New sketchbook

The cover of sketchbook #61, with the doppelganger effect.

Esqueleto Malefico

SOME CEREMONIES ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS

an exhibition of sound objects and drawings, by Matthias König & Ibrahim R. Ineke,
inspired by Arthur Machen's novella The White People (1904)

Opens Saturday 21st of January 14:00-18:00
Bries Space
Stenenbrug 15
Borgerhout, Antwerpen
open sat & sun until February 12th


http://www.bries.be/briesspace

"The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is only one place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice imitation which i have done in other places."
-Machen, The White People

The 9th Island book cover

The mock-up of the cover, because you need one in order to propose your book to publishers. The lettering and colouring need more tinkering, but this will have to do for now. It carries the cheerful, optimistic mood of the story as i want it to. A bit surprised about a story so upbeat to come out of my hands, actually. Maybe there was a need for it, in these troubled times.

http://www.timeless-shop.com/prod/problem-pink-edition-aleksandra-waliszewska-2391,51.html

http://www.timeless-shop.com/prod/problem-pink-edition-aleksandra-waliszewska-2391,51.html

Chilling

Chilling in the pyramid of ancient knowledge at the Cape of Fools. I liked the idea of having several chatty scenes like this one, where nothing happens, in between events. It gives a story more 'air'. 

In general, i have developed a strong dislike for the strict functionality of storylines where every detail is used, as if it were a crossword puzzle (or a tax return form, yuck!) that needs to be filled in completely. Mind you, in the 192 pages of this comic -which nears completion- plenty of stuff happens and many details fall into place. Just not all of them.

Also, it is nice to find room to throw in a scene with a different weather type - it takes place on a tropical island, so as a rule, it's sunny. This idea is similar to having at least one panel per page where feet are shown, to prevent the 'talking heads effect'. That's one of Alex Robinson's rules of drawing comics!

J'aime la vie !

(i love life)

new year's prayer

  

The earth demands blood.

It's a well-worn trope of horror fiction, playing on the city dweller's unconscious fear of the rural; knife-wielding druids, pagan ceremonies, fertility through sacrifice. Well-known too, as the dark heart of the 20th century; Blut und Boden, boots and runes, the bleak magic of destruction and hysteria. Yet for all the horror, it is perfectly natural. 'Adam' is known to be the masculine form of the word Adamah, earth, and related to the word meaning blood; so the earth only wants what is hers by right, and violence is the song of the earth singing her children home. Dust, to dust.

But what, then, of all things which are not Matter?

The part of town where i lived in my earliest youth, which is not where i currently reside, was built in the late 1800s amid the dunes, to accomodate the sudden influx of new residents, mostly retired army personnel and its attendant economy . Wedged between a triangle of cemeteries, it packs wide streets and alleys, turreted villas and workers' housing, squares and courtyards all in a relatively small area of unremarkable neoclassicist and eclecticist bourgeois architecture of the period, readymades for the gentrification of a later century. Having lived there as a kid has made it old stones, its fountains, its ivy-covered walls the earliest model of 'home' and 'world' to me, and whenever i pass the borough these days, the gently sloping streets still call to me with the siren song of their remembranced stone, and offer their hard, unyielding presence as proof of my exile. Nostalgia, far from being some wispy, dreamy sentiment, is in fact a gross, material, tactile thing. Not a presiding spirit at all, but the very thing presided over.

Memory and place are made of the same stuff; earth and blood; sinew and mud. Dust and dust.

Yet within this tiny knot of streets, there are also other residents; a twist to the left, a sharp turn right within memory and place reveals glimpses. Intimations of the dunes hidden beneath the pavement; the way the large old house sits atop that slight incline, concealed by pine trees; the way the farthest wall of the Sephardic cemetery at the end of the lane catches the last of the noonday sun in winter; the spires of the palatial neo-Gothic edifice shrouded in mist, their scale unmoored, become Faery towers.

The carved leaf-and-bough faces of the Green Man leering down  from the pillars at the park entrance. Lights behind the roset windows of the boarded-up church at night. The house you're sure was here, set back deep among the other buildings, but that you can't now find.

What are these?

Real, they are not; not in the way of bombs in Syria, and hunger in the homeless shelter around  the corner. But things that are not Matter are not necessarily things that do not matter. That they exist at a remove from the world, does not mean they have no function in it. Such imaginings and visions, although they are non-facts and non-places, in their phantasmagorical extrapolation are extensions of the world. A Non-world, if you will, as outpost of existence, an archipelago of meaning in the Void. For every corporate-owned stretch of concrete, someone's fond remembrance of it as a field; for every charmless thoroughfare, a lover's memory of it as the place where a ring or kiss was first offered and accepted; we make our home  in two worlds at once; make our way through both.

