a "rust monster." It's fascinating to learn that these toys were actually the inspiration for some of the beasts in The Monster Manual and not the other way around. Also, it's interesting how much of the original conceptual work for Dungeons & Dragons was done without any real regard to copyrights and intellectual property. Here is an image of the toy that became the Rust Monster, the one I remember so well from my early childhood...
Another beast that I remember well from that little bag of plastic monsters also made it into the world of Dungeons & Dragons as a landshark-kind of brute called a bulette. Here is an image of that plastic toy...
I've done a great deal of searching online but I was unable to come up with much more than that. I did learn that some other Dungeons & Dragons monsters such as the owlbear, the umber hulk, and maybe even the shambling mound were also based on these generic plastic toys from Hong King. I also found a message board with the unsubstantiated claim that this bag of plastic toys was sold as a Dinosaur playset under the name "Ancient Rulers" and that kind of rings a bell. I think I can remember an equal number of actual dinosaurs interspersed with the more unusual monsters, and since I was absolutely wild about plastic dinosaurs when I was a kid that would explain why I wanted so badly for my parents to buy me that bag of toys. So my question to you readers is do any of these images look familiar? Do you know anything about these toys? Can you give me any leads on where I might be able to track them down or learn more about them? I know this is a shot in the dark, but any help you can offer will be deeply appreciated. Send me an email and let me know. Thanks!
In other news, the beard is progressing nicely but sometimes it itches like hell. This morning Rudy told me that I am starting to look "really scruffy" which doesn't seem like a good thing. Here is how things are looking on this Day 7 of the beard marathon...
There's a lot more gray in my beard than I would have imagined. I really am getting old.
Finally, I just wanted to put this up here. I am working on a simple endpaper design for an upcoming book about the artist Ed Emberley and I'm just about finished. There might be some additional tweaking, but this is pretty close to the final look, although this will be reproduced in blue and white instead of black and white, with a nice rough paper texture to the blue. The top image is the left endpaper, the bottom is the right...
Obviously, there's still some work that needs to be done digitally to get these ready for publication, but you get the idea.
Alright, tomorrow's update will be brief, probably just a beard update, since I will be working all day at the comic book store in Columbus. Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day so if you're in the area, stop in and see me. I'll take some photos and post them on Sunday.
Matt K.
Thursday May 1, 2008 - 5:54 p.m. -- I own this motherfucker!!!
Alright. April was a rough month. As it turns out, there really isn't anything serious wrong with me, but it seems as if I am internalizing a lot more stress than I thought and that was taking a toll on me and my health. Even though the results of all my tests were completely clean and I am actually physically quite healthy, I still feel like I dodged a bullet and that got me thinking. I started running through a bunch of worst case scenarios in my head, examining how I would handle a diagnosis of serious and life-altering illness and I didn't like the results. Ultimately what I kept coming back to over and over was the feeling that I would regret so many things that I have not yet done, tried, or experienced and I would also feel depressed because I have not worked harder to stay in touch with friends, family, and people in general. I didn't get to the point where I was making imaginary deals with God, promising to donate to charity, call my mother every weekend, and draw more if God made sure my test results were good, but I did some serious thinking about personal changes I want to make in order to do, try, and experience more things and spend more time with friends and family. So this is a new beginning. It's a bit silly, sure, and the phrasing is a little tired, but I really feel as if I have a new lease on life. So let's go!
First, I made some changes to the news section of this site. I started this web site almost exactly 3 years ago on May 12, 2005 (that's so weird to think about!) and I've done a pretty good job of archiving every version and every piece of content that I ever posted. Quite a few times, I changed things and removed months worth of news updates as well as whole pages of art and photography. It kept things fresh but it also seemed a little schizophrenic to me over time. A little while ago, my good friend Stephanie W. told me that she thought of my site kind of like a garden of mine, full of all sorts of things that had been able to grow over time. That example stuck with me, and the more time that passed, the more I liked that way of thinking. To make a long story short, that was the impetus I needed to go back, excavate most of the content and news updates from prior versions of this web site, and re-post them here. I read through each and every update making sure I changed the names, or at least dropped the last names, of those of my friends who wanted a little online privacy. Also, I decided not to include the updates where I was posting all the pages from "Don't Quit Yer Day Job!" the comic that Johnny Ampersand and I made when we worked at Barnes & Noble together. I might still do that at some point in the future, but there were so many names that needed changing or editing and the work seemed a little too daunting for the moment. But yeah, other than a few name changes and the omission of that comic, every single news update for the last 3 years is now back on this site and accessible by those links over at the left under the "news archives" header. Nice.
