The Sacred, Secret Heart

Thought I'd review and post a few pics from a favorite art book of mine: The Sacred Heart: An Atlas of the Body Seen Through Invasive Surgery, a collection of photographs by Max Aguilera-Hellweg. The book was published in 1997 and now appears to be out-of-print -- and selling for outrageous prices. However, you should be able to find a copy at your library or through interlibrary loan (which is what I had to do, since some swine stole my local library's copy).

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Like most artists I've always been fascinated by the human body -- how it's made and how it works. Aside from natural curiosity, I also sort of assumed it was my duty to study anatomy if I wanted to really be an artist. I really enjoy reading about the history of medicine, and it's especially interesting to note the shared developments in the sciences and art -- the best example of this is, obviously, the Renaissance. It's inspiring and infuriating to discover the ridiculous troubles and risks da Vinci and others went through to thoroughly and objectively examine cadavers -- an opportunity I imagine medical students take for granted today, but the kind of first-hand knowledge most art students no longer seem interested in procuring, unfortunately. I suppose there are still a few schools that emphasize figurative art and provide students with the chance to observe (or even participate) in dissections, but my art school didn't, and I know no other artists whose schools did.

So I've always kept an eye out (pun intended -- see first pic below) for any books that allow me new or unique glimpses of our body's workings. Most of these texts are pretty basic and will be familiar to any artist: Vesalius' anatomical plates, Gray's Anatomy, etc. -- most which are only secondarily "artful" (In fact, many of my favorite "art" books were never intended as such: Harold Edgerton's Stopping Time, Michael Light's 100 Suns, Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature. There's something bracing and authentic about the careful, deliberate observation on display in these examples, qualities many artists spend most of their lives trying to emulate only to find they know too much about seeing and must unlearn what they think they know).

I'm not sure when or how I first discovered Aguilera-Hellweg's work or this book -- I believe he also does journalistic photography, so perhaps I saw his stuff in a magazine? Now that I think about it, I suppose some of the photos in this volume likely appeared in Nature or Scientific American or the like. At any rate, it's good work. These pictures night bring to mind other artists' interpretations of medical procedures, such as Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson" or Thomas Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" as well as Stan Brakhage's autopsy film "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes".

I do feel an uneasiness about the work here, though. I don't think it's exploitative -- it's tastefully done, formally and techincally lovely (not that those attributes alone exclude a work from opportunism or shock) but I wonder if it's too pretty or artful. Despite the horror of what we see, and no matter how simply he presents it, there is a glossy, facile, almost "professional" quality to the prints which must in some way comfort all but the most squeamish viewer. I think all of the artists mentioned are in awe of the human body and the doctors' skills (and bravery -- would you want to open someone's skull?) but Aguilera-Hellweg, Rembrandt and Eakins somehow risk solacing or distracting us with their great skill -- the beautiful compositions and light and careful colors.

Brakhage's film, though, is almost inept its bluntness, and remains the most unpleasant document of its sort that I've seen. Perhaps it's significant that he was filming autopsies rather than restorative surgery; doctors can be noble and heroic -- what of the anonymous, lab-coated morticians? They're almost characters from a horror film. Yet I would never call Brakhage's work exploitative either -- if he's not as admiring or elevating as Aguilera-Hellweg or Rembrandt or Eakins, there is still evident a genuine curiosity or shock or even confusion (is this a human body? what am I seeing?) that is just as valid.

Okay, I've blathered on enough... the photos are below. Please be warned: These might not be to everyone's taste. Apologies if this post troubles anyone.

The Residents interview and crazy flicks

"The Residents get interviewed in Toronto 1986.
One of the Residents shuts off a video camera during the live brodcast at the MUCHMUSIC studio."

Annd.. " The Residents present a series of very short videos following the adventures of a 9 year old kid named Timmy."... Here's one.

Walking round about

I am sending a drawing and this piece to a show in Chicago. I was going to go but now I am going to replace my roof. Dang. I have been drawing this guy a lot due to my own experiences with walking rather than driving. YAY for feet!

Topp's Ugly Stickers.

I've been researching Topp's Ugly Stickers and stumbled across these scans. How could I not post these beauties?!

http://www.bubblegumcards.org/Ugly_Stickers.html

NEW DIGITALS

Two old drawings that were just sketches on pages filled with other stuff. I decided they would be good tests for digital coloring.


www.cvicworks.com

Eye-Spy-Suitcase-Boomer.

Another Self-Portrait? Why Yes!

WW2 Portraits at Ventrilville

I posted some found photographs at Ventrilville that I think some of you might find... inspiring. These are not for the faint of heart. I'm planning on doing a series of digital portraits sort of like these sometime down the road. Check it out.

You Are Built

I've been messing around with poetry in comics form lately. This is one I just did today. There are a few more on my Flickr page. What do you guys think?

