Sketchbook #68

Giddiyap!

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

The march of progress

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

Did you mean: extreme capitalism?

Working on a new series of drawings on the theme of "extreme cannibalism". 

This is a study for one of them, to see if it would work when i use a brush in stead of markers. It doesn't. I suspect brushwork evokes a kind of naturalism that is at odds with the medieval skewed perspectives and anatomy, which is a more symbolic way of drawing. Isolated details look OK in this technique, but not the whole picture. Lesson learned...

Happy Easter 2015

GULA

Last weekend I was at the comics festival of Lucca in Italy. It was an exhilarating experience! Little did I know it's the third in size in the world. Despite the crowds it has a relaxed and homey atmosphere. The city itself is small and compact and ancient. I would say I prefer it to Angouleme.
Anyway, I had been invited as a part of a Dutch delegation of comic artists, including Sam Peeters, Jeroen Funke, Dace Sietina, Barbara Stok, Tim Enthoven, Milan Hulsing and Bart Nijstad. Our presentation involved some painting action. The theme was the seven deadly sins. I picked gluttony to use it as an excuse to do some more cannibals. Each of us did three paintings in three days (except Barbara who kept a diary in comic form).

I think this one came out the best, with the Romanesque swirls I like.

This autofagic guy is too clumsy to go hunting and it's not getting better.

The big ones eat the small ones. This one was the first I did. It probably shows my rustiness at the time. We were tired from travelling, plus I paint only now and then...
More photos of the festival were made, but they will pop up at some other spot if all works out.

Comics Sketchbooks by Steven Heller

This came in the mail:

Proud to be one of the 80 featured artists. A lot of them are from the RAW circle, which is not surprising as Art Spiegelman contributed to the selection. My fellow countryman Joost Swarte is in there, and so are my pals Jakob Klemencic and Matthias Lehmann. Joseph Lambert is one of the few younger artists, but rightfully so - he's very good!

This is one of the spreads I have in the book:

It makes sense to have picked this one from a few years ago (20 sketchbooks ago) as this is from my Troglodytes series, which I did before I turned to medieval imagery. Three tomes of Troglodytes appeared in The Netherlands, while Top Shelf Comix published one collection in the States.

Anyway, Amazon carries it of course

Circle Jerk

Sexy humour

Drawing Straws

Working on some lino cuts for a special anthology, to be realised later this year (although it's not quite sure yet whether the money for it will be there - I am mentioning this so there will be less chance of jinxing it). Anyway, this is just one design of five. Here are some quick tests which I have done while cutting away details.

Hmm, not so happy with the structure on the ground but at least no letters are in mirror view. That would have been plain embarrassing. There is still a little bit of fixing after this, but not much. Everybody who has done this, knows that it's particularly hard to know when exactly to stop.

The theme of cannibalism still occupies my mind. It has been said that the theme of drawing straws among shipwrecked sailors is a strictly theoretical one, because one dies of thirst long before hunger becomes a lethal problem. I wouldn't know...

Centauroid

Another centauroid in trouble. Its tail is obviously infected.

New life

The cover of my new sketchbook (#40!) has more of feral men giving birth, and the madonna + child theme. I hope some of the initial spontaneity is still left.

Hic Sunt Antropofagi

Currently working on a piece featuring cannibals. X-Mas is coming after all.
This is one of the preliminary sketches for it.

The fish are commenting on what's happening along the lines of a 16-century print after Hieronymus Bosch: 'Look son, this is something I have known for a long time. The big (fish) eat the small ones'. But I am not going to use that in the end, it's too obscure/referential. The drawing is probably not going to have any text.

Recently I went to a rather scholarly lecture by Catalin Avramescu, who has written some very interesting things about the cannibal in filosophy as the opposite of everything that makes a civilised man. Of course it's the ultimate taboo, but rather than first-hand accounts, through the ages man has been interested in cannibalism as a theoretical exercise.

Long story short, the "cannibal paradox" posed medieval theologists for a problem. The day of reckoning was always supposed to have the righteous dead rise from their graves, with God piecing together all the little bits that may have been scattered or even eaten by wild animals. (Early medieval frescos show wolves and lions throwing up their victims, very weird!) But a cannibal who has eaten another human being represents a paradox: the flesh of his victim has also become his, as he has absolved it. So those particles are in two places at one: in evil and in good. Not even God would be able to solve that puzzle. So this was quite upsetting. The idea of the resurrection of the flesh had to be moderated.

Somehow, gory pictures don't do it for me anymore. Ideas like these however I find quite inspiring.



On a side note: the crutches used by the half-man are authentic. You can find more about them on Got Medieval, one of my favored blogs.

Heart Collector

Working on the CD cover for this Black Metal band from Belgium has been a pleasure.

Centauroid

A response to Kurt's recent "Nucklavee" post, a drawing of a similar centaur which I did for a new book (soon to be published by Alkbazz).

Spare ribs of the Long Pig

It wasn't until the late Middle Ages when scientists started performing autopsies, that the wide-spread belief of men having one rib less than women was definitely debunked.

Sketchbook #39

Yet another sketchbook cover, painted front and rear with acrylics. Somehow, the front cover usually does not come out as naturally. I don't paint much so my technique gets a bit rusty.
Anyway, I can't keep myself from putting corpse-painted feral men through a lot of torture. Here is one being eaten by a giant viper pregnant with three little ones eating their way out (which was the medieval way of birth).
The elephant was thought of as a exemplary animal as it would not mate unless forced to. This is a cloven-hoofed evil variety however, protecting a Blemmyan.

Feral Woman and Centaur

Another medieval post from me, and it has nothing to do with Black Metal or any other kind of music. (Well, the Mediaeval Baebes perhaps)

Fufu might recognize this one as a remix of a page that I did for his Silent Anthology which is still being compiled. My good friend Romuald Sourisse in France is working on a series of these drawings for a show which we will have in September. Click the 'parchment' tag to see another sample, or go here for a good look at the process of medieval illumination:
http://librarii.org/spip.php?article46

Feral Metal Make Up

A fragment of a piece with Feral Men exhibiting effeminate behaviour.

And here is the finished drawing (without colours):



Lately I have been poking fun at the Black Metal thing, because corpsepaint seems to become my medieval feral men. This does not mean that I don't like the music. On the contrary, and the history about the early days of the phenomenon is particularly fascinating. There is a certain mystique around it that is rare in pop music. But then, mysticism goes well with a sense of humour (unlike dogmatism). The combination of the homophobia within the BM scene and applying make-up before every gig is just too good.

The inspiration for this piece comes from Donna Kossy's Strange Creations, to be more precise the chapter on Oscar Kiss-Maerth (yes, that sounds dangerously close to 'kiss my ass', but that was his real name) and DEVO (who took a lot of nuttiness from him). Kiss-Maerth was a morosoph who argued in his book The Beginning was the End that humans had become smarter in the course of evolution by eating the brains of slain enemies.
So here my canibal feral men are eating the poor nuns' brains, but that comes with certain unexpected side effects.

Sine Qua Non

Working on a cover design for a new edition of my book Sine Qua Non from 2005, which is scheduled for the autumn, but one never knows... Top to bottom: front and rear, without typography, and the original cover. The original edition (almost sold out) was in English and French, this one is going to be Danish. Not that it matters that much: apart from some banners with Latin phrases, the stories are wordless.