And let me tell you, re-reading all of those updates was a real trip down memory lane. I liked a lot of what I wrote, but damn some of it was embarrassing. While I'm proud of a few of the pieces, especially the autobiographical stuff that I was writing in October of 2005, I seemed to have a real problem controlling my verbiage at times. Apparently I never met an adverb I didn't like since just about every entry is peppered with far too many of them. And dear lord, how many updates did I spend just effusively gushing over some new book or graphic novel or CD? Honestly, it was kind of pathetic at times. I hope I'm a better writer by now, and I hope that the contents of these news updates become a little more interesting.
The best part of re-posting all of those updates was in reliving a lot of those memories. Lots and lots of photos of Rudy and other good friends. Photos from our travels. Updates about meeting new people like Stephanie W., Kyle Wallace and more. Although there is still much more I want to do with my life, I would have to say that even based on something as piecemeal as the updates on this web site, I've had a pretty damn good life and been very lucky.
So as part of this new lease on life foolishness, I am using this summer to do a lot of things. Some of them I've done before and loved. Some of them I've never done. But I'm doing them all, and will keep doing them all year after year. And I'll be sharing it all with you through the magic of the internet and digital photos. First up, it's time I finally grew a beard. I've wanted to do this for a long time, and I've joked about it quite a bit with Rudy. However, she really strongly prefers me with a clean-shaven face so the beard remained a pipedream. Until now, that is! Friends, the last time I shaved was on Thursday, April 24th and the face has been getting fuzzier ever since. I'll probably only keep this going until my birthday in early June, but until that point I'll be posting a daily photographic self-portrait of the progress of my awesome beard. Feast your eyes on the photos below, starting with day 4 of the beard marathon, April 28, 2008...
...followed by day 5 of the beard marathon, April 29, 2008...
...and concluding with this most recent photo, the beard marathon day 6, from just yesterday!
Look how rugged and handsome I am! Imagine how stunning this beard will be in 3 or 4 weeks!
Oh, yeah, on the Monday of my test, when we got back to our apartment, there was a funny little padded mailer envelope waiting for us by the door. I was pretty groggy from the drugs, but aware enough to rip it open and guess what! A funny piece of metal and some screws fell out, and by the next day I was able to do this...
Hell yes, friends, my enlarger is FINALLY complete! Assembled, in good working order, and ready to get busy in the darkroom! Just a few minor things to pick up now, and then I'll have a fully stocked and operational darkroom. I am stoked. As superstitious as it sounds, I took the arrival of these missing parts on the day of my medical tests as a good omen for a brighter and happier future. Isn't that machine just beautiful? It almost brings tears of joy to my eyes to see it sitting there in my studio, waiting to get to work.
This is the part of today's update that I am most excited about. I haven't done many comics, but I think I've done a pretty decent job in creating the universe of Spudd 64 and some of the characters that inhabit it. In issue #4 of my comic, I invited some of my friends to participate by either contributing stories or art. It was such a joy to see other talented and creative people turn their imagination toward these characters I know and love so well, and the results thrilled me. Here are a few of those older pieces, more or less in chronological order. First, here is a drawing of Spudd 64 by me...
Spudd went through a few different permutations early on, but I settled on this version pretty quickly and he has been the same ever since. Way back before I had even completed the first issue, my wife Rudy made me an acrylic painting on canvas of Spudd 64, entitling it "Post-Modern Spudd." This was the very first time anyone other than myself had created an image of one of my characters, but I immediately loved it. Here is her painting...
It is always so interesting to see what other artists will do with my characters, how they will envision them, and what changes their own individual styles might make in the finished image. Rudy's use of such hot bright colors was unique, as well as her depiction of Spudd's feet as much smaller than they actually were. I love that painting.
A few years later, as I was assembling the various contributions for issue #4, I met Kyle Wallace at S.P.A.C.E. for the first time and he presented me with this fantastic re-imagining of our favorite intergalactic sprout as "Pimpin' Spudd"...