Missing in Action

 

Sorry Tim and I have been out of commission. Were working on some big pictures for an art show. Pics to follow in a couple of weeks.

New ink "Empress"

Revelations Of Zob

Ok, a brief summary of what Zob is... Zob is the evil twin brother of the main character Hob Bob and main villian of my in progress illustrated fantasy book, currently without a name but which I simply refer to as Hob Bob. The story will branch out in a lot of different ways but the basic plot is a traditional good vs evil save the world from destruction sort of thing. The following is just a bit of brain storming conceptual text to help me define who Zob is prior to his attempt to rule the world with monsters and magic.

Zob lives in the scattered ruins of an old stinking swamp. The architecture is from long before, a society of lost inhabitants who had a passion for dark magic, as can be seen in the disturbing and grotesque carvings in the black stones and remaining monstrous sculptures largely hidden beneath the swamp muck. Some of the half sunken ruins are used to keep a large zoo of strange animals collected by Zob. Others are a zoo of a different kind, prisons keeping uncontrollable summons and ancient monsters dug out of the marsh lands too dangerous to keep among the average beast. There is a tall column that extends hundreds of feet up at a slightly crooked angle, at the top is a nest of wretched vulture like bats with spider like limbs. They hang their half eaten meals in intricate webs that they stretch across the ancient architecture. A large tower at the center of the swamp contains a long spiral staircase leading up to the giant skull of a monster. Its eye sockets function as large windows and its mouth is like a balcony from which Zob can see his wicked swamplands. At the bottom of the spiral staircase is a large stone structure where Zob keeps his unusual collection of specimens in jars, necromantic literature and related paraphanelia. A unique species of glowing insects that resemble tiny skulls with horns and bat wings, the result of a failed experiment, light up the swamps. They gather in large numbers around Zob's giant monster skull laboratory, making it appear to glow through out the swamplands. A giant black centipede can sometimes be seen coiled around Zob's tower where it is fed still breathing gogits out the window of the laboratory.

A large hideous beast partly resembling a crab has a ferry like boat strapped to its shell which taxies Zob around the various structures in the swamp and to an old wooden pier that connects to a maze like path towards dry land. Another secret path that leads to his lair can be reached from a small island in the swamp where the rare visitors come by boat. There is a large rusty gate entrance on the small island where an unseen gurgling voice asks a question. If correct, the visitor is allowed through the entrance and onto a quick rising bridge of rocks across the swamp. If answered wrong the visitor discovers the origins of the gurgling voice that begins laughing a horrible nightmarish laugh as the small island rises up, revealing it to be the backside of a large spider monster that eats the visitor.

Surrounding the swamp are dozens of incredibly old trees in the shape of hands with fingers positioned to represent different powerful symbols. This creates a dark sphere of evil energies that turn the stinking swamp gas into grotesque illusions to ward off unwanted visitors and is useful for experiments carried out in the monster skull lab. Zob sets traps high in the stormy sky with hot air balloons made from the flesh of rigabecks, a species of flying octopus like animals. The balloons are attached to rusty cages with rotten meat inside. The traps are used to catch giant gogamecks that Zob likes to keep as pets. Each one appears completely unique from the other apart from their distinctive wings and tails.

The swamp is filled with Zob's deformed experiments. Small camps have been built around the surrounding marshlands, places where some of Zob's experiments have taken refuge against the more aggressive things inside the swamps. These groups of bandits go out and steal the raw materials needed for experiments, food and other resources for Zob in exchange for small measures of safety in the marshlands. Some of the bandits use gecko like creatures to travel out of the marshes that allow them to sneak up walls, under carriages and other hard to reach places.

Zob was given a black witches egg in exchange for exterminating unwanted pests in the city of witches. After spending countless hours trying to hatch the egg and feeling cheated, Zob tossed the egg from his laboratory window. But unknown to Zob, his giant centipede pet began sleeping on the egg, providing the needed environment for it to hatch. The egg hatched releasing a giant abomination that was too violent to keep alive. Zob's horde of bandits united to defeat the monster, with the help of Zob's collection of ancient weapons. Its giant remains festered and fed the swamp beasts, the skeleton of the giant adding to the unsettling architectural landscape in the swamplands of Zob.

Sketchbook Scrawl.

These drawings were done recently in a small sketchbook, mostly whilst hanging around with my pals.

Butterflies & Bats

I made this collage for my significant other. I never, never make art for other people, so I have some mixed feelings about it - it's not really representative of my work or the direction it's headed in. But I made it with her in mind, and she seemd to love it, so I'm glad. If I can't make any money from this stupid stuff, at least I might make one or two people happy (too bad one of those people isn't me!).

