Sunday Art-Week Review 23?

It´s not Sunday here anymore by... nine minutes... But still... I actually have some updates.

First up is this weeks autobiographical lie:

I did a miniconcert on Tuesday, and had not had time to... well... Really prepare... As usual. So the usual stress got to it´s usual hights, and when it was time to draw the usual lie on Wednesday I was just... Empty. Which is the title. Luckilly I got this image in my head pretty quickly, all finished and stuff. I long wanted to do something with thin light fines and light shading. But... I´m gonna have to do more with that style because I think I was a bit empty that day, and can do better another day. Still... Clever way to not have to draw to much on a hard but satisfied day.

Speaking of the concert, I´ve done a little test to see how the audio goes together with a quick video of the images from the comic-version of the songs:

Me thinks the concert went pretty damned well. I wanna do a whole video of it, with the speaking bits in between.
I really think there´s a lot of potential to do pretty awesome versions, both live and on video. I´ve been psyched about trying to fit sort of stand-up´ish stuff with comics and songs, and this was the first time to do it in a full, if three song short, concert.
Hopefully I´ll get to do this little concert more times to get the flow of the whole "story".

Oh, and I need to find a better program for this stuff that Windows Movie Maker... Suggestions? For Mac? For Free?

And finally... The opening image for an article I´m drawing about Alan Moore:

Not much to say, except that I spent way too much time on that single image in a 4-page long article... Jeez...

All in all... Good week... But need to do more, more, more...

Whatday Art-Week Review of Good Intentions and Hell...

So I didn´t manage to update this Sunday either. The whole week got spoiled by the flu. And then I had to scramble to get ready to play a concert yesterday... So did I draw anything last week? Mostly just absolutly nothing. But on Sunday I did get to do the sketches for some art for the concert, and even though they weren´t finished untill Tuesday morning, I´ll still post them here:




I like ´em... Lot´s of love and stuff... Loose art... Works... Did wonders under the concert.

Hopefully next week I´ll update on Sunday, and have something to update with. Cheers!

Almost Sunday Art-Week review 21´ish...

Yes, I´m picking up the count where it left off. So we´re at 21 weeks or so. And yes, it is monday, but... It´s gotta be Sunday somewhere on the globe, or? Who cares...

Anyhow... Pretty short art-week review this week. Have mostly been finding quotes, writing, and editing for a Alan Moore graphic-article I´m writing and drawing. Have also done som art, but nothing worth showing yet.

Then I´ve been sketching away at some new songs, since I´m gonna have a concert in a week, and I really want to finish drawing two more songs so that I can print up songbooks for the whole little concert. One of them will probably be published as my weekly autobiographical comic on my norwegian blog this Wednesday. But nothing to show yet.

What I have to show is, of course, my weekly autobiographical comic for this last week:
I suppose the title could be translated to "Nag", and the thought-balloon at the lower half says "Nag, nag, nag...". The rest of the text is just thoughts going from positivity about all the possibilities of what to do in a day, then turning into panic over having too much to do and never getting anything done. Simple stuff, but it´s the first very visual layout I´ve done in a while, and I like the colours.

Then I´ve gotten one more piece for Battle For Wesnoth committed to the game.

This one took way too long to do, with too much back and forth. In the end, there´s still several weaknesses, such as inconsistant lighting on the metal surfaces, but all in all I´m pretty satisfied. Seeing the portraits in-game in the Hammer of Thursagan campaign is awesome.

Now... That´s basically it for this week. I have to prepare some courses and finish the article now, and I seem to have the flu, so next week may also be a bit thin on updates. But I will post something. Maybe even on Sunday-proper!

Sunday Art-Weeks Review what, What, WHAT???

Weekly updates, huh? Yeah, right...

So as I may and may not have warned people, consistency is not really in my nature. But hopefully I can avoid breaks as big as this in the future. But who knows?... Anyhow... The plan is to update weekly again.

