Posts Tagged ‘art’

84 items.

How to Swipe like a Pro – Old School

by Colleen Doran on April 11th, 2012
Posted In: Blog, Culture, Fine Art

My original post “How to Swipe Like a Pro” got a lot of interesting comments, but will no doubt have no effect on the legions of people out there who seem to think using reference to make art is some sort of betrayal of principles. We really don’t care about those people, but I do care about things like this:

A fascinating new documentary, Corsi: The World’s First Male Supermodel, is now seeking funds on Kickstarter. I am a backer of this project.

Corsi’s face and figure was painted, sketched and sculpted by the likes of such great artists as John Singer Sargent, Pierre Auguste Cot and James Earle Fraser. There are statues and reliefs of Corsi found in New York’s Battery Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and countless other locations around the globe.

Corsi’s story begins as very young gypsy boy, who grew to consort with royalty and then lost everything. He died of consumption in 1924 at the age of 56. Bobby Nye, an opportunistic silent film actress and casual acquaintance of Corsi obtained power of attorney over the ailing man, who was unable to speak for himself in his final days. His large collection of costumes, priceless artwork and photographic archives were quickly liquidated. The following decades saw Corsi’s legacy slip into obscurity.

Here is a photograph of Corsi, used in an 1895 painting by John Singer Sargent.

And here is the final painting.

Wow, that dude Sargent uses photos for reference, just like Alex Ross.

I hope you’ll consider donating a dollar or two to this fascinating Kickstarter project.

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Arts and Letters Links. And Three Black Hearts to go.

by Colleen Doran on November 1st, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Culture, Culture, Fine Art, Creator Resources, Legal

Over at my portfolio website, I posted an entire out-of-print short story, “Three Black Hearts”. I’d hoped to find time to color it, but maybe I will leave that task for some new print story collection.

Here’s page one of the tale.

Also, art and business linkage. Cool stuff.

In praise of hand lettering at The New York Times.

On the surface, this riotously raw lettering looks like it was produced by those who are incapable of rendering letters with any semblance of accuracy or finesse. And while this may or may not be true, a decade or so ago, this lettering was a critical reaction to the computer’s cold precision.

10 Reasons Why Prince Valiant is the bestest adventure strip hero ever.

He’s part Errol Flynn, part gritty badass, part Joseph Campbell myth on the make, part nostalgic vessel for our grandparents’ yearning for some more civilized age, part Mel Gibson-style torture survivor, even part MMORPG knight slowly accumulating levels and power and inventory.

He’s my all-time favorite comic. And the only comic I truly collect.

Ten great child geniuses in literature.

…the more compelling characteristic of the child genius is the fact that he is alone in what is many ways a foreign world. After all, alienation, in our digital world, is one of the most defining themes of our generation, something that occupies everyone.

Something you should never do: respond to your critics. Never ever respond to them like this. And don’t let your family do it, either. Michael Chabon’s wife has meltdown on Twitter. V. sad, because I respect the Chabons.

BTW, I really need to clean out my bookmarks.

If someone hasn’t written a book about this yet, I sure wish they would. Reclusive art love/heiress Huguette Clark and her eccentric ways. And to make this story even more frustrating, her art was selling on ebay recently for a song, and I couldn’t afford any of it at the time. I assume people did not recognize her name: her work had a storybook quality. It was quite nice. I imagine a little context would have sent those prices soaring.

The daughter of a disgraced former U.S. senator, Huguette inherited millions from the Montana copper mines, and has lived a solitary life while her three fabulous homes sit empty: a $100 million estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, a $24 million country house in Connecticut and a $100 million co-op, the largest apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park — all immaculately kept but unoccupied for decades.

As Huguette has just marked her 104th birthday in an ordinary hospital room in New York, there are unanswered questions as well:

Who protects an old lady who secluded herself from the world, limiting her life to a single room, playing dress-up with her dolls and watching cartoons? Who protects an old lady whose Stradivarius violin, the famous one called “The Virgin,” which her mother gave her as a 50th birthday present, has been sold secretly for $6 million? Who protects an old lady whose dearest friend, a social secretary to whom Huguette supposedly gave $10 million, now has Alzheimer’s and is unable to visit anymore? Who protects an old lady who has no children, and whose distant relatives have been prevented from visiting her? Who protects an old lady whose accountant fell behind on his own federal income taxes and is a convicted felon and a registered sex offender?

Two very fine articles with pics at MSNBC.

And here.

Fascinating stuff.

Robert Levine, author of Free Ride, at Salon.

The premise of my book is that most online companies rely for their content, and hence for their money, on traditional media companies. If they destroy that business model, it’s unclear what they’re going to have to distribute. If you look at YouTube, eight of the top 10 videos are major-label music videos. If the major labels shrank to the point where they can’t make videos, YouTube isn’t much of a business. It’s still a great social phenomenon, but it’s not much of a business.

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Martha Stewart Craft Furniture

by Colleen Doran on January 26th, 2011
Posted In: Creator Resources, Art Supplies, Blog, Creator Resources

After showing you my messy work room, I thought I would redeem myself by showing off my happy studio space, which is next door.

I absolutely love my studio! It is playful, comfortable, and contains everything I need.

I’m always writing about clutter reduction, but as you can see, I like a certain amount of companionable junk. My studio has its fair share of toys!

This set up allows me to do many types of work in one space, instead of having different task areas set up around the room. I swivel my chair to work on my desk or on my easel. Also, instead of printing out my scripts and reference from my main computer, I download them to the laptop next to the drawing board. When I worked on 24 page stories, it was easy to keep track of the papers. On 140 page graphic novels (3 or more at a time!) the paper is unmanageable. I try to print out as little as possible.