The piece measures 24 x 31"

GORE GORE

Hey everybody!!! Sorry its taken me so long to get a post up on here, I got chucked out my house and have been trying to relocate, not easy when you have no money. Just about settled into my new place now, so I got time to chill out and start drawing again.

I did these drawings recently for a band from Baltimore called Teenage Souls (http://www.myspace.com/teenagesouls) they're gonna be using them on their new LP:)

CHAOS THUGS

Some terribly evil & malformed chaos thugs who have shambled out of the woods to disembowel passers-by. When women would give birth to these mutated wretches they'd be left at the edge of the woods to starve or be eaten by wolves, but inevitably they'd be gathered up by even more deformed creatures & raised as their own & filled with hatred of the common man. This gives them an unholy glee in the destruction of unwary travellers. These are also largely based on characters from a wonderful collection of engravings based on Brueghel's drawings i bought a bit ago.

The coolest shirts in the universe..

Found this pic over at a Neato Coolville flickr gallery.  This apparently was in the 1976 Sears Wishbook Christmas catalog. - source

E - E - AH - H - H!

Public Transportation and Fire

So I had this weird idea the other day for an insane public transportation system in my Hob Bob book.  I forgot about it for a few days but I remembered it tonight. I fortunately had a pencil and paper nearby, so I drew it down.  This is a simplified interpretation, I had a vision of a vast centipede like creature crawling across a landscape with long rows of horns protruding out of its spine that are used to attach hanging seats between. 

Also, I witnessed a vast fire a few days before the 4th of Juy that consumed a large pet store and firework store.  I was in the petshop a few months back and saw a really cool talking bird that had some serious attitude which apparently died along with the rest of the animals that burned to death... kittens, fish, birds, rabbits, snakes, lizards, gerbils, although I don't think there were any dogs there for whatever reason.  The fire was sad but amazing, especially when the firework store went next door, if you can imagine what all the fire works in a firework store sound and look like going off at the same time across a few minutes alongside an all consuming fire, that's the insanity I witnessed! My cousin got some pics and video.  More on youtube..

Suck Away

-A Tezuka panel from Buddha vol. 3 that I like a lot.



Been hard at work, but unable to finish anything...

Arrive

Chapter I End

Haunted House on a Hill

SLOM GOOEY #1

Here's the cover of Slom Gooey with some quick coloring ("quick" meaning done in about an hour). This will be re-colored once I prepare the whole comic. I feel like it should be a little nastier...

Progress / Regress

Hello again, hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July. I shot the neighborhood up real good, haha.

Thought I'd toss up a few collages here that are "in progress" -- and if anyone cares to comment, please do so. The two images above are two options I'm looking at for one piece. Started with the Spider and thought it looked cool with the jaw (Tom Cruise, BTW)... then I stumbled across the weird mask which happened to fit nicely right on top... so I can't decide which I like more. Actually I'm sort of sick of both of them I guess. The spider is more contrived, but the mask is more obvious. Hmmn.

I thought this turned out okay. Wish I could have included all the legs and feet of the people, but they were covered with magazine text. Still, I like the colors and I suppose I'd call this one "done".

Dunno about this one. Always trying make stuff that looks "spontaneous" but it still always ends up looking calculated. And the whole rainbow/prism thing is way played out... I love it, and it adds a nice touch of color to images, but it's an easy crutch and every artist and their brother is using it -- one look at Fecal Face and the like and I swear I'll never use fucking rainbows again... and yet...

This I call "Bouncing Rainbow". Very clever, I know. This is more or less done, though I'm always tempted to keep fucking with the picture... thought about painting a big crack in the earth where the rainbow hits the ground, but I worried I would just screw it up. I guess I tend to rationalize on the side of economy, if only so I don't make mistakes.

This I'd call done, too... though again, I could easily add more to it -- perhaps a rainbow? Ha! No, seriously, it crossed my mind.

This is silly, but I kinda liked it.

Two more for now, and that's it. Thanks for looking, fellas.

Abstraktshun

OK, so I have been playing with these color ink abstractions. Still crowded space. Fun.

Digital Color

So I have showed a few examples of my hand-drawn colored stuff that I have been doing recently and wanted to post a couple that fall into thedigital color category. I am trying to fuse together the woodcut/art nuevo highly inked style I have been doing for years now along with a more simple blue line aspect (similar to illustrations you might see on the side of a macaroni or bandaid box but sloppier-the second image does not have this in it) and join it together with a very dark background approach taht is super low contrast when printed but spot colored here and there with flourescents. Not actual flourescent inks of course, but I am working on two blacklight posters right now which I will produce in that manner and I think working on them led me to create this color scheme.

Vanity Plant.

No Return

Bang Pow Zoom

Have a happy independence Day Everyone!

Bang Pow Zoom

Have a happy independence Day Everyone!