Why was I gone so long? Well... Life? Lack of productivity? Love? Lazyness? All of the above and more... But no matter what I´ve actually done a lot of work since the last time, and I hope to sum most of it up in this post.

Firstly, the weekly autobiographical comics are too many for this post, but you can find the on my Norwegian blog...

Then I´ve done some illustrations for posters for Absalong about pirates, sex and religion, and the history of vibrators:



I´m pretty satisfied with them, all though they´re not my best Absalongposters. I haven´t seen them with the text on yet... hmmm...

Then there´s some sketching for a friends project. Not sure if I can say anything, but I like the drawings:





Who knows what´ll become of it. Not what you see in these, at least.

Then I just finished a T-shirt for the legendary Bergen coverband Heavy Metal Kings, for their Big Heavy Metal Fest:

I´m gonna love wearing that T-shirt....

And I´m doing a article on Alan Moore for the Nemi-magazine, and also did a leader-illustration for it:

Need to get the article itself finished very, very soon...

I´m sure I´ve done some more too. Some may still be in sketch-form, some I´ve just forgotten, and some will be posted in the weeks to come.

So... yeah... updates every week. And probably some more random blogging now and then. Keep fingers crossed. Rock on!

Sunday Art-week review 19...

Gah... Slow yet hectic weeks... Only a sad song to show... but I'm really satisfied with the art....

Sunday Art-Week review 18...

Not much this week. Just another autobiographical song. Have also almost finished two more illustrated songs, but those will have to wait untill they´re revealed on my Norwegian blog...







Cheers....

Sunday Art-Week Review 17(On a monday)...

Nothing much this week. Am back in Bergen. Forgot that yesterday was sunday. Ops...

This weeks autobiographical lie:

And that's it. Between all the moving, travelling, partying, and yes, reading, I haven't actually drawn anything. Meh... Back next week with more.

Sunday Art-Week Review 16...

Ahhh... Slow week. Lot´s of reading and writing, and now packing and cleaning. I´m going home to Norway on Tuesday.

So.... This weeks autobiographical lie, with a song:






And an update on a Wesnoth piece:


And, just for fun, I did two EXTREMELY QUICK videos for great Stratosgutane songs:


Download the whole album on a CC-license through the record-labels myspace-page.

Now back to packing and cleaning.

Kims songbook(A birthdaywish)...

Since it´s my birthday, I wanna make a wish. It´s that someone will cover one of my songs.

And yeah, I know they´re in Norwegian, but who cares. Music is beyond language, ain´t it?

So I collected all the words and the chords in a litte "songbook". Listen to the videoes, and try to read the lyrics, and make something, if you wish. I´m keeping my fingers crossed.

All the songs here are of course available for the public domain. Copyright is the work of Satan(And not in the cool rock´n´roll way).

The songbook kan be downloaded here.

Drikkevise:


Vintersol:


Høstvise:


Mislykket kjærlighetssang:


Overtalelsesvise:


Vandrevise:


Johnny Gitars Nye Sang:


Abstinensblues:


Udugelig:


Galen Øy:

Me, me, ME! (On Art&Story Alive)

Just thought I´d do an update on me calling into the... Art&Story Alive podcast, hosted by the talented Jerzy Drozd, Marc Rudolph, and Krishna Sadasivam. Art&Story Alive is the live component of Art&Story, where I, the listener, and probably you, the listener, gets to call in and bug the hosts with our ramblings.

(Yes, I just copied and pasted that bit from my last post about this. I´m lazy)...

Anyhow... I´ve called into some more, and tried to tell some bad jokes and good points. Or the other way around. Here´s the list of the ones I´ve been on so far:

067 - Art & Story Alive! (With other guest, the always lovable Ryan Dow of Introspective Comics, discussing bad advice making baby Jesus cry, finding your voice, and making comics that communicate like a grunt to a loved one)
068 - Art & Story Alive! (Discussing coloring and getting cut-off by my stupid Skype)
069 - Art & Story Alive! (With birthday-boy Ryan Dow, discussing making comics for kids, and reinventing the college roomy-genre)
071 - Art & Story Alive! (Discussing why digital distribution of comics is bound to fail until we have better methods of reading them, and how to use panel-borders).