The drawing came from the entire Fragility Productions gang, which at the time included Kyle Wallace, Colt Kegley, and Tommy Webster. I believe Colt was the resident artist, so this might be primarily his work, but I don't know for sure. Nonetheless, I really loved the drawing and what these guys did with Spudd.
That drawing came at about the same time I received 2 pieces that were included in issue #4, drawings from Dara Naraghi and my good friend Johnny Ampersand. Dara claims he's "just a writer" with no artistic ability at all, yet I still find his vision of Spudd oddly charming and magnetic. Dara was also the second artist (after the Fragility Crue) to give his piece a title. Take a look at "Spudd 64 in Dimension X"...
Now Johnny Ampersand is a great artist and I've known that for years, so it was no surprise to see his fabulous piece...
It's difficult to say what I like the most about his version, but the fact that he was able to make Spudd 64 seem real, solid, three dimensional, and capable of turning his body blew me away a little bit. I think it's because my drawings tend to be very flat and two dimensional, so any suggestion of depth and weight intrigues me. Both of those drawings appeared in the mammoth 56-page issue #4 of my comic.
But Spudd 64 is not the only character I created that other artists have drawn. Colt Kegley of Fragility Productions created an image of Xephon that is actually breathtaking. First, here is one of my drawings of Xephon, an enormously powerful and gigantic alien archon, from issue #1 of "Spudd 64"...
For issue #4, Kyle Wallace wrote a one page text story titled "The Insurrection Of Xephon" which was accompanied by this drawing from Colt...
All of that wonderful art got me thinking, and I decided that I would continue to ask my friends to draw characters from my story so that I could enjoy their own unique visions of these creatures. At S.P.A.C.E. just a few months ago, I asked Tom Williams to draw Hassan, the brother of Hafez, and the main character in issue #4. Here is one of my drawings of Hassan...
Now I expected Tom to do something unique and unexpected, but nothing could have prepared me for what he whipped up. This piece is large, measuring about 14" by 17", so I had to take a digital photograph of it, but you'll get the idea. Here is the Tom Williams version of Hafez' brother Hassan...
Upon finishing it, he told me that something about Hassan's hands and feet made him think of webbing, like the feet of a frog, so that was his inspiration. I love this drawing.
Last but never least we have what is shaping up to be my favorite version of a Spudd 64 character ever. After seeing what Tom created, I started thinking about the artists I knew whose style was drastically different than my own, and the first name that came to mind was the talented Mr. Steve Black. Steve is primarily a painter and he has a BFA, so he's definitely got fine art credibility. His comics work is amazing, but his paintings are even more so. Steve's style is an almost paradoxical blending of realism and fantasy and he's produced some incredible paintings that really challenge the eye of the viewer. I asked Steve if he would be interested in this project and I gave him a list of several characters from my comics to choose from. After some consideration, he chose Tzadkiel, or at least the small flower-headed form of Tzadkiel from issue #1. I know it's small (I had to crop one of my own panels to get this image) but here is my version of Tzadkiel...
Steve, who now lives in California, works very methodically and creates his art through a long process involving several stages. This is still a work in progress but he has been sharing images of the work and they have been nothing short of remarkable. First, he sent me this pencil sketch to give me an idea of what the finished image would look like...
I nearly fainted when I saw that. As with Tom's piece, I was expecting something unique and amazing from Steve, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for what I saw. Simply put, I was stunned, and I loved every line and shape and shadow. The finished piece will be an acrylic painting on cradled masonite, and a few days ago Steve shared some of the color work. One of the many things I especially like about Steve's work is his use of color, and what is so amazing about his color choices for this piece is that they are identical to what I envisioned when I first drew Tzadkiel so many years ago. Take a look...
Absolutely beautiful. Steve is still working on the piece and has promised to share images of his progress as he nears completion. I'll keep posting them here and when the piece is finally complete I'll photograph it as it hangs on my wall.
Okay, I think I saved the best for last with this update, so I hope you all enjoyed catching up with me and seeing that incredible parade of art. I'll be updating every single day this month, and hopefully forever after, so check in again tomorrow. After all, you don't want to miss the next photo in my beard growing marathon, right?
Matt K.