 

The earth demands sacrifice, but so do these places and moments that extend from it into our imaginations; the half-remembered vistas and dissolving corridors of the last dream traces in the pre-dawn light that stay with you throughout the day (ghostly complement to the mundane) ; the brief jolt of a stranger's face mistaken for that of a long-lost friend; the impractical notion toyed with for its own sake; the envisioning of the route of a train not taken; glimpses, flashes, imaginings; the Non-world is vast.

And the nature of the sacrifice owed to it?  It demands to be seen.

Drawing attention to it, drawing it, writing it into existence, is service and ceremony, ritual and practice. Work that i predict will be as difficult in 2017 as in any other year, and more difficult still, and even more important. 
For us, there is only the trying.

" Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings"

-Wm Blake

Sous vide 5

Couverture et dos gravés par Marilyne Mangione

Images : Maud Newton, Andréas Marchal, Nuvish, Dominique Lucci, Tatiana Samoïlova, Claire Secco, Tito Gascuel, Ina, Mr T, Mélès, Gaspard Pitiot, Margaux Salmi, ël, Tony Burhouse, Jean Paul Vertraeten, Pauline Musco, Corinne Menut, Hui Zheng, Sarah Fisthole, Adrien Fregosi, Alkbazz

Textes : Ina, Agnès Cognée, Kenny Ozier-Lafontaine, Jos roy, Louis Doucet, Céline Maltère, Margueritte C, Charles Pennequin, Eric Ferber

Intérieur imprimé en risographie par Richard Bockhobza, atelieroctobre.net, au Peldis.

7euro (+2,80 frais de port), contactez nous pour recevoir une copie

Merry...Happy....Holiday Something:360 sphere art experiment

Hello, Ducks! I haven't posted in a while- but I've actually been drawing a lot of monsters, so I should probably change that. Anyway, yesterday I tried something out with the new 360 sphere photos I can create using the Google Streetview app, and to my delight: it worked! It's kind of rushed, because I just wanted to see if it would work. I can't upload directly to Blogger, because- at least, as far as I know- it doesn't yet support 360 photos. This is best viewed on a mobile device- dragging with the mouse on laptop or desktop doesn't look so great. The link will take you to the image on my Facebook profile- it's a public image, so I don't think you need to be logged in or anything.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157879846390361&set=a.10150835364130361.732325.664810360&type=3

and here is a sample from the 360 photo:

Freedom

Run for freedom! This page was in part inspired by Guy Maddin's Sissy Boy Slap Party:

Between life and death

Spiritism

 A new page from my ongoing story The 9th Island, the fourth chapter.
I am referring here to the fad of spiritism that took Europe by a storm around the turn of the century. Less well know is its influence on certain pioneers of abstract art. Hilma Af Klint can be seen as a sort of missing link between Jugendstil and abstraction. At the bottom a simulacrum painted by Nicolas Roerich, which is also interesting: it's Russian dabblings with esoterics here (in stead of the obvious nazi connection).

Of course, it's not necessary to be aware of all the references i am using, though. That would render the story quite unreadable. But it is interesting IMO to see how abstraction became a respected direction in art and comics sadly went the other way, while both developed quasi-simultaneously.

Af Klint

                                                                              Roerich

Woodcut

did 2 woodcut recently, one using "plaque perdue" technique to make several colors, another only black with good size (on 50x70cm paper)

adding last ink drawing i did
this one was complete improvisation before adding boat

Giddiyap!

This linocut of a rope-skipping centauroid was done during my stay in Slovenia, early October.

Eaten By Ducks - France Expo. 2006 - 2016 - Le Garage L. http://www.garage-l.fr/

The march of progress

A comment on man's technobedazzlement of today and an obvious nod to Bosch's Haywain.

Gift

Freebies! Here's a two-page tribute to the classic weird fiction story 'The Inner Room' by Robert Aickman. It's also on my blog, which no-one reads.
& there's more: over at http://www.plastiekenplunk.be/item/salome/ you can read my Salomé with the double page spreads inexplicably cut in half. If you liked it, leave a vote, so i win the prize & can feed my kids. 
Gift, of course, means poison in German.

Linocuts

Working on several linocuts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, of a rope-skipping centauroid, and other creatures.

boat and fish

last one, improvised on paper with ferric ink, except for the boat. Sometimes i feel like i need to think drawing first, then i fail and succeed in the other way (impro), so maybe my style is this sort of things. Also thinking how to better scan these, i think i miss some good points by looking for black/white instead of grey levels