UPDATE: And I did call in last night, for the funniest, fastest, and most intense A&S Alive I´ve been a part of, again including Ryan Dow, about breaking into the local art scene, origin-stories, and something about the problem with modern color-print and motion(And it seems motion will be the topic of next weeks podcast, so stay tuned). Here:
072 - Art & Story Alive!

Art Week Review 15...

This week has been a bit random, with my WACOMpen being in Scotland and/or my mailbox, and my mood being a bit... shit.

But here goes...

My autobiographical comic of the week, with no proper images and text in Norwegian. Don´t worry, the text is just depressive poo, so you´re not missing anything:


And I did a self-portrait reflecting my mood for my blog:

And even more randomly, a portrait of Ayn Rand. By popular request I´m thinking of changing the text to "Ayn Rand, I´d rape her" with "I´d rape her" written in soft pink letters. I think that´d be sweet. Funnily enough I´ve gotten some weird ultra-capitalist Twitter-followers lately, and I figure that someone might have seen my #aynran tag, but not clicked my link. Hilarious!


And I did this quick one for an article/blogpost I wrote about game-critisism on tokyo.no. The text basically is two word-balloons worth of artsy fancy-talk, and the kid giving the punchline "And a fucking impressive high-score".


And this nice sketch of my garden:

Apart from that I´ve been working on an comic-article about the homo-erotic aspects of Judas Priest, which has been going slower than it should due to the lack of a digital pen. But it´s looking good. Maybe I´ll show some of the sketches next week?

Illegal Review 1: Hung episode 1...

So I originally intended for this blog to have both reviews of free stuff and of things that should be free, but have been far too lazy to do so yet. Until now. Anyhow... firstly... What´s an Illegal Review?

Illegal Reviews are where I review things that are either illegally downloaded, or should be illegally downloaded to boycott those who seek to destroy the free nature of art by imprisoning it with the chains of copyright. Since I´m a weak person I cannot promise that every item review is illegally downloaded, but just because I occasionally buy stuff doesn´t mean you should.

Hung(TV-series)
Season 1 episode 1
HBO

Rejecting is hard for newbie man-whores.

Like for most people with taste, HBO has almost singlehandedly managed to restore my faith in American TV-series. With writing at a level that´s often far above your average Hollywood blockbuster, and great production, shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood are amongst my favorite pieces of newer cinematic art. Even the shows that I personally never got hooked into, like Sex in the City, Rome, and Six Feet Under, are truly admirable and finely crafted undertakings.

Now, debuting sometime soon, Hung is HBOs newest attempt at a quirky comedy-drama, created by Dmitri Lipkin, who also did The Riches, and his wife(?) Colette Burson. Having never seen The Riches, even though I´m a big fan of Eddie Izzard, I didn´t have any special expectations from Hung, and I don´t think expectations would have helped much.

Hungs plot is about a divorced and broke high-school teacher and coach, Ray Drecker, played by Thomas Jane of The Punisher fame, who decides to use his big penis, which remains mysteriously absent from the show, to his economic advantage and become a male prostitute.

The first episode is directed by Alexander Payne, whose biggest claim to fame has to be About Schmidt, and tries to tell the story leading up to Rays decision to become a man-whore. Unfortunately the story is told by loads of half-clever voice-over narration that never manages to amuse or enlighten much, and does a very poor job at making one really believe this regular-Joes reasoning behind jumping into his new career.

Other than that the direction is competent, with some funny quick cuts in time here and there, and generally good dialogue and acting. Few of the characters really stand out yet, but there is potential for them to grow. The poet lover, played by Jane Adams, starts off as noisily annoying as the script dictates, but ended up charming me. Anne Heche is suitably bitchy as the ex-wife, and Eddie Jemison is his usual amusing self as the new husband. The drama between Ray and his kids never really grabbed me, as neither kid seems like very convincing characters as of yet, but I´m willing to give them time.

