SUSPENSE!

HELLO GOOD READERS. I'm going underground and am not sure when I'll be back up for air. It's been wonderful to share and correspond with you in this way. I hope to meet again down the line.

Very Best, Nick

Quill Hair

Squiggle Finger

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. Eric Carle eat your heart out.

Sketching While Waiting For My Kid at the YMCA

Cheers!

IN THE VEIN OF FOUND ART let's look at the Cheerios box. I enjoy looking at commercial photography and trying to discern the subtext. TD Canada Trust is the best. They've got a whole slough of questionable images. Or how about the Rogers adverts that come in the mail filled with images that make television watching into this amazing group participatory love-in. This content affects human beings. Eye contact is everything.

Quill Head

I MISS THE CROW QUILL. I spent 3 years of my youth drawing exclusively with a crow quill following Dave Sim's technique. I drew 5 issues of my black & white indie road movie comic, The Cheeseheads.

This photo was taken of Max MacDonald as a cheesehead circa 1993.

PHOTO BY HOLLY CRAINE

Hungry Ghost #2

HERE'S MY OWN HUNGRY GHOST image. I drew this up and pasted it to the inside of a file drawer. Whenever I'm turning into that vacuum flaky artist person I try to ponder the content of this hasty sketch.

Patty O'Toole

SOMETHING ABOUT THIS NOSE makes me think of the 1970's. Can't quite put my finger on it. I know I'm remembering something perhaps it's cute little Patty O'Toole that I was in love with in kindergarten.

Would You Like Cheese With That?

HERE'S ONE THAT'LL MAKE make you groan. Do you think Botticelli envisioned this future? I saw the original Birth of Venus in Italy along with a whole body of Botticelli paintings and I have to say I think he was an illustrator first, painter second. The white caps on the waters in the background of Venus are so representational. In a time where painters were rock stars and all working for the religious state it is interesting to see what has distilled the test of time.

Apologies for the lack of Blog specific creations. I must say the schedule is too full for that extra 1/2 hour a day these days.

HERE'S A DETAIL FROM THE ORIGINAL.

Talk to the Hand

MY COLLEAGUE, DAVID CAESAR HAS just launched his great website. If you want to get blown away with some super-sureal-ism go to:

www.davidcaesar.com

Hank

AN OLDER PORTRAIT OF Hank Williams the third for EXCLAIM Magazine. Turns out Hank is interested in taking down the country royalty of the Williams name. His live show is 10 times as vile and whiskey fueled ad any ACDC/Whitesnake/Metallica/Judas Priest concert. One of his more memorable lyrics:

"I put the dick in dixie and the cxxt in country."

Absolute Denzel

FOR YEARS NOW I'VE WANTED TO CREATE a feature film that splices together all the performances of one actor into a single narrative. (I'm sure it will be done before too long in this age of deconstruction and the DJ). The idea is that you sequence his like emotional performances together. The effect would be an psycho-emotional strobe ala Herbie Hancock. Here's a series of Denzel Washington photos overlapped to contain Denzel's full range inside one figure. Great actor.

Also came across these incredible photoshop images of celebrities put together.

ELIZABETH HURLEY & NICHOLAS CAGE

LETTERMAN & LENO

JOLIE & PITT

PITT & CRUISE

To see where these came from click HERE.

Ronin

When I was 12, Shane Kenny held at drawing contest at the local comic book store. This was my submission for the reproduction category. One day I'll find my submission from the Marvel Try-Out Book and post it also.

"Who you callin' a fuzz ball!?" or Attack of the Tiger Striped Gulab Jamun

Show and Title

BEEN HAVING FUN WITH hand lettering. Here's something that's on the drawing board at the moment. It's for a hard cover edition of a novel I illustrated for Daniel Wells at Biblioasis -- Terry Griggs', Thought You Were Dead.

Here are couple other covers for Cormorant Books. I love hand-drawn type!

King

LISTENING TO DR. MARTIN Luther King this morning. I picked up a series of CBC Massey Lecture Series recordings from my local second hand book store, Macondo Books. Brilliant. Will listen closely as the days go by and share.

Ran the 5K 23 minutes and 26 seconds.

Running

15 YEARS AFTER THE DEATH of Billy The Kid, William Robinson and Alex Petrie started one of the longest running foot races in North America. Today I'll be participating in the 5km Thanksgiving Day race in my hometown of Guelph, Ontario. They're calling for temperatures between 5 and 8 degrees. I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's a portrait of another runner. Daryl Hannah as Pris from Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Blade Runner. Incidentally, note the 1st person voice over in the vintage Blade Runner trailer. Not Harrison Ford.

That Disneying Feeling

SO DISNEY BOUGHT MARVEL COMICS for 4 uncountable billion dollars. Does that mean we'll see Miley Sirus joining the X-Men? My spider senses are tingling with the post-modern, ouroborosian narrative possibilities at work here. Imagine the weighty Electra plot line you could weave with Billy Ray Sirus entering the marvel canon. There's plenty of Darth Vader dogma to mine here though somehow I can't imagine the accompanying amusement park experiential applications of the topic.

But forget H. Montana for a minute. I want Cher comics. Perhaps Disney could buy Cher, (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) and we could have a whole series of Diva adventures. They could opperate like that strange disco mutant from the 80's that could manipulate light. Dazzler I believe? The singing superheros would howl each other into submission. Mariah vs. Whitney special foil wrapped collectors edition.

But seriously. I do have an idea for a 6 page Cher comic. I'd love to go to Vegas, where she's booked for the next 6 months, and experience the legend and then report on it in comic form. It would be full of sentiment and metaphore. There must be a home for a piece like this out in the world.


REMEMBER THIS ONE?

CLICK ON THE SILVER SURFER TO GET THE LATEST INFO ON THE KIRBY ESTATE IN RELATION TO THE DISNEY ACQUISITION:

A Logical Fin

THIS CAME UP AT OUR local 'Drink & Draw' event this past Tuesday. Sean suggested that Sir Wilfred Laurier looked more like Leonard Cohen dressed as Spock.

Moloch on My Mind