My computer work station has so many screens, I’m starting to look like Ozymandius. If I had my druthers, I would get rid of the television entirely, and since the screen is going home to Jesus, I probably will.

I often watch movies on my large screen Apple monitor, and the quality is terrific. On the right, a 21″ Cintiq. The computer set up is a gift from the very generous J Michael Straczynski! The scanner and printer are my own recent acquisitions. The Epson Workforce 1100 printer is not only very affordable (less than $200, including ink!) but ideal for comic artists because it can print up to 13″x19″.

Take your thumbnails, scan them, then blow them up on the computer. Print them out at original art size to transfer to final drawings. This saves the energy of the original sketch. I almost never have to go to a copy shop anymore, which is great since there aren’t any copy shops anywhere near this mountain!

These flat files are a terrific deal! Art supply catalogs charge a fortune, but this big beautiful “map chest” not only looks better, but comes at a fraction of the price. Use them as an extension of your desk. Assignments are in the drawers right next to my drawing board. Materials are organized in these drawers to easily switch from one job to another without having to pull stacks of papers out and shuffle through things.

This chest handles 16″x20″ pages. You can also lay 3 sets of 11″x14″ pages side by side in one drawer. This chest is very heavy. Once you decide where to put it, don’t move it. You can get it in a variety of colors and styles. It arrives fully assembled. The only reservation I have about it is that some of the drawers tend to stick. You may need to do some sanding to get them to roll smoothly.

A smaller chest to the left of my drawing board handles 11″x14″ pages perfectly. I also use it to store my tools, and my day planner rests on the top drawer where I can see it at all times.

For tools, this is a great wheelie cart. You can get this with as many as 14 drawers!

I’m partial to the non-wheelie for storing art, but that’s just me.

Martha Stewart has a new line of furniture that I absolutely love, and if I didn’t already have a nice set of goodies, I’d be buying this stuff. Great prices, and it looks beautiful. Sage green is my favorite color! Assembly required.

Makes me tingly.

Purrrrrrr…

Buy the pieces and mix and match. This “paper storage” hutch is perfect for graphic artists.

Nice flat files:

This craft space storage hutch is a wonderful solution for painters: units to hold bottles and tubes as well as space to slip canvases, brushes and other flat tools. Love this!

The Martha Stewart Collection is manufactured and sold by the same company which made my faboo map chests, and I am very happy with my purchases. Go to an art supply catalog, and pay through the nose for custom furniture. Buy “craft furniture” and “map chests” and save a bundle!

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Arts and Letters Links

by Colleen Doran on December 2nd, 2010
Posted In: Blog, Culture, Culture, Fine Art, Culture, Literature

First, the LULZ. Cracked Magazine with a list of internet personality disorders. We have all seen these people online. Which is why I no longer go to message boards or read most comments threads.

Related: Narcissistic Personality Disorder to be removed from the Diagnostic Manual


A scholar attempts to recreate Shakespeare’s works with original accents. Words which do not rhyme with modern inflections now make music. I read this comments thread because I thought the debate might be more interesting and elevated than the usual commentary from cyberwanker2014.

One guy wrote, “What a load of old tosh.”

Awesome.

From last August (boy do I need to clean out my bookmarks,) a crook attempted to sell a stolen Shakespeare folio so he could impress his beautiful Cuban girlfriend with expensive gifts.

Critics are Jerks Department: a beautiful ballerina with a history of eating disorders gets slammed for “…looking as if she had eaten one sugar plum too many.”

A post mortem on the auction of the estate of Dominick Dunne. Snarking over the dead body.

The ex-wife of author Philip K. Dick has written a memoir.

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Thriller and Other Wonders

by Colleen Doran on October 26th, 2010
Posted In: Creator Resources, Art Supplies, Blog, Culture, Comics, Culture, Comics, Comics History, Creator Resources, Culture, Comics, DC Comics

I’ve got about 100 hours worth of work left on the Barry Lyga graphic novel I am drawing for Houghton Mifflin, and that could mean 1-2 weeks, depending on my stamina. Didn’t account for clean-up and production work when I timed this. Back in the day, I’d draw a page and stick it in a Fedex box. Now I clean it up and upload to a server. I am not quite used to it, even though it’s been the norm for my work for over two years now.

I’m extremely happy with the book in every way, except for running a few weeks behind. My work output is up by a third over last year (spent the better part of three years in a slump, which seems to be over,) but I did about 20 pages of pencils/inks a month for five months this year. Not bad. That’s just under a monthly comic schedule. Had I cut back on side jobs and not been off to Washington doing the activism thing, I think I could have pulled 22 pages a month without too much stretch.

I also learned a lot about digital art while working on this book: some inks and drawings are digital. Spent way too much time sussing out the process, and probably would have gone faster if I just did it all by hand, but now I have new skills. So, go me!

While I pat myself on the back, my client would rather I just get on with it, so here’s a couple of links and then I am out of here.

One of my favorite 1980′s comics was Thriller by Trevor Von Eeden and Robert Loren Fleming. You can probably find it in back issue bins for 25 cents or less. I only know a few people who have ever read it, and I’d love to see it collected. Von Eeden is an erratic genius: his work on Thriller was way ahead of its time. Thriller would make great television.

I rave about it, because an excellent overview of the series can be found here. Check it out!

Here’s an example of why the internet is swell: public domain books. Kunst-Formen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), by Ernst Haeckel, 1898 is here in its entirely for your perusing pleasure and reference use.


An article on the original look of ancient Greek sculptures. Painted in garish colors, or delightfully decorated in dayglo. You be the judge.

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