And all in all that´s my judgement of the whole episode. I´m not convinced by the slightly awkward mix of comedy and drama but I´m willing to give it some time, at least until we get to the actual whoring. We need more shows about male-prostitutes.

So... Hung may yet prove to be well-hung, but I give episode 1 a score of a half-erect penis out of full boner:

My homage to a great lady...

Lately there´s been some talk about Ayn Rand an objectivists. And you know, all the usual stuff comes up, like "How boring is her books???", "Should objectivists be locked up for their own safety?", "Was she really that insane or was she a pre-internet troll?", etc, etc... But there´s always one very important point missing. So I tried to illustrate it in this little sketch:
Someone should make a T-shirt out of this. I´d wear it.

The Revolution should not be Twitterized...

Something strange is a happening in on Twitter. Things are turning green all over.

No, not the nice enviroment enviroment-friendly green, nor the green of money. It´s not a fit of jealousy making it green either, and it´s not even the Hulk.

It´s the green of the Iranian Revolution. Yup, that old revolution. But strangely, it´s use on Twitter is not in support of revolutionary hero Ayatollah Khomenei or his successor Khamenei. It´s to support "Democracy in Iran".

And all over Twitter people are tweeting about the election and the demonstrations, upset about the fraudulent result and the brutal state-violence, following the hundreds, if not thousands, or Iranian twitterers that have popped up all of a sudden bringing up to date news, and warning people about the Twitter-puppets of the government who try to infiltrate and ruin the freedom to tweet.

Now... I admit that I turned my avatar green for a little while, but it´s back to it´s normal self now. Because... I´ve been thinking.

A few weeks back the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, had it´s first year of massive Twitter-following. Now, in the world of video-games, E3 is kind of like Christmas and Birthday rolled into one, but in the world at large... E3 is not really that important. Still, Twitter, awash with false stories, manufactured hype, and general nonsense, was by large deemed to have been a non-satisfactory tool for reporting on E3, with some gamers even declaring that "Twitter ruined E3!".

So.... Not good enough for E3, but good enough for a revolution? Something seems strange here.

And, as often was the problem during E3, do we really know that the tweeters are who they say they are. There are countless of people now tweeting live from "inside Iran", but shouldn´t they perhaps be out revolutionizing instead? And why can´t I find any Iranian tweeter that has a history of tweeting before the elections? Who in Iran even has internet access? Certainly not the majority(Which are the ones that should win elections in a democracy, I guess).

And it´s not like there´s no other interested parties. Not to sound to conspiratorial, but USA has actually on multiple occassions expressed the intent to fund a new Iranian revolution, and their intelligence services has the goal of dominating the internet. It wouldn´t exactly be hard for someone to... say... manufacture some revolution-hype? I mean, companies at E3 managed pretty well.

Not to mention... What do people know of the elections in Iran? Do they know that all the candidates are sanctioned by the same supreme leader, for instance? Or anything about Irans eclectic demography, and how it reflects in the electorate?

And do they remember the support and celebrations that the last Iranian Revolution got all over the western world before the dust settled and people realized that maybe it wasn´t such a great idea to let religious fundamentalists rule one of the biggest countries of the world?

I don´t know much about Iran, personally. But I probably know at least a bit more than many of the green-avatared horde infesting Twitter. At least I know enough to admit I don´t know enough.

And quite frankly, that makes it irresponsible to join Twitters Iranimania, doesn´t it?

I don´t know. I just think it´s all a bit fishy, and it sounds like the kind of thing that comes back to bite you in the ass.

Because revolutions are serious business. They should not be Twitterized.

But I may be wrong.

Art Week Review 14...

Much sketching, not much drawing this week. Scotland was... insane. As reflected in this weeks autobiographical lie:
Bagpipes at the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.

Then some of the sketches from the few times I was sober enouigh to hold a brush(Or pencil) straight:
Gourock, waiting to take the ferry to Dunoon and on to Ardentinny to go to someones birthday with open-air concerts and lot´s of midgies and a nice waterfall to bath in and hungover canooing on Loch Eck in the morning...


NED in water at the bonnie bansk of Loch Lomond. A NED is apperantly a "None Educated Delinquent". They were throwing rocks at eachother. In the background are resident Austrians Laura and Kate swimming.

Around the campfire at Loch Lomond. In-between bagpipes and flutes and country-music, flute-player Cameron tries to translate a Scottish song to Solveig. Other people in the picture are American bicyclist Rob Roy McGregor(Yes, real name), his cousin Mike, and bagpipe-player Donald(Who never took me fishing).

Solveig playing the fiddle.

Laura dancing to the jamming bagpipes, flute, and fiddle.

A swan came to listen to the music, and that Solveig charmed with her magic powers. Later, as it was dawning, it came back, and I serenaded it with the last song of the evening. A true swansong(Townes Van Zandts "To live is To Fly" with the word "Swan" put in as often as possible).

And this was just the insanity that I was sober enough to record. Crazy gawd-damned week...

Anyhow... I like how loose the last ones turned out. Have to do more like that.

I also filled a few pages of a sketchbook on my long and arduos journey home, but I managed to forget it on the plane. Bugger.

Thanks to all the countless great people I met on the trip.

Now I really have to get to work on some serious shit again...

Sunday Art-Week Review 13...

Reporting in from Glasgow on this unlucky 13th art-week.

Had a hell of a journey where everything that could go wrong did go wrong at some point, but met a lot of nice British people, even drew a portrait for the price of 1 beer, and was as if by magic able to do a sketched script for a whole 32 page childrens-book from concept to first-draft on the trip. Yay for me!(Though I won't get it up to a presentable version to shop around before the summers over).

So... first... some sketches of British charter tourists(Showing why I dislike drawing with pens):


Then the sketch where I got the concept to the childrens-book(With censored synopsis. Art not representative of anything yet):


Then the weekly autobiographical lie, called "Burdened under my own expectations"(Which I no longer am, having survived the journey):


And an updated Wesnoth piece:


So... Glasgow is quite nice, isn't it? I should really try to draw some... yup.

That's all folks!

Sunday Art-Week Review 12...

So... Been reading and writing a lot lately.

I did a drawn article about H.P. Lovecraft a few months ago. Basically the most work I´ve ever done per page. But it came out nice.

Now I´m tight for money, so I came up with a few more ideas for articles, even though the pay-per hour will end up... not too great. They did actually pay me a lot more than usual for the Lovecraft article, but that won´t happen for the new articles.

I´ve gotten one about Judas Priest and their more homo-erotic lyrics accepted, and working on suggestions for articles about Emma Goldman, the more esoteric and political sides of Alan Moore, and finally the mythmaking of Norwegian Black Metal. Pretty diverse shit to research. But I´m getting my head around it.

I really need to get the Lovecraft article translated and published somewhere else, because... multiple publishers is the only way I can make these articles profitable enough. And they´re fun to do...

Anyhow... Just uploaded the article to my comicspace-page:Click the image, silly...

So.... Art... This week... Yes....

Of course my weekly autobiographical... This ones called The Discussion.... and is as (non-)readable for silly-speaking people as for Norwegian-speaking people:


And I did another quick poster for free. I originally did it in B&W, but I got the urge to color it. Still came in slightly under the 2 hour mark, so I´m following my own guidelines for these well:


And finally, these two Wesnoth-portraits may be ready to committ. Still waiting for final word:



Oh, and I´m going to Glasgow on Tuesday. Never been in the UK before. Very much looking forward to it. Hopefully I´ll still have something to show next sunday. Have to get the weekly autobiographical lie finished before I leave, at least.

Skål!

(Edit: Updated the Ratheln portrait)